Dane tensed. “I don’t talk about that stuff...” Not with his friends. He certainly wasn’t going to talk to some young woman who already had enough nightmares of her own. “I can’t help her.”
Lars studied his face for a while before uttering a sigh of resignation. “Fine. Just watch out for her, make sure she doesn’t get any more nightmares from whatever the hell might happen here today.”
Just what kind of weddings did Penny Payne plan that people risked developing PTSD after them?
* * *
A lot of weddings had taken place in Penny Payne’s Little White Wedding Chapel. Some real. Some staged to flush out serial killers. Some hadn’t taken place at all. Brides had changed their minds. Or gunmen had taken the church hostage before the wedding was able to take place.
Penny wasn’t worried about this bride changing her mind. She stared at her reflection in the oval mirror in the bride’s dressing room.
Was it ridiculous that she wore a gown?
It wasn’t white. At fifty...something...and with four grown kids, that would have been ridiculous. But the tea-length, lacy bronze dress looked like a wedding gown. For the second time in her life, Penny was a bride.
Her first groom had been a boy. Together they’d grown up. And he had become a man—one who’d made mistakes. One mistake had brought a child into the world with another woman. One had gotten him killed.
She had survived both of his mistakes. But then she’d spent the next nearly two decades afraid of making a mistake of her own. So she’d focused on her kids and her business and she’d protected her heart—until that day she’d nearly lost her chapel to those gunmen.
Her kids—the ones she’d given birth to and the ones she’d claimed as hers—had saved everyone that day. But Penny had still lost something she had never intended to risk again.
Her heart.
But this groom she could trust. He wasn’t a boy. He was a man. Woodrow Lynch wouldn’t make mistakes that would hurt her. He loved her as much as she loved him.
No. She wasn’t going to back out and neither would Woodrow. Penny wasn’t worried about that. She wasn’t even worried about all the minute details of a ceremony that she usually insisted on overseeing herself.
She didn’t need to do that anymore, not since she’d hired Emilia Ecklund. The beautiful blonde appeared next to her in the reflection in the mirror. She carefully pinned the tiny bronze lace veil onto Penny’s coif of auburn curls.
“You look so beautiful,” Emilia told her with such awe that Penny couldn’t doubt her sincerity. She was such a sweet, sincere young woman. “Everything’s ready.”
Penny’s heart lurched. Not with nerves over the marriage. She knew that would be good. But now a few doubts flickered in about the wedding details. Emilia had seemed kind of distracted the past few weeks. Penny opened her mouth to ask a couple of questions, just to confirm.
But Emilia shushed her with a smile. “Everything’s ready,” she repeated with calm assurance. There was not even a trace of nerves in her soft voice or on her beautiful face.
Penny believed her. Emilia had been about to graduate with her bachelor’s degree in hospitality and event planning when her world had been turned upside down. After her rescue, she had been working hard to right her world again.
Maybe too hard.
Dark circles rimmed her pale blue eyes. Of course, she had an infant at home, too. New mothers rarely got enough sleep. That was probably why she’d seemed distracted lately.
Penny reached up and patted her cheek. “Thank you, Emilia, for making not just this day so special for me but for making my workload so much lighter since you started working for me.”
Emilia’s beautiful eyes glistened with unshed tears, but she blinked her long black lashes and cleared away the moisture. She smiled again, but it was as if she had to force up the corners of her mouth.
“Is everything all right?” Penny asked her.
“Yes, I told you it was,” Emilia replied. “We’re ready to start the ceremony. Are you ready?”
Penny sucked in a sharp breath. She was getting married again. She was pledging to share the rest of her life with another. She couldn’t wait. “Yes, please send my kids in here. I am raring to walk down the aisle to my groom.”
But as Emilia turned away to open the door, Penny caught her arm. The odd sensation raced over her—one of those god-awful premonitions she had that something was about to go very wrong.
Not today.
Of all days, not today...
“What is it?” Emilia asked. Alarm drained the color from her face. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Definitely not,” Penny said. “I can’t wait to marry my soul mate. But...”
“I told you, everything’s fine.”
“I’m sure you did everything right,” Penny said. “But I have that feeling...”
Emilia sucked in a sharp breath now. Penny had told her about the feelings that came over her, about her instincts that warned her when something horrible was going to happen.
“I’ll double-check everything,” her assistant assured her. “Don’t worry.”
She hurried away before Penny could stop her.
Penny couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to Emilia. She hoped she was wrong. The young woman had already been through too much.
Emilia’s heart pounded as she gave in to the nerves fluttering inside her. This was it, her chance to finally prove herself to her benevolent boss. Penny had been so sweet to take a chance on her, to give her not just a job but the responsibility of overseeing the woman’s wedding.
Nothing could go wrong.
But Penny’s premonitions were legendary. When she had one of her feelings that something bad was about to happen, it always did.
So Emilia didn’t waste time checking on the flowers. She already knew they were perfect. The minister had arrived, as had all the guests. The photographer had already begun taking pictures and setting up the camera to record the ceremony. The caterers were ready to serve for the reception in the banquet room in the chapel basement.
Emilia hadn’t lied when she’d assured Penny that everything was ready. For the ceremony...
But Emilia had that sense of disquiet, too, the same way that Penny did. Something bad was about to happen. That feeling compelled her to quickly cross the foyer to the steps leading down to the nearly walk-out-level basement. This was where the offices were and the banquet hall and kitchen.
And the nursery...
Along with all the Payne babies, Blue was there, too. Two nursery workers—teenage girls—watched all the children. But they were only teenagers. If someone tried to take one of the babies...
They wouldn’t be able to stop them.
But Emilia would.
She hastened her pace, her heels clicking against the stairs as she nearly ran down them. In her haste, she slipped. Her grasp on the railing kept her from tumbling to the concrete floor below. She steadied herself, finished descending the stairs and hurried down the hall.
Waiters and cooks milled around inside the banquet hall and the kitchen as she rushed past. Excitement hummed in the air. This was the