by Golden Angel
Oh well. Tomorrow night she could get shit-faced. It was probably better to not be totally hungover for the actual wedding anyway.
Arriving at her aunt’s house – where the driveway was already filled with cars the valets were taking care of – Sharon was amused to see that Jake was moving as if in a trance, staring at their surroundings. The house was slowly filling with people and she was stopped by several relatives and friends of her parents who recognized her. She introduced him around; he smiled and shook hands in all the right places, but he was definitely thrown.
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re here!” Melinda came barreling out of nowhere, throwing her arms around Sharon in pure relief. Tall, willowy, and dressed in a strapless white dress that did not look warm enough for the outside weather – not that that would matter to Aunt Lorraine - Melinda looked stunning. She also looked fed up. “My mom is driving me crazy. Mark and I should have just eloped.”
“I told you so,” Sharon said immediately, grinning. She held out her hand to indicate Jake. “This is my friend Jake, he’s here as my date.”
“Nice to meet you,” Melinda said, barely sparing him a glance as she looked around, appearing almost hunted. She groaned. “Here comes my mom. Distract her? It’s for the bride.” The pleading look she gave Sharon was more than a little desperate.
“Ugh. Only because you’re getting married tomorrow. Now shoo.” Sharon turned her cousin around, giving her a slap on the butt to send her on her way.
“What’s going on?” Jake asked, looking confused. At least he didn’t appear quite so dazed anymore. Which was good, he was going to need his wits about him if they were going to run interference for Melinda.
“Come on,” she said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm. “I want to introduce you to my aunt.” Sharon forcibly turned him around and called out, “Hey! Aunt Lorraine! I want you to meet someone!”
Both Jake and her aunt winced as she called out, loudly enough to draw disapproving looks from more than one person around them. Sharon pretended not to notice. If Melinda was hiding out from her mom the night before her wedding there must be a good reason... And if Aunt Lorraine was after Melinda, the only way to get her to focus on Sharon was to be loud. Aunt Lorraine wouldn’t want to cause a scene.
Sharon beamed as her aunt frowned censoriously at her, pivoting her direction slightly so that she was now headed directly towards Sharon and Jake. Behind her, Sharon could see her own mother now heading their way too. She was frowning even harder than Aunt Lorraine.
Well, this should be fun.
Chapter 13
Jake could feel his cheeks heating with embarrassment at the looks he and Sharon were now garnering as she waved energetically at her aunt. Talk about a rude awakening. He’d admittedly been a little out of it when they’d first come into the house, which was even bigger and decorated more dramatically than Sharon’s parents’. He didn’t know why she was suddenly taking it upon herself to be both loud and obnoxious, but he hated the looks they were getting.
It made his skin crawl.
Definitely not the impression he wanted to make on anyone, much less her family. Yeah, he wasn’t the one doing it, but she was on his arm.
He tried to temper his automatic response since he did realize what she was doing. The same way she'd shielded Ellie at the engagement party, she was now working to shield her cousin. Just in a louder, more obnoxious and more obvious manner that was drawing attention from everyone around them.
"Aunt Lorraine, this is my date, Jake Standish," Sharon said. Her voice wasn't exactly louder than before, but she was projecting it so that it carried, despite the crowd of people around them. "Jake, this is my Aunt Lorraine."
"Pleased to meet you," he said, keeping his voice within normal levels as he held out his hand.
Sharon's aunt took it, although she shot a disapproving look at Sharon first. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Standish."
From her tone of voice, she didn't think it was nice at all. Sharon ignored that completely.
"Jake's a former soldier and now he's a construction worker," she said, beaming at her aunt, who dropped his hand like it was a hot potato. Jake's spine stiffened.
Okay, it was one thing to run interference for her cousin after she'd been asked to, but he did not appreciate being dragged into it. Especially since the way she said it... It wasn't exactly disrespectful, but he was proud of his service and his rank and he didn't like the little emphasis Sharon put on both of his job titles. Something about her tone made it sound like she was challenging her aunt with both of them.
"Construction?" The older woman's lip curled as she looked him up and down with new eyes. "Are you a manager?"
The question was almost a challenge, and he realized that Sharon had just offered him up as a sacrificial victim to her aunt's displeasure, just to distract her. Sharon's mother had just reached them as well and she looked at him rather than speaking, her head tilted to the side as she awaited his answer. His suppressed irritation was quickly turning to justified anger, but he kept a tight lid on that emotion because it wasn't going to serve him to show it.
"Not yet," he said, practically holding himself at attention under the two women's scrutiny. "I work for LD Construction and Remodeling now, but I've only been there for a few months."
"He's got great muscles," Sharon interjected, beaming and again speaking much more loudly than she needed to. More than one person turned to look. As if to demonstrate, she let go of his arm and tried to wrap her fingers around his bicep while Jake seethed with irate tension.
He wasn't the only one. Sharon's mom was back to looking like she was sucking lemons while her aunt looked downright appalled.
"Could you at least try to be ladylike for once in your life?" she hissed at her niece.
All things considered, Jake couldn't help but empathize more with Sharon's aunt than with Sharon at the moment.
He didn't know how he had suddenly become Sharon's sacrificial goat, but he didn't like it. Especially because he couldn't imagine her treating her ex this way. Brian was pretty easy-going from what Jake had observed, but he wouldn't have tolerated this.
Was that the answer? Did Sharon respect him less because he wasn't going to spank her for bad behavior?
Would she have chosen a different route to distract her aunt if Jake was a Dom?
Asking himself those questions made him feel even more incensed at the whole situation. Yeah, he wasn't a Dom but one of the biggest things Patrick and his friends emphasized about BDSM was communication and consent.
Sharon hadn't been particularly communicative with him - she hadn't even informed him what she was going to do - and she definitely hadn't gotten his consent before throwing him in her aunt's way.
"Shouldn't a lady appreciate a man's muscles?" Sharon asked, just as loudly as before, with a high-pitched fake giggle that grated on Jake like nails on a chalkboard. "I appreciate a man who is good with his hands."
It was all Jake could do not to cringe as she rubbed her hands over his arm.
"Have you been drinking?" her mother asked, her tone veering toward shrill.
Rolling her eyes, Sharon linked her arm back through Jake's while he did his best to pretend he was invisible. Or at least, not a part of this. More than one person in the room was now looking at him with a kind of pity, as if wondering what he was doing with someone like Sharon.
While that did make him want to jump to her defense, just a little, he also couldn't blame them. At the moment, he was kind of wondering what he was doing here too. He'd signed up to be her date, not to have her talk down about his job or try to show him off like he was some kind of trophy beefcake that she'd picked up to taunt her family with. A blue-collar trophy, since they apparently had a problem with that.
He grit his teeth, looking anywhere but at the little vixen who was pressed up against his side.
******
"No, but that's a great idea," Sharon said cheerfully, deciding that she'd held off
Aunt Lorraine long enough for Melinda to escape to wherever it was her cousin had been trying to escape to. She had probably just needed to get out of her mother's sight for a bit. It was obvious that tonight everything was being done to Aunt Lorraine's specifications, whereas Melinda and Mark were completely in charge of the reception tomorrow.
That was why the rehearsal dinner was filled with people who weren't part of the wedding party or immediate family; because Aunt Lorraine hadn't had control of the reception. Mark's family was much more relaxed than Melinda's, and Melinda had refused to accept a dime from her parents for the wedding, because she'd wanted to be able to do things her way. The compromise had been to let Aunt Lorraine have full control of the rehearsal dinner, which was basically like a mini-reception.
"Come on, Jakie-poo, let's go get something to drink," she said, tugging at his arm and pulling him away.
The man had stiffened up from the moment she'd called out to her aunt, which had set off Sharon's already bubbling temper. Yeah, she'd seen he was embarrassed just because she'd called out, and the combination of his judgment plus her family's had sent a little devil raging through her. There was a small part in the back of her head that disapproved of her deliberately prodding him at the same time she was engaging her aunt and mother, but she couldn't seem to stop herself.
The look he seared her with when she called him Jakie-poo would have had her shaking in her high heels if he'd been a Dom. Her ass would have been grass. But Jake was mostly vanilla.
Hmm. Vanilla with sprinkles sounded a little too soft for how bossy he was... He was like a harder vanilla. Tough vanilla? Concentrated vanilla?
Pissed-off vanilla at the moment. She could see it in his eyes and the set of his jaw. Heck, she'd ticked him off enough in the past to know what it looked like, although she hadn't done it recently. It wasn't as much fun now as it had been before.
Maybe a drink would help cool both of them down.
Steering him to one of the waiters walking around the room with a tray of cocktails, Sharon picked up one for each of them. They were going to be here for a while, so she could have a few drinks in the beginning to kill the edge she was feeling and then have plenty of time to sober up before driving back to her parents.
"Don't do that again." Jake's voice was low and hard as he whispered in her ear. To an outside observer it probably looked like he was whispering something intimate.
Sharon sighed as she handed him one of the drinks she'd picked up. She had no idea what her aunt was serving tonight, but she knew it would be strong. "I probably won't need to. Here, have a drink."
"I'm serious, Sharon," he said as he took the drink from her, his blue eyes almost cold. "Don't do that again."
She glared back up at him. Yeah, she got it; she'd embarrassed him by being herself, just like she did her family. Just what she needed, another parent judging her.
"Don't tell me how to behave," she snapped back, spinning on her heel as she stalked away from him, drink in hand.
Even though she didn't look over her shoulder, she knew he was following behind her, like a grim reaper haunting her steps. That was how she felt about her parents a lot of the time too. The biggest difference was that she did have some obligation to Jake to introduce him around and make sure he wasn't left standing alone in a corner.
Spotting her cousins gathered on the edge of the room, she veered towards them, knowing he would follow. Yeah, some of them were just as snobbish and obnoxious as their parents, but not all of them. Joining them, she introduced Jake around and finally started to relax again, especially when Melinda and Mark joined them.
It didn't surprise her that Jake managed to hit it off with all of her cousins, charming them effortlessly. Of course, it didn't hurt that he really was hot, muscular, and looked damn good in a suit. Rina, Melinda's older sister, who could give Aunt Lorraine a run for her money when it came to being the biggest snob in the family, practically fawned on him. Jake was polite to her, which only seemed to encourage her - and considering how chilly he and Sharon were being to each other at the moment, she didn't take it very well.
Which was why she pulled Rina to the side to inform her that he was currently working in construction and remodeling.
"And you brought him as your date?" Rina asked, her voice dripping disapproval.
"Well if you had brought the man you were actually fucking, you'd be here with your gardener and not your husband," Sharon pointed out icily. Rina's jaw dropped open, her face going bright red and then paling to almost pure white, quite the feat since she had the same olive complexion that Sharon did. "Yeah, I heard about that. Now fuck off."
"You're so... so.... crass," Rina hissed at her. "Why can't you just be normal?"
She stalked off before Sharon could respond, which was probably for the best. Whatever. If cheating on her husband with every handsome male member of her staff was normal, Sharon would much rather be crass. Turning back to the conversation, she saw the severe disapproval on Jake's face again before he turned away.
There was no way to know how much he'd overheard of what she and Rina were saying to each other, but whatever he'd caught, he was being a Judgy Mcjudgerson about it.
Sharon glared at the back of his head as she finished off her cocktail. Dammit. She should have brought Brian instead of him. Yeah, there would have been no chance for hot sex and stress relief over the weekend, but at least there wouldn't have been this sinking unhappiness burrowing a pit in the center of her stomach either.
Pressing her lips together as she blinked back several tears, a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. Oh geez, it looked like she and Jake weren't the only couple having trouble. Courtney, the youngest of Lorraine's daughters, was having a very quiet but very obvious fight with her boyfriend. What was his name again? Joseph or something like that?
They'd apparently been together for a while, but it was pretty obvious that Joseph was kind of a jerk. He kept flirting with the other women - not because he was really going after them, but just to make Courtney jealous. What Sharon didn't get was why, since it only took one look at the two of them to realize that Courtney was head over heels for him for some reason.
Unfortunately, with Lorraine for a mother and Rina for an eldest sister, she was also kind of a people pleaser and a doormat. The fact that she was standing up for herself at all to Joseph, especially in public, was surprising.
When Joseph turned and stalked off, Courtney's lower lip trembled, her big brown eyes making her look like a wounded fawn as they filled with tears. Sharon could immediately tell her young cousin was going to go after him, begging for forgiveness.
Hell no, fuck that.
"Excuse me, I'll be right back," Sharon said, giving Jake and Mark a sweet smile. They both nodded to her before diving right back into their conversation. Mark had always had an interest in architecture and engineering and was having a grand time talking to Jake about the actual nitty-gritty details and mechanics of actually building.
Since Melinda was involved in a conversation with two of her friends, Sharon didn't bother trying to catch her eye. She went straight to Courtney, linking her arm through the younger woman's and totally surprising her.
"Hey honey, let's step away for a minute," Sharon said sympathetically, directing her cousin towards the privacy of the hallway instead of deeper into the room after Joseph.
******
Watching Sharon out of the corner of his eye, Jake couldn't help but frown as she led her younger cousin away. At least, he assumed it was one of her cousins. He hadn't been introduced to her yet, but she looked like just Melinda and Rina.
Speaking of Rina, she popped up next to his elbow, interrupting Mark's next question about building materials.
"Mark, so sorry to interrupt, but mom says we're going to start seating for dinner in a few minutes, so she'd like you and Melinda there to lead us all into the dining room."
"Of course, thanks Rina," Mark said, smiling affably. He shot J
ake an apologetic look. "I'd love to talk more about this later."
"Any time," Jake said easily. He liked Mark and he liked talking about his job with someone who was so interested. Mark seemed more like he was on the design end of things than the practical, but that just made for interesting conversation as they talked about what was possible. Since Jake didn't have a specialty yet and was more of a generalist, he had a basic grounding in everything.
Once Mark had turned away to collect Melinda, Jake felt a soft touch on his arm and automatically turned. Sharon's cousin Rina looked up at him with thoughtful, dark brown eyes. They didn't really look too much alike. Rina was fairly tall for the family and willowy, except for her impressive chest. The purple dress she was wearing covered everything but was very tight and completely backless.
The looks she gave him made him pretty uncomfortable, considering he'd been introduced to her as Sharon's date and Rina was wearing a wedding ring.
"So, Jake, you're my cousin's new ah... gentleman." The way she said 'gentleman' made it sound dirtier than if she'd been cruder.
He shifted uncomfortably.
"We're friends and I offered to be her date to the wedding," he said after a moment. That was how Sharon had been introducing him all night.
Rina raised her eyebrows at him, a small smile curving her lips. There was something predatory about that smile and Jake had to stifle the impulse to step back and away from her. "Oh? From what she said I was under the impression your relationship with her was much more... intimate. The man she's currently ah, indulging with, although my delightful cousin was much more crass in her description."
Heat flushed through Jake, embarrassment followed by anger. As much as he liked to think Rina was just trying to cause trouble - he hadn't missed the tension between her and Sharon - he could easily believe she was telling the truth in this case. That sounded like Sharon. And he had heard Rina accusing Sharon of saying something crass before she'd stormed off earlier.
He was really starting to regret having come to this wedding.