Her Best Man

D.J. didn’t want to be her consolation prize, especially since he’d spent a lifetime being second best to his sibling—with Allaire, and even with D.J.’s own dad.

When they reached the cafeteria, which was locked for the night, she peeked through the windows, clearly not recognizing that she was tearing D.J. apart.

“Come here.” She waved him to her side.

He hesitated, then obliged her. Her scent filled him up, made him dizzy.

“They put in a food court,” she said. “Don’t you wish we’d had something like that way back when?”

D.J. didn’t give a hang about the cafeteria.

He must’ve taken much too long to answer, because she peered up at him, her soft lips shaped as if to ask a question. Yet she stopped before a sound came out. Then, almost imperceptibly, she put distance between them. It wasn’t even physical space: it was far more devastating because it was mental, emotional.

“I wish you hadn’t gone to Atlanta,” she finally said.

What could he say? I left because, at your wedding, I wanted to die, Allaire. I couldn’t stand to see you pledging yourself to Dax when I should’ve been the one standing with you at the altar instead.

But voicing that wasn’t in anyone’s best interests. However, there was another reason he’d left, one he’d never told her. Maybe now was as good a time as any to do it since the anguish wasn’t so immediate anymore.

“I’d had enough here in Thunder Canyon,” he said. “Enough of a lot of things.”

“Like…what?” She looked as if she regretted bringing up the subject, but there was something about her that seemed to egg him on, too, as if she wanted him to come clean.

Hell, that was probably just a wish begging for fulfillment.

“When we were kids,” he said, “you might’ve noticed that Dax and I weren’t that close. I’m guessing it became even more obvious after you married.”

Allaire turned to lean against the cafeteria window. At the same time, she kept a chasm between them.

“I suspected that you two weren’t bonded. I never knew why, though.”

“That’s because we never enjoyed what you might call a ‘buddy-buddy’ relationship.”

Allaire frowned, processing something in that quick mind of hers. He’d missed watching her think.

“See,” she said, “I would’ve expected you two to be close after your mom died when you were so young.”

Maybe it should’ve been that way. When Mom had gotten in that accident out near the bypass, Dax had been eleven, D.J. ten.

“It happened the opposite way,” he said, noticing that his voice held a note of latent pain. Maybe this was all much closer to the surface than he’d thought. “Instead of bonding with each other in the aftermath, we went into our own personal caves. I became studious, Dax became interested in his motorcycles, just like Dad. They would work together, night after night, not saying anything, but you could tell it made them feel better. It gave them solace.”

“And that put you out in the cold. Oh, D.J., I never realized that.”

“I never told you. Besides, it’s all in the past.”

The lie tasted foreign on D.J.’s tongue, and he realized that he’d never graduated from the profound sense of isolation that had resulted from being ignored by his dad and brother. He wasn’t about to admit that their bond had made him envious. He’d worked too damned hard to overcome it, and just because he was willing to let Allaire in on some explanations didn’t mean she would get any others.

It was best to hide his resentment toward Dax for stealing their father’s attention when their mother had so recently been snatched from their lives, too. D.J. didn’t even like to recognize this acrimony in himself, and his unwillingness to face it had caused the hard feelings to escalate, then fester when Dax had won Allaire’s affections.

D.J. had been the odd man out in so many ways, but he’d always tried to master the complex. All the same, he kept hating himself for never having the bravado to step up and claim the woman he loved, just as he should’ve stepped up to claim his dad’s attention, also. What made things so much worse, though, was that D.J. knew that he—and he alone—was responsible for all this fruitless pining.

So that’s why he’d tried to become a new man.

A person he could be proud of again.

Chapter Three

Allaire watched the emotions play across D.J.’s face. His cheeks, leaner and hungrier than when he was young, tensed as he clenched his jaw. His eyes were dark and unreadable.

This didn’t feel right, his shutting her out.

“I think I get what you’re saying about your relationship with Dax,” she said. “No one wants to be stranded to fend for themselves emotionally. It wasn’t fair that they cut you out of their inner circle after your mom died, but I’m sure they didn’t realize what was happening.”

“You’re right.”

His tone was weary, and she didn’t sense bitterness as much as acknowledgment. And when he sighed, then walked away, she wondered just what else D.J. had been hiding from her all these years. Had she really known her best friend that well?

Maybe she should’ve made it a point to find out why D.J. and Dax had always seemed civilly distant with each other, even if they’d hung out with the same group. She’d just assumed that, even with the subtle tension between them, they still had a bond, like siblings were supposed to. In her experience, she’d enjoyed a close, if sometimes strained, relationship with her own much older sister and, true to naive form, Allaire had assumed that was how it was for most families.

But after marrying Dax, she couldn’t remember ever hearing the brothers talk on the phone or seeing them exchange an e-mail—not until their dad died, anyway. And even then their communication had been brief and to the point.

A couple of times, she’d asked Dax to elaborate, but he’d told her that he and D.J. were men, and how many men spent hours on the phone gabbing to each other? With a heavy feeling, she hadn’t pursued the subject. Her marriage was already weak at that point, and this was the least of their issues.

However, now wasn’t the time for pursuing the truth with D.J., either, so she caught up with him, bumping against his arm as a tacit way of saying she understood that he wanted to drop the subject.

The second she felt the hard muscle, even through his coat and her suit, Allaire’s skin came alive. Heat zinged through her chest, downward, zapping neglected areas and settling there.

She crossed her arms, wishing the sensations would go away. Wishing they would stay.

Soon, the two of them came to the gym, which was already chained shut. Even so, she seized the chance to look through a window, just as she had at the cafeteria when she’d been searching for anything to avoid the confusion D.J. was conjuring inside of her.

He came up behind her. She could feel the warmth of him, feel his breath stroking the back of her exposed neck.

“Old Mr. Ozzel,” she said, referring to the elderly custodian who was dust-mopping the gym’s shiny wooden floor. “Remember him?”

D.J.’s laugh softly chopped through Allaire. Her nape tingled, prickling the rest of her skin to goose bumps.

What was happening here?

“How could I forget him?” D.J. asked. “That night when you and I were leaving late because of a journalism deadline? Ozzel thought we were up to no good, wandering the halls with a mind to vandalize, so he hid himself and then yelled that we needed to scram or he’d ‘git us.’”

Allaire laughed, even though, at the time, she’d been scared of getting in trouble. Such a good girl. “We didn’t know it was Mr. Ozzel at first, so I ran, and you came after me because I was escalating the situation. He was fast on your tail, waving his mop. But he wouldn’t have caught us if you hadn’t come to your senses and turned around to make peace with him.” She laughed. “You were so well mannered, D.J., even in the face of catastrophe.”

She remembered it all now. D.J. the peacemaker, the levelheaded nice guy who smoothed out each and every hairy situation.

Except, obviously, his own home life….

“I tell you,” she said, her old affection for him feeling new again, “Mr. Ozzel became your number-one fan that night when you handled everything so…how did he say?”