Then again, when did she ever do things the easy way?
The wedding wrapped up and Cam hooked an arm around Eva, dragging her in close for a kiss. Then, to a chorus of rowdy applause, they were introduced as the new Mr. and Mrs. Camden Wilde.
Cam and Eva lifted their joined hands in the air in triumph as if they’d just won a marathon together, and the cheers exploded. And, okay, maybe they had won something. Not many people found their soul mates.
Shelby had never seen Eva happier than in those moments after the wedding as the newlyweds fielded well-wishes from their friends, and a little seed of jealousy bloomed deep inside her heart. She wanted a piece of that happy for herself. Maybe not all of the marriage crap and certainly not the whole “golly gee” Leave It to Beaver family her sister had always dreamed of, but it would be nice to have the kind of connection Cam and Eva had found with each other.
She didn’t need or deserve the entire happy pie. But was a sliver too much to ask for?
Probably.
She’d made more than her fair share of bad decisions, some of which she’d spend the rest of her life paying for.
Her gaze sought and met Reece’s again. Only this time, she was the one to glance away after an instant. She was fooling herself. A respectable man like him would never forgive her sins. Especially since one of her sins was coming back in a big way.
And might just ruin him.
Every time he glanced up, there Shelby was, her electric blue dress drawing his gaze like a magnet. Someone should have told her that dress was far too sexy for a wedding, especially a wedding where two-thirds of the guests were single guys looking to have a good time in Vegas.
Okay, Reece admitted to himself as she turned away, the dress wasn’t that revealing, considering Shelby’s usual attire consisted mostly of corsets and miniskirts. Yes, the flared skirt was short and the black lace bodice left her shoulders bare, but all the essentials were covered. Still. It took every ounce of control he possessed to keep from taking off his suit jacket and wrapping her up in it, hiding her from the interested eyes of Cam and Eva’s cop buddies.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. What was wrong with him? He had far more pressing concerns than Shelby Bremer’s choice of clothing. Like, for instance, finding his blackmailer. Or keeping both of his businesses afloat so his brothers didn’t end up jobless. Really, sex should be the absolute last thing on his mind.
But it wasn’t. Not when he was in the same room as Shelby. And that was a first for him. She was chaos on two gorgeous legs, and he hated chaos. Preferred neat, tidy, precise. So why did he find Shelby, of all women, so enthralling?
The room went pin-drop silent, pulling him from his thoughts, and he searched for the source of the sudden tension. At the back of the chapel stood a tiny blonde woman clutching the hand of a distinguished silver-haired man. Take away Shelby’s tattoos and wild hair color, and this woman could be her twin. But she wasn’t one of Shelby and Eva’s long lost siblings, of which they had a ton. No, this was Katrina Bremer, the woman who had birthed an army of children and had abandoned most of them—all except for her two youngest girls. Instead, she’d given them a hellish childhood filled with drugs and a revolving door of questionable boyfriends. Abandonment would have been kinder.
“Mom?” Eva said, and Cam’s arm slid around her waist in a fortifying hug. “What are you doing here?”
Katrina released her grip on her newest man and walked forward. She had gained weight since the first time Reece had seen her three months ago. At the time, she’d been strapped into the back of an ambulance—skinny, dirty, and high as a kite—on her way to the hospital for a psych evaluation after attacking Shelby and Eva. Now her blond hair was clean and braided, her dress unwrinkled and modest.
She stopped a short distance from Eva and clasped her hands nervously in front of her. “I wanted to see my daughter’s wedding.”
“You weren’t invited,” Eva snapped.
Shelby stepped between them and held out a hand as if to hold her sister back. “Evie…”
Eva whirled on her. “Did you tell her about this?”
“Of course I did. She’s our mother.”
“Yeah, and there’s a reason I didn’t invite her, Shelby. I didn’t want her here.” She shrugged out of Cam’s grasp and stabbed a finger accusingly toward her mother. “How could you even want to see her after the way she attacked us?”
Shelby glanced back at Katrina, then rolled her lips together and straightened her shoulders, preparing to face off against her much taller sister. “She wasn’t well back then, but she is now.”
“Bullshit.”