Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (27 page)

**

Thunder followed him into the castle through the vestibule, the sharp, crackling, murderous kind of thunder that caught the breath of everyone passing in front of the grand stair. Heads turned his direction and mouths dropped open. His shirt was ripped and he was streaked with mud, clumps of it sliding down the legs of his pants and onto the tops of his ruined shoes. He saw the brown smudges of it on the backs of his hands as he cupped them around his mouth and shouted, heedless of whom he disturbed.

“
Tam!
” His voice boomed, up the stairs, beyond, into the ballroom, echoing. “
Tam!
”

There was no sign of the guy, not even a muddy sneaker track on the terrazzo.

Mike pushed both his dirty hands through his wet hair, felt the grit he left behind, and caught his breath a moment, chest heaving, veins pulsing with adrenaline, the fight still very much in his system. When he blinked he saw the lanterns swinging, light flashing across Tam’s snarling face as they grappled and shoved at one another.

“I love you
so much,”
Tam had told Jo, in front of every-damn-body, and Mike’s brain had exploded.

Love?
He
loved
her? Tam loved
Jo
? And there’d been something about four years and hurting her and
sorry
and…Jesus Christ! In a handful of seconds that had stretched like hours, he’d gone tunneling back through his memories, searching for all the moments he could recall in which Tam and Jo had been together. The signs – so many signs – that he’d ascribed to brother/sister friendliness, had slapped him in the face. Had made themselves known for what they were. His rose-colored, innocent picture of the two of them had been blasted apart and he’d known, in a swift and sure way that left him nauseas, that Jo had never been Tam’s surrogate little sister. All week Mike had been worrying about Ryan’s wandering eyes and hands, and it was his very best friend who’d been horizontal with his little sister. For
years
, apparently.

He couldn’t process that right now. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to. But he needed to find Tam, before the idiot locked himself up somewhere and killed himself with alcohol. The fact that he even
cared
was telling, proved just how angry he
wasn’t
.

As castle guests watched in horror, he went up the stairs two at a time, wet and muddy and not giving a damn.
He pounded on the door to every room that was part of the block Dennis had reserved, but Tam hadn’t grown up his father’s son without knowing how to disappear when he wanted to.

He came up empty, kicked the locked door in front of him in frustration, and turned to find Delta and both her parents in the hall, damp from the rain, staring at him with abject horror and disapproval.

35.

D
ennis and Louise had not just a room, but a suite, complete with sitting room, and that was where the four of them now stood. At least, Mike stood, and Dennis was squared off from him, his tan hands braced on the back of an embroidered chair. Louise was sniffling into a wadded tissue in the matching chair. Delta, her hair wet and curling, was perched in the windowsill, watching the black night and the jagged tongues of lightning through the drapes left parted. Her profile ghostly white, dark lashes low on her cheeks, she was as breathtaking as always. And as cold and aloof as always.

“We need to talk,”
Dennis had growled out in the hall, and Mike had followed him in here, thinking that maybe, just maybe, there’d be something like need shining in Delta’s eyes. But he’d been mistaken. And like hell was he enduring a lecture from this rich jackass for the fun of it.

“Look.
” Mike started to turn for the door, mind still away with blood- and mud-spattered Tam and wherever he’d crawled with a bottle. “I don’t have time for this shit – ”

“You won’t go
anywhere
” - Dennis had a commanding, courtroom voice when he chose to use it - “until you’ve explained that damn
Jerry Springer
episode I just watched down there!”

A personal attack he could have handled; an attack on his family – and even if he was a
miserable, sister-screwing ass right now, Tam was his family too – was too much to tolerate.

“Yeah.”
He let a sneering non-smile split his face. “We’re all one big white trash nightmare for you, aren’t we?”

The look Dennis tossed up at him wasn’t anything Mike hadn’t seen before. In fact, the guy’s daughter was much more
intimidating. “Can you even comprehend,” he growled through his teeth, “how much money I’ve spent on this whole charade? Can you? And you’ve – ”

“Shit all over it. Yeah. I know,” Mike interrupted and earned a flashing, black-eyed glare that was almost as ruthless as one of Delta’s. “I didn’t
wanna come to Ireland, Dennis. And neither did Delta.” Her head turned toward him a fraction but he couldn’t read her expression. “That was all your wife’s idea, so if you wanna talk money, talk about it with her.”

Louise, never anything less than inappropriate, looked for the first time like she loathed him. Attraction didn’t, it seemed, run deeper than pride or love of riches. She crumpled her tissue in a ringed fist and glared at him through red-rimmed eyes. “You’ve ruined everything!” she wailed.
“You and your idiot friends! And your sister – ”

“My sister -
” Mike didn’t realize until it was happening that he was drawing up, his chest inflating, his hands coming out of his pockets, his voice rising to a controlled shout; too many people had pushed the sister button, and in this instance, it infuriated him. “Is nobody’s damn business!” he roared, and Louise fell back in her chair with a little gasp. “You know who’s ruining this wedding? We” - he pointed at Delta and then at himself, saw her eyelashes flutter - “are. So nobody say another damn word about my family!”

Dennis came around the chair, hands balled into fists. “
Do not
talk to my wife like that.”

“Oh, I forgot how
respectful
you are.” The man disgusted him: dressed to the nines, wealthy, successful…and an unfeeling bastard who had no love or respect for anyone. Mike was tired, he needed a shower, he’d had family drama dumped on his head, and he was ninety-nine percent sure his fiancée hated his freaking guts. He didn’t have the time, patience, or grace for Dennis Brooks. As Dennis opened his mouth to say something, Mike cut him off. “I wanna talk to Delta alone. Get out.”

Dennis’s silver brows went up his forehead. “Excuse me?”

Mike pressed his height advantage and leaned down in his face. “I said,
get out
.”

“Dennis,” Louise shrilled, “he can’t tell us that! This is
our
room!”

Maybe, Mike thought, as hot, overwhelming rage pumped through his veins, this was what Tam felt like most of the time.
“I don’t care whose room it is.” He dropped his voice until it was a level, calm, unquestionable threat, not breaking eye contact with his father-in-law to-be. “I will
remove
you, both of you, conscious or not. I’m talking to Delta.
Alone
. You can take your subtle bullshit and shove it up your ass, old man. I will
fight
you for her,
physically
, and trust me, you won’t win.”

Somewhere, through some psychic knowledge of the moment, Randy was cheering.
To prove his point, Mike took a deliberate step toward Delta’s father.

Dennis held his gaze a moment…two…and then with a sharp tug at the front of his suit jacket, turned for the door. “Come, Louise,”
he said, and she did, with a hard sniff and another glare at Mike.

He watched them
go, not believing he’d managed to win. But when the door clicked shut, and he turned to Delta, saw the glacial light in her dark eyes as lightning turned the window, and her face, vivid white, he realized he hadn’t won at all.

She stared at him a long moment, unblinking, and for some reason, he wasn’t expecting what came out of her mouth. “You’re going to
fight
my father?” she asked, long legs uncurling from the sill as she stood. Her spine was stiff, her posture an unnatural collection of tense angles. “Is that all any of you people know how to do?” he’d never heard her voice so razor-sharp; it was more cutting and hateful than the day they’d met, the day he’d bought a dress just to keep her in sight, plying her for a date. That had been a cold, shrewish sort of tone – she hadn’t known him and didn’t want to. This was lethal – she
did
know him, and wished she didn’t. “Fight? Are you and your…
best man
…proud of yourselves?”

He knew who she was, what she was, but just once, he wanted to see her soften. She was only soft in soft moments; she would never bend when their hackles were up like this.

He wasn’t bending either.

He felt the heavy scowl that took hold of his face. “What’s going on with me and
Tam is none of your business – ”

“No!” she took two stiff steps toward him, lips skinned back off her teeth in a snarl. “It’s
everyone’s
business because the two of you had a fistfight in the middle of my rehearsal dinner!”

“I told you I’d handle him.”

“And a bang-up job you’re doing of it! You can’t ‘handle’ him. He’s a rabid dog and you brought him along anyway – ”

“Shut up,” he snapped, and her voice caught in her throat, eyes springing wide; they were the color of black coffee in the lamplight. “I told you not to push me about Tam. You don’t know shit about him.”

She found her voice again, and something moved through her face, a flicker of betrayal that registered somewhere in the back of his mind as a warning that he’d gone too far – even farther than he’d gone in the coat closet. “Neither do you,” she shot back. “I tried…I freaking tried, Michael, to get you to open your eyes and see that he was in love with your sister – ”

A white, hot flush of anger swept through him. “You knew?”

“Everyone knew!” she flung up her arms and let them clap back to her sides. “Everyone with eyes in their head could see that except
you
.”

There was a settee in front of him and he curled a hand around the decora
tive wood scrollwork at its top, squeezing hard because he wanted to feel his arm flex.

“He has pictures in his wallet, for God’s sakes,” Delta went on. 
“But, oh, you
know
what’s best, don’t you? How dare I form my own educated opinion of your precious
best friend
?”

He felt like he kept getting slapped. Tam wanted Jo. Delta knew Tam wanted Jo…the earth was fast tipping and he was sliding down its slope. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked through his teeth, and she blinked. “If you knew, why didn’t you say anything? You set
her up with that creep Atkins – ”

“That was you,” she interrupted. “I nudged you toward
a ‘friend’ and
you
picked Atkins.”

And he had,
hadn’t he? He saw her, flossing her teeth in front of his bathroom mirror, her pretty bare toes on the rug, suggesting one of his
friends
might be interested in Jo. He’d jumped to Ryan, had allowed that to happen – and by default, had allowed all the Tam-related punch-throwing that had turned their castle getaway into a white trash reality show.

He shook his head. “You lied to me.”

Her beautiful face twisted, the anger shifting, giving him a glimpse of what was beneath. “And you
abandoned
me.”

Mike blinked. “
What
?”

She was just one long arm reach away from him, close enough for him to see the hurt shimmering deep in her eyes. She banded her arms around her middle and kicked her chin
up, imperious and defiant…at least, she tried to be. She was shaking head to toe.

“All you had to do,” she said in a strained voice, “was toe the line this one week.
We had to keep my parents happy for just seven days, and you didn’t even
try
.”

“Yes I did,” he protested.

“How?”

“I…” He’d what? Thought about his frustrating family and frowned a lot?

“I gave things up for you,” she said, and her voice came dangerously close to cracking, heavy with emotion. Her frown was wavering, giving way to a truer, more pained expression. She hugged herself even tighter. “I gave up a job at Saks I would have killed for. I gave up my apartment. I gave up,” she took a ragged breath, “my
secrets
. Everything in me told me not to, but I gave and gave to you, Michael.” Her lashes fluttered. “And all I wanted was a week. And all you did was
take
.”

She meant the coat closet. Her thoughts were, apparently, fixated there; she used what had happened there as the centerpiece of
a deepening rage…

But it wasn’t really rage. Her eyes lifted to his, wet in the corners, lashes batting furiously, and
he knew she wasn’t furious with him; she was heartbroken.

It was not, Mike acknowledged, about bending. This wasn’
t a battle of wills, a case of who was wrong and who was right. They – he – had damaged what they had together, and if they did any more wrecking, they wouldn’t be able to patch it back together again.

His hand relaxed on the back of the settee. A deep breath eased the tension across hi
s shoulders a fraction. “Baby – ”

“I always said I didn’t want to get married,” she said, and her eyes fell away from him, going to the door of the suite. Quietly, almost to
herself, she said, “I should never have forgotten that.”

Fear touched him as a thin, cold finger trailing down his spine. He swallowed.
“Delta.”

“I was stupid to even think
– ”

“Baby, don’t say anything else.” He stepped around from behind the settee, putting himself in her line of sight. “Just stop talking.”

He could see in her face that she’d already pulled back. She was withdrawing from him, stowing her emotions away. Shutting him out, filing him away under an aggressive closet encounter so that she could recall him when she needed to think about the men who’d misused her.

Mike’s eyes went down her slender pale throat and
latched onto the white gold crown he’d given her. She’d worn it every day for a year, didn’t even take it off in the shower or when she slept. She touched it when she was pensive, when she was watching a movie, when she sat at the computer. She loved it, and for him, it had been like watching her wear his love willingly, all the time, for all the world to see, her fingers brushing across it when she needed a reminder. She didn’t touch it now, though; her hands stayed rigid at her sides.

But then they lifted, and he hoped…and then dread fell heavy as a stone in his gut as he watched her reach for her engagement ring with her right hand.

“
Do not take that off
.” He hadn’t meant to shout at her, but seized with desperation, he did shout.

Her head snatched up, dark, damp hair flitting against his arm, frozen in the act of wrenching her diamond off her finger.

“Don’t,” he said, and it was the wrong thing to say because now there was clear fright etching her features. “Delta – ”

She stepped around him.

He caught her.

Mike swept an arm around her waist and pulled her off her feet, brought her in tight against his chest.
She exploded: twisting, kicking, struggling to get out of his hold, her eyes rolling wildly.