3 Seductions and a Wedding

Drew’s gaze flicked to a minivan parked a few cars away, where Annie Rush was tossing an impressive cache of empty single-serving-size Cheerios boxes and fast-food bags bedecked with characters like Ronald McDonald and the Burger King into the garbage. “Because I like the way you think.”

Leo jolted as he made the connection.

“You’re hot for Annie?” Leo asked. Annie had graduated from college before Coop had even started, which put her at about thirty-eight. She had two kids and relatively moist divorce papers. Leo doubted she had the time or interest in a guy so much younger, but what the hell did he know? He’d set his future on reigniting a relationship with a woman he’d betrayed in the worst way. If the kid wanted to shoot for the stars, who was he to judge?

“Actually, yeah. Does that bother you?”

“Might piss Coop off,” Leo replied. “I don’t know how he’d feel about his older sister dating his much younger brother-in-law.”

“I’m not interested in dating her,” Drew said.

Leo held up his hand. “Look, I don’t want to know. I gave you the list of stuff you need to get in New York. If there’s nothing else, I’ve got a boat to catch.”

Drew laughed. “Of course you do. I’m no expert sailor, but I’ve been around Jessie a lot more than you have in the last few years. Consider yourself under a severe weather warning, okay? Ten years might have gone by since you screwed her over, but she hasn’t forgotten.”

“Good,” Leo said, revving up the engine. “If she still hurts, then she still cares.”

Drew shook his head as he exited the car. “That’s the best you got?”

“Better than what you got, bud,” Leo said, flicking his gaze at Annie, who now looked as if she’d unpacked half of a sports equipment store out of the back of her van.

“We’ll see,” Drew replied. “Care to wager?”

Leo threw the car into reverse, but braked at Drew’s challenge. Building boats that raced in the most prestigious competitions in the world had given him a taste for gambling. Not because he needed the winnings, but because he loved to shove his superiority into the face of his competitors. It was juvenile and arrogant, but at least he was honest about it.

“I’m not betting that you’ll get into Annie’s pants. She’s my best friend’s sister.”

“Then just bet that I’ll get what I want before you get what you want.” Drew extended his hand.

Leo didn’t hesitate. “You’re on. What’s the stakes?”

Drew eyed Leo’s sports car, but thought better of it. “If you win, I fly you and your lady love to any destination in the continental U.S. for an uninterrupted weekend of bliss.”

“Can we join the mile-high?”

“What you do in the back while I’m flying is none of my business.”

“And if you win?”

Drew closed his eyes, thought hard, then smiled as if he’d just conjured up a particularly decadent daydream. “One weekend around the Turks and Caicos on your best rig.”

Leo laughed, shook the kid’s hand and allowed himself a split second to imagine making love to Jessie in the sky. “You’re on.”

3

IF JESSIE were to select recipes to describe Bianca’s family, the Brightons would have been some exotic dish that included rare Kobe beef, saffron handpicked from crocus plants in southern Spain and truffles extracted by the nosiest pigs in Piedmont, Italy. The Martinez clan, on the other hand, were more like chicken and yellow rice with black beans—exotic to people who didn’t live in the tropics, but rather ordinary to everyone else. As the matriarch, Celia Martinez did not entertain wild ideas, nor did she gamble, take risks or do anything that might cause someone to get hurt. Most particularly, her daughters.

Knowing this, Jessie wasn’t entirely sure how her mother would react to her announcement that in a little less than twenty minutes, she was taking off from her above-the-garage apartment adjacent to her mother’s house with the man who’d once broken her heart into a million pieces. It was probably safe to confess that they planned to transform their former love nest into a honeymoon destination for their best friends—but her recently added decision to seduce Leo while they worked she’d keep to herself.

Jessie had never really been a lemons-to-lemonade kind of girl, but maybe the time had come for her to change. She was going to be stuck with Leo whether she liked it or not. The love they’d once shared had turned to bitter loathing, but as far as she could tell, their mutual attraction hadn’t dissolved one iota. Her body flared with heat the minute she laid eyes on him. She’d caught herself staring at him more than once tonight—at the way he charmed the waitress with nothing more than his smile or how he savored every bite of his decadent pepperoni-and-sausage pizza as if it were the finest cuisine in the world.

Bianca’s mother might have appreciated the irony and the great adventure. She might even have helped Jessie plan the ultimate act of sexual revenge. Unfortunately, Mrs. Brighton was busy planning her daughter’s out-of-the-blue nuptials … and, apparently, so was Celia Martinez, who was sitting at her kitchen table, poring over her best recipes.

“Hey, Ma,” Jessie said, closing the kitchen door behind her and, on automatic, heeling off her shoes and lining them up on a rack beside the refrigerator.

“Oh, Jessie! Thank God you’re here. Did you hear about the wedding? Oh, of course you’ve heard. Alina called an hour ago. I don’t know how we’re going to pull this all off in less than a week? What was that … man … thinking?”

Jessie glanced at the clock. She was pretty sure her mother had wanted to use a much more colorful word to describe Leo, but in keeping with her rather strict dictates regarding proper language, she’d refrained. Still, she had a way of making the word man sound as if Jessie should, in a complete role reversal, demand her mother wash her mouth out with soap.

“It’s the only way to get Bianca and Coop married,” Jessie said. “And they deserve a cool surprise wedding planned by the people who know and love them best.”

“You’re right, but there is so much to do! Take these,” she said, sliding a pile of recipes across the table, “and call our suppliers to make sure we have everything by tomorrow morning. I know it’s late, but—”

“I can’t, Ma.”

Her mother’s dark eyebrows knitted together. “What do you mean, you can’t?“

“I’m the maid of honor,” Jessie explained, suddenly not sure why she’d come inside to tell her mother about her trip in person. What were cell phones for, anyway? “I’ve got my own things to do. Or thing, anyway. But you can’t do this alone. Call Deborah.”

Celia shook her head, her mouth set in a stubborn moue. “Deborah has babies. She can’t help at this late—”

Jessie groaned. Her older sister’s “babies” were now twelve and thirteen. Deb, who’d been working for their mother’s catering company just as long as Jessie, was always given a pass whenever emergencies came up—and not by choice. Despite the fact that Celia had worked full-time while her children were young, Jessie’s mom had weird beliefs when it came to other working mothers. As in, they shouldn’t work unless completely necessary. This meant Deb, who was undeniably more capable than Jessie, rarely got a chance to shine.

Well, Jessie hoped her sister was ready to go supernova, because not even the most skilled guilt trip from her mother was going to keep her from going to Key West with Leo.

On the drive home, she’d been angry at how he’d manipulated her into spending time alone in the very house where they’d first made love. She’d nearly driven off the road twice while contemplating how she was going to tolerate an hour on her own with him, much less almost an entire week. For the better part of the last decade, she’d either avoided him or frozen him out, trying to forget how willfully and carelessly he’d torn apart her trust.

But as she’d cruised the familiar streets of her neighborhood where she’d learned how to ride a bike, shake off a scraped knee and navigate the stormy waters of adolescence, she’d realized that she could either whine about the situation or take control. Leo’s presence, if nothing else, sparked the Jessie she used to be—the girl brimming with sass and direction and desire. She could not blame Leo entirely for those qualities falling to the background, but she didn’t mind giving him a bit of credit for stirring them again.

Bianca had told Jessie years ago that Leo wanted her back. She’d confided how he regretted cheating on her back in college with a girl who’d climbed into his bed one drunken night whom he’d believed—or so she’d been told—to be Jessie. Leo had never denied that he’d had sex with the girl, some tramp from his dorm who’d had her eyes on him for months. Too drunk to tell the difference had just been an extra insult she simply couldn’t overcome.

Yet if Leo fancied this week as an opportunity to force their reunion, he was mistaken. They’d get “back together” only long enough to have amazing, mind-blowing sex. And this time, when she walked away, it would be on her terms and not because he balled some other girl whose name he probably didn’t remember.

This surprise wedding presented her with a chance to not only make Leo pay for what he’d put her through, but also to purge the man from her system once and for all. She’d tried just about everything—she’d been bitchy to him and cold. She’d insulted him under the guise of humor and he’d always greeted her animosity or indifference with his signature roguish grin or flirtation.

He was incorrigible.

Which made him utterly irresistible.

To offset his lasting effects on her psyche and libido, she’d tried dating men who were his polar opposite—steady, staid and boring—as well as guys just like him: players with endless capacities for fun and irreverence. She’d been engaged to one of each. And yet, neither of them cleansed him from her soul.

No, she was going to have to fight fire with fire. Her plan was just as insane as his to throw a surprise wedding, but perhaps the results would turn out just as spectacular.

“Deb has been waiting for a chance like this, Ma,” Jessie declared. She couldn’t go off for a few days of decadence if she thought she was leaving her mother to contend with cooking dinner for two hundred people without any help. “She wants to prove she’s got the stuff to take over this business when you retire.”

“I’ll die before I retire,” her mother muttered.

“Probably, but don’t you want to leave your legacy to someone at some point?”