Jax pointed the thin red straw in Reid’s face. “Shut up, Andrews; you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell I don’t.” Where Reid’s voice had lost some of its volume, it gained in agitation. “I asked you to make sure everything was taken care of this week as my friend—as Lucie’s brother—and you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants long enough not to chase off the maid of honor.”
Straightening from the bar, Jax turned to face his best friend. Though they towered over everyone else around them, they met each other at eye level, and both pairs threw daggers across the space between.
“I’m warning you, Andrews. You don’t know the situation—”
“I don’t care if she was strutting around naked. You should’ve found yourself a piece of ass somewhere else.”
Growling, Jax fisted his hands in Reid’s expensive polo and spun him around until his back slammed against the trunk of a nearby palm tree. Reid grabbed Jax’s wrists but didn’t attempt to pull him off. “If you ever fucking talk about her like that again, you’ll be walking down the aisle without a single goddamn tooth in your head.”
“Jackson Thomas Maris! What are you doing?”
Jax didn’t look away from Reid’s narrowed glare to address the woman bearing down on them. “Just saying hello to your fiancé, Lucie.” Releasing Reid, he finally turned to face his baby sister. “Hey there, shorty. You look thin. This joker feeding you?”
Lucie jammed her hands on her hips. “I just spent most of the week unable to eat, smartass. And don’t ‘hey shorty’ me. What’s your—” Her brows gathered with her frown. “Jesus, you look like hell.”
Smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt, Reid stepped to Lucie’s side and put his arm around her shoulders. “That’s what I said, sweetheart.”
Jax scowled. “Fuck you, Andrews.”
“That’s enough,” Lucie ordered. Her voice was stern, but those big gray eyes of hers softened. Suddenly, he felt stripped bare of all his defenses. A talent his sister had when it came to him. Sighing, she said, “Come here, you big jerk.”
The tightness in his chest loosened some as he enveloped his little sister in a bear hug. The feel of her arms around his waist grounded him, giving him a few moments of peace from the incessant anxiety threatening to tear him apart at his seams.
“It’s good to see you, girl,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “And you look as beautiful as ever.”
Leaning back to look into his eyes she said, “Mmm-hmm. Don’t start trying to sweet talk me. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“I bet I can guess,” Reid interjected. “Our dearest Jax here is in love with your best friend, but he did something to fuck it up.”
Jax wanted to lash out at the man, maybe throw a punch to knock that smirk off his face. But that wouldn’t do anything but give him a split second of satisfaction and a pissed-off sister when her groom had a shiner in their wedding photos.
Lucie looked up at him for confirmation. “Jackson?”
Releasing her, Jax took a step back and scrubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t bothered grooming after his shower earlier, so his usual five o’clock shadow was now the start of a decent beard. Another couple of days and he could get a job as a model for lumberjack fashion wear.
He cleared his throat, glanced at Reid’s smug face, then met his sister’s inquisitive stare. “That pretty much sums it up, yeah.” A slow smile spread over her face. Oh, shit. “Shorty, don’t start getting all mushy on me, okay?”
“What?” she asked innocently. “A girl can’t be happy her big brother finally found love? And with my best friend, of all people?”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. She doesn’t even want to see me, much less date me. But she’ll just have to deal with me today because I’m going to Nashville whether she wants me there or not.” Then he remembered Reid had said Lucie had been on the phone with V. “She’s not answering my calls. Call and tell her not to do anything until I get there. I don’t want her around those criminals, and I sure as hell don’t trust Kat’s boyfriend to—”
“Jackson!”
Hearing Lucie yell his name made him realize she’d tried interrupting him a couple of times before that. “What?”
“Vanessa isn’t in Nashville. She’s still on the island.”
Relief that she’d never left and concern for why she hadn’t flooded his system from opposite sides of his body, colliding somewhere in the center of his chest. “Tell me where she is.”
His sister’s eyes turned sad. “I can’t.”