Sun-Kissed

by Florand, Laura

  Cade and Sylvain got up and moved out onto the floor, even though Mack was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to do that—wasn’t the first dance just supposed to be the bridal couple? Trust Sylvain to want to steal the spotlight.

  But then Luc and Summer got up, Summer gently pregnant. A distant cousin to his own daughters, Summer had spent a fair amount of time visiting his girls as a child, mostly because Julie loathed Summer’s parents, Sam and Mai Corey, and tried to rescue Summer whenever she could. Sam had multiple estates in the Hamptons, and had never bothered to make a home out of a single one of them. So despite their other options, Mack was putting Luc and Summer up in one of the guest bedrooms here, along with what seemed like half of France at this point.

  More of those chef buddy-enemies of Dom’s got up and joined the dancers—a blond surfer one with a date who looked part Asian and that big tawny guy with a small woman in very high heels. They all drifted into a loose circle around the central couple.

  They were shielding the bride and groom, Mack finally realized. Spreading out around Jaime and Dom, probably driving the photographers crazy, but breaking up the intensity of focus on that raw, exposed tenderness.

  That was…kind of good to know, that his son-in-law had enemies like that. They were way better than most of the people who tried to claim they were Mack’s friends. Since Jaime had already done the deed and married Dom, it was good to know the two of them had backup.

  He turned Anne in his arms so that her back was to his chest, stubborn about not letting her go, now that he had violated twenty years of non-touching. Might as well go for broke, as he usually thought about things he wanted. “Look,” he told her. “Kurt and Kai look happy.”

  Kurt had been coming over to play at the Corey house since before Julie died. Mack had bought the Corey beach house when Julie first got pregnant, partly because the cocoa scents that permeated their hometown of Corey made her so sick. He’d chosen the Hamptons because it was close enough to New York and attracted enough movers and shakers on “vacation” themselves, that, like them, he could manage that ambitious over-achiever’s juggling act—giving his kids a special summer at the beach, in which he actually participated as much as he could, while still continuing to get things done. The fact that he’d bought it so early in his climb, when Corey was worth a couple hundred million not multiple billions, meant that its ten thousand square feet on a three-acre beachfront lot were modest compared to some of the estates on this beach. For his kids, it had become that place where everything fun and carefree happened. Maybe that sense of happiness and time with family was why Jaime had wanted to have her wedding here rather than at the Corey estate back in the town that was named for them.

  Anne had bought the place next door shortly after her divorce, just over twenty years ago. Her fortune had still been counted in the tens of millions back then, too, her star rising fast but her own expertise at how to manage that rise not yet at its fullest. In the parlance of East Hampton, her three-story home was a “cottage”, and Anne, of course, had turned it into the most perfect, welcoming, fairytale setting for herself and her son. Not about to let the utter failure of her marriage destroy her ability to make herself and her son a home.

  Kurt, twelve or thirteen when they moved in, had been the lonely kid next door whom Julie had welcomed easily into their play on the beach, and of course Cade and Jaime had loved having the older boy play with them. They’d hero-worshipped him as little girls building sandcastles, because he built amazing sandcastles, as if Anne had personally trained him so she could put his sandcastles on the cover of her magazine. Kind of proved how lonely he was, that he’d latched onto the girls in return, not such a common thing for a boy just becoming a teenager to be so happy to play with girls five and eight years old.

  Now he didn’t look lonely anymore. Or he did, in a way, as he and his wife Kai joined the other couples on the dance floor in the middle of the gardens—intensely alone in each other, as if each other was all the world need hold. In Mack’s early days with Julie, the two of them had felt like that, before they had kids and “only each other” seemed a small thing.

  And now the kids were gone. All that size of him—wife, kids—reduced all the way back to one.

  He felt too big for himself. Like he couldn’t be that single, stingy number again.

  Anne sighed a little, and her weight actually settled for a second back against him, surprising him. Surprising his groin, which hadn’t been nearly optimistic enough to anticipate her butt nestling against it. Her arms came up to fold over his arms, wrapped over her middle. Maybe Anne had had too much champagne. “They do look happy, don’t they?”

  He angled his head, trying to see her face, but she’d always been a hard read. Wistfulness? Relief? One of those weird combinations of both, not unlike his when he looked at his kids with their husbands?

  He squeezed her a little. I understand.

  Nice to have that. A physical exchange of understanding.

  “Kai seems to be surviving Summer,” Anne said unexpectedly, and one of her slim, strong hands tightened over his forearm.

  “Kai and Summer don’t get along?” It always surprised him how much women disliked Summer. She was such a pretty, sweet little thing. Always had been, even as a kid, even when his own girls were squabbling all over the lawn about some anthill or God knew what.

  He was sure as hell glad his own daughters hadn’t gone through as many boyfriends as Summer had later, though, because it would have driven him completely insane. He’d far rather they squabble and stand up for themselves than think they had to please half the men on the face of the planet.

  Anne’s head shook, the back of it rubbing against his chest. This was starting to feel too good. Much too good. He’d had so many damn fantasies about Anne, because it had been so safe. There was that sheet of glass between them, and it wasn’t as if she was going to know what was going on in the privacy of his bedroom. And the fact that he felt a little guilty about it, invading her in his sex dreams, only added that kinky twist of pleasure to it. Made it hotter.

  But actually touching her like this had his body all confused. So used to taking her over in his head and doing whatever the hell he wanted and always having the Ice Queen melt, every single way and time, that his hand just kept thinking it could run right down under the band of her skirt and slip a finger where it made her moan, or run up to pinch her nipples and have that make her moan. His brain just kept going with the fantasy, so used to the easy, private pleasure of it that it slid right down that path with delighted eagerness.

  To where she parted her legs and begged. To where she said, Yeah, fuck me, with that cool, enigmatic smile of hers, and he damn well did.

  Shit, now he wished she’d stiffen up and pull her butt back off his groin. Because otherwise—well, she wasn’t an idiot, Anne Winters.

  She’d conceived a child, so she had to know what an erect penis felt like. As counter-intuitive as it seemed with her, as convinced a man could get that she only had sex in his own dirty little mind.

  Anne drew a breath and sighed it out, a soft, vulnerable sound. That was—odd. Anne didn’t do vulnerable. She looked at a jury and thought, If I play all fragile, I bet they’ll let me off, and instead of doing that, she gazed them straight in the eyes and thought, Fuck you. The admiration Mack had felt watching her, and the impotent fury at the damn Department of Justice, had caught him in a tight fist and held him. Held him every damn day she was in prison. Still held him.

  “Kai had some miscarriages,” Anne said very low. Her hand flexed again on his wrist. Made his wrist feel damn strong. Nice to be the wrist that could offer a hand that capable all the resistance it needed when it wanted to squeeze something.

  Mack gazed blankly at Anne’s daughter-in-law, his mind more and more on the feel of his wrist, the feel of his groin, having trouble with the conversation. “And that makes her not like Summer?” What was it with women and Summer? Were that many women that freaking in
secure? He didn’t go around hating better-looking men.

  “Mack.” Anne’s voice was quiet, and a little stern. Pay attention. Use your head. She didn’t indulge much idiocy, Anne. When your decisions affected half the world and, more importantly, your kids, it was incredibly helpful to have someone in your camp who wouldn’t let you be an idiot. “Look at Summer.”

  “She seems happy?” he said tentatively. Happy. Sure that she was loved. Relaxed into it, golden-haired and luminous with contentment. Did even Anne hate the thought of Summer being happy? He’d thought she was stronger than that.

  “She looks like a Madonna,” Anne said, with an undertone of—something. Something dark.

  When he thought of Madonnas, he thought of Renaissance paintings in museums to which he had kept dragging the girls because he was so sure their mother would have done it had she still been around. But—oh. The belly. “It’s…sweet?” He didn’t know why the hell he should have to feel so dubious about this, like maybe a beautiful, happy pregnant young woman wasn’t sweet to his conversational partner. Women were weird about each other sometimes.

  “Yes.” Anne sounded quiet and dark, like someone who wanted to curl up alone and get some sleep. “But Kai might find that painful.”

  It still took him a minute. And then—

  Oh.

  Oh.

  That had never even occurred to him before. Women didn’t get over that kind of thing?

  He looked at Kurt, the long, lean, intelligent, careful man he had once imagined might become his son-in-law, now holding his wife as if they were the only two in the world. As if he could make them be the only two in the world. They danced within their own precious bubble, his brown head bent to hers, his back always, always blocking Summer from Kai’s view and from his, too, Kai’s blond head resting against his tux, her face at ease, quiet, absorbed in him, as soft and dreaming as a dapple of sunlight through the leaves.

  “Your son’s a good man,” Mack said suddenly, bluntly. He figured Anne would want to know.

  “He is, isn’t he?” She sounded as if the awareness had snuck up on her and caught her in some painful grip of too much pride. Yeah. His pride in his daughters did that kind of thing to him, too, at the trickiest moments. “He turned out so much better than his father,” she added low.

  “Well, shit, of course,” Mack said involuntarily. “With you for a mother?”

  Anne looked up at him at that, startled and caught, eyes fixed on him as if he’d said something amazing. She had eyes like honey on moss, this elusive hint of green and sunlight, like catching sight of something magical deep in a forest just as it ducked away.

  “No offense, Anne, but you married a fucking weakling the first time around.” Not at all the kind of guy who could face down whatever bad happened to him and tell it, Fuck you.

  “The first time?” she said quizzically, which was just one of those things she did, split hairs in an ironic way to hide her emotional reactions.

  Yes, he knew she’d only been married once so far. Did she expect him to say her life was over halfway through? “Pick someone with guts the next time around,” he ordered her bluntly, mostly because he liked the way her eyes narrowed at him when he tried to boss her around like he bossed the rest of the world.

  They did narrow, kicking a charge right through him, making his stupid body drag him straight back to another fantasy, this one where she gave him that make me look, and, because it was a fantasy, you stupid body, not real, he did. He made her do all kinds of things, in all kinds of positions. And she came in every single one of them, of course.

  He took a breath, trying to squeeze his hips back away from her, but his butt was already resting on the railing. Just then the door onto the veranda opened, and the wedding circus master pushed her head out and beckoned frantically. “You’re on in just a minute! The song is almost over!”

  Oh, shit. He was still aroused.

  And it was the daddy-daughter dance!

  Fuck.

  He shoved Anne away from him, then made sure to steady her on her feet. “You stay away from me,” he told her sternly, just to be on the safe side. He knew damn well if he gave her an order she would ignore it, and he didn’t want her shutting him out for the rest of the night in overreaction to a penis or anything.

  Then he strode to the other end of the veranda, nearest the closest bathroom, and snatched a glass of ice water off the tray of a waiter as he passed.

  In the bathroom, he jerked his pants off, stood over the toilet, and hesitated a long second, grimacing. There were other ways to get rid of this thing, but—shit. He was not jerking off in a bathroom at his daughter’s wedding. Screwing up his eyes tight and turning his head away—he dashed the ice water over himself.

  Aaaagh.

  That—that—shit.

  He grabbed a towel and more or less smacked himself dry—afraid to rub—and then jerked his pants back on.

  And went out to dance with his daughter on her wedding day like a normal man.

  Chapter 2

  “What’s wrong?” Anne’s son asked, sliding into the chair beside her. Anne had just finished straightening its sea-green bow and was automatically adjusting the flower arrangement in the middle of the table to make up for a bloom some guest had stolen to wear in his hair a little earlier. Some of their guests were beginning to get in quite the liquored-up, merry mood. “You look worried.”

  In public? With cameras to catch it? She smoothed her expression immediately. You want to see me sweat, world? Come to the gym.

  You’ll find me in the boxing ring, pretending my trainer’s headgear is your head.

  “Something wrong with the wedding cake?” Kurt guessed wryly.

  Her son was so aggravating sometimes. She loved him, but he just put her in the mom category and dismissed it at that. On the other hand, she could hardly say, No, there was a demanding penis just pressed up against my butt and my butt still feels…odd.

  Then again…she’d built an empire out of herself worth nearly a billion dollars while she was a divorced single mom. She was a convicted felon. Maybe she could say whatever the hell she wanted. “Well, if you look at the back side of that blue one, there’s a finger print where I couldn’t resist a taste of the frosting, but maybe no one will notice.”

  Kurt gave her a perplexed look. The odds of Anne Winters sneaking frosting or allowing even a hair fine imperfection in anything she did were approximately 998,547,321 million to one. Her current net worth, according to Forbes, but Jesus, what did those guys have? Hackers on all her accounts?

  “Lighten up, Kurt,” she said, and took a sip of her champagne.

  Kurt blinked. His eyebrows went up. “Prison had a very unexpected effect on you.”

  She shrugged, wishing for a cigar she could bite the tip off of and drive him completely insane, or at least for the ability to slouch in her chair, but her spine just didn’t seem to work that way. “You’re a corporate lawyer.” He negotiated the hell out of her company’s contracts for her. Brilliant, her son, almost mercilessly so in certain circumstances. Those precise, contract-negotiation circumstances when he could hide his sensitive heart. “Since when are you familiar with the expected effects of prison?”

  Kurt narrowed his eyes just a little. He had hazel eyes from his father, but so much more beautiful. The way they would look up at her when he was little, so sincere and determined. Brown hair from his father. But a heart and a strength nothing like his father’s. She hadn’t needed Mack to tell her that he had turned out better than Clark.

  Despite her, probably, but some days she was determined to take some credit.

  Kai laughed from the other side of him at the round table. The sound felt strange against Anne’s skin, like an unexpected cascade of warm water when she had thought everything frozen. When part of her wanted to insist everything was supposed to be frozen, wasn’t it? It had been frozen for her.

  She had vomited in terror, the night before she had to surrender herself to
prison. The first time she had let anything get to her like that in twenty years, but alone in her room, she hadn’t been able to stop. Still, even then she’d known that she wouldn’t have any trouble with at least one of those prison tips she had found online: never, ever show them anything you really feel, not fear, not weakness, not joy. It could all be used against you. She’d gotten that part down so very long ago, layer after frozen layer separating herself from the world’s power to hurt her, accumulated year after year as she kept doing it, as no one every broke through.

  But prison had weakened something in her. She knew it had. Because now some other part of her melted under Kai’s laughter, surging up in this sudden geyser of grief for herself and hope for them: God, if my son could have that happiness, that love, that support for his whole life. If he could get to keep it. Even when things get bad.

  That laughter of Kai’s. That laughter that Anne had never really known how to give him, when he needed it, that had made his choice of wife such a cruel slap as she realized: Oh. All those things I tried to teach him—self-control, and persistence, and calm, and being strong enough to count only on yourself—he went and found the exact opposite. As if nothing I gave him was what he needed at all.

  But now—she looked across the table at Kai. Their eyes met, and something passed from Kai to her, this quiet, a gentleness in her brown eyes that was almost tender. Anne couldn’t fathom it.

  Almost nobody showed Anne gentleness, or quiet, or tenderness. Her quiet came from herself, from when she sank into her work. Sometimes, during that period when he was separated from Kai, Kurt would come by, bringing with him a precious, uncommon quiet, a quiet that was shared. They would talk in a way they never could when he was a teenager, and each read a book for a while, or play chess. Sometimes he would even, with a wry look, help her with her crafts, the way he used to when he was a child before he rebelled into all those boyish sports. He would concentrate on those crafts as if they were a lifeline, and her heart would go out to him: Oh, God, Kurt, please don’t turn out like me.