Page 24 of My Wedding Mafia Style

I watch Bianca hook an arm through Lucy’s with the satisfaction of a general claiming territory. Isabella bounces beside them, already asking whether Lucy prefers emerald, black, or “something scandalous enough to make Adriana blink.”

“Nothing scandalous,” I say.

All three women turn back.

Lucy’s brows lift. “Was that an order?”

No. Yes. Damn it.

“It was a suggestion,” I say.

Lucy smiles at me. A real smile, warm and amused and still a little dazed from our kiss. But I do not like watching her go.

Bianca and Isabella lead her down the stairs, their voices already blending into one stream of fashion, teasing, and plans I will almost certainly regret. Lucy glances back once before she disappears.

Lucy does not need to be remade to fit here. She already does. My family has begun claiming her. The greater problem is that so have I.

Chapter 8

Lucy

Ihave been kissed before. Obviously. I am a grown woman. I have dated. I have had relationships. I have kissed men in parked cars, at the end of dates I wanted to continue and at the end of dates I wished had ended forty-five minutes earlier. But I have never been kissed like that. Not on the bow of a yacht by a man who warned me first like he was both gentleman and threat. Not while warm wind lifted my hair and dark water moved beneath us and his mouth made every bad decision I had ever made in my life seem like a useful training exercise.

I am still trying to recover when Bianca hooks her arm through mine and starts dragging me down the stairs. Not guiding. Dragging. With elegance, apparently, which feels like a skill rich women learn somewhere between horseback riding and knowing which fork is for fish.

“Careful,” I say, clutching the rail with my free hand. “I still have yacht legs.”

“You have perfectly fine legs,” Bianca says. “The dress is the issue.”

“Why is everyone in your family so violent toward satin?”

“Because satin knows what it did.”

Isabella follows behind us, light on her feet and far too delighted by my personal crisis. “Also, bridesmaid dresses are designed by people who secretly hate women.”

“That feels extreme,” I say, then glance down at the dress swishing around my knees. “All right, maybe not.”

Bianca makes a triumphant little sound. “See? Healing has begun.”

I glance over my shoulder before we turn the corner, and Luca is still there at the rail, watching. His jacket moves slightly in the breeze, his dark hair ruffled just enough to make him look less controlled than usual.

Luca’s eyes meet mine across the distance, and the world does that annoying soft-focus thing again. My lips still feel warm. My body still remembers the pressure of his hand at my waist, the way he turned me toward him, the way he said I could say no and somehow made yes feel like the most dangerous word in the English language.

Then Isabella leans into my line of sight and whispers, “You look like you’re going to either faint or write poetry.”

“I do not write poetry.”

“So fainting, then.”

“I am not fainting.”

“Good,” Bianca says.

That snaps me back. “Bianca.”

“What?”

“I say this with all possible respect, because you may be the only person standing between me and whatever your family considers casual evening wear, but I am not a mannequin.”