Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (26 page)

He shrugged
and played it casual. “Taking a walk.” He gave her the same up/down look she’d given him. “What about you?”

She was wearing a terry cloth robe over her pink satin nightgown and she pushed it back to prop a hand on her hip. She shrugged. “Same.
Walking.”

Without his brothers’ height, without a
GQ
model face and killer hair, he’d always had to use what he had to his advantage. He was good at spotting opportunities – damn good.

He snorted. “Who are you sneaking out to see?”

She reached up and twirled a lock of hair around her finger, feigning innocence, then sighed. “Ryan.”

Jackpot
. “You didn’t hear?” he kept his voice mild. “Atkins got into a bar fight tonight. He looks like he used his face to stop a bus right now.”

She was disappointed. Her little shoulders sagged. “Damn.”

“But, you know,” Jordan pressed his luck, “I’m not busy…”

She laughed, just a quick little gasp of a laugh. That was okay; he was used to that. He waited,
and her smile turned speculative, her eyes lingering on him. Jordan could feel her weighing the potential. Finally, she shrugged. “What the hell. Come in. My roommate’s asleep.”

Ryan Atkins may have had girls hunting him down, but the morning after, a
won’t you please
and a
what the hell
weren’t any different: the outcome was the same.

33.

T
he rain fell softly, gracefully, gray and gentle over Billingsly. Delta watched it through one of the windows that overlooked the lawn from the mezzanine, letting her mind go spinning away from everything that was wrong until she was just a girl watching rain through a window; she took a slow breath and let the place – the castle and its majesty – pull her up out of her mental muck.

It couldn’t last, though.
Another wedding had upstaged hers, a little fact her mother had failed to mention, and the mezzanine and ballroom weren’t available for the ceremony. Maureen had told her this like she already knew it:
“But your mum assured me…”
Louise hadn’t even bothered to tell her she’d been incorrect in her thinking for weeks.

Ryan Atkins
had come out the loser in a bar brawl with Tam and his face, according to reports, looked like an overripe plum. She knew why Tam had attacked him – the motive, anyway – but what she didn’t know was why Tam would sulk and fight rather than take his girl back. He, like Mike, like her mother, like everyone, seemed determined to disrupt the wedding at every turn.

She was exhausted by it all, and not sure she’d eaten since lunch the day before.

With a regret that she couldn’t linger, she turned away from the window and thanked Maureen for her time, descended the grand stair in search of…she didn’t know what. Someone else knew, though, because Mike was waiting for her when she reached the bottom, a pained, guilty expression twisting his features.

In the final three steps it took her to draw even with him, she asked herself if
, somehow, in the past day, she’d managed to overlook the coat closet. She hadn’t. He’d never before given her a reason not to trust him, but that night, he’d put up a glacial wall between them and used her through it. She felt fragile and shaken still, and that was something she didn’t like feeling.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked, and even if there was a note of apology in his voice, they both knew it was the first time either of them had asked permission for something so simple. It was a sign.

“There’s a parlor down the hall,” she said, and headed that direction. He fell into step beside her, keeping his pace slow to match stride with her, and they walked without touching. Without even attempting to touch. Mike might have been ready for a thaw, but she wasn’t sure she was.

She led him to the sitting room where the girls had gathered the mo
rning of the bee-infested photo shoot. It was empty, gray light filtering in through the curtains, and Delta went to the dainty gold and green settee in the center of the parlor and sat, arranged the skirt of her dress, suddenly nervous. Then she pinned him with a look that had him rubbing at the back of his neck; he was the one who’d asked to talk, so he should do the talking. He knew that, apparently, but was uneasy.

“I don’t…” he took a big breath, “I don’t really know what to say to you.”

“Well.” She wet her lips and tried to keep her expression from getting too pinched. “You could start by telling me you’re sorry for treating me like a cheap hooker the other night.”

A hurt look flickered across his face. “I didn’t treat you like that.”

She lifted her brows, challenging him for a better way to phrase what had happened.

“Not that it matters,” he consented. “I’m sorry about that.”

He was sincere, but it didn’t soothe her. “And if that were our only problem…” she lamented, dropping her chin into her hand.

“What else is wrong?” he asked, and she felt the threads of her composure start to fray. He was standing over her, tall and
solid, the expression on his handsome face daring anyone or anything to give her grief. It was too late for the heroics – for his Captain America stance – and it was too late for him to pretend that he supported her without question. They were not a united front against her mother; they were hapless victims whose bond, apparently, couldn’t survive even these petty issues.

“
What else
?” she asked, and thought her voice sounded strangled. “Are you kidding me?”

He lowered down onto the settee beside her and reached for her hand, his face soft and sympathetic. She pulled both her hands into her lap, out of his reach. She didn’t want him to touch her and she didn’t want him, after silently, angrily
putting her up on a piece of furniture and going at her like some kind of rutting deer, to play the sweet and compassionate fiancé who cared about her emotions. If it was all pretend, she didn’t want to play along anymore.

“For starters,” she said, her throat aching with the oppressive buildup of emotions, “my mother has dragged us all to this godforsaken place.”
Which wasn’t fair to beautiful Billingsly. She blinked hard and stared at her hands because she hated the way Mike’s green eyes were trained on her face. “And your family is acting
miserable
and trying to make me feel guilty
on purpose
.”

“They’re not doing it on purpose,” he said, and her hands tightened into fists. “If they’re miserable, it’s because they can’t afford it.” Guilt twisted in her stomach.
“My brother and sister still live at home to chip in. They don’t have money to blow on a big trip like this the way your folks do.”

He said it gently enough, but it didn’t ease the blow: the reminder that her rich family was out of touch. She made a grumbling sound in her throat. “Don’t try to make it out
like that’s my family’s fault – ”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Then whose fault was it? This mess had to be someone’s fault. “They didn’t have to come for the whole week,” she protested, lifting her head to glare at him. He was making too much sense and his defense of his family was in danger of softening her.

His voice became patient: “You don’t know my mom. Refusing an invitation is rude. They had to come.”

“Then they could at least be pleasant about it!”

Okay, forget the softening. Her anger started fizzing again, and that was before he chuckled. “Come on, baby, have
you
been pleasant?”

He could be whatever he wanted, could treat her however it suited him at the moment, but
she
needed to be pleasant? “I can’t believe you just said that!” she snarled, and though she knew her eyes were flashing, his smile didn’t waver.

He laughed. “You know you’re being a little…”

“A little what?”

“Nutty.”

She was, but he was part of the reason. She sucked in a deep breath and then another, struggling to put her head above water. She latched onto her indignation because it was the only thing she was sure of at the moment. “And your best man,” she huffed. “Is there anyone else’s face he plans on destroying before we take pictures?” Stupid Tam; she’d tried to help him, and the idiot just couldn’t be helped.

Mike, self-assured and giving her a look that was the equivalent of a pat on the head, said, “I’ll handle Tam.”

“We cannot have another incident like that, Michael,” she snapped. “If he can’t get his act together – ”

“I said I’d handle him, didn’t I?” his voice took on an edge. He didn’t expect to be questioned; just like that, her doting defender had turned back into the belligerent asshole. “He’s going through a rough spot. Leave him alone.”

Tam he would defend, but her…

She glanced over the back of the little sofa, toward the windows streaked with rainwater. A slow, acid sort of fear had been building
in the back of her mind, radiating outward; it was dancing across her nerve endings now. She reached up and touched the white gold and diamond crown charm she wore around her neck, the one he’d given her. “Mikey,” she sighed, “I’m just so afraid this isn’t going to work out.”

“It’s not too late.” He moved toward her on the settee and it creaked. “We can skip out on this whole thing right now and we
can stop at the first church we come to. Get hitched without the fuss.” He sounded eager. She glanced at him again, saw in his face how willing he was to walk out the doors of the castle and leave all of their guests and the wedding that had been a year in the making behind.

“No,” she said, full of fear and doubt and
a thousand other things. “I meant…”

“What?” he
prodded, and the energy shifted. She felt her fear spread to him.

“I meant…” she said just above a whisper, “
us
.”

He took a deep breath and she knew she’d stepped over the line bet
ween wondering and shoving. “No.” His voice came out hard, sharp, desperate. “No,
do not
say that.”

Part of her wanted to reach for the hand he’d braced on the velvet cushion between them. Part of her wanted to cry. Instead, she stood, smoothe
d her skirt, and glanced down at his tight, wounded face. “I already did.” And she left him in the parlor.

34.

A
s a very little girl, Delta had stood up at the counter in the laundry room, standing on a stool beside Mrs. Miller as the housekeeper’s hands deftly smoothed and folded every starched white napkin, setting them aside in tidy piles. Delta had always marveled at the simple magic of the task, the assuredness in Mrs. Miller’s hands – hands rough and worn and made for the precise rituals of the house. In her own world – the working, breathing, thriving bowels of the big house – Mrs. Miller had been a queen in her own stoic way. She knew things. She understood things. There was a steadiness about her that Delta had wished belonged to her mother instead.

One morning, after a particularly volatile fight between her parents in the drunken aftermath of a dinner party, Delta had watched the folding of the clean napkins and announced,
“I’m never getting married.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,”
Mrs. Miller had scolded with a smile in her voice.
“Of course you will.”

“I won’t,”
Delta had insisted, kicking her chin up.
“Not ever.”

Mrs. Miller’s hands had stilled, the sharp creases of the napkin forgotten a moment as she turned to regard Delta on her stool.
“Honey,”
she’d said gently,
“it won’t be like that for you – what it’s like with your mama and daddy.”

Delta hadn’t believed her.

“You’ll just have to make sure you marry the right man.”

“I don’t like any of them,”
Delta had said, and scowled.

“But you will. You’re too young to understand now, but you will. There’s things you’ll learn to like.”

She’d made a face.
“Kissing?”

Mrs. Miller, her face not so lined back then, had smiled.
“That too, but other things. When you meet a man who makes you smile, makes you laugh, makes your heart beat faster, makes you feel like the safest, prettiest, most perfect girl in the world…and when you know that no one does that better than him, then you’ll’ve found him. Your husband.”

It was Mrs. Miller she thought of now as she watched a housekeep
er fold new towels through the open door of the bathroom. It was the night of her rehearsal dinner and suddenly Delta wished she was seven again, on a stool, watching napkins get folded, her housekeeper smiling at her and telling her that her life, her marriage, would be nothing like her parents’. That the past few days she’d spent avoiding Mike hadn’t meant anything.

“
Delta
.” Regina’s voice pulled her out of her own head and back to the moment at hand. Her friend was watching her with a frown. “I’ve said your name, like, five times.”

“Sorry.” Delta gave herself a little shake and regarded her reflection in the dressing table mirror one last time.
Her dress was midnight blue, strapless, fitted and tailored well; it matched the navy polish on her toes. She’d taken great care with her makeup, carrying her eyeliner out past her lashes in the most subtle of cat-eye wings. Her hair was in loose barrel curls down past her shoulders. She wore simple diamond studs in her ears that went well with the crown charm around her neck. Outwardly, she was ready; inwardly, she shook and shivered. She hadn’t spoken to Mike since she’d left him sitting in the parlor. They were getting married in the morning, and they hadn’t fixed anything. Now, more than ever, the sense of wrongness that had haunted her all week pounded in her ears, louder than her own pulse.

“Ready?” Regina asked.

Delta blew out a quivering breath. “Sure.”

The staff had set up a tent right on the edge of the lake, rows of clean white chairs flanking the aisle she would walk down. An ominous black thunderhead was rolling in over the water, the wind lifting the edges of the tent, bringing with it the smells of lake and mud, casting a shadow over the hastening twilight. Everyone was waiting for her: her parents, the girls, Mike’s family, the guys…and most importantly, in navy suit and tie, her Michael.

A fissure threatened the solidity of her heart. Somehow, he’d become this chafing presence in her life, and was no longer
her Michael
. The thought brought tears to the backs of her eyes that she blinked away.

One night, one day
, she told herself. That was how long she had to hold herself together. After, maybe once they were man and wife and no longer under scrutiny, they could crack all her worries open like eggs and burn them away until they were nothing. Until she was reminded why she so deeply and surely needed to marry this man.

**

Mike could have done the rehearsal bit in his sleep. He’d seen all the charts and borne witness to every little procession Delta’s mother had mimed down the middle of the Brooks’ living room. He could have told every bridesmaid and every groomsman and both mothers-of exactly where to stand/sit. In the literal sense, the rehearsal was unimportant.

But he’d gone days without D
elta. He’d been stewing around the castle trying to figure out why – aside from the obvious sick-mother issues – his best friend was spiraling further and further out of control. The whole reason for this trip – for the money his family was shelling out, for all the ridiculous rituals he’d endured – felt worlds away and was standing on the other side of the gathering crowd from him, watching him with plain mistrust.

He wasn’t, he realized, sure he trusted her either.

“Alright.” Their wedding planner, Maureen, clapped her hands together. She was in her usual black pantsuit, bob of dark hair gathered behind a headband, a pen behind one ear, looking tired and harried. “Let’s get this done and we can eat. Aye?”

There was a responding chorus of, “Aye,” from the wedding party, and then they fell into line:
bridesmaids first, groomsmen second. Mike tried to catch Delta’s eye before he went to take his place up at the altar, but she ducked her head and wouldn’t look at him; he sighed.

The minister stood beneath a
lattice work arch bolted down to the platform that had been built out right to the edge of the lake. The whole stage had been an ugly thing during construction – plywood and cinderblock for support underneath – but now, draped all in white satin and tulle, it looked perfectly wedding-ish. Mike bobbed a stiff nod to the minister and glanced out across the water, saw the tight white caps the wind was picking up and folding over, and watched fat gray and indigo clouds come tumbling toward them. Thunder rumbled, just loud enough to hear, in the distance, and he took it as an omen.

Numb, indifferent, he watched the girls’ procession.
And then the guys. Tam was in his leather jacket rather than a suit coat, and as he stepped into his best man slot, Mike could smell the overwhelming cigarette stink of him. Ryan’s face was a black mess of bruises, and he stared at the toes of his shoes as he walked, giving Tam a wide berth as he fell into his place. There was something smug about Jordan’s dead-faced expression.

And then Delta started down the aisle on her father’s arm and he shoved all the idiots out of his mind.

She looked flawless as fine china, and just as fragile. Tension had tightened every elegant line of her body; her white hand had gone colorless on Dennis’s sleeve. Her coffee eyes were fixed on the minister. Her delicate jaw was clenched tight. He could read her well enough to know she was a hairsbreadth from snapping – but as it turned out, he couldn’t read her well enough to know in
which direction
she’d snap. She might have been on the verge of collapsing into his arms…or telling him she didn’t just “think,” but knew they couldn’t work.

He got his answer a moment later. Dennis handed her off with a sharp-eyed warning look that Mike ignored. Delta set her trembling hand in his, turned to him, her chest lifting beneath the tight midnight blue of her dress, and her eyes came to his face.

She hated him.

**

The storm was bearing down on them. Regina was up at the mike, toasting them, kicking off the dinner that steamed on the long row of buffet tables at the back of the pavilion, but Delta could just hear her over the ceaseless, kettle drum pounding of thunder. The wind had teeth, snatching napkins and candles and ladies’ hair with fierce tugs. The charge in the air, the lifting of the fine hairs on her arms, heralded each vicious strike of lightning. All the elegance and splendor was a laughable farce in the midst of such a storm; Mother Nature was trying to tell all their guests that this wedding, the bride and groom, were an absolute joke.

She and Mike sat at their honorary table for two, not touching, not gla
ncing at one another, the energy between them dark and aggressive like the weather. Regina made joking remarks about love and destiny and how meant to be they were, but Delta just knew all the guests, eyes trained on her, had to know what a crock of shit that was.

Regina ended her toast to a smattering of applause and then a chill swept
up Delta’s arms, prickled gooseflesh raising on her skin, teeth clenching tight as she fought the urge to shudder. It was time for Mike’s best man to deliver his congratulations, and dread filled her head-to-toe as she watched Tam get to his feet and move to take the microphone. The expression on his face was so intense, she was grateful when he put his back to them and addressed the crowd. But then he started talking…

“I met Mike when we were thirteen,” he said, and for a moment, Delta dared to hope that he could choke down his venom. “We spent a lot of time in detention for dress code violations: torn up jeans. Mine were just old, but Mike had taken the scissors to his.”

A few faint chuckles reached her ears over the howling of the wind, the unending symphony of thunder.

“But of course, Mike outgrew that fast. Then it was the jock phase, the prep phase…you know all the phases. That’s the thing about Mikey – he always just wants to fit it.”

Delta let her eyes move across the crowd; Randy laughed, but no one else did. She snuck a sideways glance at Mike and saw his plastic smile slowly receding. This wasn’t the toast he’d expected. Tam’s volatile energy was a palpable thing invading the pavilion, falling off of his tense shoulders and spreading, poisoning.

“Mike’s family,” he went on, “well, except for Walt over there, is the kind of family everyone wants.” There was a wistful note in his voice. Not everyone: him. The kind of family
he
wanted.

“He’s going through a rough spot,”
Mike had said; Delta remembered and felt her pulse pick up. That nagging, foreboding anxiety that had plagued her, the undeniable sense that something was wrong, that something was going to explode in all their faces…

This was it. She realized that with a startled breath. This was the culmination, the final manifestation
, of everything that was so very wrong.

“They’re Norman Rockwell,” Tam said with a glance over his shoulder at Mike. His eyes glowed blue in the semi-darkness.
“Mike, dude, you should appreciate them more. Instead of running around sucking Daddy Moneybag’s dick and hoping getting hitched to
this
” -  he pointed at Delta - “will turn you into the Porsche driving prick you always wanted to be.”

She felt a flush bloom in her face that wasn’t even embarrassment. She was too hurt to care – Tam wasn’t lying. Mike’s family, probably even Mike, felt exactly that way about her. Beside her at the table, she felt his fist thump down at her elbow, and couldn’t be bothered to look at him.

“Tam!” he hissed.

Delta saw her mother’s mouth gape open.
Saw her father go stiff and flat-faced with rage.

Tam kept going: “But I figure that, if you still think of me as your best friend, then
as your best friend
, I gotta tell you, you’re making a huge mistake here.”

Someone shouted something, and he held up a hand. “I’m almost done.” And he didn’t have long because her father and Mike’s were on their feet and closing in. “I got one more thing to say.”

And Delta knew what it was. Her eyes, glazed and numb, went to Jo, who’d gotten to her feet, little hands clenched tight at her sides.

“Joey,” Tam said, and his voice changed completely. It was soft and heartbroken and strained thin. “I’m sorry, baby.
Four years ago…that…I had to do it, I really did, but I should never have done it that way, and I’m sorry. Because I love you. I love you so much, more than you can even know, and I never wanted to hurt you.”

They stared at one another a long moment, the shipwrecked lovers who were demolishing her rehearsal
dinner, and then Tam turned away from the crowd. His eyes passed over her and Mike, one cold, flat moment, then he dropped the microphone and the pavilion erupted.

Mike’s chair scraped back across the slate pavers as he leapt to his feet. He and his father and his whole damn hillbilly family went rushing out into the night after Tam as the heavens finally loosed the rain in a torrent.

Delta saw her parents closing in and knew what they would tell her. It was over. She didn’t know if the knowledge was blessed or devastating, but this whole awful thing was over. She dropped her face into her hands and drew in a shaking breath, felt the light touch of raindrops against her back, and steeled herself against the fallout.