Well, too bad.
Her urges weren’t getting no satisfaction. She’d rather stick a fork in her eye.
“He’s amazing, Jules. Just give him a shot.”
“With a tranquilizer dart you mean?”
Even as the memory of Callie’s laughing shove against her shoulder made her lips twitch, Jake’s muscles clenched under her palm. He was probably also clenching his jaw. At least if she wanted to confirm, she could just glance across—they were the same height, but only because she was wearing heels. At five eight in bare feet, she was tall for a woman, but all the men in this family were over six feet in height.
It irritated her that Jake had the physical ability to look down his snooty nose at her.
Deciding to focus on something else, she glanced around, taking in the smiling faces and teary-but-happy eyes. Everyone in their best clothes, their coats abandoned in the cloakroom to reveal bright, happy color. Structured and beautiful puletasi—full-length dresses, or skirts and tops, featuring traditional prints—on the women with Samoan heritage. Flowy lines and block colors on others.
As for the men, some had broken out a crisp lavalava—a traditional Polynesian skirt—to go with their shirts and ties, while others stuck with suits, but everyone was in formal gear. That, she knew, hadn’t been a demand by the bridal couple. She had a feeling it was simply expected in this church.
Juliet’s grandparents’ congregation had been similar.
When two mischievous flower girls ran sneakily past to follow directly behind the bride—on best behavior once they’d reached their destination—her lips kicked up. Other children had wiggled out to stand at the aisle end of the rows of seats, all the better to see the bridal party. A small Indian boy wearing the cutest Indian-style gray suit, complete with silver embroidery, shot a sunny smile Juliet’s way, his cheeks round and his eyes dancing.
Juliet recognized him as belonging to Ísa’s funny and intelligent friend, Nayna. Having gotten to know and become friends with Charlotte, too, over the time since Charlotte had fallen for Gabe, Nayna had joined them for the prewedding festivities. Her handsome husband had been part of the male cohort, and had acted as an usher today.
Their gorgeous little boy was going to be trouble as a teen, Juliet thought with a sense of kinship. She looked forward to seeing him dance at the reception. Because no Samoan family wedding was ever without dancing—and from all she’d seen, Gabriel Bishop deeply respected his stepfather’s heritage, so there’d be dancing, of that she had no doubt.
Juliet intended to dance until her feet hurt. One of her best friends had just married the love of her life; it was a night to celebrate and to not consider the opinions of a certain male member of Charlotte’s chosen new family.
Jake probably considered dancing indecorous.
The doors were open, the afternoon sunshine pouring in as Gabriel and Charlotte stepped out to be met by another hail of petals from the guests who’d managed to get out before the wedding party headed down the aisle.
Laughing, the couple ran to the gleaming white stretch limo that’d eventually take them to the reception. First, the entire bridal party—Alison and Joseph included—would stop for photos. Ísa’s siblings, Harlow and Catie, had also been ordered to come along to the photo session as the newlyweds wanted shots with the entire family.
According to Charlotte, Harlow and Catie had spent so much of their teenage years with the Bishop-Eseras that Alison and Joseph treated them the same as their boys. And though both had been abroad during Gabriel’s courtship of Charlotte, Juliet’s friend had come to know and fall in love with the two in the time since.
Charlotte had included Catie in all the prewedding celebrations.
Honestly, Charlotte’s heart was the biggest thing about her. Juliet had wondered if, once Charlie came to know her, she’d run fast in the opposite direction—because Juliet’s heart was as heavily shielded as Charlie’s was open and generous.
But Charlotte insisted on believing that Juliet had “a heart so generous” she had to protect it against hurt. Juliet had decided not to disabuse her friend of that notion or to share the fact she still threw random objects at the screen when her pinhead ex showed his lying face.
Since she couldn’t afford to keep replacing her TV, she threw soft objects while pretending they were rocks hitting Reid’s swollen heads. Yes, both of them. The one above his shoulders and the one he went around swinging in the face of any woman vaguely blessed with breasts and an ass.
But Reid had no place here, she thought with a breath that had her lungs filling with Jake’s manly-man scent. Damn it. Exhaling as quickly as she could, she kept her mind on what was to happen next. While the bridal party did the photos, the guests would make their way from the church to the reception venue to be plied with food and drink and entertained by acts put together by the children and teenagers in the extended-kin group.
With how both Gabriel and Charlie valued family—including friends who had become family—Juliet had a bet going with Aroha that the two would begin birthing their own private rugby team within the next nine months.
A year at the latest.
She and Jake didn’t say a word to each other as they walked to the second stretch limo. It was big enough to fit the entire bridal party and yet somehow—thanks, universe—Juliet found herself trapped in a corner with the heat of Jake’s body pressed to hers. He’d gotten a whole lot bigger since the last time she’d been this close to him: big shoulders, muscled thighs, ripped biceps, all were kind of a given with rugby men. He was sleeker than heavily built Gabriel, but in rugby, muscle was a matter of degrees.
A sleek, elite rugby player was still pure hard muscle and bursts of incredible speed on the field, their fitness and toughness legendary. Jake’s thighs were probably like rock.
For all that’s holy, Juliet, stop thinking about Jake’s thighs!
Her mind immediately wandered to what it’d be like to bite down on one of those thighs and whether his warm brown skin was dusted with black hair all over or— Stop, Juliet! Stop this insanity at once!
“Cut it out, you two.” Sailor’s words had her cheeks going blazing hot… until she realized he was talking to Catie and Danny—who’d been sniping at one another from opposite sides of the limo. “Put down the swords for one day.”
“They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves then.” Ísa laughed. “The last time the two of them were on good behavior, they ended up so traumatized that Catie had to leave the country.”
“Ha ha,” Catie said, the skirt of her flowy, breezy dress arranged neatly over the knees of her prosthetic legs.
Honestly, Juliet wouldn’t have known they were prosthetics if Catie hadn’t whipped one off during yesterday’s celebrations to show off a new way to attach it to her stump. The younger woman had also shown Juliet a picture of a skin that gave one prosthetic the look of a cybernetic leg.
“My faves are my racing blades though,” the champion runner had said. “I’m the wind on those.”
At twenty-two, Catie was at home in her body in a way that Juliet had never been at her age. She’d been physically awkward even at her best, all skinny arms and legs and bones that felt uncoordinated and too big for the world; she’d also been reeling from the collapse of her marriage six months earlier.