Chapter One
Marietta Valez adjusted the veil for her best friend, Cosette Peterson, and checked for makeup smudges. Cosette was a blonde beauty, a brilliant but spacey chemist, and the most genuine, innocent, and wonderful person Mar had ever known. Mar sighed. “Perfect. You are absolutely gorgeous.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
Mar hugged her loosely so as not to upset anything, wishing she could hold her friend tight for a long, long time. Cosette was the only person on this earth who truly loved her, and now, naturally, that focus would go to Cosette’s new husband, Isaac Jewel. It was right, lovely, and perfect, but Mar was secretly afraid of breaking. She hadn’t been alone since middle school, when she’d protected Cosette from a bully and the two had become instant best friends. Now she’d be alone again.
She said a prayer for strength and forced herself to let Cosette go. “Love you too,” she managed to say without her voice cracking. She reluctantly handed Cosette off to her father and nodded to Eve Jewel, Cosette’s future sister-in-law. “Send Paisley.”
“It’s your turn, love,” Eve said to her three-year-old daughter.
Mar guessed that the sweetheart, Eve, had never said a cross word in her life. Eve seemed almost too sweet, to the point that Mar feared that if the blue-eyed, raven-haired beauty went out in the rain, she’d melt. Then again, she was raising a daughter on her own, ran her own fitness center, and worked as a fitness coach, so Mar couldn’t discount the lady’s mental or physical toughness.
Isaac’s darling niece, Paisley, didn’t need to be told twice. She skipped down the aisle, throwing rose petals pell-mell. Everyone laughed and oohed over how cute she was. Eve walked sedately down the aisle. Her sister, Rachel, followed her with a definite bounce and swagger in her step that Eve didn’t share.
It was Mar’s turn. Forcing a bravado that was normally instinctive, she smacked Cosette on the rear and muttered, “Watch me wow those Jewel boys.”
“All but Isaac,” Cosette whispered back.
Mar winked. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know another woman is alive.”
Cosette laughed as Mar strutted away. It was not easy to strut in five-inch heels, but Mar had mastered it. Being five foot nothing—well, under five feet, but she wasn’t inclined to be honest about that—she’d had no choice but to become an expert at walking in very high heels. She wouldn’t be trampled by the world.
After she’d lost her adoptive parents at six, she’d flitted from home to home. Some of the foster parents were okay; some were mean and terrifying. She’d had a decent foster family as she’d graduated high school, and they had helped her get into college and learn how to be successful. Even more importantly, she had an innate desire to rise above the scum who’d brought a baby girl into the world and promptly deserted her on their way out of the hospital. Left their child to freeze in a snowstorm rather than go through the proper channels to place her for adoption. Mar thought they were classic losers.
Pushing her past away, she focused on the present, strutting down the aisle before the bride, her best friend. It wasn’t truly a wedding aisle, just a stretch of sand on Destin Beach, Florida. Even though she was the master of five-inch heels, Mar had rarely tried to walk with them in sand while a wedding crowd watched her. It was murder. She sank all the way to her heel with each step and then had to yank said heel out and do it on the other side. She looked ahead of her. How had Eve and Rachel fared? They were already at the wedding arch, standing on the opposite side of their slew of handsome brothers, and their heels were probably only two-inchers. They were normal-sized girls who’d probably never felt the pressure to wear platform shoes to be taken seriously.
One of the brothers, Luke, stood out to Mar. He was perfection in a tailored suit. Not quite as tall or thick as Isaac, this brother was lean and mighty fine. He had golden-brown hair, a trimmed beard that had flecks of red in it, and the most gorgeous blue eyes she’d ever seen on a man. Other people might claim that the entire Jewel family shared the same blue eyes, but they obviously hadn’t been caught in a staring war with this brother. Luke Jewel was … delectable. His eyes were framed with dark brown lashes and lit with intelligence, grit, and an appreciation for her.
She almost tripped, but she recovered and kept plunging forward with a large smile enhancing her perfectly made-up face. Sweat was popping up on her brow, either from the way Luke’s eyes lingered on her, or from the workout of walking up this aisle. Nevertheless, she tilted her head imperiously and kept working her way through the blasted sand.
If that look in Luke Jewel’s eyes was sincere, she might grant the fine-looking man the privilege of entertaining her for the day. That was all a man could be for her, anyway: entertainment. She definitely had no inclination to delve into those blue eyes any deeper than that. She couldn’t allow herself an involved manly distraction, not after failed relationship after failed relationship, most ending with the man explaining that she was too feisty and she ran when things got too hard. Well, duh! Look who’d brought her into this world: a mother and father who dumped their problems and ran.
She shook it off. She was busy running a highly successful perfume company, Cosette Industries. Her best friend was the genius who created all of their fabulous scents, and Mar was the one who marketed and grew the company. It had been a lot of hard work, an insane amount of hard, but maybe for today she’d let her hair down.
She finally made it to the front and sidled in next to Rachel and Eve. Turning with a large smile plastered on her face, she focused on her best friend walking down the aisle. She was ecstatic for Cosette and Isaac, and she would not succumb to her terror of being desperately alone like she’d been for years before meeting Cosette. She was Marietta Valez. No one and nothing would ever take her down.
* * *
Luke Jewel watched the incredibly beautiful Marietta Valez push her way through the sandy aisle toward the rest of the wedding lineup. It didn’t look easy in those spike heels she wore, but she did it with style, stuttering once but quickly recovering. Her long, dark curls were arranged around her perfect face; her smooth, brown skin was showcased by the fitted pale blue dress she wore; and her pink lips were such a perfect pout that he found his mind straying to even happier destinations than his next-oldest brother’s wedding.
Her dark gaze stirred something in him that he hadn’t let himself feel since he’d been a hormone-driven eighteen-year-old. He’d made mistakes that only his sister Eve knew about or could relate to. Eve was the lucky one, though; at least she had Paisley. Luke had nothing but an empty hole in his heart.
He’d spent the last ten years pushing away the pain—at first acute, and now dull but persistent—and filling his life with work and shallow dating, mostly work. His mind was overflowing with ideas to make money, start new businesses, and help struggling businesses succeed; sometimes it was hard to shut his mind down, even for sleep. The media painted him as a playboy who loved women and left them, but truthfully, he didn’t have time to even love them, and life was better that way. He went on dates with beautiful women. He’d meet them out and about in the different cities he traveled to, or sometimes they’d be employed by different companies he acquired, or—his least favorite—someone would set him up on a date. Sometimes it was a nice dinner conversation, and sometimes it was a fun distraction, but usually it was a waste of time.
As Marietta drew closer and gave him a challenging lift of her chin, he knew she would not be a waste of his time. Yet was he prepared for someone who could capture him like Marietta was already doing with one look and a dangerous flutter of those long eyelashes? Her pretty dark eyes were fascinating, and her innate confidence called to him—as if she were meant to be his soul mate, challenge him, encourage him, lift him, and love him.
His heart started to race and his palms began to sweat. He couldn’t let himself fall under a woman’s spell again. The last time had about cost him his own soul.
He yanked himself free from her gaze and concentrated on the preacher’s animated speech about loving and cherishing. The grin on Isaac’s face was infectious. Isaac and Joshua, their oldest brother, had both found the love of their lives. Luke was thrilled for them, but he couldn’t let himself believe that as the third brother in the Jewel family, it was now his turn.