Crystal Green – Her Best Man (страница 3)

Then, just when D.J.’s heart hadn’t had any pieces left to be broken, she’d asked him to be their best man.

Normally, D.J. wouldn’t have refused her anything, ever, yet this was different. When he’d gracefully tried to get out of the wedding, she’d begged him to reconsider. Like the good guy he was, he’d broken down, then agreed, leaving her none the wiser as to his feelings. Smiling through the ceremony and acting the part of happy brother-in-law had left him with wounds he’d struggled to heal by returning to college at the University of Georgia and creating a life that didn’t include his brother and new wife.

From that point on, it had been too painful for D.J. to return to live in Thunder Canyon, as he’d always planned. Strange, because he’d pictured himself coming back as a man who’d made himself into someone Dax could never be—truly the best man. In D.J.’s mind, he would win Allaire over once she recovered from the rejection he was still sure Dax would deal out. But the marriage had endured, which meant D.J.’s part in Allaire’s life was over.

So he’d stayed in Atlanta and directed his energies to making good on his business degree. He’d become wealthy by first working at a barbecue joint for pocket change, then experimenting with his own recipe for rib sauce.

The rest was history, until Riley Douglas and the gang—Grant, Marshall, Mitchell and Russ—had persuaded him to open a Rib Shack at the resort.

D.J. had resisted at first, recalling how agonizing it had been to see Allaire at his dad’s funeral, even if he had been grateful his brother had had someone to stand by his side and comfort him. However, D.J. had eventually realized that he was over Allaire now, five years later. It was about time, too. So he’d taken his friends up on their offer, returning to Thunder Canyon as a better man than he’d left…

But at this moment, in the aftermath of Allaire’s latest rejection, D.J. realized that maybe he still wasn’t good enough.

As they stood silently on the grass of the high school that had brought so many good times to their lives, D.J. called upon the confidence he had developed as a wildly successful businessman. You didn’t come out here to win over Allaire, you idiot. You came here to hire an artist for the Shack. Don’t take her refusal personally.

Just as their extravagantly tense pause got to the point of absurd, D.J. forced a grin. “Sorry to hear you can’t do it. You were my first choice.”

Always his first choice.

She dug the toe of her boot into the grass, her arms folded over her chest. “I do want to take it on, but it’s…” She exhaled, then looked him in the eye.

It was a shock to his system, one that had never lost its surge.

“Is this about Dax?” he asked gently, hiding his anger with his older brother. He’d become a pro at that early on. “What would he have to say?”

“It’s not what he’d have to say. It’s that I…we might seem…disrespectful, maybe.” She paused. “It might be insensitive of me to spend a lot of time with you when he and I don’t even talk anymore.”

They didn’t talk anymore. That’s what the gang had told D.J., too. Funny how people, whether they were ex-lovers or ex-friends, just retreated when things got too awful to bear. But it didn’t sound like Dax’s style to fade into any background.

Allaire continued. “Sometimes I’ll see him across the Super-Save Mart or on the street. He’s lost his swagger, D.J., and I don’t want to add to that.”

A warped part of D.J. hit on an irony: while in Atlanta, he had gained the confidence Dax must have misplaced. Weirder still, Thunder Canyon seemed to be sucking it right back out of D.J., too.

It gave him no joy to know his brother probably had shadows in his eyes, just like Allaire. D.J. had always hated the part of himself that envied Dax his breezy good looks and charisma, both inherited from their dad and missing from the much more reserved younger son of the family.

There’d only been one time—after Dax had suffered that near-fatal accident—that D.J. had almost let go of his resentment. Seeing Dax out cold on the hospital bed, so weak, had almost dissolved all the years of alienation and hard feelings.

Almost. When the doctor had told D.J. that Dax would be okay, D.J. had left just as secretively as he’d come in, unwilling to put his wounded brother through the distress D.J.’s presence would have no doubt caused.

“Allaire,” he said, “I can understand why you’d feel that way about respecting Dax.”

“You can?”

“Sure. You’ve always been sensitive to how others feel. But Dax can take care of himself. I doubt he’s going around thinking about how his every action is affecting your opinion.”

When her eyes darkened, D.J. wanted to smack himself. He hadn’t meant to insinuate that she was entirely out of Dax’s mind. How could anyone forget her?

Yet he couldn’t say that out loud, not without giving himself away and risking another sure rejection.

“What I meant,” he said, “is that he’s probably trying to get on with life.”

She laughed shortly. “You don’t have to sugarcoat it, D.J. He’s moved on after four years, all right. And…well, so have I. I never would’ve agreed to a divorce if I’d still loved him like a wife should.”

Again, a terrible part of him—a part he wanted to disown—lightened at the news that she didn’t feel for Dax anymore.

If that was even true.

But something about the ingenuous way Allaire watched D.J. told him that she really didn’t have any emotion left for his brother.

Then again…

God, he needed to stop thinking about how she still might be drawn to Dax.

He shoved his free hand into his coat pocket. All he wanted to do was go to her, touch her. Damn it, he really hadn’t gotten over her at all, had he? And here she was, more ignorant than ever as to how he felt.

Was he really putting himself through this again? Had he returned to Thunder Canyon to be that same old “nice guy” who’d never stepped up to take what he wanted?

Of course not. He was a respected businessman, a success story. This lovesick adolescent boy stuff was going to disappear any second now.

Any second.

In the silence, Allaire offered him a tiny smile—a hint of devilishness on the face of an angel—and D.J. went liquid.

Damn it.

“The thing is,” she said softly, “I really missed you. Missed our old talks. Missed how we could sit around and never even have to talk. I’ve missed having you in my life.”

He tried to barricade himself against her, but it was useless. Still, he found himself assuming the old D.J.’s way of fooling her, of being that steady, loyal, nonthreatening best friend who just stood back while everyone else went after their heart’s desire. The kid who knew all too well how it felt to be left behind.

“I missed you, too, Allaire.”

Had he ever.

“So,” she said, her smile widening, even though it was still tentative, “since I can’t be hanging around your restaurant for hours and hours, would you want to drop by after Open-School Night tomorrow so we can catch up?”

In public, he thought. A safe meeting.

She added, “I’d really like to spend more time chatting tonight, but I’ve got to do some touchups on the Thunder Canyon Cowboys set before the performance and then hole up with work. How about it?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, once more finding that he was helpless to deny her what she wanted.

The best friend. The nice guy.

They went on to small talk about her parents and how they were doing, about her teaching and how she liked it, about changes the gold rush had brought to Thunder Canyon. Then, after reminding him that she had to get to the dinner theater before tonight’s seating, Allaire told him the best time to meet her tomorrow, and D.J. walked her to her Jeep.

In the meantime, he ripped into himself for falling back into the same waiting-in-the-wings buddy he’d tried to leave behind. Nothing had changed between him and Allaire, and nothing ever would.

Yet when he got into his pickup and chanced a look in the rearview mirror, his heart flared.

Allaire was still standing outside her Jeep, an expression on her face that he’d never seen before.

An expression he couldn’t even begin to decipher.

A flicker of hope remained, lighting him up as she got into her car and drove off.

Chapter Two

“It was just…off,” Allaire said while touching up a painted stream on a background piece for Thunder Canyon Cowboys.

Tori had gotten restless while evaluating her essays at her apartment and had joined Allaire at the empty dinner theater.

“What do you mean by off?” she asked, a soy-cheese-and-tomato sandwich muffling her words as she sat at a table near the stage. Both she and Allaire had been experimenting with vegetarianism the past couple of months, ever since they’d met while prepping their classrooms during the summer. Little by little, the outgoing “new teacher” had encouraged Allaire to come out of the shell she’d built around herself after the divorce.

“I mean seeing D.J. again was a very different experience.” Allaire stepped away from the backdrop to survey her work, brush poised in her hand. “He didn’t seem like…you know…the old D.J. so much anymore. But then again, he did. Does that make any sense?”