Wedding Party Collection: Always The Bachelor. Barbara Hannay
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a good team. They used to have fun.
Even worse, she was pretty sure she actually disliked him a little less than she had this morning.
Oh, this was bad.
Hating Dillon was her only defense, her only ammunition. She depended on it.
Without that hate, she could no longer ignore the fact that he’d irreparably broken her heart.
Do you suspect your man is lying to you? Trust your intuition. Odds are, he probably is.
—excerpt from The Modern Woman’s Guide to Divorce (And the Joy of Staying Single)
Ivy learned two important lessons that night.
The first was that the only thing worse than having to face her ex again was having to face him in her ratty old nightshirt with the sleeves torn off, wet, tangled hair and no makeup.
The second, more valuable, lesson was always lock your bedroom door.
“Whoops,” Dillon said from the open doorway when he saw her lying in bed on her stomach, on top of the covers, her laptop open in front of her.
She scrambled onto her knees, tugging the shirt down over her pale, sun-deprived legs, kicking herself for not visiting the tanning bed a few times before she left. Then kicking herself a second time for caring what he thought. “What are you doing in here?”
He looked genuinely baffled. “Guess I got the wrong room.”
She couldn’t help wondering how he’d managed that, since Deidre had had the decency not to put them in adjacent rooms and his was located at the opposite end of the house.
“Huh.” Dillon glanced down the hall in the direction he’d come from. “I must’a made a wrong turn at the stairs.”
She dragged her fingers through her knotted hair, cursing herself for not running a brush through it. Her mother, the cosmetologist, had spent years hammering into her head that to avoid damage to the ends and give her thin hair more body, it should be brushed after it dried. Which shouldn’t have been a problem since she hadn’t been anticipating company.
Or in Dillon’s case, an intruder.
You don’t care, she reminded herself.
“Well, as you can see, this isn’t your room, so…good night.”
He looked casually around, as if he had every right to be there. “Hey, this is nice.”
“Yeah, it’s great.” And she knew for a fact it was not much different than his room.
Rather than leave, Dillon stepped farther inside, wedging his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. A move completely nonthreatening, but she felt herself tense. “I think your room is bigger than mine. And damn, look at that view.”
Without invitation, and in a move arrogantly typical of him, he crossed the room to the open French doors and stepped outside onto the balcony.
Ugh! The man was insufferable!
Forgetting about her unsightly white skin, she jumped up out of bed and followed him. Staring at her from a balcony a dozen yards away was one thing. She could even live with the teasing, but this was her room, her only refuge this week, and he had no right to just barge in uninvited. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving only a hazy magenta ghost in its wake, and specks of glittering light dotted the heavens. And in the not so far distance she could hear the waves crashing against the bluff. Add to that the cool breeze blowing off the water and it was a perfect night. If not for the man standing there.
He whistled low and shook his head. “Yes, ma’am, quite a view.”
“Your room faces the same ocean, so I doubt the view is all that different at the opposite end of the house. Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you go check.”
Ignoring the razor-sharp edge of irritation in her voice, he propped both hands on the railing and made himself comfortable. “No, sir, you don’t see stars like this in Dallas.” He sucked in a long, deep breath and blew it out. “No smog, either.”
She wasn’t quite sure of the point of the “aw, shucks” routine, but it was getting really annoying. “Dillon, I want you to leave.”
He turned to her, his face partially doused in shadow, wearing that crooked grin. “No, you don’t.”
Damn him. He still knew exactly which buttons to push. But she wasn’t going to take the bait. She wasn’t the young, emotionally adolescent girl he remembered. She was going to stay calm. “Yes, I do.”
“It’s been ten years. We have a lot of catching up to do.” His eyes strayed to the front of the threadbare, oversize shirt and the grin went from amused to carnal.
Exactly what kind of catching up did he think they would be doing? And was he familiar with the phrase, when hell freezes over?
“You always did wear T-shirts to bed. Usually mine.” He hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and something dangerously hot flickered in his eyes.
“You said you liked ’em ’ cause they smelled like me.”
She crossed her arms and shot him a chilling look.
Undaunted, his eyes wandered over her. “And I see that you still wait until your hair is dry to brush it.”
She hated that he still knew her so well. That he’d bothered to remember anything about her at all. And the only reason he had was to use it against her. To make her uncomfortable. To knock her off balance and lower her defenses so he could go in for the kill.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I’ll bet you do all those things subconsciously,” he mused. “Because deep down you still love me and you want me back.”
The mercury on her temper began a steady climb, and she clamped her teeth over the sarcastic reply that was trying like hell to jump out of her mouth.
You will not show this man how angry he’s making you, she chanted to herself. You will not let him get the best of you.
“Isn’t there a technical term for that?” he asked.
Yeah, there was a term for it.
Nuts.
Which he was if he honestly believed she had any feelings left for him. Favorable ones, that is.
“Don’t we have a high opinion of ourselves,” she said.
He grinned. “May be, but you can’t say that I’m not consistent.”
No, she definitely couldn’t say that. He’d never once failed to let her down.
And this conversation was going nowhere.
“Look, I appreciate the way you defended Deidre against the Tweedles at dinner, but let’s not pretend that I don’t know exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”
Amusement quirked up the corner of his mouth. “Tweedles?”
Ivy slapped a hand over her mouth. Oh, jeez. Had she really said that out loud?
“Like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?” A deep rumble of infectious laughter rolled from his chest and had a grin tugging at the corners of her own mouth.
And just as quickly it fizzled away.
Ugh!
He was doing it again. Softening her up. Lowering the ick factor of just being near him.
“You need to leave,” she said. “I have work to finish.”
He didn’t move. “I