Secret Weapon Spouse - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,41

couldn’t keep this from Alex. She was tempted to call him, interrupt whatever he had going on tonight, with the bad news.

But she feared she would hear a woman’s voice in the background and it would make her feel even worse than she did right now.

She thanked Clare and went back to her office.

She’d been wrong about another man. She was batting a thousand.

Chapter Eleven

The next morning in her office Samantha tried to keep her thoughts on her work, namely the Holcom-Anders wedding.

She went through her list of to-dos and even double-checked the weather channel to make sure there would be no surprises.

The Holcom-Anders wedding was being held on the beach today—one of those huge unpredictable outdoor weddings that drove wedding planners crazy.

With indoor weddings at least you could control the environment. But beach destination weddings were the big thing this year so most of the Holcom clan had flown in several days before and been up in Orlando doing the Disney thing before the wedding. The Anders part of the family had Miami connections so many of the guests would be driving down to Key Largo today.

The weatherman promised sunny skies. Satisfied there was nothing more she could do, Samantha gathered her things and went down to the parking garage to meet the rest of the team for the van ride to Key Largo.

She hadn’t seen or heard from Alex since last night. She’d been disappointed when she’d returned home after working as long as she could only to find no message on her machine. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t let what almost happened in the back of the limo happen again.

Instead, she would tell Alex what she knew about Preston Wellington III. She regretted not telling him last night before the limo ride. But he’d asked for one night without any bad news. And she had to admit, she’d enjoyed herself immensely.

Meanwhile she had a wedding to take care of, then she would be flying to Tennessee to find out what she could about Presley Wells.

She was her usual quiet self as she loaded into the van with the rest of the Miami Confidential team.

The talk among the group was of everything but weddings—and undercover work. Samantha leaned against a side window and listened, enjoying the fact that today they were all women and could chat about the craziest things.

Fortunately, the road to Key Largo was open, the traffic not too bad. Samantha breathed a sigh of relief when they arrived and saw that all of the details she’d so meticulously been working on with the rest of the team seemed to be in place.

This was a part of her job that she loved. Often it rivaled the other part of her job. But surprisingly, she had become a pretty good wedding planner.

The beach and leased hall for the reception were beehives of activity. Samantha checked in with Nicole O’Shea, Weddings Your Way’s photographer; Jeff Walsh, the shop’s music coordinator; and finally Ethan Whitehawk, the team’s all-around handyman. The three had ridden down together earlier. Ethan had been involved in building an arch on the beach where the actual wedding would take place.

“The arch is beautiful,” she told him. “I’ve heard nothing but raves.”

As was his nature, Ethan only smiled as he made some minor changes to the outdoor bandstand.

Samantha left him and saw that Isabelle, the shop’s spokeswoman, was talking to the mother of the bride as if trying to reassure her. Samantha started over but Isabelle motioned that everything was fine.

Normally, this many agents didn’t attend the weddings. Most of them worked behind the scenes before the big day and weren’t needed.

But this was the first wedding since Sonya Botero had been abducted. Rachel had worried that what had happened wasn’t an isolated incident. That instead, another bride-to-be from Weddings Your Way might be in danger, so the whole team had come.

Samantha opened her notebook and began to check off items to be attended to. Alex Graham was hardly in her thoughts as she did what she did so well: tended to details.

The team disappeared during the wedding, all breathing a collective sigh of relief that there had been no problems. The weather had held, all the guests had arrived and the ring bearer hadn’t lost the rings. All small miracles.

And maybe a larger miracle. The bride-to-be had made it through her vows without any problems—including another abduction or hit-and-run.

Samantha had already made sure the reception hall was ready, fully decorated, the wedding cake in its