“
Even annoyed, as she was now, she vibrated the kind of barely restrained energy that made every part of him spark to life. Some parts more enthusiastically than others. He shifted his weight and sidestepped slightly in an effort to keep that reality as unnoticeable as possible. He’d become a master of that particular skill during the last few months she’d been on the station.
He needn’t have worried. She didn’t so much as glance at him. Her irritation was focused solely on her big brother. “Did you really just perp walk Cooper down the harbor?”
Logan’s eyebrows lifted along with his hands, which he held up at his sides, palms out. “Hold up, I didn’t--”
“Save it,” Kerry said. She turned to Cooper. “I apologize. He forgets I’m an adult woman who can handle her own affairs.” She glared at her brother during that last part.
“She’s right, you know.” This came from a little spitfire brunette who, given Kerry’s descriptions of her family, must be the middle McCrae sister, Fiona. Fists planted on her hips, managing to somehow look down her cute little nose at her much taller and much bigger brother, she added, “We’re trying to plan my wedding and grill her about Mr. Hot and Aussie here. I’d think by now you’d know that we’ve got this covered.” She made a brief gesture to the other women standing alongside her. “If we thought he was a danger to society, we would have called.”
Cooper watched the ricocheting dialogue like a spectator at a cricket match, unable to squelch a grin. It was like watching his own sister, all grown up and in triplicate. As Kerry and Fiona closed in on a somehow now hapless-looking lumberjack of a police chief, Cooper stepped forward and stuck out his hand toward the taller, willowy young woman who stood just behind Fiona. Where Kerry was Amazonian and Fiona a little firebrand, their oldest sister was the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. “Hannah Blue, I presume? I’m Cooper Jax. Sorry for the disruption of your sister’s wedding plans. I didn’t know.”
This had Fiona turning his way. “And how could you, given Kerry couldn’t be bothered to so much as send you a postcard?”
“Hey,” Kerry said, looking at her sister now. “Whose side are you on?”
Fiona looked back at her. “The side that keeps this guy here and you looking all pent up and googly-eyed.”
“Googly-eyed?” Kerry shot back.
Cooper, grinning unrepentantly now, turned his attention back to Hannah and continued, as if her sisters weren’t getting all up in each other’s personal space. “I understand congratulations are in order on your recent nuptials as well.”
Hannah gave him a swift, all-encompassing once-over as only a former defense attorney could. Then, in the face of his unrelenting goodwill, she took his hand, her mouth curving up in the barest hint of a smile as she gave it a firm, quick shake. “You’re a charmer, Mr. Jax, I’ll give you that.”
“Go with your strength,” he replied.
”
”