Sun-Kissed (2 page)

Another photo, just of Julie, a beautiful one where the sunlight fell on her face just right and her expression as she looked into the camera was so tender, so loving. Under it, Cade had captioned
I am so proud of you.

At the head table, Jaime bent her head and started to cry.

Mack took a step forward—but Dom’s hand was already there. Curving over the nape of her neck. Big and scarred and saying,
It’s all right. Cry if you need to. I’m here.

Dom was there. Not Mack. She had somebody else to hug her now, when she needed it, whose hugs she would want more than her daddy’s.

The last slide came up, Jaime and Dom in their wedding clothes just outside the church only an hour ago, Jaime’s head tilted up, Dom’s tilted down, the expression on their faces—

A hand took his arm, pulling him gently around.

“Damn.” He scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, breathing raggedly.

Anne kept tugging, guiding him away from the crowd, through an arch of roses to a private spot on the veranda wrapping around the side of the house. It was a lovely night, the lights that wove through the garden glowing warm gold again post-slideshow, the band shifting, getting ready for the first dance. He’d have to get back. He had to do the daddy-daughter dance.

Oh, fuck.

Shit
, and he’d been the man who once thought he was too tough to cry. Before his daughters and his wife pummeled all his emotions wide open. He scrubbed water off his face again, trying to calm his stupid, ragged breathing.

“Sorry,” he told Anne, who probably
never
cried. She probably hadn’t even let herself cry the night before she went to
prison.
“Damn. It’s just that she’s—he’s—oh, damn, they’re all gone now. They’re not my little girls.”

Anne stroked the flower petals of his boutonnière, the one she had made for him, as if getting those petals to lie exactly right would fix everything. “They’re still your little girls,” she said quietly.

“They are to
me
,” he agreed, anguished. “But they’re not to anyone
else.
No one will ever, ever love them as much as I—” He broke off, sniffling like an idiot, turning his head to stare at the ocean across the dune.

“I know,” Anne said, wistfulness shifting across her face, so subtly he was probably the only man who would ever spot it. And it had taken him fifteen years of walks along the beach. Her only son was married, too, although Mack remembered the rough spot that marriage had gone through, remembered a year and a half when he hadn’t seen Kai at all and Kurt had been a mess, as if the younger man was being oh-so-slowly stretched on a rack, inch by excruciating inch past bearing.

And if Mack remembered it, Kurt’s mother was most certainly remembering it, too. The goddamn agony of seeing your child hurt and not being able to stop it.

He pulled Anne into his arms, suddenly, knowing she wouldn’t like it, but just needing a shared hug, for a moment, with someone who really did understand.

Her body went startled and stiff in his arms, which pissed him off somehow, and he snuggled it, teaching her body how well they fit. He’d had a wife and two girls, and he knew how well a hug fit. She relaxed so warily you’d think he’d been asking a snowman to sunbathe, honest to God.

It’s not going to kill you, damn it. You’re not actually made of frozen water.

Snow Queen, they’d always called her in the press during that enraging criminal justice pursuit. Or Ice Queen. For the woman who compulsively collected houses and turned them into homes. Yeah, get a mass of people yapping at you and they were always idiots.

She stood very still in his arms, like she was pretty sure she was
not
the right puzzle piece for this spot.

Jesus, Anne.
He leaned back against the railing, putting some stubbornness in this hug now, pulling her in tight. God, a hug felt good. Even a hug whose smaller half wasn’t quite sure it wanted to be part of it. He’d just been hugging Jaime before he walked her down the aisle only an hour ago, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t have hugs in his life, and yet a hug that wasn’t father-daughter but was, you know, man-woman…

Felt good.

Felt damn
alive.

Over Anne’s blond pixie cut, through the roses, he saw Dom pull Jaime onto the dance floor, that big, rough, aggressive, utterly enamored son-of-a-bitch handling his daughter, pulling her in close, the strains of the slow dance reaching them on the veranda gently. Jaime laid her head against Dom’s tux with so much trust, as if she was letting herself completely go.

The way she used to lay her head against
Mack’s
chest when she was a little girl, and
fuck you, Dom. Why do they grow up? How did I lose that?

His arms squeezed Anne harder, holding on to the only thing he could.

But Dom knew what a precious thing he had. Mack had to give him that, even though it made him want to punch the man in jealousy. Jealousy that surged higher as Dom’s head bent to Jaime, as he held her close. Everything about big, bad Dom Richard was on display right there, for all those camera-happy wedding guests and the professional team, flashes going off everywhere. The man was ripped-open, raw, exposed. Vulnerable and trying to be strong.

Cade and Sylvain got up and moved out onto the floor, even though Mack was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to do that—wasn’t the first dance just supposed to be the bridal couple? Trust Sylvain to want to steal the spotlight.

But then Luc and Summer got up, Summer gently pregnant. A distant cousin to his own daughters, Summer had spent a fair amount of time visiting his girls as a child, mostly because Julie loathed Summer’s parents, Sam and Mai Corey, and tried to rescue Summer whenever she could. Sam had multiple estates in the Hamptons, and had never bothered to make a home out of a single one of them. So despite their other options, Mack was putting Luc and Summer up in one of the guest bedrooms here, along with what seemed like half of France at this point.

More of those chef buddy-enemies of Dom’s got up and joined the dancers—a blond surfer one with a date who looked part Asian and that big tawny guy with a small woman in very high heels. They all drifted into a loose circle around the central couple.

They were shielding the bride and groom, Mack finally realized. Spreading out around Jaime and Dom, probably driving the photographers crazy, but breaking up the intensity of focus on that raw, exposed tenderness.

That was…kind of good to know, that his son-in-law had enemies like that. They were way better than most of the people who tried to claim they were Mack’s friends. Since Jaime had already done the deed and married Dom, it was good to know the two of them had backup.

He turned Anne in his arms so that her back was to his chest, stubborn about not letting her go, now that he had violated twenty years of non-touching. Might as well go for broke, as he usually thought about things he wanted. “Look,” he told her. “Kurt and Kai look happy.”

Kurt had been coming over to play at the Corey house since before Julie died. Mack had bought the Corey beach house when Julie first got pregnant, partly because the cocoa scents that permeated their hometown of Corey made her so sick. He’d chosen the Hamptons because it was close enough to New York and attracted enough movers and shakers on “vacation” themselves, that, like them, he could manage that ambitious over-achiever’s juggling act—giving his kids a special summer at the beach, in which he actually participated as much as he could, while still continuing to get things done. The fact that he’d bought it so early in his climb, when Corey was worth a couple hundred million not multiple billions, meant that its ten thousand square feet on a three-acre beachfront lot were modest compared to some of the estates on this beach. For his kids, it had become that place where everything fun and carefree happened. Maybe that sense of happiness and time with family was why Jaime had wanted to have her wedding here rather than at the Corey estate back in the town that was named for them.

Anne had bought the place next door shortly after her divorce, just over twenty years ago. Her fortune had still been counted in the tens of millions back then, too, her star rising fast but her own expertise at how to manage that rise not yet at its fullest. In the parlance of East Hampton, her three-story home was a “cottage”, and Anne, of course, had turned it into the most perfect, welcoming, fairytale setting for herself and her son. Not about to let the utter failure of her marriage destroy her ability to make herself and her son a
home.

Kurt, twelve or thirteen when they moved in, had been the lonely kid next door whom Julie had welcomed easily into their play on the beach, and of course Cade and Jaime had
loved
having the older boy play with them. They’d hero-worshipped him as little girls building sandcastles, because he built amazing sandcastles, as if Anne had personally trained him so she could put his sandcastles on the cover of her magazine. Kind of proved how lonely he was, that he’d latched onto the girls in return, not such a common thing for a boy just becoming a teenager to be so happy to play with girls five and eight years old.

Now he didn’t look lonely anymore. Or he did, in a way, as he and his wife Kai joined the other couples on the dance floor in the middle of the gardens—intensely alone in each other, as if each other was all the world need hold. In Mack’s early days with Julie, the two of them had felt like that, before they had kids and “only each other” seemed a small thing.

And now the kids were gone. All that size of him—wife, kids—reduced all the way back to one.

He felt too big for himself. Like he couldn’t
be
that single, stingy number again.

Anne sighed a little, and her weight actually settled for a second back against him, surprising him. Surprising his
groin
, which hadn’t been nearly optimistic enough to anticipate her butt nestling against it. Her arms came up to fold over his arms, wrapped over her middle. Maybe Anne had had too much champagne. “They do look happy, don’t they?”

He angled his head, trying to see her face, but she’d always been a hard read. Wistfulness? Relief? One of those weird combinations of both, not unlike his when he looked at his kids with their husbands?

He squeezed her a little.
I understand.

Nice to have that. A physical exchange of understanding.

“Kai seems to be surviving Summer,” Anne said unexpectedly, and one of her slim, strong hands tightened over his forearm.

“Kai and Summer don’t get along?” It always surprised him how much women disliked Summer. She was such a pretty, sweet little thing. Always had been, even as a kid, even when his own girls were squabbling all over the lawn about some anthill or God knew what.

He was sure as hell glad his own daughters hadn’t gone through as many boyfriends as Summer had later, though, because it would have driven him completely insane. He’d far rather they squabble and stand up for themselves than think they had to please half the men on the face of the planet.

Anne’s head shook, the back of it rubbing against his chest. This was starting to feel too good. Much too good. He’d had so many damn fantasies about Anne, because it had been so safe. There was that sheet of glass between them, and it wasn’t as if she was going to
know
what was going on in the privacy of his bedroom. And the fact that he felt a little guilty about it, invading her in his sex dreams, only added that kinky twist of pleasure to it. Made it hotter.

But actually touching her like this had his body all confused. So used to taking her over in his head and doing whatever the hell he wanted and always having the Ice Queen melt, every single way and time, that his hand just kept thinking it could run right down under the band of her skirt and slip a finger where it made her moan, or run up to pinch her nipples and have
that
make her moan. His brain just kept
going
with the fantasy, so used to the easy, private pleasure of it that it slid right down that path with delighted eagerness.

To where she parted her legs and begged. To where she said,
Yeah, fuck me
, with that cool, enigmatic smile of hers, and he damn well
did.

Shit, now he wished she’d stiffen up and pull her butt back off his groin. Because otherwise—well, she wasn’t an idiot, Anne Winters.

She’d conceived a child, so she had to know what an erect penis felt like. As counter-intuitive as it seemed with her, as convinced a man could get that she only had sex in his own dirty little mind.

Anne drew a breath and sighed it out, a soft, vulnerable sound. That was—odd. Anne didn’t
do
vulnerable. She looked at a jury and thought,
If I play all fragile, I bet they’ll let me off
, and instead of
doing that
, she gazed them straight in the eyes and thought,
Fuck you.
The admiration Mack had felt watching her, and the impotent fury at the damn Department of Justice, had caught him in a tight fist and
held him.
Held him every damn day she was in prison. Still held him.

“Kai had some miscarriages,” Anne said very low. Her hand flexed again on his wrist. Made his wrist feel damn strong. Nice to be the wrist that could offer a hand that capable all the resistance it needed when it wanted to squeeze something.

Mack gazed blankly at Anne’s daughter-in-law, his mind more and more on the feel of his wrist, the feel of his groin, having trouble with the conversation. “And that makes her not like Summer?” What
was
it with women and Summer? Were that many women that freaking insecure? He didn’t go around hating better-looking men.

“Mack.” Anne’s voice was quiet, and a little stern.
Pay attention. Use your head.
She didn’t indulge much idiocy, Anne. When your decisions affected half the world and, more importantly, your kids, it was incredibly helpful to have someone in your camp who wouldn’t let you be an idiot. “Look at Summer.”

“She seems happy?” he said tentatively. Happy. Sure that she was loved. Relaxed into it, golden-haired and luminous with contentment. Did even
Anne
hate the thought of Summer being happy? He’d thought she was stronger than that.