Once Mark had turned away to collect Melinda, Jake felt a soft touch on his arm and automatically turned. Sharon’s cousin Rina looked up at him with thoughtful, dark brown eyes. They didn’t really look too much alike. Rina was fairly tall for the family and willowy, except for her impressive chest. The purple dress she was wearing covered everything but was very tight and completely backless.

The looks she gave him made him pretty uncomfortable, considering he’d been introduced to her as Sharon’s date and Rina was wearing a wedding ring.

“So, Jake, you’re my cousin’s new ah... gentleman.” The way she said ‘gentleman’ made it sound dirtier than if she’d been cruder.

He shifted uncomfortably.

“We’re friends and I offered to be her date to the wedding,” he said after a moment. That was how Sharon had been introducing him all night.

Rina raised her eyebrows at him, a small smile curving her lips. There was something predatory about that smile and Jake had to stifle the impulse to step back and away from her. “Oh? From what she said I was under the impression your relationship with her was much more... intimate. The man she’s currently ah, indulging with, although my delightful cousin was much more crass in her description.”

Heat flushed through Jake, embarrassment followed by anger. As much as he liked to think Rina was just trying to cause trouble - he hadn’t missed the tension between her and Sharon - he could easily believe she was telling the truth in this case. That sounded like Sharon. And he had heard Rina accusing Sharon of saying something crass before she’d stormed off earlier.

He was really starting to regret having come to this wedding.

Family was really important to him, whereas Sharon seemed to go out of her way to antagonize hers. She didn’t even try to get along with her parents from what he could tell. Sure, her parents were kind of cold and formal, and snobbish, but they didn’t seem like totally terrible people. Whereas Sharon had deliberately tried to provoke their displeasure from the moment she’d arrived home.

Then, rather than finding a nice way to distract her aunt, she’d done the exact same thing and used Jake to do it. Finally, when he’d made his unhappiness with her tactic clear, she’d just accused him of trying to boss her around and swanned off instead of apologizing. If he hadn’t followed her, would she have just left him in a sea of strangers that she’d just embarrassed him in front of? It seemed likely.

Yes, he got that she wasn’t her best with her family.

Yes, a lot of them were kind of assholes.

But to be perfectly honest, she was being one too, just in a different way than they were.