They’d ridden tricycles and bicycles together, played kick-ball and climbed trees. They’d gone skinny-dipping in the creek as teens until his father found out and tanned their fannies, criticized each other’s dates and walked arm-inarm to their high school graduation ceremony. They’d been there for each other during the darkest periods in each of their lives. And although she hadn’t seen as much of him in recent years, the knowledge that Charles had been just across the city had been a sort of lifeline, an anchor when the loneliness threatened to overwhelm her.
A ripple of whispering in the crowd behind her caught her attention and she glanced around, annoyed at the commotion. preparing to quell the chatterers with one of her best freezing stares. Honestly, people today had no sense of propriety. Or plain good manners.
Movement caught her eye. It was—it couldn’t be! As she recognized the dark head surging toward the front of the crowd, for one strange moment the ground rose up at her, tilted crazily, and settled back down only when she took a deep breath. She whipped her head back and faced front again, just as Charles’s older brother Dax—Travers Daxon Piersall the Fourth, if you please—stepped from the crowd and walked to her side, folding himself into the chair on her right.
Oh, God. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Panic rose. She nearly bolted from her chair before she remembered where she was, and she forced her quivering muscles to stillness. Flight was not an option. Besides, she told herself grimly, you aren’t the one who makes a habit of running away. That thought brought forth such a surge of unexpected rage that she clenched her hands into fists, fighting the resentment and hurt that had hardened into pure hatred years ago. She’d be damned if she’d let Dax’s unexpected, unwanted arrival chase her away.
The buzz of conversation grew fiercer, and in her peripheral vision, she saw his head turn. And the crowd grew quiet.
Why, oh, why hadn’t he gotten flabby around the middle or worn bottle-thick glasses? Walked with a cane. Been follically challenged? Any little flaw would have done.
She hadn’t taken more than that one horrible glance of identification, but it had been enough to show her that Dax hadn’t lost one iota of his looks. If anything, his dark masculine presence had only intensified in his years away, and his shoulders looked as broad and strong as ever. The long thigh resting just to the right of her own, mere inches away, stretched taut over lean, muscled flesh hidden beneath the sober dark suit pants. A memory of that thigh, and the ecstasy it had brought pushing between her own, tried to roll across the mental screen in her head, and she ruthlessly chopped it into a million pieces.
Thank God she hadn’t let her own figure go. Thank God. She looked damn good and she knew it. Her body was in great shape, courtesy of her never-ending calorie-counting, the stair machine, the free weights and legions of expensive skin lotions and hair appointments. Her nails were flawlessly lacquered in an appropriate, understated pale peach, her hair perfectly styled, and her black summer suit, bought during a terrific sale at a cute little boutique at Owings Mills Mall, fit every slender, sculpted, hard-earned curve perfectly.
Damn him. If only he’d wilted a little around the edges of his youth and good health. It would have been wonderful if she could have looked at him, this man she’d loved and had planned to marry, and wondered what she’d ever seen in him in the first place. Instead, she could barely breathe, and her heart was galloping away, leaving the rest of her to be dragged along behind by a stirrup.
The crowd behind her murmured, “Amen,” and she realized they’d come to the conclusion of Charles’s and Alma’s funeral service. The minister stepped aside and she rose to do her part.
Beside her, Dax also stood. As she moved forward with two yellow roses, a last token of her friendship, he slipped his hand beneath her elbow, wrapping long fingers around her upper arm and holding her firmly against his side.
She cast him a furious glance, tugging her elbow away, but he didn’t let her go. For the first time, their eyes met, and the cynical amusement she read in his black eyes made her grit her teeth so hard she heard them grinding together. If he thought he was going to force her into making a scene here, he was sadly mistaken. She’d come to pay her last respects to his younger brother—
Charles. Oh, God, Charles and Alma. The fight went out of her and she had to lock her knees against the sudden weakness that threatened.
The reason for Dax’s presence exploded in her mind again. Charles couldn’t be dead, couldn’t be lying in cold abandoned silence in that white box. He was the only person in the whole world who knew everything there was to know about Jillian Elizabeth Kerr, and she needed him. She needed his undemanding friendship, the total support he’d always offered, the shoulder for her tears.
And Alma. Sweet, gentle Alma. Charles hadn’t expected to love her, but she’d been the best thing that could have happened to him, and she’d accepted Jillian’s place in his life as easily as she would have a real sister. Alma’s shoulder also had been dampened by tears, though Jillian had stopped shedding them years ago.
But those tears were trying desperately to get out today. She pressed her lips together to still their quivering, standing silently for a moment before leaning forward to lay down her offering atop each casket, then moving aside so others could pay their respects.
Dax’s fingers touching her arm burned through the suit cloth and as soon as she wasn’t the focus of attention any more, she did yank her arm away. “Get your hands off me, Dax, unless you want to lose those fingers.”
They had moved out into the sunlight, and his perfectlycut black hair gleamed, so deep a midnight hue that not the slightest trace of copper or indigo highlight would dare show itself. He looked every inch the successful American male. He chuckled at her words, though there was no humor in the sound, and his deep voice raked over exposed nerve endings like sugar on a bad tooth. “I’m glad to see you’re as charming as ever, honey-bunch. I just got into town. Aren’t you going to fall all over me and welcome me home?”
“You’re about seven years too late.” She could have cut out her tongue as soon as the words came out—the last thing she wanted was for him to think his leaving had bothered her so much she still remembered it. But the old endearment had rattled her, brought memory nudging again at the door closed and locked on that chapter of her life.
His eyes narrowed, and something dark and scary moved beneath the polished charm for a moment, making her almost—almost—step back. But she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
His eyes cut toward the coffins behind them. “Shame about old Charlie. And his wife. I never met her but she really must have been some hot number, for him to drop you like a hot potato.”
Monster. How could he talk so callously about his own brother? The fist around her heart squeezed painfully, but all she said was, “Alma was very special. Charles cherished her.”
The inverted Vs of his dark eyebrows lifted. “I bet that really ticked you off. Or did he keep you around for a little side action when things got dull?”
Her brain ingested the words, rolled them around and tried several times to connect them before she realized what he meant. “You bastard. Don’t make assumptions about my life. You don’t have a clue what Charles and I felt for each other. Oh, excuse me—” she nodded graciously as if something had just occurred to her “—I forgot. You’re better at assumptions than you are at commitments.”
She was standing almost toe-to-toe with him now, although it was hard to look him in the eye without tilting her head backward since he was so much taller than she. The dark thing in his eyes flickered and flared to life, and she recognized contempt, and a rage as deep as her own.
“Jill?” The husky feminine voice carried a note of worry. “What’s wrong?”
Jillian turned. Her sister Marina was rushing toward her, practically dragging her husband Ben along in her wake.
Jillian moved toward her, taking her hands and slowing her to a halt. “Nothing’s wrong.” She made an