Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (20 page)

“Delta,” he said, pulling her out of her own head, “I was kidding.”

But she wasn’t. Dennis was never refused anything, not even the opportunity to do something for someone else. If they stayed in the townhouse for any period of time, both her parents would invite themselves to dinner. Both of them would remark how little influence Delta had over the interior of the place. In their eyes, she’d be deferring to Mike, and to them, that wouldn’t be a good thing.

“I’m on the way, okay?” he asked. “I’ll see you in a few.”

“Yeah.”

“Love you.”

“You, too.” She hung up her cell and let it rest in her a lap a moment while she gathered her thoughts. She and Regina were in her old bedroom in her parents’ home. The closet was full of the clothes and shoes she hadn’t had room for at her apartment; she rotated sometimes – brought an armload from her apartment to exchange for what was here. Usually there was a shoe or scarf or earring missing because Louise had borrowed something and never returned it.

It was almost seven and the light beyond the windows was the golden stuff of approaching dusk. Inside, her bedroom was a palette of white, sumptuous fabrics and delicate details. Unchanged from her teenage years, it always sent her tumbling back to a time period better left forgotten. It was beautiful, it was physically comfortable, but she didn’t miss it.

“Boy’s got balls,” Regina said as she heaved up to her feet, a pair of white wedge sandals in one hand. “No one in the history of…ever…has told your dad ‘no’. About anything.”

“I know.” An unexpected shiver went up her spine.

“That’s more than a little hot,” Regina said, and went to the floor-length mirror to step into the shoes and check her reflection.

“I know,” Delta repeated. Even if she loved him all the more for it, she was drowning in the pressures of this wedding already – she didn’t want Mike to create more.

**

Downstairs, the house had been transformed into a museum of candles. They covered every solid flat surface: tall tapers and squat fat ones, tea lights and round ones shaped like globes. All were white and all were ready to be lit the moment darkness fell.
The gardens in the back looked much the same. Two long linen-covered buffet tables had been set up to accommodate finger foods and wine glasses. Stakes had been driven into the mulch to support the strands and strands of white twinkle lights that had been used to create a canopy of faux stars overhead. The fountain bubbled, the flowers bloomed with riotous color, and her mother’s sculpture glistened copper in the center of everything. Lit paper lanterns lined the walkways and the yard was a fairy land.

It was a little bit ridiculous.

Delta laced her fingers through Mike’s as he whistled.

“We got engaged a year ago. How can an engagement party
now
be this huge?”

“You haven’t figured that out by now? My family does everything huge.”

“This looks like…”

“Disneyworld, I know.”

He sighed. “It’s gonna keep getting worse, isn’t it?”

“Afraid so.”

Regina had been strolling through the yard, taking it in, and headed toward them, already finished with her first glass of White Zin; she’d filled it to the rim against the caterer’s frowning look. “So, Mike,” she said as she drew up to them, and Delta recognized the twinkle in her eye. “Will all your groomsmen be here?”

“They’re supposed to be.”

She grinned. “Good.”

**

Tam had never been to a party that hadn’t involved six-packs and hot wings sitting on a coffee table. Tonight, in his paper-thin shirt and skinny red tie, jeans and sneaks and his leather jacket even though it was too hot, he watched waiters work their way through the Brooks’ back garden. One passed him and he plucked a glass of dark wine off the tray the guy carried. He chugged it in two swallows; it tasted like shit, but he hadn’t seen any beer or liquor and he needed something to fortify him; he’d just caught a glimpse of dark blonde hair through the crowd and he was way too sober for what he intended to do.

It felt like there were two-hundred people in the Brooks’ yard, and maybe there weren’t, but there were enough bodies to make him uncomfortable. All the groomsmen, Delta’s pack of bridesmaids, and both families were present. Tam had been Mike’s
shadow for a time, and then Randy’s for a little while. He’d seen Jordan only briefly, and figured that was who belonged to the dress shoes he saw poised next to Jo’s stilettos across the grass.

He didn’t
know where his sudden rush of bravery had come from as he began threading his way through the crowd. Nothing had changed in the past weeks…nothing save the groomsmen asking about Mike’s sisters. Asking if either of them were single. Finding out Jo was. He’d gone four years without her, and while there was no reason for his desperation to spike so hard now, it was doing just that. Maybe he was afraid Delta might succeed in setting Jo up with someone. Maybe four years was all he could expect to go without snapping. Maybe putting his mother in a nursing home had finally severed the thin threads of patience inside him.

It was stupid and reckless, but he was moving toward her anyway, and it was going to take something besides his conscience to stop him tonight.

26.

J
o hated parties so much she wasn’t even sure
hate
was a strong enough word. She detested the strappy little dress and sandals her sister had let her borrow, abhorred the way her heels kept sinking into the grass, absolutely wanted to scream every time anyone looked at her like she wasn’t supposed to be there. She could feel their judgment because she’d felt it from others her whole life. Normally it didn’t bother her. After Delta’s invitation to the nightclub, it was chafing against all of her nerves.

When Jordan happened past, she snagged the slee
ve of his jacket. “Stay with me.” Her request was more of an angry hiss, and he turned a lazy look on her.

“Stay?” One of his brows lifted. “But I’ve got, like…” his eyes went to the sky as he counted in his head, “at least ten
bridesmaids I wanna meet.”

“You
wanna bang,” she said with a snort. “I’m sure their tastes are more expensive than
you
.”

“Now that hurts.” He was drinking red wine and took a sip, made a face. “Jesus, don’t they have anything worth drinking around here?” His eyes did a restless scan of the crowd and Jo was afraid she’d lose him.

“No, only wine. Just…stand with me for a bit? Please?” Her fingers tightened on his sleeve and he finally looked at her, his blue-green eyes round with surprise.

“You’re really freaking out, aren’t you? Why?”

“I’m not freaking out. I just don’t want to have to talk to any more of Delta’s stupid friends.”

He shrugged. “So go hang with the guys.”

She’d thought of that, but unlike her brothers – Jordan, anyway – Mike’s other friends seemed to think she was flirting with them, even when she wasn’t. “I…” whatever she’d meant to say left her head as the crowd shifted in front of her and she saw who was walking toward her. She’d tried to prepare herself mentally for tonight on the off chance she’d have to speak to Tam, but it had been more than a year since she’d so much as laid eyes on him, and doing so now cut deep and hit bone.

Her mouth went dry and her heart gave a great lurch that left her light-headed. She loved him – had always loved him – but she
hated
him now too. Hated him for what he’d said and done to her up against the side of her dorm building four years ago. Hated him all the harder for not trying to reach back out to her and ease the sting of rejection. Hated him for letting this hate fester, for dropping out of her life after growing up together like she meant nothing to him, and never had.

“It’s Tam,” she choked out, pulse thundering in her ears, eyes traitorous as they stayed glued to him. He was still coming toward her, long legs eating up the grass in the Brooks’ backyard, and he was totally focused on her. Not on the party around them or Jordan or anything else. Four years and suddenly she had his undivided attention.

It confused the hell out of her, and for that, she hated him some more.

Jordan shook her hand off his sleeve and started to pull back. “So talk to him,” he offered, and before she could tell him that she wasn’t going to talk to the man who’d broken her heart, he slipped away. Damn him.

Alone, Jo banded an arm across her middle and straightened as best she could with her heels sinking into the grass. She could either let Tam come to her, or try and send him away before he reached her side. Her heart was galloping – she could feel it in every pulse point beneath her skin – and her stomach was twisting into knot after knot. She wasn’t ready for this, for him, for whatever pitiful thing he would say to her.

Taking the coward’s way out, she set her jaw and narrowed her eyes and gave him a look that warned him not to come any closer. He halted immediately, swaying like he’d run
into an invisible wall, and it broke her heart to think that even if he’d ruined her and she hated him, they could still read each other so well.

**

In a garden full of mingling, laughing, well-wishing guests, Delta’s eyes latched onto the anomaly: the stand-off happening over against one brick garden wall. Tam and Jo had found each other, and there were downed power lines running between them.

Maybe five feet apart, Delta could tell they wouldn’t get any closer, and the one doing the pushing was Jo. Tam’s hands clenched empty air – he wanted to narrow the gap – but Jo had her little chin kicked up and the look in her eyes was so threatening it would have been amusing if Delta hadn’t known what was going on between the former sweethearts.

On her way to ask the waiters to bring out more white wine – a directive from her mother – her gaze had landed on the silent soap opera playing out between Mike’s best friend and sister, and she’d been drawn to a halt, fascinated to see what happened. Even from a distance, through the twinkling of lights and shifting of bodies, she could read the tension in them, see the fine tremors in Jo’s little hands, watch Tam’s chest heave as he sucked in air. His eyes were full of question, hers of warning. He, she realized, had been the one to hurt her, and she wasn’t ready to forget it, even if she was lonely for him.

In a sea of humanity, Delta had found the one true thing to find. Her friends, Michael’s friends, the stressed relatives…all of them were here not for her, but for the promise of a new event to celebrate. Weddings, babies…everyone wanted to celebrate things
like that. The bride, the baby: those were immaterial. They all just wanted an excuse to gather, to get tanked up, and to pretend it wasn’t for selfish reasons. The smiles might have been true, but sentiments only half-true.

Tam and Jo, however, were electric, and no one else seemed to know it but her.

She held her breath and waited; party goers streamed around her, bumped into her, but she didn’t notice.
Do something
, she urged silently.
Say something to each other
.

But Tam edged a step back, and then another. And then he deflated, shoulders slumping, and turned away from Jo, put some space between them. Jo watched him go, unwavering, until he was halfway across the lawn, and then she fell back against the wall, a hand going to her lips, quivering.

Delta cursed softly to herself and felt a touch at her elbow. She jumped and twisted her head around to see Mike looming over her, tall and blocking out the light behind her with his wide shoulders. Guilt surged.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, and his eyes went across the garden, but didn’t land on anything. “Or are you just spacing out?” His gaze came back to her and he smiled, one of those Captain America smiles that
wasn’t as sly as he thought it was. She loved them.

“Spacing,” she said, and tried and failed to smile back. She swallowed, her guilt pushing up the back of her throat. It wasn’t her place, but she was starting to think that keeping Mike in the dark about what she’d just witnessed was getting dangerous.
“Actually…” She wet her lips. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Oblivious to her tension, he nodded. “Can it be no
w? I’m dying to get out of this...” He gestured to the lush, lit, beautiful garden. “Cattle chute.” Only Mike…

“Sure.” She reached for his hand and slid her much smaller one into it, felt his fingers squeeze hers as he started to draw her off, but then her mother materialized in front of them.

“Just who I wanted to see,” Louise cooed, her smile too bright. “Come say ‘hello’ to your cousin Helen.”

And her opportunity was lost.

**

Mike shook so many hands he lost count. He smiled until his face ached. He’d always thought he had plenty of friends, but Delta’s relatives and acquaintances seemed to number in the
hundreds. When he finally found himself alone with her behind some kind of gnarled fruit tree, he let the tired muscles in his face relax, exhaled in a rush that left his shoulders sagging. “Jesus,” he muttered, and she nodded, not even asking what he meant.

She put her back to the brick garden wall and drew one high-heeled sandal up to prop back behind her, arms folded loosely across her chest. She looked
exhausted, and not just tonight. She’d looked that way for a while now. Her face, slack now, was thin and pale and drawn, the dark circles under her eyes not hidden by her makeup. She was still the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on, but she was tired, and he could tell.

“You okay?”

Her head lifted and she let it fall back against the wall, her throat a slim column bowed toward him. She twitched a sideways smile. “Fine.”

He smiled back.
“Liar.”

“What gives me away?”

“If hell could look as good as you, then you look like hell.”

“That’s sweet.”

“You know what I mean.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes up toward the net of lights overhead; the brown irises caught the pinpricks and seemed spotted with white. “This wedding’s killing me.”

“So call it off.” He shrugged. “We can go to the courthouse. Or to Vegas.” He smiled. “Get married by an Elvis impersonator.”

Delta’s smile was sad and distant. “You know I don’t have that option.”

He knew she
thought
she didn’t have that option, but he didn’t understand her commitment to something she didn’t care about. He would only ever go so far when it came to making his family happy, and beyond that, he had to do what he had to do. Delta, though, was dead set on agreeing to her mother’s every wish.

“We’ll have to redo your townhouse,” she said, voice grim. “Mom will hound us if we leave it like it is.”

It was stupid, but a small price to pay. “Okay.”

“Just like that?
Okay?” She still had trouble believing him when he agreed with her without a fight.
“I want you,”
he’d told her one night, in the dark stillness penetrated by the sounds of them catching their breath.
“I don’t care about the little shit.”

“You have a whole apartment full of furniture,” he said, “I figured you’d bring some of it with you.”

She blinked and her eyes were dazzling with the Christmas lights. “I’ll have to bring all of it,” she said like an apology. “My mom – ”

“Is nuts,” he fi
nished. “But you can humor her if you want.”

She glanced away from him and her body was tense all over. She was thinking too much, trying too hard, and it was eating at her.
Until she couldn’t relax even when she had the chance.

Mike pushed away from the tree and closed the gap between them, took her thin upper arms in his hands and squeezed until her eyes came to his face. “What did you
wanna talk to me about before?”

She leaned toward him and placed her hands on his chest, flexed her fingers until the tips dug through his oxford and into his
pecs. Her lips parted and her eyes darted back and forth across his face: his mouth and nose and hair and eyes and somewhere over his shoulder. He could have sworn she looked worried, frightened even. Whatever she wanted to say built and built and built – he swore it was pushing at him through her chest as her breasts brushed against him – but then it receded. She pulled it back in and offered him a quiet, tired smile.

“You’re handling this like a champ.”

“I know,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

But then she stretched up on her tiptoes and asked for him to kiss her. He did, and for a stolen moment, was reminded that being a champ was worth it.