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“Congratulations, man. Nice digs.” Tad turned to find Conor looking all spruced up in a spiffy suit.
They shook hands. “Thanks, Conor. Glad you could make it.”
“You serving beer at this joint?”
Tad snorted and turned back to Jules and Dr. Perfect.
“Just think, our Jules with a doctor.” Cara clutched her chest dramatically.
“Kind of jumping the gun, aren’t you, LT?” LT was Shane’s nickname for Cara, an abbreviation of Lemon Tart, which suited her perfectly.
Cara looked superior. “Well, they seem to be getting along, don’t they? He loves kids, is a bit of an Anglophile, has a thing for leggy blondes. I don’t think I’m being premature here in saying this is quite the coup. Maybe I should look at getting into this matchmaking business.”
Shane laughed and kissed his wife softly. “One more service from DeLuca Doyle Special Events.”
“From meet to altar and beyond,” Cara said, her eyes bright as sapphires. “Full service events from dating all the way to family planning.”
Tad cut in, irked with how this conversation had started and even more irked with where it was going. “What are you going to do? Stand over them on their honeymoon and tell him where to put it?” He could see Cara doing exactly that in some sex clinic somewhere.
There, no, there.Probably how she treated Shane.
Unfazed by his snappishness, Cara curved her lips. “Some people need the extra push, don’t you think?”
As family, Tad was contractually obliged to love Cara, but sometimes he had a hard time liking her. She was so freaking bossy and too damn organized for her own good, and this latest example of interference took the champagne fountain-shaped cake. Since meeting Shane and getting knocked up, she had become even more insufferable. Like all happy people, she wore that air of smugness that made everyone who wasn’t in the same boat of puppies and unicorns want to strangle her.
“Big deal,” Tad said, getting back to Dr. Perfect. “So he hands out lollipops to kids after they give blood.”
Cara gave him the DeLuca stare down. “He’s a pediatric oncologist.”
“Guy treats kid cancer?” Two cents from Conor.
“Sure does, and he looks damn fine while doing it,” Cara said.
The guy who treats kid cancer was currently making Jules laugh so hard her breasts bounced. Tad didn’t have to be close to know what her laugh sounded like. She didn’t dole it out freely and he remembered every single one she’d gifted him with. Now every smile she gave to this jerk was stolen from the bank she had for him.
From this angle, her profile was all curves, which made him realize that Jules had rarely worn anything figure-hugging or revealing until she had started on this dating business. As if he had wished it, she turned and he got the full picture. More like the whole photo album. Dressed in an emerald green dress that draped over her hips and breasts just perfectly, she looked like a goddess.
From beneath scowling eyebrows, Tad watched her, trying to interpret her body language. At times like this he wished he didn’t know her so well. She was stepping away, just an inch or so at a time, but then Dr. Feelgood cupped her elbow and drew her back to him. A very calculated gesture that unfurled her body and eliminated any hesitancy that had existed before in her stance. Was she so starved for contact, so desperate for attention, that the simplest touch was enough to draw her in?
She was a freakin’ time bomb.
Her quiet strength and radiant luminosity drew people into her burning orbit. That she was owning her power swelled all sorts of things in him—his heart, his cock, the green lump of jealousy like a foreign object in his chest.
Not so foreign, he supposed. Since Jules had put herself out there, he had been jealous of every man she considered worthy of a first date. And it shamed him to admit it, but he was envious of her bravery. She had made a decision to take the next step and risk her heart; the mere idea scared him shitless.
Jules scared him shitless.
He bet there was a really long-ass German word for what he was feeling right now, but standing here sulking wasn’t going to get it done. He shoved a foot a few indignant inches in front of his rigid body, ready to make his move. Just as Jules and the doc parted.
Thank Christ.
She walked a few steps his way and then encountered… Tad turned to the empty space to his left, not quite believing his eyes. That Conor fucker had slunk away and beelined for Jules.
Blood was in the water and the sharks were circling. Herb farmers, gruff chefs, cancer doctors, barmen firefighters…what next? The entire clergy at St. Jude’s?
“You okay, man?” came Shane’s soft Irish burr.
“Fine,” he gritted out. “I’m going to do the host bit.”
