Jake hated to think that some guy she’d dated had done a number on her, and actually had the nerve to show up at her brother’s wedding. She deserved to be with someone who would give her everything. A house in the suburbs and a white picket fence. A handful of cute kids with big brains like their mother.
He knocked his knuckles hard into his sternum to physically shove away the tightening at those images of Sophie being picture-book happy with some other guy. Jake wasn’t sure about her plan to make her ex jealous, but he was already planning to get the guy alone and teach him a lesson about what happened when somebody messed with a Sullivan.
Just then, Chase stepped out onto Marcus’s terrace and called Jake’s name, jolting him out of his thoughts.
Chase’s brothers were all groomsmen with Marcus officiating the wedding. Jake was the only non-Sullivan to be given the honor of standing up with Chase, even though he had plenty of cousins who could have been chosen.
The ninth Sullivan. It was always how they’d made him feel, like he was one of them. All those years he’d hung out at their house, Jake had pretended he was home. And the truth was, Mary Sullivan’s house had been the only real home he’d known until he bought his own place with the profits from his Irish pubs.
Jake was happy for Chase. Sure, he was surprised by the way his friend had fallen so quickly, and by how happy he was about the whole husband/father thing being dropped into his lap, but just because Jake wouldn't ever let himself get caught up in that ball and chain, he would always support a Sullivan.
Being a groomsman at Chase’s wedding and running the bar was all part of giving back to the family that had helped raise him when his own family hadn’t given a damn.
“How’re you feeling on the big day?”
Chase grinned. “Good.” His grin widened. “Really good.”
Jake had seen Chase and Chloe together enough to know this was one seriously happy dude. Chase didn’t seem to have one regret about giving up having his pick of hot models.
“Have you seen Chloe?” Chase asked. “Do you know if she needs anything?”
As soon as Chloe had announced her pregnancy, Chase had become a carbon copy of every other overprotective dad-to-be. It was exactly the kind of crazy behavior Jake would never understand. Which was why he made damn certain none of his sexual partners could get knocked up.
“I was just talking with Sophie,” he told Chase. “Sounded like everything is under control with the girls.”
“Good.” Chase nodded, then grinned at him. “Come inside. Smith is telling us about an orgy he walked in on a couple of weeks ago. I’m guessing it’s a warm-up for his speech after the wedding.”
“So you’re really not going to miss giving it all up, huh?”
Chase didn’t hesitate before shaking his head. “Chloe is worth a thousand orgies.”
Jake could hear the Sullivans laughing as he walked inside. He loved that family as if they were his own, would take a bullet for any of them. Especially the dark-haired beauty he couldn’t manage to shake out of his head.
Or his heart.
Chapter Two
“We were just about to send out a search party for you.” Kalen, the makeup artist Chase usually worked with on his photo shoots, grabbed Sophie the second she stepped into the guest house. “Everyone else is putting on their dresses already. Fortunately, all you need is some light mascara and lipstick.”
Normally, Sophie would have agreed to keep her face close to bare. She’d never been all that comfortable in makeup. Lori had been the one who’d always liked to play with their mother’s eye shadows and powders. Sophie had been more interested in finding the books to tell her sister how to put it on, rather than playing mannequin.
“Actually,” she said, “I was hoping you could work a little of your magic on me.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Magic?”
Sophie nodded. “There’s this guy...”
Kalen gave Sophie a slow grin. “Well, in that case, I’d be happy to work a little of my magic on you. He won’t know what hit him.” She called out to the hairstylist friend she’d brought with her. “Jackie, can you come here for a sec?”
A few minutes of hushed conferencing later—in which Sophie made it clear that she didn’t want to look overly made up or trashy, just a whole lot sexier than she normally did—the three women had a plan.
Sophie sat back in her seat and tried to ignore her rapidly beating heart as they transformed her from Nice to something entirely different.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, after Kalen and Jackie had helped Sophie change into her bridesmaid’s dress without messing up her hair or makeup, Lori walked into the room and stared at Sophie in shock.
“What the heck have you done with my sister?”
The two of them hadn’t been getting along so well for the past year. Sophie hated to see the way Lori was letting that jerk she’d been dating in secret walk all over her. Everyone saw her twin as so fierce, so fearless, but Sophie knew Lori was simply better at hiding her emotions than the rest of them.
Every time Sophie had tried to bring up the situation, her sister had blocked her out of her life more and more. Lori was a master of sharp, sarcastic barbs, as Sophie knew all too well, and she’d been lashed out at one too many times in recent months. But beneath everything that had come between them in the past year, she loved her sister. How could she not, when they’d always been two halves of a whole?