3 Seductions and a Wedding

2

THE START FLAG had raised and the horn had sounded. Leo had calculated and planned with precision, but the operation to win Jessie back—and marry off his best friends in the process—was a risk nonetheless.

Luckily for him, Leo’s gambles usually paid off. He hadn’t made his way in the highly competitive world of yacht design and racing by playing things safe. Throwing off the old designs and traditions had made him a popular guy in a very elite, exclusive club. He’d even managed to keep his business afloat during tough economic times by selling his custom-made watercraft to foreign competitors who hadn’t yet felt the crunch of the tight market. To attain success, he’d kept his eyes on the prize and thought outside the box.

If he wanted Jessie back, he was going to have to pull out all the stops—including those that were keeping her from admitting that she still loved him.

Okay, so he wasn’t entirely certain she was still love-struck. In all honesty, his research proved the complete opposite. For three years following the swamping of their relationship, she’d refused to be in the same room with him. Until Bianca and Coop started spending more time out of the country than in, Jessie had used every excuse in the book to make sure they never breathed the same air. But when their wayward friends only had a three-hour layover between trips to Bimini or Istanbul, she couldn’t be too choosy about which friend Coop preferred to see at the same time—and it was usually Leo.

From then on, they’d agreed—without ever speaking on the matter—to a cold but lasting truce. But every chilly “Hello, Leo” and equally icy “How are you doing?” reminded him of everything he’d lost by screwing up. He’d apologized, of course, but apparently, words weren’t enough. He’d assumed that time would undo the damage he’d wrought, but even after ten years, Jessie Martinez held a grudge like a stuck anchor.

Yet the last few times they’d seen each other, he’d sensed a momentary crack in her glacial veneer. The way her eyes dilated whenever he leaned close to her. The way she didn’t stiffen at his touch when he handed her a beer.

Even now, the subtle but noticeable tightening of her nipples beneath her snug blouse when he’d stopped her from taking a tumble on the sidewalk stoked him to act.

Of course, he might just be suffering from an incurable case of wishful thinking—but where was the fun in believing that?

“I’m fine,” she insisted, even though he knew that if he released her, she’d likely crack her head on the concrete.

“You sure?”

She scrambled to get her feet back under her, then tugged out of his hold. She stumbled slightly, but managed to stay upright. He couldn’t resist smiling. She was beautiful when she was flustered. Well, she was beautiful when she was confident, when she was shy (which wasn’t often) and especially when she was pissed off. Which meant that in a little less than an hour, she was going to rival Helen of Troy, Miss America and poor, plain Angelina Jolie.

She wiped her hands on her jeans. “How are we getting to Key West? It’s a long drive.”

“Let me worry about transportation,” he said. “The most important thing is that we get the house habitable by the weekend.”

Her chin quivered. “What house?”

“The house we rented that summer,” he replied. “The house on the private—”

“Island? You can’t have rented it. The owner sold it.”

That stopped him. How could she have possibly known?

The summer between their sophomore and junior years in college, Bianca and Coop, still in the early stages of their love affair with both each other and wanderlust, had found a spectacular five-bedroom, split-level house to rent for a month on a private key about ten nautical miles off Key West. Unfortunately, Bianca’s overprotective parents had objected to their daughter shacking up with her boyfriend all alone on an island. Though over eighteen, Bianca had used her parents’ concern (and threats to stop paying her tuition) to entice her best friend, Jessie, into coming along on the once-in-a-lifetime getaway.

Coop had done the same with Leo and it was on that island and in that house that Leo had fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with the woman who now hated his guts.

Well, hate was a strong word. He was fairly certain that time had tempered her loathing to sheer dislike by now.

Time, however, had done absolutely nothing to alleviate his cravings for her. Yeah, he’d been the one to wreck their burgeoning relationship, but after a decade of concentrating on nothing but work and sailing, along with the occasional fling just to make sure his parts were still in working order, he was ready to reclaim the ultimate winner’s cup—Jessie. He wanted her back and he was going to use this wedding as an excuse to seduce her back into his life.

“Owner listed it again a couple of years ago,” he explained. “I used to sail a lot in the Keys, so a broker gave me a call.”

She swallowed visibly. “You own it now?”

He smiled. “Every palm tree and grain of sand, though no one has been on the property for years.”

“Why?”

Her expression was a mixture of disbelief and disgust, which on the surface wasn’t a very good sign.

“I’ve been busy. I don’t get down there much anymore and my caretaker quit last year.”

“No, I mean, why did you buy it, especially if you never use it?”

“Do you really want to know the answer or would you rather go home and pack? We leave in—” he consulted his watch “—two hours.”

She narrowed her eyes, searching for some clue to his motives, but finding none, she cursed and stalked toward her car. “I’m only doing this for Bianca and Coop.”

He slung his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Of course. Why else would you go with me to the remote, deserted island where we first made love?”

From the short distance between them, Leo couldn’t tell whether Jessie’s eyes watered on account of deep, residual hurt or blind fury. Still, his best bet was to take off now, before she could retaliate.

He slid into his convertible, rubbing his chin absently while he watched Jessie tear out of the parking lot, the backside of her car fishtailing in her haste. He hoped she made it home in one piece. Or better, that she made it through this trip without ripping his throat out. He was so wrapped up in thought, he started when Drew Brighton leaped over the passenger door and landed smoothly in the seat.

“You’ve lost your mind, man,” Drew said.

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 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?”

Celia frowned. “Deb has a husband. Children. I want to leave the business to you, so you can—”

Jessie cut her mother off with a weary sigh. “Have something to occupy my lonely nights?”

Celia scooped up her recipes and shuffled the order, but without much focus. This wasn’t a conversation either wanted to have again, not when they’d fought this fight so many times already. In the end, they’d simply be so angry with one another that they wouldn’t speak for a week. Jessie didn’t have the energy. Not when she had a seduction to look forward to instead.

Jessie knew she should have never joined the catering business in the first place. She’d done so strictly out of comfort and familiarity. Having acted as her mother’s gofer for years, she appreciated the thrill of pulling off a spectacular event. But she wasn’t a good cook, and her eye for design was limited to expertly recreating what someone else had put together. She’d told herself over and over that working in the family business was just a layover—a bridge until she figured out what she really wanted to do.

But that argument was hard to maintain now that she was past her thirtieth birthday.

For the first time in forever, Jessie finally had a fire in her belly. She had a goal—an attainable ambition that could lead her to bigger and better things. She hadn’t realized until tonight how the memory of Leo and what he’d done to her acted like an impenetrable wall to her future life. She needed to break down that barrier, once and for all, by wiping all the “what ifs” with regard to Leo Sharpe out of her—mind, body and soul.

And if she could also give her best friend in the world the wedding of a lifetime in the process, so much the better.

“Ma, I already called Deb and she’s on her way. I love working with you, but this isn’t my dream. You’ve always known that.”

“What is your dream, then?”

Jessie swallowed her reply. It was too personal for her to voice out loud. She’d only just figured out she wanted to sleep with Leo again and she wasn’t ready to share her epiphany with anyone—especially not her mother.

“To throw Bianca the best wedding ever,” she answered, slipping her hands onto her mother’s shoulders and massaging out the tension. “She might travel the world on a whim, but she’s always been there for me. For us.”

Little by little, the tightness in her mother’s muscles melted away. Celia had started out as a cook in her husband’s Cuban restaurant, but that all changed the day Miguel Martinez unexpectedly contracted pneumonia and died. Too traumatized to reopen the restaurant, Celia had voiced the desire to do something else with the insurance money. Opening a catering business had been the top of her list, but she’d had no idea where to begin.

Luckily, Bianca’s well-to-do parents had stepped in and guided Celia, helping her choose a location for her headquarters, giving her advice on how to find employees, suppliers and customers. A dinner party for twenty hosted by the Brightons had been her first gig. Pulling off this wedding was only a small token toward paying them back.

“Bianca is like my third daughter and I want her to have a magical wedding day,” Celia agreed. “You do what you have to do, mijita.”

Jessie kissed her mother’s cheek and grinned when she heard her sister’s car pull into the driveway. “That’s what I intend to do, Ma. And then some.”

4

LEO’S LUNGS tightened and then burned. Instantly, sweat stung the corners of his eyes and his hands slipped on the steering wheel of his 1969 pickup. He’d exchanged his sports car for the truck not only to carry more gear, but also to impress Jessie with its rugged coolness. But now that he’d witnessed her strutting down the stairs from her walk-up apartment in a skirt so short it might as well have been a belt, he was the one impacted to his core. He shifted in the driver’s seat, his jeans suddenly snug around his package.

Great first impression, Sharpe. Greet the woman you once screwed over with a raging hard-on. That’ll make her trust you again.

He glanced away, but not before he caught a naughty grin slide across her lips, painted the color of the Caribbean sunset. What did she have to smile about? Only an hour and a half ago, her fury over his plan had been undeniable. What had changed?

Her clothes, for one thing. In college, Jessie had developed a real eye for clothes that drove him wild. Never quite trashy, but always on the edge. His memory swam with images of flesh-colored fishnet hose, leather pants and a particularly tricky lace-up bustier he’d become adept at removing in ten seconds flat.