The Bridal Chase. Darcy Maguire

career, her obligations to family and friends and planning their wedding.

      The wedding seemed to take all the spare time she had, despite having a wedding planner and both his and her mothers’ help. But then the wedding was only two weeks away now.

      He took a deep breath. It would all be fine after the wedding. Like it used to be. Besides, everyone loved her. He loved her. There wasn’t anything more to it.

      Cade just wished their approaching nuptials didn’t occupy all her time. He’d wanted to spend a lot of time with her, get to know her even more.

      He sighed. He guessed they had the rest of their lives for that.

      ‘Does dinner at The Palace sound okay to you?’ he asked, slipping behind the wheel.

      Heather liked to be wined and dined at the finest of places and surprised with treats and gifts, and he loved seeing her happy. Which reminded him. He reached into the back seat and pulled out a small wrapped package. ‘For you.’

      ‘Oh, thank you,’ she lilted, fluttering her eyelashes at him as he started the car. ‘You know I love surprises, darling.’

      He nodded, starting the car, quelling the image of being with that tall, mysterious beauty. He had everything and there was no way he’d risk that for anything.

      He glanced at the woman who would soon be his wife, the tension easing from his shoulders. She was impeccably dressed, as she always was. Groomed and preened to perfection; even after a day’s work at the fashion house that she managed she looked like a million dollars. Not the same sort of perfection as the stranger in the bar…hers was more a natural beauty, something she had without effort.

      He could almost smell the stranger’s sweet vanilla scent on the edge of his memory.

      He caught himself. It didn’t matter. Heather loved her top-shelf perfume, her designer wardrobe, his family and him…that was all that mattered.

      They were going to have the perfect life together. She was everything he’d always wanted.

      Roxanne dropped her head on to the desk, lifting and dropping it again for good measure. Why?

      What was wrong with her?

      Why had she even tried to pick the guy up with only minutes before his fiancée turned up? As if he was going to do anything then anyway…he wouldn’t have even been considering her. There would be no way even the most daring man would risk it.

      She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

      She rubbed the sore spot on her forehead. Maybe his impending date wouldn’t have mattered to him if her dress had been shorter, sexier, red?

      She sighed, dropping her head again on to the desk and staying there, covering her face. She was hopeless.

      What sort of professional was she? She hadn’t even looked at her watch to check out how much time she had…hadn’t even thought about it after he had walked in that door, towering above the mortals, looking like a god in that tailored suit.

      She would have thought it would have been easier, especially after all those detective novels she’d read and the shows she’d watched on TV.

      She stared around the small office in the two-storey walk-up that her sister, Nadine, had found to run her business. It wasn’t exactly typical of an investigator’s office.

      It was small, the size of a small apartment, with enough room for two desks, a couple of wastepaper baskets and three walls of filing cabinets that Nadine’s daughter, Rory, had decorated with crayon.

      A small pile of toys sat in the corner on a miniature desk where Rory came to help out when pre-school was out and the holidays were on.

      One window looked out on the neighbouring office block’s western wall and had floral curtains and the other faced the street with pink blinds that wouldn’t go down.

      The outer office was painted a soft peach with the paint that her sister had left over from painting her daughter’s bedroom, with a sofa that had seen better days and a pile of magazines from the Dark Ages.

      Despite appearances, Nadine said the business was going quite well…if you didn’t count today’s disaster or the fact that Roxanne had been left to hold the fort—and she had no experience in this type of fort at all.

      What she was going to do now with the Cade case she had no idea. Half of her wanted to shove the thing into the filing cabinet and forget about it, the other half hankered to go and see the guy again, to try again.

      Could she?

      No. It would be too obvious and far too awkward for her, and the fact that her track record with men was a disaster had to be taken into account.

      The door burst open.

      Nadine rushed into the room, carrying an armload of files. ‘What are you still doing here?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s late.’

      Roxanne looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Yes.’ But she hadn’t wanted to go home and face her sister until she’d worked out what to do.

      ‘Don’t think you can weasel overtime out of me.’ Her sister shot her a smile that looked a lot like her own, like her hair and her eyes—if there hadn’t been three years between them they could have been twins.

      Nadine flicked back the wisps of her auburn-tinted brown hair. ‘How’s it going anyway? Are you finding everything okay? Taking notes for every call? Being polite?’ She dumped the files on to the desk. ‘Can you file these while you’re hanging round?’

      Roxanne rubbed her forehead to ease the pain and sat up straighter. ‘Sure, but shouldn’t you be at home with Rory? I’ve got this all covered.’

      Her sister scooped up the papers from a tray on her desk. ‘I’ve got a sitter with her for an hour so I haven’t got much time…I just wanted to catch up on paperwork… Are you sure you’re all right with this? I know I sort of dropped this on you, but you were jobless…’

      Roxanne stood up. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’m handling everything. I’ve had plenty of experience in office management.’

      Nadine nodded, heading for the door. ‘Not this kind of office, I’ll bet.’

      Roxanne’s mind shot to the scene earlier in the bar. That was for sure.

      ‘And I forgot to tell you, if there’s anyone who can’t wait until next week just pass them on to the private investigators that I wrote there in the appointment book.’

      Roxanne’s gaze wandered over to the number scrawled on the top of the book. Just great. She could have told her that earlier.

      The elegant woman had come in first thing this morning, insisting on getting the job done at the soonest possible time, threatening to take her business elsewhere if Roxanne couldn’t guarantee an immediate start.

      ‘And ring me if there’s a problem at all; I can track down a sitter for Rory for an hour or so while she’s sleeping. I can be a mother and troubleshoot messes at the same time.’

      Roxanne froze. Her messes. She could hear Nadine’s accusation as clearly in her tone as every other time that her sister had come and saved the day for her, whether she wanted saving or not.

      Since their mother had passed away Nadine had taken over the role with a vengeance. Well, she wasn’t a teenager any more and Nadine didn’t need to know she’d gone and tried to do a job herself and made a mess of it.

      So, she had messed up the first time. She wasn’t going to run to Nadine at the first sign of trouble, she wasn’t going to pass the buck and she certainly wasn’t going to show that she wasn’t prepared to go out there in the real world again and put herself on the market.

      She could face Cade Taylor Watson again.

      Roxanne was up to the task, just not today, not without some more preparation and planning.