Something Borrowed Read online

  SOMETHING BORROWED

  By

  Kimberly Kincaid

  Copyright © Kimberly Kincaid 2015

  Published by Kimberly Kincaid Romance 2015

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Kimberly Kincaid. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact Kimberly Kincaid at [email protected]

  For more information about Kimberly Kincaid, please visit www.kimberlykincaid.com

  Edited by Nicole Bailey, Proof Before You Publish

  Formatted by Anessa Books

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition March 2015

  “How believable do you want to get?”

  “What are you doing?” Sasha swallowed back the sigh building in the back of her throat as Sully skimmed his callused thumb over the inside of her wrist.

  “Just a little practice,” he said. “What’s next?”

  Sasha inched forward, until barely a few inches separated their bodies. “I suppose you’ll put your arm around me from time to time.”

  “Like this.” There was no question in his voice as he gently dropped her hand to wrap his tightly-muscled forearm around the back of her rib cage. The move brought them face to face at the edges of their pillows, and whether it was the darkness making her bolder or the fact that Sully was letting her call all the shots in this little practice session, Sasha couldn’t be sure.

  But she didn’t want to stop. “Yes. But it would probably look odd if I didn’t hold you back.” She pressed her palm against the hard plane of his chest, his pulse beating firmly beneath her fingers.

  “Fair enough,” he said, tipping his chin so their mouths were completely level. “Do you think we might kiss when that happens?”

  Oh. God.

  “Yes.”

  This book is dedicated to Robin Covington and Avery Flynn. Long live the minivan adventures! One day, we need to take our Vegas Rules to Vegas…

  Acknowledgments

  Sasha and Sully’s story is near and dear to my (Golden) heart, as they’re two of the very first characters I ever put on the page. Although their path has come a long way, their happily ever after wouldn’t have found daylight if not for Alyssa Alexander and Tracy Brogan. You ladies never wavered in your insistence that Sasha and Sully should have a book, and for that, I am more grateful than words can express.

  For every writer who has a book of her heart and a dream in her head…this one’s for you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sasha Arrington was either hearing things or losing her marbles. And while neither situation was particularly appealing, she’d take double helpings of both over the words that had just popped out of her twin brother’s mouth.

  “I’m sorry. Did you just say you’re getting married?” Sasha stared across their favorite table at Brewed Awakening, suddenly wishing her cappuccino contained something stronger than a double shot of espresso. But come on. No way had Jace just said—

  “Yup.” His charming smile became a full-on showstopper, complete with crinkling around his bright blue eyes. “Delaney and I are tying the knot.”

  Sasha’s heartbeat hit Mach 2 behind her crisply ironed chef’s whites, her shoulders bumping against the wooden backrest of her chair. “But you’ve only been dating for four months.”

  “I know,” he said, but funny, the words didn’t deter his expression. “But I also knew after four weeks that she was The One. So I asked her yesterday, and she said yes.”

  “The One? No offense, but have you hit your head at a job site recently?” As an architect, Jace spent more than a little time around heavy machinery when a project was underway. Maybe that would explain his dip into the pool of total insanity. Considering the absolute train wreck of their parents’ marriage and subsequent divorce, not to mention the merry-go-round of step-parents they’d had to endure after that, Sasha couldn’t believe Jace would even consider holy matrimony, much less happily-ever-after.

  He might as well be hunting down fire-breathing unicorns.

  Jace cleared his throat, taking a long sip of the coffee in front of him. “Actually, I haven’t, but thanks for your concern. I just happen to be in love with a woman who I’d like to be with forever, and I don’t see anything wrong with wanting forever to start right now.”

  Her brother’s normally laid-back tone slipped just slightly, sending a ribbon of guilt spiraling through Sasha’s belly. While she kept the rest of their family at arm’s length—for good reasons—she and Jace had always been close, enough so that they lived in the same suburban town just outside of Washington DC. Of course, she wanted him to be happy, and she had to admit, he and his girlfriend Delaney did make a great couple. But tons of people made great couples in the beginning.

  Until all of a sudden, inevitably, they weren’t so great at all.

  “I’m sorry. I know I have a bit of a, um, strong opinion on relationships.”

  Sasha paused as Jace’s chuckle delivered his expression right back to carefree territory. “A strong opinion? Sash, you’re the most jaded person on planet Earth.”

  “I’m not jaded. I’m realistic.” She leaned in, blocking out the Friday morning bustle and chatter of the coffeehouse crowd. “Look, I want you to be happy, and if you say getting married to Delaney is a good thing, I believe you. But you’ve got to admit, it sounds a little crazy.”

  Jace ran a palm over the back of his neck, his smile going sheepish. “If you think us getting married sounds crazy, you might want to brace yourself for the rest.”

  Every last one of Sasha’s senses vaulted into high alert. “What do you mean, the rest?” Weren’t impending nuptials bad enough, for God’s sake?

  “We’re getting married next weekend. In Ireland.”

  Well. That answered that question.

  “You can’t be serious,” Sasha breathed, her mouth going completely dry despite the frothy sip of cappuccino she’d just choked down. This whole thing had just blown right past crazy to land square in the lap of bat-shit insane.

  But still, her brother wore that perma-smile that said not only was he serious, but he was ridiculously happy about it. “Delaney’s family is extremely tight-knit, and they all live about an hour outside of Dublin. Her grandmother is in her mid-eighties, and her health has been failing rapidly this year.” His expression sobered, sending a pang of concern to Sasha’s gut. “Her doctor said she doesn’t have a whole lot of time. Since Delaney’s family is so much bigger than ours and her grandmother is too frail to travel, we figured why not get married in Ireland rather than here in the States.”

  No less than seventy answers to that question boomeranged to Sasha’s lips, but she bit them all in half. Jace might be the conductor of the crazy train right now with all this yammer about forever and ever, but she knew better than to try and talk him out of this wedding. His mind was clearly made up, and if there was one thing they shared above all else, it was the extra-strength chromosome for stubborn. “Okay, so the location makes more sense now. But you want to have the ceremony next weekend?”

  He nodded. “Delaney’s on spring break starting today, and she doesn’t have to be back to teach her third-graders for another two weeks. You’ve got the semester break for culinary school, too. We didn’t want you to miss important classes that might impact your grades.”

  “You timed this with my schedule in mind?” Sasha asked, shock covering her cheeks in a hard prickle.r />
  “Of course.” Jace nudged her knee beneath the table. “I know how important culinary school is to you.”

  Her reluctance took another direct hit. “It is, but…”

  Jace shifted in his seat, the wooden legs of his chair scraping slightly over the coffeehouse floorboards. “Listen, all of this shook out really quickly, and I’ll understand if you can’t make the trip. But you’re my sister, and you being at my wedding would mean a lot to me.”

  “Of course I’ll be there.” She might still think this was nutters, along with being moderately terrified to fly, but her brother had always been there for her. If an impromptu Irish destination wedding would make him happy, Sasha could punch her passport and play along.

  “Thanks, Sash. Listen, Delaney and I wanted to help cover your airfare since we’re asking you to go to Ireland on short notice, but you know Dad. He gets a little, uh, militant with plans.”

  Just like that, Sasha’s apprehension went on a comeback tour in her gut. While most parents would be thrilled to focus on the bride and groom in this situation, Frank and Gigi Arrington had gone for the kill over the celebration ever since their divorce, each of them zeroing in on every negative thing they could possibly dig out of the trenches at family gatherings.

  “Let me guess,” Sasha said, massaging her temples to ward off the thudding ache blooming behind her eyes. “Not only did he buy my ticket, but he already had his personal assistant schedule my entire itinerary in hourly increments.”

  Her brother hesitated before giving up a sympathetic nod. “He tentatively reserved your ticket, along with a plus-one in case you want to bring a date. A car will pick you up at the airport in Dublin, and there’s a room reserved for you at the local inn in Willow Cove starting on Wednesday night.”

  Sasha bit her lip, mentally repeating I will not harsh my brother’s wedding buzz in an endless loop. “Nice,” she said, although it came out sounding a lot more like a different four-letter word. She might’ve tried a few lackluster corporate careers before finally deciding on culinary school last year, and yeah, money might be tight as a result, but she wasn’t a total screw-up. No matter what her uber-successful, even-more-uber-wealthy father had implied at every holiday dinner since she’d graduated college seven years ago. Did he really think she was so unreliable and incompetent she couldn’t even make travel arrangements?

  “I’ll call him this afternoon to let him know that’s not necessary. I can book my own trip to Ireland, and I can certainly pay for my own plane ticket.” Okay, so maybe she’d have to black market a kidney in order to make that statement completely true. But no way was she letting her father highlight her inadequacies before she even set foot in the airport, no matter how many extra catering jobs she had to pick up in order to pay her way.

  “You know he’s going to insist on planning all the details anyway,” Jace said without accusation or heat. “Just like mom is going to fixate on her egregious lack of grandchildren about five minutes after I put the ring on Delaney’s finger. It’s just how they are.”

  Sasha sat back, running her finger around the edge of her coffee cup. “Hopefully you’ll get a reprieve from their negativity just this once, seeing as how it’s your wedding.” Even their parents, who were the masters of disdain, probably wouldn’t laser in on Jace during the happiest week of his life.

  Which meant that unless Sasha could cook up some sort of distraction to snag their attention from her entry-level job and her terminally single status, there was a massive likelihood it was about to be the unhappiest week of Sasha’s life, because both of her parents would surely channel that extra energy smack in her direction.

  On second thought, forget a distraction. Sasha was going to need an honest to God miracle to keep her parents in check and out of her hair at Jace’s wedding.

  #

  James Sullivan gripped the handle on the stainless steel saucepan in front of him, his breath moving through his lungs in quick, steam-filled bursts as he cursed the very nature of the word risotto. But despite the ridiculous muscle burn running up his forearm and the ungodly heat being thrown off by the test kitchen stove, Sully didn’t even break stride with the whisk in his grasp. His fellow culinary students might be taking advantage of the lax day-before-spring-break schedule by skipping open kitchen hours, but he’d committed to whipping up mushroom and spring vegetable risotto. Even if the labor-intensive dish threatened to whip his ass in return, no way was he executing it with anything less than perfection. He always made it a point to get everything he set his sights on, no matter how much he had to bust his butt in order to achieve success.

  Sasha Arrington walked through the double doors to enter the otherwise empty test kitchen, and okay. Make that almost everything.

  Sully’s gut went tight—along with a couple of his more southerly parts—at the sight of his dark-haired, darker-witted station partner. Christ, even in her loose-fitting chef’s pants and her shot-to-hell kitchen clogs, Sasha flipped his fucking switch.

  Just like that, the stove wasn’t the hottest thing in the kitchen.

  “Hey. Sorry I’m late,” Sasha said, untangling him from his illicit thoughts as she hung her bag on a hook by the door. “I was having coffee with Jace.”

  She headed to the sink to wash her hands, and whoa. Had the lines around her watercolor-blue eyes been etched with that much worry when she’d first come in?

  A ripple of concern ghosted up Sully’s spine. “Don’t worry about it. Is something wrong with your brother?”

  “You mean other than the fact that he’s getting married?” Sasha made a face like she’d taken a nice, juicy bite of an overripe lemon, but it quickly faded as she crossed the kitchen to peer into the saucepan. “Damn, Sully. That risotto looks fantastic. How on earth did you get it so creamy?”

  “The same way you get your pie crust to do that insane tender-flaky thing.”

  “Magic?” One inky black brow arched upward, and he countered her sarcasm with a laugh.

  “Hard work. You spent weeks getting that pie crust recipe right.” Sully reached for the sprigs of fresh thyme he’d grabbed this morning at the farmer’s market, adding them to the saucepan with one hand while steadily whisking with the other. “So your brother is getting married. That’s a bit of a new development, isn’t it?”

  “Brand-spanking new, to be precise. But Jace isn’t going halfway. He’s not just getting married. He’s getting hitched to the woman of his dreams in a fairy tale Irish destination wedding that, oh by the way, is happening eight days from now.”

  Whoa. Sully was all for ambition, not to mention getting married to the woman of his dreams. Hell, his parents had been together for thirty-five years, and one day, he fully intended to follow in their footsteps. Still, an eight day engagement seemed pretty aggressive, even for him. “I take it you’re not looking forward to the blessed event.”

  “Yes and no.” Sasha’s expression softened, her kitchen clogs squeaking on the linoleum as she headed to the open-air pantry a handful of steps away. “Jace is happy, which is the most important thing.”

  “Okay, then why do I sense a but coming on?” Sully asked. Sasha’s chest rose and fell in a deep sigh beneath her chef’s whites, and he whisked with a little more purpose to blank the straight shot of heat catapulting through his veins.

  “Let’s just say the Arrington family dynamic is a touch skewed. Our parents went through a tabloid-worthy divorce when Jace and I were eleven. Ever since then, family gatherings aren’t about what’s happy. They’re about what’s wrong with everybody. And since Jace has a gorgeous fiancée and a flawlessly stable career…” She returned to their workstation with an armload of ingredients, dropping a five-pound bag of sugar to the table with a clunk as Sully filled in the blanks.

  “You think you’ll be on the hot seat.”

  Sasha laughed, which he’d find an odd reaction if he wasn’t so well-acquainted with her mettle. “Come on, Sully. I do freelance gigs for a catering company while I
scratch my way through culinary school, and my longest relationship lasted for half a football season. I’m pretty sure that means the hot seat is permanently embroidered with my name.”

  “All right,” Sully said, steadily whisking a ladleful of vegetable stock into his saucepan even though his muscles were growing righteously indignant. “But this isn’t your average Thanksgiving dinner. It’s your brother’s wedding. Maybe they’ll let you off the hook, just this once.” She might still be in culinary school, but Sasha was a damn good chef, not to mention being witty, smart, and totally fucking gorgeous. Surely her parents couldn’t be too hard on her.

  Her scoff said otherwise. “They won’t mess with Jace, thank God. But usually, he’s my buffer for family gatherings, and we keep each other out of the manipulation crosshairs. I’m glad they won’t give him a hard time at the wedding.” She paused to arrange her mise en place, the tension in her shoulders smoothing out just slightly as she lined up the flour and salt and cinnamon with precise care. “But between my dad’s micro-managing and my mother’s conviction I’ll end up a dusty old spinster, I’m fairly certain I’ll have earned a master’s degree in disappointment by the time the week is over.”

  Although Sasha’s words held all her usual sarcasm, her pretty blue eyes flickered with something a whole lot softer. The expression lasted for the barest of seconds—if Sully hadn’t lifted his head from the risotto at just that moment, he’d have missed it entirely.

  But he hadn’t, and the dash of pure vulnerability kicked his mouth into gear without his brain’s permission.

  “Sounds like what you need is a new wingman,” Sully said, waiting out the look of confusion on her face as she lifted her gaze from their workstation with her brow tucked in tight.

  “What?”

  “A wingman. You know, someone to watch your back. Someone like…a date.”