Wedding Party Collection: Always The Bachelor. Barbara Hannay
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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