The Best Man for the Job

Marcus inwardly recoiled. Celia? A target? As if. He couldn’t stand her. And as she could stand him even less, even if he were insane/deluded/drunk enough to make a pass at her again, which he most certainly was not, in all likelihood he’d get a knee to the groin.

‘Didn’t we just clear that up?’ he muttered, really not wanting to dwell on that particular outcome.

‘Not very satisfactorily.’ Dan rubbed a hand along his jaw and frowned, as if in contemplation. ‘You know, Zoe mentioned she thinks you do it a lot.’

‘Do what?’

‘Scowl at Celia.’

‘Do I?’

Dan nodded. ‘Pretty much every time you come into contact, apparently.’

‘Oh.’

‘So what’s with the two of you? Why the friction? What did she do to you?’

Interesting that Dan thought it would be that way round when everyone else would have automatically assumed he’d be the one to blame. ‘She didn’t do anything to me,’ he said with a casual shrug. Apart from reject him. Resist him. Ignore him. Avoid him. And drive him bonkers by getting to him when he’d never had any trouble not letting her get to him before. ‘We just don’t get along. That’s all. Sorry.’

‘No. Well, she is something of an acquired taste, I’ll grant you.’

One that he’d briefly acquired when he’d been an angry and out-of-control teenager but wouldn’t be acquiring again, so he hmmed non-committally and sought to change the subject. ‘Zoe looks radiant,’ he said, watching the bride smiling and chatting, happiness shimmering all around her like some kind of corona.

‘She does,’ said Dan with the kind of pride in his voice Marcus couldn’t ever imagine feeling, which was just as well because marriage was not for him. ‘She also has a different take on it.’

‘A different take on what?’

‘You and Celia.’

Marcus frowned. So much for changing the subject. And what was Dan doing, making it sound as if he and Celia were a thing when they were anything but? ‘Does she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right.’

‘Want to know what she sees between the two of you?’

Not particularly. ‘Knock yourself out.’

‘Chemistry. Tension. Denial.’

Huh? Marcus reeled for a moment, then rallied because Zoe was wrong. Totally wrong. ‘She sees a lot,’ he said, keeping his expression poker.

‘She does.’

‘Too much.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘What makes her such an expert anyway?’

‘She’s made an art out of reading people. She’s generally right.’

‘Not this time.’

Dan shot him a shrewd look. ‘She reckons it’s like that kid analogy,’ he said.

‘What kid analogy?’ asked Marcus, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

‘The one about pulling the pigtails of the girl in class you fancy.’

At the odd spike in his pulse Marcus shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ he said, wondering what the hell the brief leap in his heart rate was all about.

‘If you say so.’

‘Celia deeply disapproves of me, and I—’ He stopped because how could he tell his best friend that he thought his sister was an uptight, judgemental, workaholic pain in the arse? ‘Anyway, wouldn’t it bother you?’ he said instead, although now he thought about it perhaps the question came fifteen years too late.

‘You two together?’

Marcus nodded. ‘Hypothetically speaking, of course. I mean, she’s your sister and I’m not exactly a paragon of virtue.’

‘It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest,’ said Dan easily. ‘Celia’s perfectly capable of looking after herself and, actually, if I was going to issue a big-brother kind of warning I’d probably be issuing it to her.’

‘Why?’

‘She’s a tough nut to crack.’

‘One of the toughest,’ Marcus agreed, because she was, and not only because she was the only nut he’d wanted but had never managed to crack. Not that he thought about that night much because, after all, it had been years.

‘She’d drive you to drink trying.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘And that would be a shame.’

‘Just as well you don’t have to worry about me, then, isn’t it? Although I do think you ought to be worrying about Zoe,’ he added, now just wanting this oddly uncomfortable conversation to be over. ‘She’s been cornered by your mother and a couple of your aunts.’

‘So she has,’ said Dan, that smile on his face widening as his gaze landed on his wife. ‘I’d better rescue her.’

‘Off you go, then.’

Dan must have caught the trace of mockery in his voice because he stopped and shot him a look. ‘One of these days it’s going to happen to you, you know.’

‘What is?’

‘Love and marriage.’

Marcus shook his head and laughed. ‘Not a chance.’ He valued his freedom far too much, and anyway, he’d seen what love could do. The pain it could bring. The tragedy it could result in. He’d been part of the fallout.