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“Oh, I couldn’t do that!” she exclaimed, a look of shock on her face.
“Sure you can,” Bishop cajoled. “I’ll teach you how to line dance.”
“What’s line dancing?”
“It isn’t shaking your booty, it’s more like the dancing people did on Pride and Prejudice. People stand side by side and do the steps—”
“But I don’t know any of the steps.” Her cheeks were flushed, and she darted a nervous but vaguely longing glance toward the dance floor.
By now Bishop had her by both hands, urging her to her feet. “It’s easy to learn, I’ll show you. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”
Jaclyn watched, smiling. Bless Bishop, not only for staying, but for paying attention to the poor woman and actually having her laughing now. She might never be happy with her son’s choice of wife, the marriage might not last past next week, but she wouldn’t look back and remember the wedding with total misery.
Bishop positioned them off to the side so they wouldn’t interfere with the other dancers, who were whirling and gyrating, and began walking his partner through the steps. After the third pass-through, she began to get the hang of it, remembering when to clap, sometimes remembering when to kick. She was laughing, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright.
The band wasn’t slow. They saw what was going on, and swung into Brooks and Dunn. “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” began blaring from the speakers. A couple of women squealed, and several of them hurried to align themselves with Bishop and Evelyn, stomping and scootin’ and clapping. Bishop was laughing, his usual sardonic expression completely missing in action, and E
velyn was laughing in return whenever she missed a step.
“Thank you,” the groom said, coming up beside Jaclyn and handing her a cold, frosty bottle of beer.
Surprised, she automatically took the beer. “For what?”
He was a little sweaty from his own efforts on the dance floor, his hair falling forward onto his forehead, his eyes sparkling and his color high. He nodded toward his mother. “For making Mom laugh.”
So he wasn’t completely oblivious to the turmoil he was putting his family through, as she’d thought. If he was going into this marriage with his eyes open, he might actually have a chance to pull it off, though she was fairly certain that would mean separating his bride from her current crowd of friends. On the other hand, he might fit in with that crowd better than she thought, in which case Evelyn probably had some sleepless nights filled with worry in her future. You just never knew with people. And because you didn’t know, because she couldn’t fix things even if she did know, Jaclyn smiled and took a sip of the beer. “Don’t thank me, at any rate. Thank Bishop. I had no idea he even knew what line dancing was.”
“Who is he? Your boyfriend? I thought the cop was.”
He didn’t seem upset at the idea that people he didn’t know were at his wedding, drinking and eating. “No, Bishop is the florist who did your flowers. He usually leaves as soon as he has everything in place, but today he decided to stick around. I’m sorry, I should have asked permission.” The fact that she hadn’t, that the idea hadn’t even occurred to her, was a testament to how off-balance the whole day had been for her.
He waved her apology away. “That’s fine. Doesn’t matter to me. So the cop’s your boyfriend?”
She opened her mouth to deny that, too, then realized that if she did, she had no ready explanation for Eric’s presence. She could either explain the whole complicated series of events, which she didn’t want to do, or she could let everyone think she habitually invited friends to the weddings she oversaw, which was in most ways worse than telling the truth. But if she said he was on duty—he was, wasn’t he?—she ran the risk of half the guests bolting, and ruining the party. Evidently they had all decided he was there only because he was dating her, and for some reason that made him less threatening. “Kind of,” she finally said, lamely.
“Thought so.” The groom clinked his bottle with hers, winked, and wandered away in search of his new wife.
Jaclyn looked at the bottle of beer in her hand. She should set it down; she wasn’t much of a drinker, and she never drank anything alcoholic when she was on a job. The problem with this job was that she was more bystander than organizer, she’d already done everything she could do short of getting the bride and groom in a car—please, God, soon—and, damn it, she was hot and thirsty and the beer was cold and wet. She wasn’t crazy about beer, but what the hell. She tilted the bottle and drank some more.
She had almost finished the beer when an arm suddenly clamped around her waist and she looked up, startled, into Mullet Head’s smiling face. “C’mon, sweet thing, let’s dance!” And he began dragging her toward the dance floor.
Eric had been keeping his distance, more out of respect for the fact that Jaclyn was working than for any other reason, but he’d positioned himself, at the back of the tent close to the tables of food, where he could keep an eye on her. The location had turned out to be doubly advantageous. He’d had beer and barbecue pressed on him; he’d refused the beer and taken the barbecue, along with sides of potato salad and coleslaw. There were a few soft drinks and juices available, for the kids, so he drank a soft drink and ignored how good an icy beer would taste. The barbecue was damn good. The minister said it was because he set an open can of beer inside the barbecue grill and then kept the grill closed while the meat cooked; supposedly the hot beer added moisture to the meat and made it tender. Maybe there was truth to that, because the meat was outstanding.
If there was any public place where Jaclyn was safe, this was probably it. For one thing, very few people knew where she was. The other three women who worked at Premier did. Obviously Bishop Delaney had known where she’d be, which was a weak link he didn’t like even though he didn’t think Delaney had anything to do with either Carrie Edwards’s murder or the attempt on Jaclyn’s life. Eric had come to appreciate how linked the business of putting on a wedding was, with the same people running into each other again and again. Event planners had their favorite vendors that they recommended, in case the client didn’t already have someone in mind. If Delaney mentioned to someone where he’d be, and who was directing, that someone could easily tell someone else and word could get to the wrong person.
But this place wasn’t easy to find. The barn wasn’t visible from the road. It was on private property, and there was only that one farm trail leading in. If he hadn’t had Jaclyn’s schedule and paperwork, and a GPS, he might not have found it himself.
Last but not least, he thought Jaclyn was fairly safe here because most of the people around her weren’t the type to take kindly to someone being shot in their midst, and disrupting their fun. If all the vehicles here were searched, he was certain at least three quarters of them would have firearms in them. The pickup trucks had shotguns and rifles easily visible in rear window brackets; the cars would have pistols tucked in consoles and glove compartments, or under the seats. The shotguns and rifles were legal, and in any case all these cars were on private property. When he’d been in uniform, if he’d stopped any of these people for a traffic violation, a fair number of them would have been arrested on the spot.
He could make a phone call and have his people swarming over this field. A raid would probably result in that same fair number being hauled in on outstanding warrants, but hell, they hadn’t broken any laws that he’d seen, and sometimes a cop had to make a judgment call. Most of the warrants would be on relatively minor stuff—“relative” being the operative word—and there was a lot worse going on out there that law enforcement could be spending its budget and man-hours on. He was cool with that.
Then he saw the skinny guy from the night before, the one with the worst mullet in the history of mullets, drag Jaclyn toward the dance floor, despite her protests and attempts to pull free, and he wasn’t cool with that—not by a long shot.
He found himself stalking toward the asshole, and the expression on his face may have been a tad unfriendly, because even the people in this crowd took one look and moved out of his way. If he knew anything at all about Jaclyn, it was that she’d go out of her way to keep from causing a scene, unless she was tearing a strip off his own ass, which seemed to supersede everything else—so even though she was protesting she was trying to be quiet about it, trying not to be obvious that she was struggling with the guy, and that made him even angrier because it put her at a disadvantage.
Because she was pulling back, and because he himself was moving pretty fast, he caught up with them just as the jerk dragged her onto the dance floor. He stepped up on the planks and caught the guy by the shoulder; he didn’t throw him to the side—he could have, but for Jaclyn’s sake he tried not to create a scene. Instead he merely clamped down, digging his fingers into the shoulder joint and pulling him to a halt.
“I told you yesterday, she’s with me,” he growled.
