Sun-Kissed (8 page)

And it gave her a solid feeling in her stomach, a belief that maybe some joys in this world, some couples, could make it through.

Jaime danced a little against Dom as she clasped her hands behind his neck, and he cooperated, rocking them gently as if they could still hear the last love song in their heads.

Jaime snuggled against his chest, and Anne was considering her possible avenues for retreat without disturbing them, when Jaime laughed, in almost sleepy contentment. “Did you see my dad? Do you think he’s drunk?”

Dom grunted, this remnant of an irascibility that too much happiness had almost drugged to sleep. Dom dealt poorly with Mack. Didn’t trust a man that powerful so close to him or to Jaime, Anne was pretty sure. Mack did a little better with Dom from his side, mostly because, as he had explained to Anne one morning on the beach, whatever Dom’s faults,
and there are many
Mack’s gravel morning voice had added, he was pretty sure the man would do anything for Jaime.

“I thought you told me those two were already together,” Dom said.

Anne’s eyebrows went up.

“Well, they’re discreet about it,” Jaime said. “I guess they didn’t want to upset me and Cade when we were teenagers. Or maybe just didn’t want to let the world into their business, because the world is pretty damn nosy about us. But I’m pretty sure they’ve been a lot more than friends for, what, probably a decade now.”

What?

“It’s sweet,” Jaime said. “I think it makes them both so much happier. Although they’re both a hard read.”

Dom shook that black head of his. He was fresh-shaved and very elegant in a tuxedo for his wedding, although a secret rebel’s tuxedo, with an open neck to his white shirt. But he would always have this sexy, big, dangerous thing going on.

Well, what? Anne’s mouth curved in her shadows. If her sons-in-law—if
Mack’s
sons-in-law—were going around thinking she was hot, she had the right to admit to herself they were pretty hot, too, didn’t she?

“I don’t know what they might have had when you were a teenager, but if they did have something going on, he screwed up or something happened, and she cut him off,” Dom said definitely. “And he’s been cut off for a while. Your dad looks at her like she’s a castle he’s about to bring down.”

Oh, he did, did he? All Anne’s forces manned her walls in defensive instinct, just at the thought. She hadn’t built those castle walls to be penetrable. She’d built them to withstand a siege.

And somewhere, deeper, lower down, like this secret tunnel that some spy inside her wanted to open to the enemy:
He did, did he? He wanted in that badly?

Jaime laughed. “Well, she’d better watch out then. Because once my dad starts his pieces across a chessboard, he wins. Even if he has to knock the whole damn table over and go for the other player’s throat to do it.”

***

Mack nodded at the guard stationed near the boardwalk coming in over the dunes and walked down it until he came to the bend in it, a couple of benches and a space where people wanting to get closer to the ocean but not quite in the mood to get sand in their feet could sit and watch it. He shrugged his shoulders, glad to escape the noise and wedding hustle for a while, shaking his dad’s aggravation off him but letting the thoughts from it sink in.

The moon and starlight shone bright on the water. He made way for a shadowy couple coming up the ramp from the beach, a couple that resolved itself into Summer and Luc. The moonlight shone off Summer’s golden hair, her hand in Luc’s as Luc angled them a little so that she could precede him up the boardwalk while they still held hands. Summer’s luminous gold and Luc’s black hair and black eyes made it look as if light was being trailed by shadow up the walk. Summer had Luc’s tuxedo jacket over her shoulders, and Luc’s white shirt was open several buttons at the neck. The wind or maybe fingers had ruffled his hair.

Summer had that gentle half-smile on her face that made Mack kind of mentally snap a picture of it and send it to Julie. Not that he exactly believed Julie was somewhere getting those mental emails of his, but he didn’t exactly not believe it, either. He’d always had that habit of thinking out to her at some moments, like a little nudge through death:
You see Cade giving that valedictorian speech? Shit, you would have been proud.
Or,
Good God, Julie, tear-gassed at a G8 summit. What the hell am I going to do with that girl? We should never have named her after my father. I told you that was asking for trouble.

And now, no words, really, just a nudge of Summer’s smile toward that memory of Julie. Because Julie had always worried about Summer, when she was still alive, and Mack thought she’d like to see how happy the girl was now. That fake, silky smile thing she had had going on for so long—that smile-for-the-tabloids—had always made him want to just grab her father Sam’s head and beat it against something. But this—this was quieter. Easier. A real happiness.

Maybe he could kind of see how that rounded belly and smile could wrench pain right through a woman who didn’t have it.

Summer lifted a hand in acknowledgement, her smile changing for her honorary uncle Mack but still a warm smile, still a real one, Mack was proud to say. She sure as hell didn’t smile with real warmth for her own dad. Luc nodded briefly at him as they passed. “Monsieur.”

Good kid. Arrogant as hell, like Sylvain and Dom, but good manners on him about it. Mack had genuine trouble dealing with men who weren’t arrogant, mostly because they just kind of disappeared before him without him even noticing they existed. Kind of like the straw house for the big bad wolf. Worse than that, really. More like the big bad wolf talking a breath in front of a house, only to have it waver out of existence like smoke just from that intake into his lungs. It was nice to run up against someone made of actual brick from time to time.

He thought of Anne, that lofty, beautiful castle made of smooth, impenetrable stone, and grinned, resting his folded arms on the rail. The ocean looked beautiful at night, all dark and quiet but with the moonlight shining off it. Anne hadn’t escaped to here, either. He’d find her in a minute. There was only so far Anne could allow herself to retreat—she’d built herself into a castle to hold her ground, not yield it—and anyway, give her two minutes away from the wedding celebration and all the thoughts of what the wedding organizer might be screwing up would start eating her brain alive, if she didn’t go make sure.

He turned and leaned back against the rail, gazing at his house. It felt good to be the owner of that house right about now. It felt as if he’d built this great, big shelter and invited warmth and happiness to come in and stay. Laughter and voices came from the terrace and verandas, the open windows, the tables and the dance floor in the middle of the fairytale-lit gardens and the clusters of people all over the place, a mix of Corey-side guests and all those chef frenemies of Dom’s. He didn’t know whether Jaime had just been trying to pad Dom’s side of the church so he wouldn’t stand so isolated, or what, but it felt as if she’d invited half the arrogant chefs in France. Since Cade had been up there as the maid—grrr,
matron
, a word Mack couldn’t wrap his mind around when it came to his daughter—of honor, Sylvain had sat on Dom’s side of the church, too. Sometimes Mack was afraid he might just have to start liking Sylvain.

He tried to keep it close to his chest, though. No sense letting
Sylvain
know. Jesus.

Jaime had basically just packed up one of the family planes with Dom’s chef—was frenemies the right word? They weren’t enemies who pretended to be friends, they were guys who solidly had each other’s back all while pretending to be enemies, and, hell, but Mack would like to have some enemies like that. To those chef-rival-friend-whatevers, she’d added Dom’s staff and the surprisingly large number of other people who actually seemed to like that son-of-a-bitch and flown them over for the wedding.

Which meant Mack had a house packed with men who thought they were gods, and it’s not that he had a problem with the conviction, but it wasn’t like he was running a Greek pantheon here. What the hell would that make him, Zeus?

He smiled a little as the idea sank in, enjoying owning Olympus. There, lounging against the gazebo railing, was Apollo, for example. That blond chef who looked as if he should be out there on the ocean surfing was busy provoking everyone with a lazy grin, his arm always draping over this tiny, black-haired woman’s shoulders as if he needed her to support his weight. Sarah? was that her name? had gotten into the kitchen, too, but apparently Anne had been able to stand her, because she was quiet and perfectionist and not overtly bossy. They were talking to a short woman with spiky, punk hair—Célie, Dom’s saucy head chef chocolatier. A blonde woman with a high-end professional camera was capturing photos of the group as if she couldn’t stop, while an older, dark-haired chocolatier—in his forties, maybe—occasionally reached out and took her by the camera and pulled her into him, smiling down at her and making her come out from behind it.

Standing near them, reacting to some provocation, was that big lion guy who’d caused Anne a fit over the macarons she’d had planned for the reception. Apparently, he’d winced, and then winced, and then winced some more, and then he’d started flinging orders at Anne’s staff and pretty soon he and a couple of those other chefs had taken completely over. Several members of the staff had nearly quit in a huff, and from what Anne said, the Macaron Lion had only shrugged:
Good riddance.

Since inherently perfectionist and impossibly demanding Anne agreed with him, once she saw the difference between Macaron Guy’s work and her people’s, it had been pretty funny helping Anne vent her way through the episode. Anne clearly wanted to hit nearly everyone involved over the head, and also find a way to hire Macaron Guy to be on her staff. Something that would never work. Alpha personalities who had to dominate all the space around them and make everything go their
way did
not
deal well with Anne.

Well, except him. He gave the guys around the gazebo a smug little smile.
Beat you.
Mostly, probably, because he was older and while it had made him less flexible in some ways, it had also taught him not to be such a shit-ass.

You could stand to make yourself a bit supple, to have a woman as strong as Anne in your camp.

He scanned the gardens and veranda and the glass windows that let him see inside the great house, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Instead, he spotted Jaime out in the gardens over there by the little waterfall. Jaime’s red-brown hair was still too short to be put in those braids he’d loved so much when she was a freckle-faced, gap-toothed kid. No, she had this elegant jaw-sweeping thing going on right now that made her look so grown-up
.
Damn it. But beautiful. He sure as hell had two beautiful daughters.

She was twirling into Dom’s arms, laughing up at him. Like she used to dance up to her daddy and laugh up at
him
, goddammit. Glumness settled over Mack again.

Paris.

Why the hell did they have to choose Paris?

He
could go to Paris, he supposed. They’d bought that damn sterile penthouse apartment there last year just to make it easier on him and his dad to visit, and to make sure his girls always had a refuge if they needed to get away from those idiot boyfriends of theirs. He could pretty much tell that wouldn’t be necessary by now, but back then, what had he known about those arrogant s.o.b.’s?

Looked as if he was stuck with them now. It was a good stuck, he knew it deep down, but…shit. It made his shoulders feel so heavy. As if, for one of the first times in his life, they wanted to sag.

He could set up at least part-time headquarters in Paris, easily enough. Well, easily compared to some of the other things he did running a multibillion-dollar corporation. But if they’d wanted to be on the same side of the ocean as their father, they probably would have said so by now.

He glowered at his toes, feeling empty, empty, like someone had sucked all his air out of him and left him this limp balloon washed up on the beach.

Plus, shit, even if he did move his whole headquarters to Paris—would Anne move hers?

And as he thought that, he thought—well, everything. His lungs filled, and his shoulders straightened, as if he’d just breathed the whole world back into him.

Anne. Anne. Shit. If a man thought about a woman
that
way, that he couldn’t even move closer to his daughters without making sure she was going to move with him, then he needed to do something about it.

A little lightning bolt of greedy pleasure lanced through him as he thought about doing something about it.

Maybe his life wasn’t halfway over but halfway started. And
fuck
with this platonic shit.
Jesus
, he was getting tired of looking at her ass and not touching it. The
things
he had done to her in his fantasies in the privacy of his shower. She’d probably castrate him if he tried a couple of them in real life, but as to the rest of them…hell. If there was one thing Mack had figured out before he was even out of his teens: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He’d been eyeing that gorgeous, queen’s castle a long time. Trying to make himself hold off, respect their treaties, keep his ally. But that fundamental greed pushed at him, that need to claim every territory he wanted. About high time he ripped those treaties up and laid siege.

Well, siege. He was fifty-three years old and he’d been on the other side of that moat a hell of a long time already. Maybe it was time to bring in some cannons.

Chapter 6

“Ha. Caught you,” Mack said, stepping up so close his biceps brushed her shoulder. “Hiding in front of the house now? Chicken.”

Chicken? Her?
She snapped her teeth together. “Mack Corey, I am watching your first son-in-law and his friends ruin your second son-in-law’s car. Don’t spoil the moment.”

It was kind of a hot moment, to be honest. Since they were going around talking about people’s hotness out loud these days. The chefs had stripped down to their white shirts, or in Patrick’s case the edgier black T-shirt he wore under his tux, and, sleeves rolled up, they were attacking that car with melted chocolate like kids given finger paints. All those intensely physical, creative men, full of energy and passion, letting their inner four-year-old out.