Free Bridegroom Bodyguard by LISA CHILDS Page A

danger. I thought you just needed to watch out for him because he’s a playboy, but maybe you need to watch out for him because he’s a killer,” the detective warned her.
    She shook her head. “He’s not shooting at himself or trying to blow himself up.”
    “But he could have killed the judge,” the detective persisted. “He could have also killed the bodyguard.”
    “And gone back tonight?” she asked. “Why?”
    Detective Sharpe shrugged again. “Your grandfather never told you about the criminals who returned to the scenes of their crimes?”
    “Parker Payne is no criminal.” Her instinctive defense of him laid to rest those doubts she’d kept having about him. While her mind found reasons why she shouldn’t trust him, her gut trusted him instinctively. Her heart trusted him.
    The detective cocked his head as if considering the veracity of her statement; he obviously didn’t know and respect Parker like the older officer who had spoken with her at the hospital or the bald-headed officer at the judge’s house.
    “I would have agreed with you,” Sharpe admitted, “but he has recently started associating with some known criminals.”
    She shrugged now. She had no idea with whom Parker associated. “I wouldn’t know—”
    “The Kozminskis,” he said, as if she had asked. “They were at the hospital earlier when the bomb went off in the parking lot. They were with their new brother-in-law—Logan Payne.”
    They must have been the blond men with the light-colored eyes who had found out that someone had put out a hit on her as well as Parker.
    “The Kozminskis have long criminal records,” Detective Sharpe continued, “starting with stints in juvie for theft and murder....”
    “I don’t know the Kozminskis.” But if they were any part of the reason for her interrogation, she didn’t like them very much. “I have nothing to do with any of this. Not only am I physically incapable of doing—” an involuntary shudder struck her with the memory of Brenda’s corpse “—what was done to the judge, but I have no motive to hurt her. Now that she’s dead I have no job.”
    No mentor to help her pass the bar. Not that Brenda had been much help on Sharon’s previous attempts. She had even suggested that Sharon give up on law and continue as Ethan’s nanny. Now she wouldn’t even be able to do that—and that was the far greater loss to Sharon.
    The detective snorted. “You have the biggest motive, Ms. Wells.”
    “Unemployment?” she scoffed.
    “Inheritance.”
    The detective had obviously lost it. “What inheritance?” The judge hadn’t even paid her that well.
    “When the judge’s murder was reported on television, her lawyer contacted us about her child. He thought the child would be with you....”
    “He—he’s with...friends.” Given the detective’s opinion of the Paynes and the Kozminskis, she didn’t dare be more specific, or else he might send a police car to pick up Ethan, too.
    “The judge’s will made you the guardian of her son and the trustee of the estate he’ll inherit from her—a sizable estate from which you’ll draw a sizable salary for his care.” His smirk was back. “That gives you a very big motive for her murder.”
    “I am Judge Wells’s granddaughter,” she reminded the dim-witted detective. “I don’t need money.” And maybe that was why Brenda hadn’t paid her very much. The judge had known what Sharon had inherited when her grandparents had passed away a few years ago—a lot of money. But they had never given Sharon what she had really wanted from them: their love.
    “I would never kill anyone....”
    “Not even for that little boy?” he asked. “The judge must have really trusted you with him to appoint you as his guardian in her will.”
    Sharon had lied to the detective...because Ethan was the one person for whom she would kill. She would do anything to protect that little boy.
    She shrugged. “I never really knew what Judge