Her Best Man

But what if they could piece their relationship back together? Hadn’t today been a start?

Couldn’t it be the same, even with everything that’d happened after high school?

“Seems to me,” Tori said, “that you outgrew Dax and found D.J. today.”

A sense of panic—or maybe it was the shock of truth—zapped Allaire. “Wrong. Even if your appraisal held any grain of truth, I’d never date the brother of an ex-husband. It’d be awkward, to say the least.”

“Are you still in love with Dax or something? Because that’s not what you’ve been telling me every time I want to go to The Hitching Post on a Friday night.”

Allaire was already shaking her head. “I don’t love him anymore—not in that way. There’s still a…fondness, I suppose. We don’t hate each other. There aren’t even hard feelings. Our marriage was like one of those songs that doesn’t have a real ending, if that makes sense. It kind of repeated over and over until it faded to nothing.”

Tori was cocking her head, fully invested, urging Allaire to go on.

“Dax and I started dating in high school, and our feelings really were genuine. You know how it is when you’re younger. At that point, real life hasn’t intruded much. There aren’t any big compromises to be made yet. And we didn’t live with each other before the wedding, though we did get married shortly after high school. I gave up all the plans I’d made, like going to a state college and studying art in Europe. Those things didn’t matter at the time. I loved Dax and that was top priority.”

“And you got resentful eventually.”

Allaire wasn’t so sure it was resentment as much as regret. “Sometimes young love doesn’t mature very well, and that was what happened with us. When I was a girl, I was this…I guess you could say ‘fragile dreamer.’ And when it turned out that I had a buried independent streak—something I hadn’t been very aware of—Dax balked. Not that I blame him. He’d been expecting a wife who would devote her time to being with him on the racing circuit, and that lost its shine for me pretty quickly.”

“Understandable. So while Dax raced, did you start pursuing those old ambitions? Did you go over to Europe for some studying?”

“I wish.” She’d still been Dax’s wife, keeping the home fires burning. “But I did pursue an art education on a different scale. I decided that by going back to school and getting a teaching credential, I could still live a few dreams through my students. I mean, teaching—what a job, right? I’d get to share my love of art while creating some of it on my own, too. But Dax didn’t see it that way because he wanted me to cheer him on in every race. One night when he was off-circuit, he said I’d become a stranger, because I hadn’t minded being his pep club before. I took exception to that and asked him if he seriously thought I was just going to remain the same compliant dreamer I had been in school.”

Even now, that particular epiphany surprised her. It’d taken years for her to develop, yet so many things had stayed the same. She was still too worried about what others thought, and though she was much more sensible nowadays, she would always have a heart prone to dreaming.

That’s why she spent so much time doing freelance work besides her teaching, balancing the fantasy with the reality as she avoided having to face hard questions about life.

“Darlin’—” Tori leaned over the table to place a hand on Allaire’s arm “—you still might have a lot of sweet and fragile in you, but there’s the heart of a lion beneath it all.”

Allaire smiled, wondering if that were true, especially as she rested her gaze on the stage-bound set pieces.

She didn’t see much heart in her work at all.

The next night, D.J. made sure he wrapped up his meetings with the Rib Shack contractors on time and was out the door before the clock struck eight. Allaire had told him that she’d almost be done greeting her students and parents by that hour.

And D.J. wanted her all to himself.

As he parked his pickup in the lot, he told himself not to get excited. First of all, other teachers would still be around as de facto chaperones. Second of all, he shouldn’t expect her to suddenly realize she’d made a mistake in marrying Dax and run to him instead. He knew his old friend better than that. Both of them realized Dax would be standing between them, no matter how hard D.J. might hope that she really saw him—the man who’d been waiting for her to notice—and not his brother.

He walked into the school’s side entrance, moving past a rainbowed sign that said Open-School Night! Allaire had told him that she was based in Mr. Richard’s old classroom, so D.J. headed straight there. Funny how he still recalled these locker-lined halls, even with the changes—a new wing of classrooms, a revamped office area. Even the same stale school air lingered.

When he found Allaire leaning against a wall and chatting with another teacher, he almost tripped over his own boots. His pulse threaded in and out of itself in a demented race.

Her pale hair was up in that spiky bun again, and she was dressed in a beige suit with black piping that reminded him of a Victorian woman. Even her shoes were those black ankle boots that buttoned up the side.

She was his every fantasy, right here, in the flesh, and D.J. didn’t know if he had it in him to ever claim her.

But, again, he hadn’t come back to Thunder Canyon for Allaire. When he’d left, he’d promised himself that he would return only when he truly became a man worthy of winning her, and he wasn’t sure when he’d get to that point. Or if he ever would. Besides, it wasn’t in D.J. to disrespect Dax by taking up with his former wife. Even though D.J. and his sibling hadn’t spoken much over the years—only via phone calls when Dad had passed from a heart attack—they were still related. Still bonded by family, although D.J. hardly felt the connection.

When Allaire spotted him, he could’ve sworn that she was affected, too. Her gaze locked with his, digging into him until his heart blasted against his breastbone, chiseling at it.

Then she stood away from the wall, sending him a cool smile that had him wondering if he’d imagined the moment.

He took that as a hint to approach, his boot steps echoing off the walls like beats of a clock going backward in time.

Nodding at the older female brunette next to Allaire, D.J. said, “I’d forgotten how this place smelled.”

The brunette laughed. “Teenaged bodies. Sweat, perfume and a general sense of wildness.”

“Smoke, too,” D.J. added.

“From the bathrooms.” Allaire gestured down the hall, where a banner advertised the homecoming dance in pink-glitter glory. “We do our best to monitor, but it’s not always good enough.”

Quickly, she introduced D.J. to Mrs. Steph, the PE teacher and softball coach. Then the other woman excused herself, eager to get home to her family.

“Looks like the place cleared out,” he said while Allaire began walking him down the hall, away from her closed classroom.

“We got a rush around six-thirty. Now everyone’s in the family room watching prime-time TV, I suppose.”

Her talk was light, casual, but the ghosts of old kept thickening every word, weighting them with far more than she probably intended.

“You giving me a tour?” he asked, trying diligently to keep himself in check. But all he wanted to do was reach out—just one time—and touch her hair. He imagined it’d be as soft as the shampoo she’d always used: a lavender concoction. Yet now there was a certain kick to the scent that hadn’t existed before. It drew him until he had to fight himself back.

“A tour was the plan.” She grinned up at him, and it was as if they were back ten years, him walking her to physics or U.S. history. “You haven’t seen the new cafeteria yet. It’s our pride and joy.”

“Must be a trip for you to see how things change before your eyes here. It’s weird enough for me. All the benches and windows seem really small now.”

“Perspective, D.J. How can you not see things differently when you’ve come back here as a millionaire?”

The term struck him as uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Allaire shot him a curious glance. “Why not? You’re almost a Horatio Alger story—a kid who went to seek his fortune in a big city, apprenticing, then discovering he had a real knack for the restaurant business.”

Honestly, D.J. considered his success to be a bit ludicrous, his swollen bank account obscene. He’d never thought making so much money doing something he loved to be possible. But he’d paid a price, and the cost had been losing touch with the woman he’d secretly loved.

“Honestly,” he said, “I’m still not used to it all.”

She smiled, more to herself than him, really. “That’s not surprising. You were never flashy.”

Not like Dax.

Though the thought went unsaid, it was there, a solid specter.

She seemed to realize it, too. Flipping the subject, she said, “I’ll bet you have to pinch yourself every once in a while as a reminder that you can afford fine things, huh?”

She’d hit the nail on the head, as usual. No one else had ever come close to understanding his every thought. Still, she would never guess that he wished he could use his money to fulfill all those dreams Allaire had treasured in high school: moving to Paris to study the exhibits in the Louvre with all the time and care this would require, setting up an easel on the banks of the Seine to paint the sunset over the water.

But none of that mattered anymore. It couldn’t. Hell, even if D.J. ever summoned the courage to tell her how he felt—or, he told himself, how he used to feel—about her, he would always wonder if she was seeing him as the runner-up to the dashing Dax.