Ísa replied soon after with the number attached.
After thanking her, he tapped out a message to Juliet: You need to sell a subscription to whatever tea you were drinking last night. I was wiped, but you decided to take on Reid too? Legend. – Jake
Her response lit up his phone half a minute later: You’re hilarious, Jacob. She’d added a grumpy panda sticker.
Grinning, he tucked away his phone just as Leo reached him.
“Jeez, what the hell is that on your face?” the other man quipped. “Could it be that the Saint is having a moment of hilarity?”
Jake groaned; he hated that nickname, born of his serious on-field nature and ability to “miracle” difficult passes, but it showed signs of sticking like superglue. The Bishop and the Saint. People thought they were geniuses. “You forget I’m your ride home, Simba? I think you want to walk.”
Throwing back his head, Leo roared. “King of the jungle!”
Multiple rolled-up towels hit his head.
18
NO ONE Messes with Jake’s People
Esme was waiting for him on the porch of his parents’ house when a frustrated Jake drove up late afternoon that day. Reid had screwed up all his plans regarding Juliet. One shot of him anywhere near her and the small media squall would blow up to nightmarish proportions.
So he’d gritted his teeth and stayed put… and kept checking his phone like a besotted teenage boy. But Juliet hadn’t messaged him again. So he’d messaged her. No pain, no gain. I found a picture of Reid and printed it out for your new voodoo doll.
I’m trying to work here, had been the response.
On a Sunday?
I’m a vice president. Attached had been the meme of a serious-looking cat at a desk, spectacles firmly on. I have admin stuff to clear at the office since I had to babysit a bunch of rugby players who think they’re models.
So, he’d written, no to the voodoo doll?
Find a piece of his clothing, minion. Then I shall do my spells. Now, this VP is going back to work.
Realizing she was serious, he’d stopped with the messages but had gone online and ordered a bunch of flowers to be delivered to her office. Roses in darkest red. Lush and bold and sexy. Like Juliet.
He’d paid the exorbitant Sunday rate to ensure delivery within the hour.
Knowing the attached note might be seen by nosy parkers, he’d written: These reminded me of you. (Except for the lack of thorns.) – J.
Another woman would’ve seen that as an insult. Juliet, however, had replied with: My thorns are extra stabby today. Keep your distance.
That had been four hours ago, and while Jake had let her get on with her work, he wasn’t planning to heed the warning. For the first time in his adult life, he felt like taking risks. It was scary as all hell, but so had been holding Esme for the first time. So had been trying out for a team after his grief-and-shock-fueled hiatus.
With risk came incalculable rewards.
“Daddy!” Esme flew down the stairs to him.
Grabbing her in his arms, he spun her around. “Did you catch any fish for dinner?”
“No! My fishies was small, so I threw them back!” She wrapped one arm around his shoulders as he climbed the stairs.
He bumped fists with Sailor when he walked into the kitchen, unsurprised by his brother’s presence. He’d seen Sailor and Ísa’s vehicle parked outside. After putting his daughter down so she could run outside to play with Emmaline and her grandfather, he hugged his sister-in-law.
When he bent to peck his mother on the cheek, he got hauled down for a proper hug. “We’re having fish and chips for dinner,” she told him. “You’ve just volunteered to grill the fish. Ísa, you set yourself down and take a load off.”
Jake caught his sister-in-law’s faint blush, saw the glance exchanged between her and Sailor, and narrowed his eyes. “You two are keeping secrets.”
Ísa burst out laughing, gray-green eyes sparkling. “I told you.” She pressed one hand to Sailor’s chest. “I said your brothers would figure it out the instant they laid eyes on us.”
Hooking one arm around her neck, blue-eyed Sailor kissed his wife’s temple. His expression and grin were that of a man living his happiness. “You’re going to be an uncle again, bro.”
A huge smile cracked Jake’s face. “An oops, huh?”
Sailor threatened to deck him while Ísa laughed and said, “No, a planned joint project.”
A backslapping hug between brothers, a gentler hug for Ísa.
“You better tell the others,” he said afterward. “Gabe will beat you dead if he’s the last to know, and Danny will sulk.”
Sailor glanced at his watch. “Where is Danny anyway?”
“On an orchard out Kumeu way,” Alison answered. “Birthday dinner for a friend from his sports psychology course.”
While Sailor called Gabe, then Danny, Jake got more details out of Ísa, including that the couple had found out the week before the wedding but hadn’t wanted to steal Gabriel and Charlotte’s moment—but that had meant amusing stealth shenanigans where Ísa avoided alcohol without tipping anyone off.
“I have to apologize to the plants in Charlie’s home,” she said with a giggle at one point. “Poor things are probably drunk from all the wine I poured into the pots!”
The happy, celebratory mood continued through dinner—and Jake kept thinking of how much Juliet would enjoy this casual get-together. If Reid hadn’t stirred up the media, Jake would’ve had his mother invite her. Jules might tell Jake to take a hike, but she’d say “Yes, ma’am” if it was Alison who made the call.
Alison Esera hadn’t raised no idiot.
It was post-dinner that the trouble hit.
Helping with the cleanup, he emptied the kitchen garbage bin, then walked out into the early-evening dark and over to the hidden spot behind the garage where his parents stored their external garbage bins. Once he’d dumped the slick black trash bag inside, he pulled the wheeled green bin out to the curb, having remembered it was trash pickup day on this street tomorrow.
It was as he was about to return to the house that he spotted the media van parked down the road. He frowned, but the reporter getting out of the passenger-side door wasn’t looking in the direction of his parents’ home. She was motioning for her cameraman to follow her to Reid’s place.
Glad it was dark enough that the reporter hadn’t spotted him, he melted away into a pool of shadows cast by the large jacaranda tree his mother had planted when she and his father first bought this place. It had grown as Alison’s sons had grown, and come spring, it’d carpet the entire front area of their home in a shower of purple-blue blooms.
Jake had seen the photos of what had been a run-down and neglected villa back then, its paint flaking and its plumbing shaky at best. Gabriel and Sailor had helped their mother and new stepfather strip the paint, clean the gutters, replace old boards, and in the doing, they’d laid the foundations for the unbreakable family unit into which Jake, then Danny, had been born.
Across the road, the reporter and cameraman pushed open a little wooden gate and strode up to Reid’s front door. Instinct telling him to stay put, he watched as the reporter knocked. Reid’s model girlfriend opened the door, all masses of mahogany-brown hair and stacked body.