Page 127 of Sins of Arrogance

Fitz takes off again, yelling for Enoch to race him, and my heart squeezes watch­ing the two of them rush to­ward the food ta­bles set up on the ter­race.

Pure joy, tan­gled in a mo­ment.

“You’re such a good mom,” Róise says with a grin.

Speak­ing of glow­ing. In her sig­na­ture pink, my cousin is the epit­ome of happy bride-to-be.

Mick drawls, “She is that.”

Warmth rushes into my cheeks. You’d think I’d stop blush­ing at my hus­band’s com­pli­ments af­ter seven years of mar­riage.

“Thanks.” I smile at them both. “I try.”

“You try so hard to be good at ev­ery­thing you do. Maybe too hard.” Róise’s words carry mean­ing I don’t want to get into right now.

I’m en­joy­ing my­self.

“How are the wed­ding plans go­ing?” I ask, to change the sub­ject.

“You’d be bet­ter off ask­ing moma or Aria. Not that I don’t have opin­ions, but those two are op­er­at­ing on a sin­gle fixed track and it’s all about the wed­ding.”

“Moma was the same with my wed­ding.” And back then, a com­pletely over­whelmed eigh­teen-year-old, I hadn’t minded a bit.

“She’s ob­sessed. Moma even scoured Pin­ter­est for the lat­est wed­ding trends. Aria was not im­pressed with the ‘shades of brown’ wed­ding idea.” Róise laughs.

“I know, she told me about the ‘love story notes’ idea, but that doesn’t re­ally work for an al­liance wed­ding does it? It’s not like Mick and I had a meet-cute to share with our guests and yours with Miceli isn’t ex­actly fam­ily friendly.” I wink at my cousin.

This time her laugh­ter is pure Róise wicked.

I grin at her. “You look happy.”

There’s no ques­tion that Róise and her mafioso are deeply in love, re­gard­less of what brought them to­gether.

“I am. It doesn’t feel real.”

“Three weeks un­til you’re a De Luca.” I wag­gle my eye­brows at her. “You ready?”

“More than. If you be­lieve Miceli, I’m al­ready a De Luca at heart.”

“That’s re­ally sweet.”

“Don’t let him hear you call him that,” Róise says with a laugh.

“How did the fit­ting with moma’s dress go?” I ask.

I’m Róise’s ma­tron-of-honor, but we didn’t have to go wed­ding dress shop­ping be­cause she wants to wear our grand­mother’s dress.

My grand­fa­ther in­sisted I wear a gown de­signed by a big name fash­ion house. Moma made sure sham­rocks were em­broi­dered around the hem in match­ing white thread, so you had to re­ally look to see them. But they were there.

She also made sure I had a tiny horse­shoe nes­tled amidst the el­e­gant roses in my bou­quet. There’d been no six­pence in my shoe, but I’m de­ter­mined that Róise has one.

We Irish mob princesses need all the luck we can get with our mar­riages.

Later, when ev­ery­one is vis­it­ing with ev­ery­one else, I go to check on Fiona in the Boathouse.

I don’t find my sis­ter, but an un­pleas­antly fa­mil­iar voice lets me know I’m not alone.

“Kara.” Dier­dre stands in the open door­way, block­ing the sun and my exit.