Every Beat of My Heart (New York Sullivans 0.5) - Bella Andre Page 0,15

to make sure this was really her life. She was an army brat who’d moved more than she stayed. She never got to have a close circle of friends until the Sullivans had taken her in when she was fifteen and made her feel like she finally belonged. Even then, she’d made some huge missteps, especially marrying the wrong man and staying with him for ten too-long years. Every single day of the past three years, she had been amazed by the love she’d managed to find—the love she’d rediscovered—with Ryan.

Their love made any amount of hard work to put on this double wedding absolutely worth it. They’d all been working pedal to the metal on it for the past week and, amazingly, it had been mostly smooth sailing. A majority of the guests were able to clear their schedules, even on such short notice. And Vicki was pretty sure that neither she nor Heather had been particularly high maintenance.

When it came to their men, on the other hand?

She and Heather had to laugh at just how similar Ryan’s and Zach’s professions were—especially all the superstitions that preceded each of Ryan’s games and Zach’s races.

Ryan himself wasn’t particularly superstitious, thankfully. But his teammates were, which was why the Hawks insisted that Ryan and Vicki walk through an arch of baseball bats to get to the altar. Okay, so it might not be the most romantic vision in the world, but Vicki was willing to roll with it. Thank God he didn’t believe in staying celibate during the series, like so many of his teammates. After having been away in France for two weeks, even the mere thought of another two weeks in which they couldn’t make love would have pushed both of them over the edge.

Surprisingly, Zach’s racing colleagues were even nuttier about the wedding than Ryan’s baseball team. First, Zach’s pit crew claimed that if anything green was used in any part of the decorations (apart from the grass and grapevines, which obviously couldn’t be changed), Zach would lose all future races. But they were even more serious about Zach not shaving off so much as a millimeter of his facial hair between now and the wedding. To do so, they insisted, would be the ultimate jinx.

“Since we’ve got a few minutes before the game starts again and three out of four of you are here,” Lori’s twin, Sophie, said, “I thought we could get some extra wedding business done.”

“Megan isn’t here,” Lori groaned, “and we can’t do anything without her spreadsheets, right?”

“Got them right here.” Sophie lifted her tablet. “We decided to put the spreadsheets in the cloud so that we can all access them, remember?”

“You sound like our cousin Suzanne when you start talking about computer clouds,” Lori grumbled.

Suzanne was the only female sibling of the four New York Sullivans—Drake, Harrison, and Alec were her brothers. Vicki had spent some time with each of them over the years while on trips to New York and at weddings, of course. Now that she and Ryan were going to have more free time, she hoped she could get to know his cousins in New York and Maine better. Thankfully, she was already really close with the Seattle crew—Rafe, Mia, Ian, Dylan, Adam, and their parents, Claudia and Max.

“Speaking of our cousins in New York,” Sophie said, “Alec has made arrangements to use a few of his private planes to fly family from New York and Maine into a private airstrip in Napa.”

None of the Sullivans flaunted their money or fame, but since Vicki hadn’t grown up knowing people who had private planes or who were famous, stuff like this still made her head spin.

“And Heather,” Sophie continued, “Alec wanted you to know that he’d be happy to pick up your parents in Washington, DC, if that would be more convenient for them.”

Heather did her best to try to hide her reaction from the rest of them, but Vicki knew too much about Heather’s fractured relationship with her parents to miss it as she said, “I’ll give them a call and let Alec know right away if they’d like a ride.”

Judging by the way Zach pulled Heather closer, it was obvious that he wasn’t particularly thrilled about Heather’s parents coming to the wedding. Vicki wished she could do something to help, but sometimes the very best you could do was simply to be there for the people you loved. Ryan and his family had shown this to Vicki time and