Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (8 page)

“And I’m not some overly macho dickhead who’s going to fight over you. If you don’t respect yourself, how can I respect you?”

He might as well have called her a slut. She swallowed hard, feeling the insult all the way down to her bones. “Respect?” she hissed through her teeth. “You don’t even know me well enough to know that I
hate
steak. And I
hate
badly written porn novels. And that there’s a difference between Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio!”

He blinked.

“You don’t know me at all, Greg, so don’t act like you respected me or even liked me beyond what I could do for you at parties as your arm candy,” she ground out the last and snatched her purse up off the side table in her front hall. Her ankle boots went on in an angry rush; she stomped them into place. “Excuse me,” she said as she locked her door and stepped around him. “I’ve gotta go screw a guy.”

9
.

M
ike lived in a townhouse: an end unit done in antique white brick with black shutters and door, a crabapple tree anchoring the complex-provided landscaping at the front corner. Parked cars went up the narrow drive and around the front curb. Delta nosed her Volvo up behind a black 4-Runner and took a deep, rattled breath.

By choosing Mike, she’d put an undue amount of pressure on him. Greg had proved a disappointment to the last moment – he didn’t even care enough to have a true argument with her – but walking away from him tonight meant she’d sided with Mike, and she wasn’t so proud of that choice.

With one last check of her lipstick, she braced herself to deal with the consequences of her actions and climbed out of the car.

Mike must have been watching for her because he opened the door as she was lifting her hand to knock. She started, hand suspended in front of her as the fast, inward snatch of the door ruffled her hair. He was in an old sweatshirt with fraying cuffs, jeans and socks – she was thankful she’d dressed down – and his grin was ear-to-ear. “Hey.”

Her nerves had built on the drive over, champagne bubbling behind a cork. But his smile diffused them, and left her with nothing but the after-champagne warmth that was so desperately lacking in her life. Regina’s words came back to her now:
“When was the last time you did anything just for the fun of it?”
So Mike wasn’t the picture of upper crust stability she’d always seen herself with – so what? He left her nervous and doubting and frustrated the hell out of her – and those emotions were better than no emotions. And it wasn’t like she was marrying the guy – she was just having fun. She’d almost forgotten how, but his smile made the relearning curve bearable.

“Hey.” S
he stepped into a foyer full of men’s shoes and hanging jackets; there was a black leather biker number next to Mike’s bomber and she almost grinned. A thick stew of deep voices was churning somewhere deeper into the house and her nerves tightened again. “Am I late?”

“Nope.”
He shut the door behind her and caught her coat as it slipped back off her shoulders. “Pizza’s on the way. We’re having beer but I think I might have some wine somewhere.”

“Beer’s fine,” she assured as she smoothed the front of her sweater and turned to face him.

He was staring at his coat rack and all its taken pegs like it was a Rubik’s cube. Delta bit back a smile when he finally pulled someone’s windbreaker off, dropped it across the shoes on the floor, and hung her wool military coat up in its place. “Jordie can get over it,” he said with a shrug, and then both of them were standing awkwardly in his foyer.

Scratch that,
she
was standing awkwardly, the night before and her argument with Greg battling for supremacy in her mind. But Mike put a hand on her hip and leaned in to press a fast kiss to her lips. “Come on,” he said as he stepped away, “I’ll introduce you to the idiots.”

The foyer continued on into a narrow hall: staircase and formal dining room to the right, sitting room with black marble fireplace to the left. It emptied into a galley kitchen done in black and white and red, a half wall giving her a glimpse into a surprisingly large living room full of black sofas and glass-and-chrome tables, a big picture window and a round dining table.
Mike stopped at the fridge to fish out a Bud Light. The bottle was cold when he pressed it into her hands and it only made the nervous tremors running beneath her skin worse, but she took a swig hoping it might help.

“Guys.
” Mike had a megaphone voice and he turned the volume of it all the way up as he stepped around the corner into the living room with a big hand hovering at the small of her back. “This is Delta.” Feeling like she should take a bow under the eyes that swept her way, she managed a tight smile. “Babe,” he called her and it didn’t sting too badly, “you know my shithead brother Jordan – ” he was sitting in what (horrifically) looked like a bean bag chair, “ – and that’s Tam – ” he pointed to the guy with the black hair who’d knocked over perfume with him, “- Lance, Mitch, and Ryan – ” who were lined up on the couch: beefy and bald; tall and awkward; square-jawed and smiling too wide.

“You guys mind your damn manners,” Mike warned, and propelled her toward the couch where sullen and black-haired Tam was sitting.
Delta let Mike tuck her in against the arm as he took the middle seat.

And then she realized where she was: that horrible moment pre-relationship in which a guy let his friends give her the final seal of approval.
She
hated
that moment.

“So, Delta, huh?”
Ryan asked across the glass coffee table. He had a face that belonged on a Calvin Klein billboard somewhere. “As in the airline?”

It was going to be one of
those
evenings.

**

“Are you miserable?”

Surprisingly, she wasn’t. She couldn’t understand why three of his friends were normal while his brother and Tam so obviously weren’t, and she wasn’t interested in the football game up on the big screen.
But it was fun to watch the guys squirm when she gave an arch answer to one of their questions. And she kept listing to the side until she was resting against Mike’s big shoulder, and the beer was slowly relaxing her head to toe.

“No,” she said as she lined up the pizza boxes along his kitchen counter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had pizza and the smell was heavenly.
And that was before she started lifting lids and checking for toppings.

Mike stepped up beside her; he’d pegged the rest of them with the kind of alpha male look that had left her rolling her eyes, but secretly,
she was grateful to have a few stolen moments alone in the kitchen. “One of these is supposed to be whole wheat crust and veggies,” he said, because he’d said nothing that wasn’t completely innocent all evening so far.

“You didn’t order that just for me, did you?” she asked with a quick check from the corner of her eye.

He was watching her and trying to look casual. “Nah. Lance counts calories worse than a chick.”

She grinned and pulled a slice of pepperoni up onto her plate.

“Okay, so, if you’re not miserable.” He took two slices. “Does that mean you’re not gonna sneak out early on me?”

She licked a spot of grease off her thumb and gave him a carefully bland look. “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

He grinned. “Well don’t change your mind about that, ‘cause I’m gonna get rid of these guys in a little while.”
And then it’s just the two of us
, she read the unspoken. The thought sent a thrill up her spine.

“Don’t give me
a reason to,” she shot back, and damn if he didn’t look like he enjoyed the bickering as much as she did as he got a fresh beer from the fridge and went back to the living room.

Delta shook her head, smiling inwardly, and snapped a paper towel off the roll by the sink to use as a napkin. Mike’s friend Tam stepped around the half wall and into the kitchen, and even if she saw him coming, something about the dark, closed-off expression he flashed to her before he picked up a plate startled her. He wasn’t her type – his hair and the way his too-tight jeans looked soft like the rips in the knees were from wear and tear and hadn’t been purchased that way – but
the stunning blue of his eyes would have been pretty if he hadn’t been glaring at her. Delta didn’t react, rooted in place while he gathered his food and left, too surprised to shoot him a nasty look of her own. She was used to men smiling at her, giving her the up-down inspection, coming onto her and leering at her, but not giving her the evil eye.

She was still standing there, stupidly, when Jordan entered. “Couch would be ba
ck that way.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder without giving her so much as a glance.

Mike was right:
he
was
a little shithead.

It didn’t matter, though, once she was tucked back in the corner of the sofa, fielding more questions from the three normal
friends about Mike’s clumsiness on the day they’d met. And it really didn’t matter when the three normals called it a night and Jordan followed them out. Then there were three; Delta’s ankle boots were under the coffee table and Mike had pulled her stocking feet up into his lap, and the tight, welcome knot of positive tension in the pit of her stomach would have been all the more enjoyable if Tam hadn’t been slouched in a chair across from them. No amount of meaningful glances from Mike nor the way he was massaging the arches of her feet, could override the mood killer that was his friend.

Mike found a spot that made her toes wiggle and pressed with his thumb. “You
wanna go upstairs?” he asked in a lame attempt at an underdone, his blonde brows jumping. He was a doofus and it was kind of sweet; he wasn’t suave, but excited about getting her naked again.

Sweet – at some point she’d gone from hating him to finding him
sweet
.

“Well…” S
he tipped her head in Tam’s direction and he shrugged.

“It’s cool.”

“I…”

Tam’s empty beer bottle hit the coffee table with a
clink
. “I’m turning in,” he said as he got to his feet. “Can I still crash?”

“Yeah,” Mike told him and they exchanged
guy-nods that meant she-didn’t-know-what.

Delta watched him leave the room, heard the stairs shift under the soles of his bare feet, and she waited, silent, Mike squeezing her foot, until she heard the soft
click
of a door closing upstairs. “Is he your roommate?” she asked as she turned back to Mike, and watched something uncertain skitter across his face.

“No. But I’ve got a guest room, so he sleeps over sometimes.”

“Why?” came out more harshly than she’d intended, the memory of the cold way his eyes had passed over her in the kitchen before the only opinion she had of the guy.

Mike shrugged again, his sideways smile faltering. “He gets into the beer too hard and no way does he
need to drive all the way back to Kennesaw like that.”

“But
– ”

“We’ve been friends forever,” he cut her off, smile returning as his hand slid over the top of her foot and up her leg,
settling on her knee as he leaned in closer. “Don’t worry about it.”

Delta pulled herself upright against the arm of the sofa. “You’re telling me what to do?”

“You don’t have a problem telling me what to do,” he said, still smiling.

She wanted to be miffed, especially when he hooked his hands behind her knees, pulled her legs all the way across his lap until she was right up close to him and leaned in to kiss her. But instead she opened her lips under his and speared her fingers through his hair.
She had, after all, picked Mike; it was time she admitted that to herself and quit being obstinate.

10
.

“W
on’t he hear us?” Delta asked at the top of the staircase. She swore she could feel Tam glaring at her through the walls as she glanced down the narrow, dark hall that stretched away from the landing.

Mike caught the hem of her sweater between two fingers and tried to tow her through the open door beside them, but she stood rooted in place.
“Depends. How much noise are you planning to make?” She swatted him away and his smile became exasperated. “What?”

She folded her arms and watched him rake a hand through his hair. “It’s just a little…uncomfortable is
all.”

“What, that my best friend is sleeping down the hall?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not uncomfortable that you’re sleeping with someone else?”

He said it so calmly, and with such a bland expression, it took a moment for the full effect to hit Delta, and then guilt gave a sharp tug at her conscience. Here she was turning her nose up because his friend was asleep down the hall from them, while she’d as much as admitted to playing two men against each other. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, but her sudden wash of shame brought the words up out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I haven’t been with Greg since I started seeing you,” she said, arms still wrapped around her middle, almost flinching as she looked up into his face.

She thought he almost smiled, but he caught himself. “So when’s that?
Since today?”

“Since your stupid ass came into my store trying to destroy the
whole perfume counter, okay?” She threw up her hands in defeat. “I am
not
sleeping with both of you.”

His smile was still in check somehow.
“That’s probably a good thing for Greg. No way would he measure up.”

“Do you ever get tired of being so charming?” she asked with a sigh, and his smile finally broke, white and brilliant.

“You like it.” He hooked a finger through a front belt loop on her jeans. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

**

His bedroom was dominated by a wall of windows that showcased the skyline as a net of lights against a black on indigo backdrop. Delta stared at the pinpricks of yellow through the gaps in the vertical blinds as she caught her breath, the gray satin sheets sticking to her damp skin. Mike thought he was some kind of pimp or ladykiller or some such bullshit with his king size bed – at least, that’s what she’d wanted to think until she’d remembered him crowding her out of her queen at home. And she’d quit berating the satin once she felt it against her skin. And now she lay on her back in the dark, planning her escape and hating the idea of it.

There was a soft hissing sound as the sheets parted and Mike’s hand slid across her stomach and hooked around her hip.
No, I have to leave,
she thought, but let him pull her into his chest. He was on his side, propped up on the arm that wasn’t wrapped around her, and even in the dark, there was enough ambient city glow to make out the whites of his eyes, the green irises looking black. Delta glanced away from them and out somewhere over the shadow that was his shoulder.

“I should probably get going,” she said, and heard hesitancy in her voice. On some level, she wa
nted to see if he would protest; wanted him to, even.

“What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?” he asked, fingers drumming slowly against her hip.

“Nine,” she admitted, knowing what he would say.

“
So tell me what time to set the alarm and you can stop by your place to doll yourself up on the way in,” he didn’t ask, but told her.

If she hadn’t still been flushed and limp, she might have argued. How had he not figured out that the male chauvinist routine didn’t work with her? She wasn’t someone who was told what to do. But when her eyes found his again, she thought there was a certain softness to them that wasn’t the product of shadows or her imagination. And as his hand went up and down the curve of her waist, she remembered the way he’d taken her hand in the bar parking lot
the night before, the way he’d walked her to her door. Under his obnoxious, persistent outer shell, he was a guy who worried about a girl’s safety, and that was too rare anymore.

“And just like that you think you can get me to spend the night?” she had to ask.

He grinned, his teeth a fast glimmer of white. “If I let you go, you’d tell everyone you know what a douche I am for making you drive home at one in the morning and you know it.”

“
I might tell them you’re a douche anyway.”

“But I’m a chivalrous douche.”

Delta snorted a laugh. “Do you ever stop?”

“Never.”
His hand left her as he twisted around and reached for the alarm clock on his nightstand. “What time?”

“Six-thirty.”

“Damn,” he murmured as he fiddled with the buttons in the dark. “No way do
you
need that long to do your makeup.”

“You’ll change your mind about that when you see me in the morning,” she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears. The thought left her stomach jumping in an unhappy way.

“Doubt it.” The clock went back to the nightstand. “Okay, six-thirty it is. You need anything else, your majesty?”

“Uninterrupted sleep, peasant.” S
he put on her haughty voice and slid down between the sheets, eyes closed and hands folded over her chest. Then bit down hard on a smile and counted.
Impact in five…four…three…

She squealed when he tackled her and the whole mattress flexed
under them. “Sleep?” he asked against her collar bone and her fingers went through his hair. “You’re underestimating me, sweetheart.”

She laughed, anticipation sweeping through her as her hands went down the back of his neck and across the thick bundles of muscle that draped his shoulders.
She predicted he’d keep moving lower, but Mike braced up on his hands and held himself above her a long, silent moment. Again his eyes were just shiny spots in his dark face, his body blocking her view of the windows.

“What?” she asked, feeling the sudden change that had come ov
er him as she swept her hands down his arms.

“I’m not one of those guys who
pisses all over his territory,” he said, and she frowned.

“Well…thank God for that, I guess.”

His face dropped low over hers and she became suddenly aware of just how small and vulnerable she was tucked beneath him like this. He played the idiot well, but he was capable, she realized, of scaring the hell out of someone. Not her – she wasn’t frightened – but he was intimidating all the same. “But I don’t want you to see Greg anymore.”

Delta felt her brows shoot up her forehead. “You’re the one who said you
wanted to compete. I told you – ”

“I know. But I changed my mind.”

Her nails dug into his biceps in silent warning. “Are you threatening me?”

“No,” he said evenly, “I’m
telling
you that I’m gonna threaten
him
if he doesn’t give up and go away.”

She wished for more light so she could read his expression. He sounded serious, though, more so than he had at any time before.
“He stopped by my apartment before I came over here tonight,” she said, trying to match his tone. “He’s completely offended that I’m ‘screwing’ you. You won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Good.” She swore he smiled before he ducked his head and kissed her.

**

Mike spent more of his lunch break than he could afford trying to decide if Delta would wrinkle her nose at the cliché red roses he finally settled on at the florist’s counter. He decided she’d probably wrinkle her nose at whatever he took her, because that was just the kind of difficult as hell girl she was. He consoled himself over the knowledge that Greg was gone, that she hadn’t been playing him against the guy, that she’d finally fallen asleep tucked against his side and had borrowed his toothbrush and a t-shirt as she’d stood at his bathroom counter, hair a mess, makeup smudged away, bare toes quick on the cold tile.
Those images stamped in his head made the difficulty worth it.

With his
red roses, he stepped into the outer airlock at Nordstrom and checked his reflection in the glass of the interior door before he entered the store. He’d never in his life worried so much about his hair as he did now. Dating Ms. Perfect had a sobering effect on his ego.

A sales girl – there was probably some PC title for her aside from “girl” that he didn’t know or care about – met him just inside the entryway. “Good afternoon,” she said with an overly bright smile. He wasn’t sure Delta was even capable of smiling that way. “What can I help you with today?”

“Can I talk to your manager?” he asked, just to be cute, and watched fear go skittering across her perky expression.

“I…”

“Is Delta here?” he asked to save time and her heart rate. “I’m meeting her for lunch.”

Her smile didn’t come back,
though. “Um.” Her hands clasped together almost nervously. “Yes, she’s here. She’s with a guest. Would you like to wait and I’ll tell her you’re here? Mr.…?”

A tiny note of warning sounded in the back of his head. He tried to shove it aside, but it persis
ted. “Nah.” He stepped around the girl. “I’ll find her. Is her office in the back?”

“Yes, but, sir, customers aren’t allowed back there.” Her low heels clipped along the tile as she started to follow the path he cut between the jewelry and perfume counters.

“I’m not a customer,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m her boyfriend.”

“Shit,” the girl said under her breath, and that note of warning became a siren flashing red and blue lights around the inside of his head.

Delta wasn’t back in her office, but out on the floor, standing between two racks of designer belts. Mike saw her brown eyes, the sharp arches of her brows and the dark sweep of hair at the top of her head over a rack, and followed her gaze to the dark-headed, suit-and-tie asswipe she was talking to.

The guy wasn’t much taller than Delta,
and narrow-shouldered. Medium build and refined, rich-boy facial features. He was clearly old money breeding stock, country club ready right down to the polite frown he was giving her.
Greg
, Mike knew, and his hand curled into a fist around the stems of the roses, a thorn piercing the tissue paper wrap and biting into his palm.

“…I told you,” Delta was saying, her voice snappi
ng through her teeth, “that I – ”

Mike couldn’t let her finish. “Told him what?” he asked, loudly enough to snatch bot
h their heads in his direction. “That he was the only one you were banging? Or was that little story just for me?”