Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) (12 page)

Whoever she was, she was the girl who’d been on Tam’s lap in 2003. The girl he’d snarled at her about and turned vicious for. The girl he didn’t want her to tell Mike about…

She was introduced to brother Walt, brother-in-law Dylan, and suffered an up-nod from Jordan. Then: “My sister Jo,” Mike said, and the little girl with the big eyes who was Tam’s secret offered a handshake and a cool, appraising look.

Tam had had a secret affair with Mike’s little sister.

**

Dessert was pumpkin pie (homemade), brownies with ice cream, cookies…more than Delta wanted or needed. She balanced a too-full plate on her knee and pretended to nibble at it as Beth Walker sat across the coffee table from her.

“I love your shoes,” Mike’s mother said. “Where’d you get them?”

“At work – Nordstrom.”

“Oh.” Beth frowned. “I don’t shop there.”

“I do,” Walt’s wife
, Gwen, said. “The one in Buckhead?”

“Yes.”

They were an odd collection of people. Trying to be sweet, trying to impress, and not giving a damn all at the same time. They made her head hurt.

“What about your dress?” Beth asked. “It’s very nice too.”

“It was a gift,” Delta lied. “I’m not sure where it’s from. Macy’s, I think.”

Beth plucked self-consciously at her own sweater set and Delta wished the floor would open up and swallow her.
Mike’s mother was a little soft in the middle and there was just a smidge of gray her hairdresser had missed in her blonde hair. She did look like her parents’ housekeeper, crow’s feet and all, and it left Delta horribly guilty for some reason.

“Jo.
” Mike’s other sister, Jessica, said, “I keep trying to tell you that you’d look good in a sweaterdress like that.”

Jo was sitting in a massive, lumpy chair with her brother Jordan, her socked feet on the coffee table. She snorted. “You couldn’t pay me to wear something like that.”

“Joanna,” her mother scolded. “Manners.”

“I was just saying
– ”

“I
know what you were just saying.” Beth scowled. “Don’t say it again.”

Jo made a face that her brother mimicked, and she elbowed him.

“So, Delta.” Beth turned back to her, her polite façade stressed. “How long have you known Mikey?”

“Mom,” Mike said under his breath with a groan, and Delta didn’t know which bothered him more – the question or the nickname.

“About…” the truth of
a week
was obscene. It felt worlds longer than that. “A month,” she lied again.

Beth’s expression told her that still wasn’t long enough.

“Where’d you guys meet?” Gwen asked, a fist propped on her chin, looking dreamy and delighted at the prospect of a story.

“Yes, how did you?” Beth added. “I had no idea you were serious about anyone, Mike.” She glared at her son. “I would have appreciated knowing.”

Delta put a bite of chocolate chip cookie in her mouth and let Mike tell the story. It didn’t sound charming or cute or destined-to-be as he related it in monotone. It just sounded like one awkward mistake that had led to this awkward mistake of a moment in this house where she was an alien.

**

It was only nine-thirty when Mike parked in front of her apartment building, but it felt like one a.m. He was a bad mix of tired and restless, and Delta’s silence on the drive told him she was feeling the same way. It was too soon to dissect the strange day they’d just had, and he wasn’t sure when he would want to. Meeting families was always awkward. But they hadn’t known each other that long, which made it even worse.

He followed her silently up the stairs and through the door into her apartment. They took off their coats and she stepped out of her shoes.

“You want a drink?” she asked, already heading for her kitchen.

“What’ve you got?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

He heard the
pop
of a wine cork and stepped across the threshold to find her pouring two glasses of something white. Not his choice, but like she’d said, it didn’t matter. She passed a glass across the center island to him and he chugged it in one long swallow. Delta lifted her brows over her own glass, but said nothing.

“So we met the families,” he said. “Guess that’s kind of a big deal.”

“Guess so.” She swept her headband off with one hand and massaged her scalp with the other, hair shimmering and chocolate in the low light over her stovetop. “I should probably call it a night,” she said, and Mike tensed at
I
;
I
wasn’t an invitation for him to join her. “Black Friday tomorrow and I’ve gotta be up early.”

“Glad I don’t work retail,” he said, and settled his forearms on the center island of her kitchen. “I can sleep late.”

Her smile was quick, tight, untrue. “Good for you.”

I’ve learned to expect mistakes when it comes to my
daughter,
Dennis Brooks’ words came back to Mike now. God knew, in her family, “mistake” could have meant a bad manicure. But more likely, it meant she carried her father’s constant disapproval; today had rattled her.

It had rattled him too, though, and the last thing either of them really needed was to part ways with pretend smiles and insincere promises to call. Well, maybe not
needed
so much as
wanted
. He didn’t
want
to walk out of here and go home to let all the day’s bullshit turn into indigestion.

“Come on.” S
he started around the island, eyes on her bare toes. “I’ll walk you out.”

Mike darted out a hand and caught her wrist – caught her startled attention
, too, because her eyes came to his with a sudden little gasp.

“Shit, you scared me,” she scolded, a frown curling down the corners of her mouth. Her lip gloss was all but gone, and her lips were pale, her eyes liquid and dark and unhappy.

“I didn’t mean to.” He gave her wrist a gentle squeeze and felt the fluttering of her pulse under his fingers. “But I’m not leaving.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.” He started to pull her toward him and she came, up on her tiptoes and trying to look resistant. “And I don’t think you want me to.”

“You’re going to tell me what I want?” she challenged, and he thought he saw a tremor in her jaw, felt a shiver in her arm. He didn’t understand either.

“No, I’m just guessing,” Mike said and offered her a smile as his thumb moved over the faint blue veins just beneath her skin. “And I’m a little afraid that if I walk out, I won’t hear from you again.” Her jaw worked as she ground her teeth together. “And after all that stupid shit with our families, I think we need to take a sec and remind ourselves why we’re doing this.”

“Doing what?” she tried to pull away and he wouldn’t let her.

“Seeing each other.”

“Well if you want to keep seeing each other, you’ll turn loose. Because news flash, Walker, I’m not some bitch who secretly longs to be dominated.
Don’t
manhandle me.”

But Mike didn’t let go. “I’m not hurting you,” he said, “and I’m not going to ‘dominate’ you. Calm down.”

She coughed a humorless laugh. “Calm down? I’m not wound up.”

“Yeah you are. You’re wound so tight you can’t even stand for me to touch you.”

She started to protest, he could tell. Her mouth opened, the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth, a deep breath gathered. But then she released it in a shaky rush, her eyes rolling to the ceiling.

“I don’t aim to piss you off,” he prodded. “But I can’t stay on your good side if you don’t
tell me what’s wrong.”

“Wrong,” she repeated with a non-smile, still staring at the ceiling. It was a long moment before her eyes dropped to his, wide and sparkling like coffee. “I don’t have a damn clue how to deal with you,” she said just above a
whisper. “And it scares the hell out of me.”

Mike wanted to laugh. The dinner he’d endured with her family and
she
was scared?
Ha!
But he didn’t say that, instead urged her even closer, until they were almost touching, and straightened away from the island; her head fell back on her neck as she looked up at him. “Stop overthinking things,” he said, and swept her hair aside as he palmed the back of her head. “At least for tonight?”

She nodded.

**

Delta wasn’t lying; Mike was nothing like her father…the men in her life…he was nothing like what she’d been taught to want, and that scared her. He was everything she’d always thought she didn’t want…but wanted him anyway. And that truly did scare the hell out of her. She fought with herself every second over him, and it made her want to fight
with
him. Settling into a rhythm with him would feel like losing some much-needed part of herself…wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it feel like sacrificing principles and teachings?

Or maybe it just felt like his lips falling through open air and landing against hers in the middle of her shadowy kitchen. Maybe that’s all it was supposed to feel like. Maybe she worried too much.

If a man could kiss without selfishness, that’s what he did. Unconscious, reckless, excited, his lips slanted across hers and his tongue ran across her lower lip, asking her to respond and be just as unconscious and reckless as he wanted to be.

Delta splayed her hands across his hard
pecs, over the starched cotton of his oxford, and let the tension bleed out of her. Her neck went limp, head cradled in his big palm, and she closed her eyes and opened her mouth and let him kiss her. Let her lips and tongue dance with his. Listened to the graceless, wet sounds of it and pressed her body against his.

His hand slid slowly down the back of her neck, his thumb tracing along her pounding carotid. His teeth scraped across her lip and Delta stretched up on her toes, hating and loving how tall he was. His other hand went to her hip and he pivoted them until the edge of the counter bit into her back. She didn
’t care, though, because he reached down her thigh for the hem of her dress.

Mike pulled back a fraction and Delta caught herself reaching for him, eyes fluttering open, feeling drugged and flushed, lips parted. His thumb brushed across her chin as his other hand slipped under her dress. His green eyes were dancing and electric in the faint light from above her stovetop, his smile ruthless.

“You still wanna walk me out?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Asshole,” she accused, and his mouth came back to hers, his kiss warm, sweet, clinging.
Turning her insides to melted butter. Her fingers went to the top button just below his collar and slipped it loose, went down to the second, the third. The feel of his skin beneath the pads of her fingers sent a thrill licking up her spine that was ridiculous and probably should have shamed her, but she didn’t care. His tongue was sliding over hers and his hand was on the move.

He pushed the clinging fabric of her dress up around her hips, the cool air against the tops of her thighs giving her gooseflesh. His hand was big and warm though, old calluses on his palm giving her the shivers for an entirely different reason. He kissed her and leaned into her, pushing her back against the counter, and his hand went between her legs, thumb teasing her through her panties.

“Mike,” she murmured against his lips. The last of his buttons came loose and she spread her palms across the hard, smooth planes of his abs, his muscles leaping at the touch. “We should – ”
Go to the bedroom,
died in her throat as both his hands went to her hips and he spun her before she could argue.

“No,” left her on a gasp as her palms clapped against the granite countertop. “No,” she repeated, more urgently, and tried to step away. She could feel him against her back, hard and ready, and his arms were around her, trapping her.

“Delta.” His head dropped over her shoulder and his voice was right up against her ear. Deep. Soft as velvet. “You’re fine, sweetheart.”

She took a deep breath, frightened and not even sure why.

His hands slipped under her dress again, slid up the flat of her belly. Slow. Methodical. She watched them under her cream dress, chest lifting as her breath continued to play catch and release. She was hot as hell, her skin full of feverish needles, and even as she worried that she wasn’t in control, a larger part of her didn’t care. He was big and solid around her, turned on too, and he made her feel so, so good like she hadn’t in so long.

Her bra was unlined black lace and he pulled the cups down. His hands moved under her sweater, the very tips of his thumbs tracing over and around her nipples with a lazy slowness that went on and on, until they were hard against his touch.

“You know you’re gorgeous,” he breathed in her ear. “But I think you are too, if that counts for anything.”

Her head kicked back against his shoulder and her eyes searched for his face. She caught just a flutter of his lashes, a fast snatch of green eyes. “Kiss me again?” she asked.