Free BRIDAL JEOPARDY by REBECCA YORK Page A

anyone to see you with me when I get the car.”
    She quickly agreed, pressing back against the building as she watched him cross the street and disappear into the B and B.
    In a few minutes, a late-model Impala pulled up at the curb, and she climbed in, shutting the door quickly behind her.
    “I suppose you know where my dad lives,” she said as he pulled back into the traffic lane.
    “Yeah.”
    As they drove out of the French Quarter, then to St. Charles Avenue, Craig kept glancing in his rearview mirror, making sure that nobody was following them.
    “I guess you’re used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Stephanie murmured.
    “Part of my job description.”
    As he headed up St. Charles, then turned onto St. Andrew Street, her heart started to pound. She hadn’t exactly had a pleasant encounter with her father, and she hadn’t expected to meet up with him again so soon.
    “You get out. I’m going to leave the car around the corner,” he said as he pulled up in front of the house.
    “I’ll wait for you outside.”
    He gave her a critical look. “You really don’t want to be here, do you?”
    “No. And I’m thinking that it’s not so great for you.”
    “Because?”
    “Because he’s given me to John Reynard, and he’s not going to be happy to see me with another man.”
    “ Given is a pretty strong word.”
    She shot him a fierce look. “You don’t think I agreed to marry Reynard because I was madly in love, do you?”
    “No. I thought you were interested in his money.”
    She dragged in a sharp breath. “Thanks.”
    “I didn’t know you then.”
    “And now you do?”
    “You can’t lie with your thoughts.”
    “At least that’s something.”
    He turned his head toward her, then looked back to the road. “I’m working my way through this situation—just the way you are.”
    “You’ve had some experience with it.”
    “This is different.” He waited a beat before saying, “To get back to the current problem, tell your father I’m a detective you’ve hired to find out who the men were.”
    “He’ll think John could handle that on his own.”
    Craig shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?”
    “No.”
    Stephanie climbed out of the car and walked up the driveway toward the detached garage. When she looked inside and saw that her father’s car was missing, she breathed a little sigh of relief, then started wondering where he was.
    Because she said she’d be outside, she waited for Craig on the wide front porch.
    “It looks like my dad isn’t home,” she said.
    “Good.”
    “I hope so. He doesn’t like...” She stopped.
    “What.”
    “...me sneaking around.”
    “What the hell does that mean? This is your house.”
    “Not anymore. I moved out.”
    “Your father sounds like a real winner.”
    “He’s had...a hard life.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “He was used to wealth and privilege, and he lost that.”
    “His own fault,” Craig pointed out.
    “Maybe that makes it worse.”
    “Do you always make excuses for him?”
    “Let’s not go on about him,” she snapped, and he pressed his lips together, maybe because he realized he would gain nothing by continuing to focus on her father’s failings.
    After she unlocked the door, she turned to him. “Come inside, but wait in the front hall.”
    “I should check out the house.”
    “For what?”
    “Intruders.”
    “Unlikely.”
    To her relief, he stayed in the hall while she darted into the living room, then circled through the rest of the downstairs before climbing quickly up the stairs.
    Leaning over the balcony, she beckoned to him. “Come on.”
    * * *
    “W HAT ARE WE looking for?” he asked when he reached the top of the stairs.
    “I’m not sure. It was almost thirty years ago, so it’s not going to be on the computer, but Mom kept some boxes with papers and pictures in the top of her closet.”
    Craig followed her into a bedroom where the furnishings were antique and the once-expensive fabrics were dusty and