we have everything by tomorrow morning. I know it’s late, but—”
“I can’t, Ma.”
Her mother’s dark eyebrows knitted together. “What do you mean, you can’t?“
“I’m the maid of honor,” Jessie explained, suddenly not sure why she’d come inside to tell her mother about her trip in person. What were cell phones for, anyway? “I’ve got my own things to do. Or thing, anyway. But you can’t do this alone. Call Deborah.”
Celia shook her head, her mouth set in a stubborn moue. “Deborah has babies. She can’t help at this late—”
Jessie groaned. Her older sister’s “babies” were now twelve and thirteen. Deb, who’d been working for their mother’s catering company just as long as Jessie, was always given a pass whenever emergencies came up—and not by choice. Despite the fact that Celia had worked full-time while her children were young, Jessie’s mom had weird beliefs when it came to other working mothers. As in, they shouldn’t work unless completely necessary. This meant Deb, who was undeniably more capable than Jessie, rarely got a chance to shine.
Well, Jessie hoped her sister was ready to go supernova, because not even the most skilled guilt trip from her mother was going to keep her from going to Key West with Leo.
On the drive home, she’d been angry at how he’d manipulated her into spending time alone in the very house where they’d first made love. She’d nearly driven off the road twice while contemplating how she was going to tolerate an hour on her own with him, much less almost an entire week. For the better part of the last decade, she’d either avoided him or frozen him out, trying to forget how willfully and carelessly he’d torn apart her trust.
But as she’d cruised the familiar streets of her neighborhood where she’d learned how to ride a bike, shake off a scraped knee and navigate the stormy waters of adolescence, she’d realized that she could either whine about the situation or take control. Leo’s presence, if nothing else, sparked the Jessie she used to be—the girl brimming with sass and direction and desire. She could not blame Leo entirely for those qualities falling to the background, but she didn’t mind giving him a bit of credit for stirring them again.
Bianca had told Jessie years ago that Leo wanted her back. She’d confided how he regretted cheating on her back in college with a girl who’d climbed into his bed one drunken night whom he’d believed—or so she’d been told—to be Jessie. Leo had never denied that he’d had sex with the girl, some tramp from his dorm who’d had her eyes on him for months. Too drunk to tell the difference had just been an extra insult she simply couldn’t overcome.
Yet if Leo fancied this week as an opportunity to force their reunion, he was mistaken. They’d get “back together” only long enough to have amazing, mind-blowing sex. And this time, when she walked away, it would be on her terms and not because he balled some other girl whose name he probably didn’t remember.
This surprise wedding presented her with a chance to not only make Leo pay for what he’d put her through, but also to purge the man from her system once and for all. She’d tried just about everything—she’d been bitchy to him and cold. She’d insulted him under the guise of humor and he’d always greeted her animosity or indifference with his signature roguish grin or flirtation.
He was incorrigible.
Which made him utterly irresistible.
To offset his lasting effects on her psyche and libido, she’d tried dating men who were his polar opposite—steady, staid and boring—as well as guys just like him: players with endless capacities for fun and irreverence. She’d been engaged to one of each. And yet, neither of them cleansed him from her soul.
No, she was going to have to fight fire with fire. Her plan was just as insane as his to throw a surprise wedding, but perhaps the results would turn out just as spectacular.
“Deb has been waiting for a chance like this, Ma,” Jessie declared. She couldn’t go off for a few days of decadence if she thought she was leaving her mother to contend with cooking dinner for two hundred people without any help. “She wants to prove she’s got the stuff to take over this business when you retire.”
“I’ll die before I retire,” her mother muttered.
“Probably, but don’t you want to leave your legacy to someone at some point?”
Celia frowned. “Deb has a husband. Children. I want to leave the business to you, so you can—”
Jessie cut her mother off with a weary sigh. “Have something to occupy my lonely nights?”
Celia scooped up her recipes and shuffled the order, but without much focus. This wasn’t a conversation either wanted to have again, not when they’d fought this fight so many times already. In the end, they’d simply be so angry with one another that they wouldn’t speak for a week. Jessie didn’t have the energy. Not when she had a seduction to look forward to instead.
Jessie knew she should have never joined the catering business in the first place. She’d done so strictly out of comfort and familiarity. Having acted as her mother’s gofer for years, she appreciated the thrill of pulling off a spectacular event. But she wasn’t a good cook, and her eye for design was limited to expertly recreating what someone else had put together. She’d told herself over and over that working in the family business was just a layover—a bridge until she figured out what she really wanted to do.
But that argument was hard to maintain now that she was past her thirtieth birthday.
For the first time in forever, Jessie finally had a fire in her belly. She had a goal—an attainable ambition that could lead her to bigger and better things. She hadn’t realized until tonight how the memory of Leo and what he’d done to her acted like an impenetrable wall to her future life. She needed to break down that barrier, once and for all, by wiping all the “what ifs” with regard to Leo Sharpe out of her—mind, body and soul.
And if she could also give her best friend in the world the wedding of a lifetime in the process, so much the better.
“Ma, I already called Deb and she’s on her way. I love working with you, but this isn’t my dream. You’ve always known that.”
“What is your dream, then?”
Jessie swallowed her reply. It was too personal for her to voice out loud. She’d only just figured out she wanted to sleep with Leo again and she wasn’t ready to share her epiphany with anyone—especially not her mother.
“To throw Bianca the best wedding ever,” she answered, slipping her hands onto her mother’s shoulders and massaging out the tension. “She might travel the world on a whim, but she’s always been there for me. For us.”
Little by little, the tightness in her mother’s muscles melted away. Celia had started out as a cook in her husband’s Cuban restaurant, but that all changed the day Miguel Martinez unexpectedly contracted pneumonia and died. Too traumatized to reopen the restaurant, Celia had voiced the desire to do something else with the insurance money. Opening a catering business had been the top of her list, but she’d had no idea where to begin.
Luckily, Bianca’s well-to-do parents had stepped in and guided Celia, helping her choose a location for her headquarters, giving her advice on how to find employees, suppliers and customers. A dinner party for twenty hosted by the Brightons had been her first gig. Pulling off this wedding was only a small token toward paying them back.
“Bianca is like my third daughter and I want her to have a magical wedding day,” Celia agreed. “You do what you have to do, mijita.”
Jessie kissed her mother’s cheek and grinned when she heard her sister’s car pull into the driveway. “That’s what I intend to do, Ma. And then some.”
4
LEO’S LUNGS tightened and then burned. Instantly, sweat stung the corners of his eyes and his hands