Free Sun-Kissed by Laura Florand

couples, could make it through.
    Jaime danced a little against Dom as she clasped her hands behind his neck, and he cooperated, rocking them gently as if they could still hear the last love song in their heads.
    Jaime snuggled against his chest, and Anne was considering her possible avenues for retreat without disturbing them, when Jaime laughed, in almost sleepy contentment. “Did you see my dad? Do you think he’s drunk?”
    Dom grunted, this remnant of an irascibility that too much happiness had almost drugged to sleep. Dom dealt poorly with Mack. Didn’t trust a man that powerful so close to him or to Jaime, Anne was pretty sure. Mack did a little better with Dom from his side, mostly because, as he had explained to Anne one morning on the beach, whatever Dom’s faults, and there are many Mack’s gravel morning voice had added, he was pretty sure the man would do anything for Jaime.
    “I thought you told me those two were already together,” Dom said.
    Anne’s eyebrows went up.
    “Well, they’re discreet about it,” Jaime said. “I guess they didn’t want to upset me and Cade when we were teenagers. Or maybe just didn’t want to let the world into their business, because the world is pretty damn nosy about us. But I’m pretty sure they’ve been a lot more than friends for, what, probably a decade now.”
    What?
    “It’s sweet,” Jaime said. “I think it makes them both so much happier. Although they’re both a hard read.”
    Dom shook that black head of his. He was fresh-shaved and very elegant in a tuxedo for his wedding, although a secret rebel’s tuxedo, with an open neck to his white shirt. But he would always have this sexy, big, dangerous thing going on.
    Well, what? Anne’s mouth curved in her shadows. If her sons-in-law—if Mack’s sons-in-law—were going around thinking she was hot, she had the right to admit to herself they were pretty hot, too, didn’t she?
    “I don’t know what they might have had when you were a teenager, but if they did have something going on, he screwed up or something happened, and she cut him off,” Dom said definitely. “And he’s been cut off for a while. Your dad looks at her like she’s a castle he’s about to bring down.”
    Oh, he did, did he? All Anne’s forces manned her walls in defensive instinct, just at the thought. She hadn’t built those castle walls to be penetrable. She’d built them to withstand a siege.
    And somewhere, deeper, lower down, like this secret tunnel that some spy inside her wanted to open to the enemy: He did, did he? He wanted in that badly?
    Jaime laughed. “Well, she’d better watch out then. Because once my dad starts his pieces across a chessboard, he wins. Even if he has to knock the whole damn table over and go for the other player’s throat to do it.”
     
    ***
    Mack nodded at the guard stationed near the boardwalk coming in over the dunes and walked down it until he came to the bend in it, a couple of benches and a space where people wanting to get closer to the ocean but not quite in the mood to get sand in their feet could sit and watch it. He shrugged his shoulders, glad to escape the noise and wedding hustle for a while, shaking his dad’s aggravation off him but letting the thoughts from it sink in.
    The moon and starlight shone bright on the water. He made way for a shadowy couple coming up the ramp from the beach, a couple that resolved itself into Summer and Luc. The moonlight shone off Summer’s golden hair, her hand in Luc’s as Luc angled them a little so that she could precede him up the boardwalk while they still held hands. Summer’s luminous gold and Luc’s black hair and black eyes made it look as if light was being trailed by shadow up the walk. Summer had Luc’s tuxedo jacket over her shoulders, and Luc’s white shirt was open several buttons at the neck. The wind or maybe fingers had ruffled his hair.
    Summer had that gentle half-smile on her face that made Mack kind of mentally snap