Chase grinned. “Good.” His grin widened. “Really good.”
Jake had seen Chase and Chloe together enough to know this was one seriously happy dude. Chase didn’t seem to have one regret about giving up having his pick of hot models.
“Have you seen Chloe?” Chase asked. “Do you know if she needs anything?”
As soon as Chloe had announced her pregnancy, Chase had become a carbon copy of every other overprotective dad-to-be. It was exactly the kind of crazy behavior Jake would never understand. Which was why he made damn certain none of his sexual partners could get knocked up.
“I was just talking with Sophie,” he told Chase. “Sounded like everything is under control with the girls.”
“Good.” Chase nodded, then grinned at him. “Come inside. Smith is telling us about an orgy he walked in on a couple of weeks ago. I’m guessing it’s a warm-up for his speech after the wedding.”
“So you’re really not going to miss giving it all up, huh?”
Chase didn’t hesitate before shaking his head. “Chloe is worth a thousand orgies.”
Jake could hear the Sullivans laughing as he walked inside. He loved that family as if they were his own, would take a bullet for any of them. Especially the dark-haired beauty he couldn’t manage to shake out of his head.
Or his heart.
Chapter Two
“We were just about to send out a search party for you.” Kalen, the makeup artist Chase usually worked with on his photo shoots, grabbed Sophie the second she stepped into the guest house. “Everyone else is putting on their dresses already. Fortunately, all you need is some light mascara and lipstick.”
Normally, Sophie would have agreed to keep her face close to bare. She’d never been all that comfortable in makeup. Lori had been the one who’d always liked to play with their mother’s eye shadows and powders. Sophie had been more interested in finding the books to tell her sister how to put it on, rather than playing mannequin.
“Actually,” she said, “I was hoping you could work a little of your magic on me.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Magic?”
Sophie nodded. “There’s this guy...”
Kalen gave Sophie a slow grin. “Well, in that case, I’d be happy to work a little of my magic on you. He won’t know what hit him.” She called out to the hairstylist friend she’d brought with her. “Jackie, can you come here for a sec?”
A few minutes of hushed conferencing later—in which Sophie made it clear that she didn’t want to look overly made up or trashy, just a whole lot sexier than she normally did—the three women had a plan.
Sophie sat back in her seat and tried to ignore her rapidly beating heart as they transformed her from Nice to something entirely different.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, after Kalen and Jackie had helped Sophie change into her bridesmaid’s dress without messing up her hair or makeup, Lori walked into the room and stared at Sophie in shock.
“What the heck have you done with my sister?”
The two of them hadn’t been getting along so well for the past year. Sophie hated to see the way Lori was letting that jerk she’d been dating in secret walk all over her. Everyone saw her twin as so fierce, so fearless, but Sophie knew Lori was simply better at hiding her emotions than the rest of them.
Every time Sophie had tried to bring up the situation, her sister had blocked her out of her life more and more. Lori was a master of sharp, sarcastic barbs, as Sophie knew all too well, and she’d been lashed out at one too many times in recent months. But beneath everything that had come between them in the past year, she loved her sister. How could she not, when they’d always been two halves of a whole?
Today was one of those days when Sophie needed her twin, the other half that should automatically understand everything on a DNA level, to reassure her.
In the heat of the moment, as she’d made the decision to shake things up, it had seemed so empowering to let Kalen and Jackie make her up, but for someone like her, who’d always been happy disappearing into the background, this hair, this makeup was a big departure.
What if people laughed at her?
What if Jake laughed?
She’d die. Oh yes, right then and there in the middle of Chase and Chloe’s special day, in front of three hundred people, she’d wither up and drop dead.
Lori moved closer, did a full circle of Sophie in her deep pink satin strapless dress. She’d been the last one to meet Chloe at the bridal store to pick out her maid of honor dress. Although it was definitely more conservative that Lori’s, Sophie had forgotten how well the satin hugged her curves, closer than anything else she owned, that’s for sure. It was classic movie-star style, a la Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress, with a long slit up one leg.