Best Man's Conquest (3 page)

“She is.” It had taken a while, but her mom had finally gotten her life together.

“I would have stopped in for a trim, but I was running late.”

Only a complete fool would go to his former mother-in-law for a haircut. And while Dillon may have been a big pain in the behind, he was not a fool. Complete or otherwise.

“I figured I would stop in after my meeting instead. But then I got to thinkin', she may not have the highest opinion of me.”

“Gosh, you think?” Her mom had
never
liked Dillon. Not even when they'd been dating. She'd always said he was too much like Ivy's real dad. Arrogant and unreliable.

After Ivy's dad took off, she and her mom had been forced to stay with Deidre and her parents until they got back on their feet.

He hadn't bothered to stick around, and her mom had been sure Dillon wouldn't, either. She'd warned Ivy repeatedly that she was asking for trouble, just begging to get her heart broken.

Ivy had wanted so badly to prove her wrong. But her mom had been right, of course, and to this day she'd never let Ivy live it down.

What would her mother think if she could see her now, stuck in the same house with Dillon for a week? She would probably be worried that Ivy would be foolish enough to fall for him again. The way she had repeatedly fallen for Ivy's dad, trapped in what she liked to call an on-again, off-again trip through the house of horrors that had spanned nearly a decade.

Ivy was smarter than that. If there was one thing she'd learned from her mother, it was how not to repeat her mistakes.

She would worry about her mom Saturday when she flew in for the wedding. Right now she had other, more pressing problems, like the man still staring at her.

It was clear Dillon didn't intend to leave her alone. Rather than spend an hour or so before dinner enjoying the sun, she would instead have to remain indoors, where he couldn't bug her.

Ivy rose to her feet and grabbed her book. “I guess I'll see you at dinner.”

“I thought you wanted to read.”

“It's been a long day. I think I'll take a quick nap.” It was a lie, but there was no way she would admit that he'd irritated her to the point of driving her away.

She hoped this was just his misguided way of trying to make amends. She hoped she was wrong and he wasn't actually doing this to annoy her.

“See ya'll later,” he called, and as she was shutting the door, she could swear she heard laughter.

Bitterness can be handled in many ways. The worst is to pretend it isn't there. Recognize it, identify it, embrace it. Then get over it.

—excerpt from
The Modern Woman's Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)

D
illon was a big, fat liar.

Ivy sipped her champagne and glanced up at him through the pale pink, lingering light of sunset across the patio table. Eyes as blue and crisp as the ocean stared back, tangling her up in their gaze like a fish in a net.

A shivery zing of awareness started in her scalp and rippled with lightning speed down to her toes. And though she mentally squirmed and flopped, she couldn't seem to break loose.

Instead, she stared him down with a cool, disinterested look. Hoping he couldn't see the frantic flutter of her heartbeat at the base of her throat. The goose bumps dotting every conceivable inch of her flesh.

He was
supposed
to be avoiding her. He had
agreed
to leave her alone, hadn't he? Yet, as she feared earlier on the balcony, it was crystal clear that he had no intention of keeping his promise. In fact, he was doing everything he could to make her as uncomfortable as humanly possible.

And he did it damned well.

Throughout dinner, every time she looked up from her plate of mostly untouched food, his eyes were on her. He wasn't even attempting to be subtle, the big jerk.

At this rate she would be leaving the country a total basket case.

Blake kept shooting Ivy apologetic smiles, and Deidre had started stress eating. She had finished her own meal and was stealing bites from Blake's plate when she thought no one was watching. Blake's brothers, Calvin and Dale, observed with blatant curiosity.

Deidre's bridesmaids were another story. The motor-mouth twins—or as Deidre liked to call them, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum—were too busy flapping their jaws to notice Ivy. Or anyone else for that matter.

They weren't actually twins, although they may as well have been. They had the same burnt-out blond hair and surgically enhanced, anorexic, size-one bodies. They even shared an identical flair for mindless, irrelevant conversation. Ivy was guessing that their collective IQ's ranked somewhere in the low double-digits.

“A toast to Deidre and Blake,” Dillon said, raising his glass, his eyes still locked on Ivy. She couldn't help but notice that he'd dropped the good ole boy twang. Tonight he sounded decidedly more upper-crust Dallas. “May you have a long, happy life together.”

Like we didn't, his eyes seemed to say. Was he suggesting that was her fault?

Yeah, right.

Around the table crystal stemware clinked and everyone sipped. Ivy downed the contents of her glass in one long swallow. She'd never been much of a drinker, but the champagne felt good going down. It tickled her nose and warmed her nervous stomach.

One corner of Dillon's mouth tipped up and his eyes sparked with mischief. He was mocking her.

She sat a little straighter, pulled her shoulders back, all the more determined to see this through. She refused to let him win.

May be the trick to making it through this week was to drink alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Hadn't that been Dillon's method of coping with stress? Hadn't he spent the better part of his time in college intoxicated?

Although she did notice that he drank only mineral water with dinner and had barely touched his champagne. Was it possible he'd given up drinking?

As if reading her thoughts, Dillon reached for the bottle of champagne the housekeeper had left chilling beside the table. He rose from his chair and circled to her side, moving with a subtle, yet undeniable male grace that was hypnotizing. Even the Tweedles, deep in some inane conversation about the difference between clothes sizes in the U.S. as opposed to Europe—in Europe Dee had to buy a size three,
gasp!
—stopped to watch him with unguarded interest.

Ivy sat stock still, resisting the urge to turn in her chair as he stepped behind her. His aura seemed to suck the oxygen from the air around her, making her feel light-headed and woozy.

He leaned forward, resting a hand on the back of her chair—his fingers this close to her skin but not quite touching her—and filled her empty glass. As he poured, his arm brushed her shoulder.

His
bare
arm. Against her
bare
shoulder.

Time ground to a screeching halt, and the entire scene passed before her eyes in slow motion. A twisted, messy knot of emotions she couldn't even begin to untangle settled in her gut, and a weird, this-can't-possibly-be-happening feeling crept over her.

Why didn't she do something to stop him? Bat his hand away or jab an elbow into his gut? Why was she just sitting there frozen? It was not as if she was enjoying this.

Yet she couldn't deny that there was something about him, about the feel of his skin that was eerily familiar.

Not just familiar, but almost…natural. Which was just plain freaky, because there was nothing
natural
about her and Dillon being anywhere near each other.

Silence had fallen over the table and everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at her and Dillon.

Which Ivy realized was exactly what he wanted.

Under the table, her foot was tapping like mad. If she didn't calm down, she was going to wear away the sole of her sandal.

She forced herself to relax, to pretend she didn't care when in reality she was wound so tight she could crack walnuts on her rear end.

What felt like an eternity later he
finally
backed away, making it a point to run the length of his arm across her shoulder while the hand that rested behind her chair brushed ever so softly against the back of her neck. If this was what she had to look forward to every time she emptied her glass, May be the heavy drinking wasn't such a hot idea after all. She was much better off keeping him at the opposite end of the table, where he could only touch her with his eyes.

“Anyone else?” he asked, offering a refill to the rest of the table.

Dee raised her glass. “I'd love some.”

As he poured, Ivy couldn't help noticing that he didn't rest his hand on her chair, nor did he brush against her with his arm. Everyone else seemed to notice, too.

It confirmed that he had only been trying to antagonize her. Hadn't he caused her enough grief? Couldn't he act like an adult and leave her alone?

Just as she'd suspected. He hadn't changed a bit.

“Dale told us you guys used to be married,” Dee said as Dillon returned to his side of the table and slid easily into his seat.

The way he could look so relaxed and casual, yet emanate an aura of authority, boggled the mind.

He retrieved his napkin from the table and draped it in his lap. “That's right.”

Dee's eyes widened a fraction and she looked to Ivy for affirmation. “Really?”

“We were,” Ivy confirmed. “For about a year. A long,
long
time ago.”

“
He
married
you?
” Dum asked, looking first at Ivy, then to Dillon, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Wow. I really thought Dale was kidding.”

Gee, thanks, Ivy wanted to tell Miss Tactless. Just go ahead and say what's on your mind. Don't worry about my feelings.

“She left me and broke my heart,” Dillon said, flashing Ivy a wry grin.

A look passed between the twins, like sharks who had just smelled blood in the water and were gearing up for a feast.

“
She
left
you?
” Dee, who obviously missed the sarcasm oozing from his words, clucked sympathetically, shooting Ivy a look of disdain. She reached across the table to pat Dillon's hand and assured him, “You deserve better.”

Oh, please. Ivy experienced a severe mental eye roll. Even if she had wronged him somehow, which she absolutely hadn't, it had been ten years ago.

“It's no wonder,” Dum said. “Blake, didn't you say she hates men?”

Deidre's jaw fell and she shot Blake a look.

“That's not what I said,” Blake told her, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He turned to Ivy, looking as though he wanted to disappear. “I swear, that's not what I said. I was just telling them about your book. Man-hating never entered the conversation.”

Ivy believed him. In all the time she'd known Blake, she'd never heard him say a disparaging word about anyone. But she could see the needle on Deidre's stress meter creeping into the red zone. Deidre eyed the Tweedles' untouched chocolate mousse with ravenous eyes and asked, “Would anyone like seconds on dessert?”

“Not me,” Dillon said, rubbing a hand across what Ivy was sure was still a washboard stomach. “I'm stuffed.”

“Like
she
needs seconds,” Dee mumbled under her breath, but conveniently loud enough for the entire table to hear. Dum snickered and Blake's brothers exchanged a look, one that said Deidre's fluctuating weight had been a topic of conversation in the past.

That didn't surprise Ivy. The Tweedles hadn't exactly been Deidre's first choice for bridesmaids. In fact, they weren't her last choice, either. They ranked somewhere just below the never-in-a-million-years category. But Blake's brothers were the groomsmen, per their gazillionaire father's demands, and they had refused to stand up in the wedding without their girlfriends.

Since Deidre would be stuck as a part of the family for the next fifty years or so, and Daddy was footing the bill for the wedding—and the house they were moving into after the honeymoon,
and
the cars they would be driving—Deidre felt it best to acquiesce.

The whole arrangement set off warning bells for Ivy, but she was keeping her mouth shut. Deidre seemed happy, and Ivy didn't want to burst her bubble. There was a very slim chance it would all work out, and Ivy was clinging to that hope.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table, and Deidre lowered her eyes to her lap, shame flaring in red-hot splotches across her cheeks. Blake looked awkwardly around, everywhere but at the woman he should have been speaking up to defend. Ivy felt torn between defending her cousin and not wanting to make things worse.

Blake was a genuinely nice guy, and he loved Deidre. Unfortunately, he didn't have much in the way of a backbone.

Of the three brothers he was the youngest, and while he hadn't taken a beating with the ugly stick, he wasn't what you would call a looker, either. He was sort of…nondescript, and he let everyone, including his family—
especially his family
—walk all over him.

Which is why Ivy feared Deidre would be bowing to her in-laws' wishes for the rest of her natural life.

“So, Ivy, I hear you're a practicing psychologist now,” Dillon said.

Uh-oh. She distinctly felt an attack coming on.

Wonderful.

At the very least, taking potshots at her would deflect the attention from Deidre. It would be worth a little humiliation.

“Yes, I am,” Ivy said, unable to keep the defensive lilt from her voice. One corner of Dillon's mouth quirked up in a very subtle grin, and Ivy raised her chin, bracing for the onslaught of insults. The “shrink” jokes she'd already heard a million times. The “little book” jabs.

She fisted her hands in her lap, digging her nails in the heels of her palms, her foot tapping like mad under the table, steeling herself for the worst.

Bring it on, pal.

“I find it truly fascinating,” Dillon said, and Ivy thought,
sure you do.

Dee covered a yawn with fingers tipped in bright pink, clawlike nails, and Dum made a production of looking at her watch. Did they think they were the queens of stimulating conversation?

Dale and Calvin, on the other hand, looked thoroughly amused by the entire situation. Those two were even worse than Dillon. They needed to grow up and get a life.

“Her book has been on the
New York Times
bestseller list for months,” Deidre said, a note of pride in her voice. “She's famous.”

Unimpressed, the Tweedles rolled their eyes.

“I'm particularly interested in the study of self-esteem,” Dillon said.

Self-esteem?

Was that some sort of veiled insult? Was he honestly suggesting that Ivy had low self-esteem?

She felt her blood pressure shoot up to a dangerously high level, and her foot was cramping up from the workout it was getting.

She was incredibly comfortable with herself,
thank you very much
.

“I once read that people with a negative or low self-esteem will insult and belittle other people to boost their own egos.” His expression was serious, but there was a spark of pure mischief in Dillon's eyes. His gaze strayed briefly to the Tweedles, then back to Ivy. “Is that true?”

It took a full ten seconds for the impact of his words to settle in, and when it did, Ivy was so surprised she nearly laughed out loud.