“Chooser goes first.”
“Whoa, count me out.” Jake stopped at the bricked path to the guest house. “I’m going to catch a little sleep before the sun gets all the way up. Thanks for coming to get us, Sydney. I’ll call you later when I’m ready to go back to the hotel and pick up the truck.”
“Sure thing, buddy. I’ll be waiting by the phone.” Syd blew him a kiss. “Call me,” she sang. “Don’t be afraid, you can call me.”
Gentry frowned at her high-pitched rendition, and Sydney shrugged. “Can I help it if I have a song in my heart?”
Gentry took a last lingering look at Jake’s backside as he walked to the guest house in the shaded light of early morning. “Why couldn’t he have put on thirty pounds and grown thick and flabby across the rear?”
“Good genes.” Sydney grinned. “You can spell that j-e-a-n-s, too.”
“Clever.” Turning, she headed for the house. “I guess I’d better skip the swim in favor of a shower, some adequate clothing and a return to the hotel before Sonny wakes up.”
“Good idea. You don’t want to take the chance one of the cleaning crew will mistake him for a corpse and call the undertaker.”
“I’m sure he’ll find the whole episode amusing…in retrospect, of course.”
“Oh, of course. I expect he’ll be vastly entertained, especially when he hears about the smacker you planted on Jake.”
Her heart shuddered at the possibility. “I didn’t do any such thing.”
“You looked pretty firmly rooted to his lips when I saw you.”
“You didn’t see a thing,” Gentry corrected her. “And you especially didn’t see a smacker.”
“So, you’re not going to tell him about the kiss. You’d rather keep your guilty little secret, then.” Sydney opened the back door and held it until they both could slip into the quiet house. “Wouldn’t it be better just to confess, fight, make up, and get the whole thing out in the open? Secrets can come back to haunt you.”
“Sonny and I believe in being totally honest with each other, but I’m not an idiot. There are a few secrets that ought to remain just that…secrets.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell.”
Gentry stopped and Sydney bumped into her from behind. “You have to promise me you won’t tell, Syd. Swear on your Blood Sister Oath right now.”
Sydney made a face. “I would rather paint my toenails than cause trouble between you and your beloved. You know you can trust me, Gen. There’s no need to drag out the BS Oath.”
“Trust is the reason we invented it in the first place…and you’re the main offender. Now, swear.”
With an exasperated roll of her eyes, Sydney lifted one foot, raised her right hand and began to hop in a tight circle. “I, Sydney Jane Caroline Ryals, do solemnly swear that regardless of how many times I am tortured, beaten or horsewhipped, I will never reveal the secrets of my blood sisters.” She put down her hand and foot. “There. Satisfied?”
“Do the rest.”
Frowning fiercely, Sydney lifted her other foot, raised her left hand and made a counterclockwise hop. “I, Sydney Jane Caroline Ryals, swear that if I even think about breaking this sacred Blood Sister Oath, I will be cursed with bad skin, cellulite, halitosis and bad hair until the day I die.” She stopped hopping and sighed. “I never realized what vindictive little brats we were in our younger days.”
Gentry nodded. “We were so dramatic in our youth.”
“As opposed to our adulthood, of course, when we act out scenes from movies in front of a whole squadron of police and kiss our ex-husbands in plain view of—”
Gentry whirled to face her. “You swore, Sydney.”
“Well, excuse me, I thought you knew you kissed him.”
“Don’t mention it again.”
They reached the stairs and walked quietly to the upstairs hall leading to the bedrooms. Stopping outside her own door, Gentry put her hand on Sydney’s arm. “I almost forgot to say thanks.”
“For what? Being there?” Sydney gave her a quick hug. “That’s what friends are for.” She took a couple of steps toward the guest room that was hers for the week, then backed up. “You do realize, Gen, that oath or no oath, you owe me big-time for this one.”
“I’ll be forever in your debt.”
“You bet your butt you will.” Sydney walked on down the hallway, humming a jaunty little tune that sounded a lot like “Suzy Had a Steamboat.”
Chapter Eight
The Hamiltons’ brunch in honor of Sonny and Gentry was supposed to be casual and relatively intimate. Relatively became the problem, however, when Sonny’s family swelled the guest list and kicked intimacy out the window…or rather, off the terrace. Every last Harris aunt, uncle and cousin showed up, with a few friends. What should have been groups of two or three couples mingling around the pool became a crowd with groups of five or more couples centered around makeshift tables, hastily covered with cloths and decorated with platters of raspberry tarts. The remaining guests stood wherever they found space, balancing plates, cups and utensils, and defending their square foot of terrace.
At a center table, Gentry sat elbow to elbow with Sonny and Jake. Directly across from her, Sydney, flanked by Lee and Mitch, smiled as if she was in the catbird seat. To Mitch’s right sat Frannie, Milton Harris, Heather and Sonny. To Lee’s left was Pop, and next to him sat Tina, a young woman with short, spiky hair the color of black cherry Kool-Aid and contact lenses that turned her eyes into a disconcerting shade of purple. She got caught in the musical chairs shuffle and ended up at their table, introducing herself as “a friend of a friend of somebody’s cousin.” Next to Tina sat Betty Harris. Hillary stood behind Frannie and Milton, ready to pounce on the first available chair.
Gentry had looked forward to this brunch for a month, and now she was condemned to enjoy it while Sonny seethed and glared across her at Jake, who was hemmed in on his right by the cold shoulder of Sonny’s mother. What a swell party this was turning out to be, she thought.
How Sydney had gotten Jake into this small, intimate brunch was a no-brainer—she could have smuggled in an entire circus without the hostess being any the wiser. And while it did cross Gentry’s mind to wonder how Jake had been persuaded to come, the real mystery was how Sydney had maneuvered thirteen people and twelve chairs so that when everyone was seated, Gentry was squarely in the middle of a war zone.
Every time Jake sat forward, so did Sonny. If Jake leaned back, Sonny followed suit. If Jake looped his arm across the back of his chair, Sonny’s arm snaked around her shoulders to make sure his territory was protected. Gentry tensed every time Jake opened his mouth, because no matter who he spoke to around the table, Sonny would suddenly find something to say to the person sitting directly across, so that the two conversations canceled each other out and bombarded Gentry with increasingly louder attempts to be heard. When Jake offered his untouched raspberry tart to Betty Harris, Sonny all but jumped across the table to shove his in front of her first. Luckily, Gentry intercepted his plate before it tipped Jake’s and dumped both of the tarts into Betty’s ample lap.
Gentry might have had more patience with Sonny’s behavior if he hadn’t ignored her in favor of making sure Jake couldn’t make contact with her. The most attention she received was when he apologized after accidentally hitting her with his cast, which happened nearly every time he touched her. Jake moved, Sonny moved, she received a thunk and a cursory “sorry.” It was becoming quite annoying.
“So how did you two meet?” Tina asked Gentry, her purple eyes sliding appreciatively to Jake. “If I bet that it was love at first sight, would I win?”
“Yes,” Jake answered.
“No,” Sonny said at the same time, and then leaned forward to glare across Gentry. “What do you mean, yes?”
Jake’s eyebrows lifted politely. “Tina asked me a question and I answered. Do you have a problem with that?”
“She asked me,” Sonny snapped. “I’m Gentry�
�s fiancé.” His position clarified, he smiled at Tina. “We met through our mutual interest in art,” he said, giving Gentry’s hand an awkward pat.
“So did we.” Jake smiled at Tina, too.
Another glare swept past Gentry. “I own an art gallery in Dallas.” Sonny offered the information with yet another smile.
“That’s where we met,” Jake said.
Sonny stiffened. “That’s where we met.”
Gentry wished she’d never met either one of them.
“She came in to look for a painting,” Sonny explained.
“So did I.”
Sonny fired a warning glance at Jake across the neutral zone. “That’s how we met,” he said.
“Us, too.” Jake nodded agreeably. “Except I was the one looking for a picture.”
“Painting,” Sonny snapped.
“Painting,” Jake corrected himself.
Tina blinked her spiky eyelashes in some confusion and her purple eyes flicked to Gentry. “Are you going to marry both of them?”
“Fortunately, just one,” she answered.
“That’s me.” Sonny shot a “so there” glance at Jake.
“He’s right,” Jake said. “We’ve already been married.”
“Annulled.” Sonny stretched his neck to deliver that one over Gentry’s head.
Jake nodded concession. “Annulled.”
Tina responded with another blink, and Gentry wondered if she could get out of here by crawling under the tables.
“Isn’t this a lovely party?” Frannie said. “It’s so nice all of Sonny’s family could be here for the wedding.”
Milton Harris shook his head in a skeptical, I-hopehe-can-pull-it-off-this-time manner. “After what happened at the last wedding, no one in our bunch wanted to take a chance on missing something this time around.”
“This is nothing like the last wedding,” Sonny insisted.
Milton looked pointedly at Jake. “Then what’s he doing here?”
“He’s visiting me.” Pop’s voice was pure John Wayne, daring anyone to make something of it.
“Just before the wedding?” Betty gave a short, humorless laugh. “That certainly seems odd.”
If this had been a Western, Betty would have been the first one shot, Gentry thought. Pop was one of the good guys, though, and kept his six-shooters in his holster. “Nothing odd about it,” he said. “I’m not the one who’s getting married.”
“Neither is he.” Sonny leaned around Gentry to make sure Jake heard.
Jake’s response was to lean back and drape his arm along the top of Gentry’s chair, forcing Sonny to duck back in a hurried attempt to get his hand on her chair first. Clunk. The heavy cast struck the metal folding chair before it fell, thunk, against her backbone.
“Sorry.” Sonny propped the cast on top of the chair again, edging Jake’s arm out of the way. Gentry rubbed her backbone and counted to ten.
Jake shifted forward and laid his arms, hands clasped, on the table.
The dishes on the table rattled as Sonny’s cast landed a second later, clipping Gentry’s wrist on the outside. “Sorry,” he said, and settled in the new position. Jake listened to a little of Pop’s storytelling, then shifted in his seat and leaned back. Sonny caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and leaned back in his chair, too. A few minutes later, Jake scooted closer to the table. Sonny grabbed the edges of his seat as best he could with one hand and the chair hopped awkwardly. One chair leg nicked Gentry’s foot in the process.
“Sorry,” Sonny said. She raised her eyebrows and counted to twenty.
Jake lifted one arm in a slow stretch.
Thunk! Sonny’s cast hit Gentry’s shoulder in anticipation of Jake’s next move…which didn’t happen. “Sorry.” Sonny resumed the arms-on-the-table, forward position.
Jake started to lean back. Sonny watched, warier now of leaping into action. Jake rocked forward. Sonny rocked forward. Jake rocked back, stretched out his legs and slumped a little in his chair. By the time Sonny got his slump set, Jake was back to the table with his arms crossed in front of him. Sonny followed, but no sooner got his arms positioned, than Jake straightened and draped his arm along the back of Gentry’s chair. Sonny glanced over, realized he was out of sync and quickly corrected his positioning.
They reminded Gentry of two squirrels darting around the trunk of a tree, then dashing around in the opposite direction as soon as each one spied the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. She slapped her hands, palms down, on the table. “Would you stop that!”
The chatter around the table came to an abrupt halt and everyone looked to her for an explanation. She nodded pleasantly. “Sorry, I was just getting the kinks out of my system.”
“Kooks, more likely,” someone muttered.
She divided her irritable look between both men, turning her head to be sure they each got their fair share. “Now,” she said, “if the two of you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to enjoy the rest of this party without getting motion sickness. So, unless you have a life-ordeath situation, sit still. Understand?”
“My fault,” Jake said. “I was bored. No one to talk to and all. Sorry.” He leaned past her and offered Sonny a handshake.
Sonny glanced from the proffered hand to his cast and scowled. “I don’t know why you keep crashing these parties, Daniels. You’re not walking off with Gentry this time, no matter what you think. She learned her lesson. She knows she made a mistake by not taking her vows as planned that day.”
That was something of a misstatement, Gentry thought. She had taken vows that day…as planned. She and Jake had vowed their love and commitment in a motel room barely thirty minutes’ drive down the road. The exchange of vows was theirs alone, communicated in long, hot, wet kisses and sweaty palms…and sweaty bodies…and bare chests and bare breasts and bare legs tangled in the sheets and each other…and in the erotic sounds of two passion-slick bodies coming together….
“Take a couple of deep breaths before you hyperventilate,” Jake said, and then thumped her on the back.
Sonny jerked around in his seat. “Keep your hands off her, Daniels. If she needs a whack on the back, I’ll whack her. I don’t want you to touch her, understand?”
“Sonny, please.” Gentry laid her hand on his cast. “What is wrong with you? You never make a scene.”
“Well, it’s time somebody did.” Sonny’s shoulders began to rise like an expanding balloon, his chest filling out like the north wind getting ready to blast the coast with a storm. He shoved back his chair, but it didn’t move far enough for him to stand, so he hovered, somewhere between sitting and standing. “It’s time somebody showed this coyote the door…and as Gentry’s fiance, it will be my pleasure to do it.”
“Sit down, Harris.” Jake’s voice was low, but forceful.
“Not until I’ve kicked your—”
“Would anyone like more tarts?” Frannie picked up the platter and passed it across the table, in the mistaken belief raspberry tarts would divert everyone’s attention from the snarling going on around her daughter. “They’re wonderful. Go ahead, have another.”
Pop grabbed the platter and set it down. “Would you be quiet, Frannie? I don’t want to miss this.”
“Are you just going to sit there?” Sonny snarled at Jake.
“I was thinking I might, yes.”
“You’re not thinking too clearly, then. Get up or I’ll haul you straight out of that chair myself.”
Jake was clearly debating his next move. Gentry tamped down her complete disgust with both men and considered how to bring this embarrassing standoff to a conclusion with a minimum loss of face all around. She thought, somehow, this was her fault. She could have, should have, prevented the tension from reaching this point. Still, it was difficult to feel guilty when the testosterone levels were sky-high on either side. She shifted her focus to Sonny. “Sit down, Sonny. Contrary to what you might have been told in some smelly old locker room, I am not a prize you can win in a p
ointless brawl.”
“I know that, Gentry.” He patted her shoulder. “So I’ll just punch him for my own satisfaction.”
“Anyone care for more of this delicious punch?” Betty poured a little more into her glass before waving the pitcher around the table. “Who wants more punch?”
“Not now, Mrs. Harris.” Hillary reached between Frannie and Milton, snatched the pitcher of iced punch and cradled it close against her, out of the way.
“Don’t waste any more of my time, Daniels,” Sonny challenged. “I want to know why you came back.”
“I thought you wanted to punch me,” Jake said.
“I changed my mind. First I want to hear you admit you came here thinking you could lure Gentry back into your bed….”
“Sonny!” Gentry grabbed his hand, but he shook it off.
“And ruin another wedding for us. Then I’m going to punch you.”
Behind her, Gentry heard Jake sigh. “I never really wanted to shoot the sheriff,” he muttered under his breath. His chair scraped as he pushed back.
Gentry shoved the table in her scramble to get to her feet and in between the two men. Behind her, like a baby learning to walk, the table wobbled, tipped-and collapsed, dumping the platter of raspberry tarts indiscriminately as it fell. Glasses tumbled down the incline, throwing leftover punch in random splatters. Bullfrogs around a pond couldn’t have leaped out of danger any faster than the people around that table. With squeals of surprise and gruff epithets, they jumped in all directions.
Betty got out of the way, then bent to grab her purse, bumping two innocent bystanders with one swing of her hips. Heather’s foot caught in the rung of her chair and she fell sideways into Milton, who lost his balance, stumbled into Frannie, knocking her forward, then righted himself with an unstable turn, which put him on a collision course with Hillary. He threw his arms around her, but couldn’t stop the momentum and they staggered together into first one table and then another, taking down three tables in one spectacular fall before they landed in a sitting position, upright and face-to-face, like rag dolls in an awkward embrace.
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