Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (18 page)

Delta watched the lamplight pick golden threads in his blonde hair and she didn’t want to be frightened. She didn’t want to be burdened with her cold heart. She didn’t want to uproot her life for New York and the promise of what-could-be if it meant losing what was in front of her right now.

“There are jobs in Atlanta,” she said, and watched his whole body light up, coming to sudden, happy attention. Mike wasn’t – as his green eyes went wide and a white, crooked smile stole across his face – so very different from the thing that had been taken from her years before. Maybe that was why she loved him. Maybe that was wrong of her. But maybe all that mattered was, even if it scraped and clawed and killed her, she knew she had the capacity to love someone. Maybe that was worth whatever heartache she had to endure. “I want to marry you,” she said, and he leaned forward, caught her face in one big hand, and kissed her.

23
.

“O
h my
GOD
!!” Sydney’s excited screech belonged on the other side of a shower curtain in a Hitchcock film. “It’s
gorgeous
, Delta!”

She should have known that there would be no literature discussed
today at book club. Marisa de los Santos’s second novel paled in comparison to the rock that sparkled on Delta’s finger, and all the girls, her mother included, had formed a jostling semi-circle around her chair, eyes wide and mouths open.

“There’s just the one stone?” Jennifer M. asked.

“I’d be happy to have
a
stone,” Jennifer H. sighed.

“God, you’re so lucky,
Delt,” Carly said with a dreamy exhale, chin propped on her small fist.

Louise Brooks took a long swallow of Pinot Noir and grinned, self-satisfied as a cat in cream. “I knew he was the one,” she said smugly from her chair by the window. “I just knew, Delta. He’s absolutely delicious.”

He
was
delicious, but that wasn’t something Delta wanted her mother to know or think. She took a fortifying sip of her own wine and didn’t comment.

“Engaged,” Regina said wit
h a snort. “I never thought I’d see the day.” Louise shot her a dark look that she ignored. “You’re not running a fever, are you?”

As cheesy as it was for her to think, she
was
a bit feverish, and not in a medical sense. The words
I want to marry you
had eased a deeply-buried knot of tension inside her she hadn’t even known existed. The peace that had descended had been unlike anything she’d felt before. Though, as this afternoon was proving, that peace could be disturbed by too many witnesses. The idea of marriage was blissful when it was just her and just Mike curled up together in the dark, but the stress of it was making itself known now.

“No,” she told Regina, fighting a smile.

“When’s the wedding going to be?” Sydney asked, perched on the edge of her chair. “Soon? This summer maybe?”

“Oh, Lord,” Louise muttered.
“Of course not.”

Sydney shrank back with a startled expression – always so easy to offend or upset.

“It takes at least a year to plan a wedding,” Louise said. “Longer if you want it to be a good wedding.”

“Mom, I think you and I have very different ideas of
a ‘good’ wedding.”

Louise smiled again.
Quick and insincere. “Then you’re lucky to have me.”

**

Planning a wedding was, Mike learned as he stared down at the collection of pamphlets on the Brooks’ coffee table, the worst sort of torture. His sister Jessica had been married in a rec center, in a rented room with ugly green carpet, in a dress from David’s Bridal, with flowers she’d arranged herself.

By contrast,
Delta’s mother pulled out a great, glossy booklet with a castle on the front and squealed with joy.

“Billingsly,” she said reverently. “It has to be Billingsly, Delta. I’ve been imagining that for you for
years
.” Her eyes lifted to Mike and her smile became suggestive. “It’s so romantic.”

Delta had her hands on her hips and was shaking her head, hair spilling over her shoulders. “That’s too presumptuous, Mom. It’s stupid.”

“What, um - ” all Mike could see were dollar signs (and his future mother-in-law’s wandering gaze) - “what’s Billingsly?”

Louise beamed up at him from the sofa. “It’s this incredible castle in Ireland. Dennis took me there one year for our anniversary. It’s….it’s…well, look.” The brochure was thrust into his hands and even the slick cover of the thing felt expensive.

Mike heard the clip of dress shoes over the marble floors as he flipped through the pages. Dennis’s voice echoed against the high ceilings. “What the hell are you trying to talk them into?” he asked his wife. “Something stupid?”

Mike flicked a sideways glance to Delta and saw her head dip in approval of her father’s question,
then he returned to the views of castle, lawn and lake that were spread in front of him like so much haughty bullshit.

“Ireland?” he asked, dazed.

“On Lough Corrib,” Louise said. “Isn’t it perfect?”

**

“Oh.” Beth started to rise from her chair, but her legs gave out and she settled again, both hands clutched to her chest. “Oh,” she repeated. Her eyes were big green marbles rolling between the two of them. “Engaged?” It wasn’t a happy question.

“Yes, ma’am,” Delta said, and produced her left hand to show the ring.

Beth swallowed hard, the muscles in her throat working. “Oh,” was all she could say.

Mike’s father, though, leaned toward her finger, squinting. “Shit, Mikey. How much did you pay for that?”

“Dad,” he said with a groan. The hand he had draped around her waist tightened, his fingers drumming against her hip.

“What? I’m only asking. It looks like it cost a shit-ton.”

Beth’s eyes were on the floor and she tucked her left hand, and her own, smaller engagement diamond, between her legs.

Delta felt herself shrin
king inside Mike’s hold. Her family wanted to go overboard. Mike’s family was stuck at the other end of the spectrum. She belonged to neither.

**

With the softest of sounds, Delta’s lips left the ridge of his clavicle and she sat up, hands splayed across his chest. Her hair, loose and teasing against his skin, lifted as she rose and fell heavy and almost-black across her breasts. “What?” she asked, and even if her tone wasn’t, her expression was soft, dark brows relaxed. The little hollow at the base of her throat flickered, evidence that her pulse was starting to pick up and she was even more engaged in what they were about to do than he was.

His hands were on her waist and he slid the right one up the narrow bones of her ribcage and under her hair, finding the warm, soft weight of her breast. Her nipple was a hard bud against his palm and she inhaled at the contact, swelling into his hand.
She was naked and straddling his waist, resplendent in the soft butter yellow lamplight, and Mike’s attention should have been locked onto her and nothing else.

But h
e couldn’t stop thinking about their parents, his and hers, and the varied reactions to the engagement news. And there was nothing like thinking about your mom to kill the mood.

When Walt and Jess had announced their marriages, Beth had brought down the champagne she kept hidden in the top of the pantry. That afternoon, his arm around Delta, Mike had watched his mother wilt like a dry flower in the summer heat
. She’d looked at Delta with the kind of jealousy and regret that was found in high school girls’ locker rooms. In her mind, he knew, she was already measuring herself up to the Brooks and counting all the ways she couldn’t compete.
It’s not a competition
, he’d wanted to tell his mother, suddenly furious with her; but he hadn’t wanted to say it in front of Delta and further the anxiety that already plagued her. His priority was his fiancée, not his mother.

“Bored with me already?” Delta prompted, bringing him back to the present.

He found a smile for her, squeezed what he had in his hand. “Don’t count on it.”

One of her slim-fingered hands ventured beneath the curtain of her hair and slid over his, encouraging him. He had a feeling she’d never dare to say it out loud, but the girl
liked to be touched. “Then what” - her voice became throaty as they both caressed her - “is putting those wrinkles on your forehead? Hmm?”

Mike reached up with his left hand and flipped her hair back over her shoulder. A tiny shiver went through her, her lashes
dark down against her cheek as she watched him cup her other breast. He was gentle, because that’s what always left her purring – soft strokes of his thumb until she had gooseflesh.

“Honey,” she murmured, and her hips rocked. Whatever he had to tell her, she wanted him to tell her
now
and be done with it. “
What
?”

“Can we do this?” he blurted, with none of the grace he’d hoped to have.

She snorted, eyes lifting to his face. “We
have
done it. A lot.”

Okay, he’d walked right into that one. “No, I meant…” his hands stilled and
he could feel the thumping of her heart beneath her skin, her deep breaths pushing her nipples into his palms. “The wedding,” he said with a frown. “It’s gonna be…insane. Can we do that?”

Can we survive the stress? Are you going to freak out on me and dump my ass before then? Can anything that begins with such drama settle into something lasting?
He asked those and a hundred other questions with a long, searching look that probed the dark, hot irises of her eyes.

A half-smile curled the corners of her pretty mou
th and she leaned down low, hair sliding over her shoulders again, breasts pillowing softly in his hands. She rested her forearms on his chest and let her face hover above his, so close he went cross-eyed looking at her.

“It’s just a wedding,” she said like it was the
simplest thing in the world, smile widening as just a flash of her white teeth. “It has nothing to do with you or me or what we have. We just do our duty so my mom doesn’t give us hell, and then we go back to our real lives.”

And she was right, wasn’t she? It was just a party, just a necessary evil they had to get through. It had no bearing on their relationship.

Then why was it bothering him?

He didn’t
know, but when she rubbed the tip of her nose against his and stretched like a cat on top of him, bringing all the right places into contact, he decided not to worry about it too much. He had her, he had a year to convince her that no amount of wedding drama was worth splitting up, and that was what mattered.

**

“You heard?” was how Jordan greeted Tam as he climbed onto his favorite stool at Double Down.

He nodded and accepted the mug that was passed to him across the bar top. There was no need to ask for cl
arification; Mike had asked his viper girlfriend to marry him, and that was the only thing Jordie could have meant. Tam took a long swallow of beer and caught the overflow with his thumb afterward, shaking his head. “He’s lost his damn mind.”

Jordan cast a cursory look down the bar to make sure the rest of his drinkers were settled, then propped his elbows up and got settled
himself. His hair was getting too long and he pushed a hand through it absently. “You know, I’m all about good in the sack. It’s kind of important.”

Tam nodded, trying to hide a grin and mirror Jordan’s expression all the while thankful as hell that
something
had made him want to smile.

“But there is no way in hell that stick-up-her-ass bitch is good enough in bed to marry.”

“If anything, you’d think that stick would get in the way.”

“I know.”

They both contemplated the scarred top of the bar a moment. “You know what it means for you, right?” Jordan asked, sounding almost guilty. “You’re gonna have to see – ”

“Yeah, I know.” He lifted his beer again. Even if the wedding wasn’t until next summer, there would be countless opportunities at showers and parties to bump into Jo.

It was going to be a long year.

24
.

A
year seemed so long a thing on paper, but in practice, it was only a heartbeat or two. A snow, a storm, a hot night and cool morning. New blossoms and the curled, brown edges of failing leaves. It passed so quickly that few took true note of all the small things – the snowflakes and daffodil tufts and spreading branches of trees. Humans were so stuck inside themselves they saw the passage of time from one angle, through one lens, never understanding how they could so deeply alter the lives of others.

Delta’s year was punctuated by phone calls and consultations, roses and tiny sample cakes, veils and dress fittings and a thousand emails between her and a woman named Maureen from Billingsly Castle in Ireland. And through all of it, her mother became the most vicious, hideous, hell-bent-on-perfection mother of the bride anyone had ever seen. Louise had one daughter, one wedding to plan, and it was to be an affair that rivaled the royals
’. By May, Delta felt stretched so thin she had to remind herself that it was
her
wedding she was slaving over, and that, somehow, it must be worth it.

She also had to continually remind herself that Jo Walker was soon to be her sister-in-law and that she couldn’t give her the pinch she so desperately needed – not her or her elegant, yet protective
, big sister Jessica. Mike’s sisters were proving to be two more flies in the ointment. Big biting horseflies.

“Why are we even here?” Delta overheard Jo say as she passed the table where the youngest Walker was slumped with
her chin propped on the backs of her hands, staring at the bubbles in her soda.

“Because we’re bridesmaids,” her sister whispered back to her, and Jo made a childish face, feet swinging under the tablecloth. As Delta spared the little jeans and sneakers-wearing heathen a glance from the corner of her eye and continued toward the head of the room, she asked herself for the hundredth time why Jo Walker was, in fact, a bridesmaid.

The wedding party was out of control. All of Delta’s friends – most of whom were more like acquaintances – had begged and wheedled their way into being included. Louise had loved it.
“You can’t have too many attendants, dear,”
she’d said.
“You want to look like an important bride with plenty of people who love you.”
Numbers didn’t equal love, but telling that to Louise had been even less productive than the two hours Delta had wasted trying to talk her mother out of Billingsly. The wedding was being held at a castle; she needed plenty of ladies in waiting to flank her up at the altar. Regina had, at one point, offered to stay behind to lessen the party by at least one, but Delta had clutched her sleeve. Her best friend was the one person she actually wanted in attendance.

And then had come the most insufferable meeting-of-the-parents, the Walkers and Brooks looking like the before and after shots of a family suffering through the economic downswing. It had been the most awkward dinner of Delta’s life, and judging by the sheen of sweat on his forehead, Mike’s too. Beth had only heightened the strain when she’d asked,
“What about the girls? Your sisters, Mikey – are they going to be in the wedding?”

Louise hadn’t known about the sisters, but her reaction had been immediate.
“Of course,”
she’d told Beth with a saccharine false smile that had sent a shudder running up Delta’s spine. After dinner, Delta had been cornered in the study.
“I didn’t know there were sisters
!” her mom had hissed.
“Now we have to include the stupid little rednecks!”
And she hadn’t been swayed: sisters were to be a part of the party, as per Southern tradition. Thus, Jess and Jo Walker were bridesmaids. Reluctantly so. It made a luncheon like this one all the more tortuous.

Moving toward the warm, alluring light that poured
in through the front windows, Delta took a deep breath and squared up her shoulders. For a moment, she debated fleeing the coffee shop where they’d met to discuss the wedding. The din of voices behind her could have belonged to a school lunchroom full of children rather than self-professed “ladies,” and the noise set her teeth on edge. With one last longing look out at the street, she turned and faced her bridesmaids.

“Afternoon, girls,” she greeted in a voice that fell flat. Why was she doing this? How had Mike on one knee in his boxers with
I love you
turned into such a spectacle? It felt, as the chatter died down and heads swiveled in her direction, like all these babbling sheep-women were getting to witness something intimate and personal they shouldn’t have. What she had with Mike was something shimmering and wonderful she didn’t know how to describe in relation to any other aspect of the life she’d led thus far, and she didn’t want her friends looking at it for some reason. She detested pulling it out in public and gossiping over it, making a mess of it and dissecting it and asking questions that took all the emotionality out of it.

She couldn’t worry about that now; she could only squirm inside the bright red dress Mike had bought for her on the second day of their meeting. “Girls,” she repeated, and ten pairs of eyes locked ont
o her eagerly. Two pairs sourly; Jo and Jess hated this.

As she talked the girls through the schedule of the coming week – her mother looking on with laser-intense eyes that bespoke of her vicarious joy – she tried to think of something, some
gesture, that would ease the tension between her and Mike’s sisters.

It came to her;
as she discussed their flight arrangements, her eyes collided with Jo’s jaded, blue-green stare and she knew what she could do for her future sister-in-law. If her jaded, broken little heart could find someone new to fixate on, maybe Jo wouldn’t be so miserable, wouldn’t hate her so badly, and maybe Tam would be pissed to boot, which would be a bonus.

**

The only thing that qualified Tam to be Mike’s best man was his gender. Why in the hell a guy with two blood brothers would ask
him
of all people to stand up next to him was beyond his reasoning. Mike still called him his best friend, the open door policy was still very much in effect, but Mike had new friends now. Grown-up, college-educated, professional friends who would have filled the role better.

“Come again?” Tam asked, and made a reflexive reach for the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d left on the counter.

They were in Mike’s kitchen, seeking out drinks between poker games while the rest of the friends – those grown-up assholes Tam hated so much – talked in low murmurs over at the felt-topped poker table under the living room window. Mike folded his arms and leaned back against the counter, eyes going to the whiskey Tam splashed over ice in his glass tumbler. “Dude, you’re throwing them back tonight,” he observed, and Tam frowned.

“Not exactly best man material, huh?”

Mike’s sigh was a patient one, if there was such a thing. “I can’t ask Walt or Jordie,” he said. “’Cause I wouldn’t ask Walt anyway and he’d get offended because he’s the oldest and I was his. And Jordie wouldn’t do it.”

So he was the backup choice, then.

“But you were the first one I thought of,” Mike went on, and Tam’s hand shook just a little as he set the bottle down. “Man, c’mon, of course I picked you. It’s called a ‘best man’, right? Well, you’re my
best man
.”

It was an honor – or was supposed to be, anyway – but Tam felt stirrings of dread and anxiety. “What about them?”
he gestured through the half-wall with his tumbler.

“What about ‘
em?”

“They…”
aren’t anything like me
, he wanted to say.
I’ll be this hideous sore thumb. A black spot on your wedding pictures.
“They probably have nicer shoes than I do,” he finished lamely, and took a long swallow of his drink, the burn that went down his throat heavenly.

Mike snorted, then sobered; Tam could feel his gaze on his profile and
did his best to ignore it. “Hey.” Mike lowered his voice and it became the almost-urgent whisper of their boyhood:
I can tell them I started the fight; You can have my sandwich; You wanna come home with me instead?
“I can spot you the money if you need it,” he said and for one terrifying moment, Tam was fourteen again, all skinny legs and knobby elbows, hair in his face; and Mike was this big blonde doofus window to salvation. He was hungry and hurting and yearning for things he couldn’t put a name to and he knew that if he went to the Walkers’ for dinner, there would be mop-headed Jordie wanting to play pool, and, more importantly, little tiny Jo with skinned knees and grass-stained socks asking him if he’d brought his skateboard. But then the ice cubes shifted in his glass and he was twenty-six, and Mike was offering to rent him a tux for the wedding. “It can just be a loan,” Mike went on, because he knew that outright charity would be refused. “You can pay me back whenever.”

“I don’t need the money,” Tam lied, and downed the rest of his Jack.

Mike took a moment to weigh the truth of that, then shrugged. “So you’ll do it then?”

“Sure.”

A big hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Awesome.” His voice came bounding back to its normal volume. “Dude, wait till you see all of Delta’s bridesmaids. If you can’t get lucky with one of them, then you can’t get lucky at all.”

And if any of them were anything like Delta, he wouldn’t touch them with someone else’s. “Where is your blushing bride tonight, by the way?” It seemed like it had been ages – a year, really – since it had been just the guys without that devil-woman hanging off Mike’s arm.

Mike coughed a laugh. “Out with my sisters. Poor Delta – she thinks she can actually fix Jo up with someone.”

And just like that, the two whiskeys he’d already had were as potent as water in his belly and he was reaching for the bottle again.

**

“Jo.” I
t took every ounce of Delta’s patience to keep her tone light and conversational. “You might try smiling the next time someone comes over to talk to you.”

Jo – d
ressed in a simple black sheath dress that was probably what she wore to funerals, simple black pumps and the lightest touch of makeup – was already far outshined by the rest of the nightclub goers, but to make matters worse, she stared daggers at any man who even dared approach their table.

The four of them – Delta, Regina, Jo and Jessica – sat at a high-top table with a good view of the dance floor, close enough to the bar so that, as Regina had explained, a man could see them and send a drink right over. So far, only Regina was doing any flirting. Jessica kept calling her husband to check on their son. And Jo was the most miserable-looking girl to ever disgrace Aces.

“Gee.” Her eyes flashed up through the gloom, nothing short of hateful. “If that’s all it takes, then I should be swimming in men.”

“Jo.” Her sister touched her arm. “D
on’t be so dramatic.”

“Anyone can get lucky here,” Regina offered. Her hair was in loose red curls down her back and her strapless dress gave her the look of a sausage stuffed in blue satin, as unkind as it was of Delta to think that. But Regina wouldn’t have cared; she would have shrugged and said,
“I like food like I like men. I can’t say ‘no’ to either.”
She gave her hair a toss. “Get some alcohol in you and it won’t even matter if you like them.”

It was meant, in Regina’s blunt and shameless way, as helpful, but Jo’s lip curled up and she didn’t take it that way.

Delta glanced at Jessica and met the blonde’s cool gaze. “I’m a little surprised,” Jess said, “that you’d be so generous, Delta. Trying to help Jo find a date.” It wasn’t a compliment or a
thank you
.

Delta took a sip of her wine and forced a tight smile. “I do what I can.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Jo sulked.

Regina snorted. “It is with that attitude. You know, honey, they only bite if you ask them to. Take one home and you might decide you like them.”

Jo drew herself up to her unimpressive full height, spine stiff, lips compressed in a tight line. Jessica’s eyes flashed a protective warning.

Regina fished the cherry out of her Manhattan and pulled it off the stem with her teeth, grinning.
“Gotta get that cherry popped sometime.”

Jo’s reaction wasn’t the taken aback flush of a virgin; Delta had seen photographic evidence to the contr
ary, but she hadn’t expected the girl to still be so stuck on Tam. Her eyes narrowed to angry slits and she slid off her chair. “Like hell am I staying here,” she growled under her breath, snatched her purse off the table and slipped into the undulating crowd.

“Shit,” Jess murmured, and took off after her sister.

Beside her, Delta heard Regina sigh. “Dramatic bunch, aren’t they?”

Delta swallowed and didn’t answer. They were a dramatic bunch she was about to marry into.

**