Free Charmed and Dangerous by Lori Wilde Page A

grove, wasting no time in ditching her.
    Maddie hesitated, alternating between eyeing the coconuts dangling above and the FBI agent sneaking through the trees. Her innate sense of caution warred with her allegiance to her sister.
    Stay or go?
    Hang back and wait? Or take your chances and plunge ahead?
    Risk your noggin or Cassie’s life?
    Tick-tock.
    David was halfway through the grove when she realized loyalty trumped safety.
    “Okay, all right, wait up, I’m coming,” she whispered loudly.
    “Shhh. I think I hear the wedding march.” He stopped and cocked his head to listen.
    She clamped her lips shut and nervously duck-walked behind him as quickly as she could. It wasn’t easy, navigating the moist sand and the coconut trees in that position.
    When Maddie heard the deadly whoosh-thunk of a descending coconut to the left of her, she almost peed in her pants.
    Yikes!
    The second whoosh-thunk, closer even than the first sent her stomach into spasms and her heart rate into hyperdrive. She felt like she was in the video game Frogger she and Cassie used to play as kids.
    She scuttled faster and by the time she reached David, she felt edgy, overheated and even a bit faint. She cowered beside him, arms wrapped over her head, eyes squeezed closed. Her pulse stepped up its shallow, flighty beat.
    David reached out and laid a hand across her shoulder. “I want you to prepare yourself,” he murmured.
    “Prepare myself to die by coconut?” Maddie asked, peering over her shoulder and praying she wouldn’t see any angry island gods hurling ripe fruit at her.
    He took her chin between his fingers and thumb and turned her head toward the beach. “Look at the bride.”
    “Yeah, okay, I see her.”
    She squinted at the woman in white walking rather stiffly down the green Astroturf laid out as an aisle. Maddie was a tad nearsighted, but glasses got in the way of sports and she’d never gotten the hang of poking plastic contact lenses into her eyes.
    “You don’t recognize her?”
    “Should I?”
    “It’s your twin sister and unless I’m mistaken the groom is Peyton Shriver.”
    Before she could shriek, “What?” David clamped one hand over her mouth and snaked his other hand around her waist, pulling her down flush against his warm body.
    “I told you she ran off with him voluntarily,” he whispered.
    Maddie tensed and she struggled to break free from his overbearing grasp. She had to get to Cassie and stop that wedding now, but David wasn’t about to turn her loose. She aimed an elbow at his ribs and jabbed hard.
    “Ouch, that hurt. Stop fighting me.”
    “Turn me loose,” she mumbled around the salty taste of his skin.
    “Only if you promise not to go ballistic.”
    Yeah okay, she would promise anything in order to get David to let her go, but that didn’t mean she would sit here idly by and allow her sister to marry that sleazebag art thief.
    Slowly he released her and then slipped his gun from its shoulder holster.
    “Stay well behind me, or I’ll handcuff you to a tree,” he threatened.
    “I think you’re bluffing.”
    “Just try me.”
    Something in his tone of voice, told her he meant every word. The last thing she wanted was to be handcuffed to one of those coconut trees.
    They both looked toward the beach. Her sister—if indeed the bride was Cassie—reached the altar and the music stopped.
    “Dearly beloved,” she heard the minister say.
    She couldn’t heed David’s warning; she had to speak out. She didn’t care if he got mad and handcuffed her to a coconut tree, she’d take her chances. She had to stop her twin from making a horrible mistake.
    “Cassie, no!” she screamed. “Don’t do it!”
    David was on his feet, staying low, gun held at his side. Maddie was on his heels. They were at the edge of the grove when she glanced up and saw it, a coconut dangling precariously from the tree right above them.
    Don’t visualize it falling.
    But she couldn’t help herself. She was a