Cuff Me(10)

Nope.

Still didn’t feel like fact. It wasn’t… right.

“She looks happy.”

Vin flicked his eyes to the side, trying to figure out if his older brother was looking for a fight, but Anthony merely stood there with his usual unreadable expression. Plus, he was holding out a beer, so…

Vincent accepted the beer with a grunt.

“You don’t,” Anth said, shifting so he mimicked Vincent’s posture of back to the wall. It was a place Vin found himself a lot. Off to the side. Out of the way. Watching.

“I don’t what?” Vincent asked.

“Look happy,” his brother said.

Vincent didn’t respond as he took a sip of beer, not really bothered by the observation.

Anth was hardly one to talk about looking happy.

Anthony Moretti was the oldest of the Moretti siblings, older than Vincent by two years, and nearly as taciturn as Vincent himself.

Less so now though, Vincent had to admit. His brother had become a different man since meeting and falling for Maggie Walker. Vin couldn’t blame him; Maggie was good people.

Still, even with his beautiful new wife and baby on the way, Anth wasn’t exactly forthcoming with big toothy grins.

Of the five Moretti siblings, he and Anth were the most alike. Marc and Luc were more easily likable. Quick with a smile and a joke. Elena, as the only girl, was the family darling, and as quick with a smile as she was with a tantrum.

But Anth and Vincent were cut of the same cloth. Quiet, reserved, ambitious.

It was these similarities that prevented them from getting along.

That, and the fact that Anth had never been good about minding his own business. He was classic oldest sibling in all the worst ways. Bossy. Interfering. Condescending…

“Aren’t you two cute, over here looking all sulky and pissed,” came a too-cheerful voice from Vincent’s right.

Both he and Anth turned to glare at Luc. Yet another thing Vin and Anth had in common: they were both quite adept at getting irritated with their youngest brother.

“Shut it, bambino,” Vin said. Luc, being the baby of the family, took his fair share of shit but was remarkably good at never letting his older brothers get under his skin.

Case in point, Luc merely grinned wider before pivoting around so his back too was to the wall. “I see why you two losers like it over here in the corner. Great view of the womenfolk.”

Vincent let himself look in the direction Luc indicated. It was, indeed, an excellent view of the females in the room, and that right there only served to aggravate Vincent’s bad mood.

Jill was getting married.

So very absurd was the idea that Vincent had briefly held on to hope that she was just jacking with him.

But no. The ring was real. The nonstop chatter about the dress was real.

The engagement was real.

Currently her left hand was the center of a girly circle.

Vincent’s sister Elena clasped Jill’s wrist firmly as the rest of the women oohed and ahhed over the atrocious rock on her finger.

His sister’s enthusiasm, he could see. Jill and Elena had been best friends for years. Maggie and Ava too made sense. The four women had been thick as thieves ever since Luc and Anth had brought Ava and Maggie into the family.

But his mother was also making squealy girl-ish noises, fussing with Jill’s hair every second, talking about dress shopping and updos and other horrors.

Even Nonna—his feisty, zero-BS grandmother—was getting in on the nonsense, all but hopping around Jill, demanding to be a bridesmaid.

“Who’s the guy?” Luc asked quietly.

“Why you asking me?” Vincent asked testily.

“I wasn’t,” Luc snapped. “I was talking to Anth, who actually knows something about the three months she’s been gone.”

“Three months,” Vin interrupted. “Nobody else thinks it’s bullshit that some dude proposed after three months?”

“Didn’t you guys talk during that time?” Luc asked.

“Yes, we talked,” he ground out.

Barely. Vincent hated talking on the phone, but that’s not why he’d tried to keep their phone calls short. He’d tried to limit how much he and Jill talked while she was away because it had reminded him that she wasn’t here.

“And she didn’t tell you that she was seeing someone?” Anthony asked.

Vincent said nothing, and Luc leaned forward to glare at Anth. “Obviously not.”

“I’m just sayin’,” Anthony said.

“What?” Vin snapped. “What are you just sayin’?”

He felt rather than saw his two brothers exchange a look.

Luc sighed. “I know Jill can be impulsive, but this—”

Yes. This. This was…

“Whoa, what the hell did I miss?”

All three brothers looked away from the group of women to see their father standing there, looking puzzled.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, pouring himself a glass from the open bottle of champagne. “Did your mother tell you she made me go to the dentist? Tricked me into it, then didn’t have the decency to apologize.”

“It’s a rough life, Dad,” Luc said. “Rough life.”

Tony Moretti grunted before gesturing with his wineglass toward the women. “So what’s going on there? I haven’t heard that much squealing since Elena got those new red shoes with the red soles.”