Leo glanced at Bianca’s little brother and grinned. “So you agree with Jessie that this whole surprise wedding thing is crazy?”
Drew brushed at a smear of grease on his jeans. “Nah, I agree with Ajay that the whole lark is brilliant. The only way to get those two to settle down long enough to get hitched is to totally blindside them with something spectacular. I’m talking about you and Jessie.”
Leo tugged his car keys out of his pocket and shoved them into the ignition. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Drew snorted. “My sister and I are close, man. And I dated Jessie once.”
“You? You’re like, what? Twelve?”
Drew cursed. “I’m twenty-six and my moving company made more money than your little sailboat ventures last year and the year before, asshole, so shut the hell up about my age.”
Leo mumbled an apology. He liked Drew. The kid was a few years his junior, but he’d always come across as a wise, old soul when he wasn’t cussing Leo out for being a jerk.
“You’re right,” Leo said, lifting his hands off the steering wheel in surrender. “I didn’t know you dated Jessie.”
“It was just once for some charity event. We had a great time, but I’m like her brother. And I overheard enough of her conversations with my sister to know that you trashed her heart.”
He nodded. “Guilty as charged.”
“Then why did you set up this whole surprise wedding to try and get her back?”
“How did you know?”
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