Wedding Party Collection: Always The Bachelor. Barbara Hannay

don’t I believe you?” He eased away from the ledge, and she resisted the urge to step back. “You know, I could always tell when you were lying.”

      “I guess it takes one to know one,” she snapped.

      The humor slipped from his face, and she could see that she’d hit a nerve. Well, good. He had it coming.

      Then why did she feel like such a louse?

      He took another step closer. “Did I ever lie to you, Ivy?”

      “I am not doing this.” She turned and walked to the closet. She flung the door open and snatched her robe from the hanger. “I refuse to get sucked into a conversation about a relationship that has been over for ten years.”

      She thrust her arms through the sleeves and bound the belt securely at her waist. She swung around and nearly plowed into him. He was right behind her.

      “The truth, Ivy.” Every trace of playful cockiness had disappeared from his voice. “Did I ever once lie to you?”

      Her heart rattled around in her chest. She remembered this man. The quiet, serious, alter ego. His appearances had been rare, but they had always intimidated the hell out of her. And Dillon knew it.

      Had he been hiding in the background all this time, waiting for just the right moment to pounce?

      “I don’t owe you a thing.”

      He stepped closer, his eyes locked on her face, and every cell in her body went on full alert, every neuron in her brain lit off like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

      “Did I ever lie to you?”

      Don’t do it, she warned her traitorous subconscious. Don’t you dare say what you’re thinking. It doesn’t matter anymore. It will only make things worse.

      Don’t say a word.

      He stepped closer, until he was only inches away. His hair was a little windblown from his walk along the beach, and she could smell the scent of the ocean on his skin and clothes. Steel-blue eyes bore through her, stripping her bare, and her feet felt cemented to the floor.

      She couldn’t move.

      “Ivy?”

      “No!” she shrieked, no longer able to contain the anger and frustration and hurt that had been festering for far too long. “You never lied to me, Dillon. In fact, you made it distinctly clear just how little our marriage meant to you.”

      She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth, but it was too late to take them back. She was still bitter and hurt by the divorce and now he knew it. And she didn’t doubt he would use it against her.

      For several long seconds he just stared at her, his expression impossible to decipher. Finally, his voice neither warm nor cold, he said, “I wasn’t the one who walked out the door.”

      His words felt like a slap across the face and literally knocked her back a step. He wasn’t suggesting the demise of their marriage was her fault, was he? There was only one person to blame, and he was standing right in front of her.

      Who had repeatedly stayed out every night and come home drunk while she had done her best to get an education? Who had blown his money gambling week after week?

      And who had sicced his father on the grant committee and had her scholarship revoked?

      May be he hadn’t lied, but what he’d done was worse.

      He’d let her down.

      For a second they just stood there looking at each other, then he shook his head, so subtly she had to wonder if she’d really seen it or if it had been a trick of the light.

      “Good night, Ivy.” He turned and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

      And for some stupid reason she felt like crying.

      She didn’t care what he believed. What had happened to their marriage was not her fault. She may have been the one to physically walk out the door, but emotionally, Dillon had already been long gone.

      Ivy dove into the pool, limbs slicing across the still water like a hot knife through cool butter. Thanks to Mr. I-never-lied-to-you, she’d slept like hell and woke at dawn. But with each stroke she could feel the stress from the previous night begin to evaporate, burned away by the adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her bloodstream.

      She’d always had something of a love/hate relationship with exercise. She’d been blessed with a naturally slim figure, so her sporadic visits to the gym never caused her concern. In the last few years, however, she’d noticed things gradually beginning to expand and spread.

      Hence her daily morning swim. It was the one thing that felt the least like real exercise. And while it wouldn’t bring back the figure of her youth, she was able to comfortably maintain her present weight.

      She only wished some of that extra weight had been redistributed to her less than impressive bustline.

      She completed her laps and surfaced, and there, not three feet away, lay Dillon in a lounge chair beside the pool, a mug of coffee in one hand. Watching her, of course.

      Here we go again.

      She couldn’t see what he had on from the waist down, other than the fact that his feet and calves were bare, but from the waist up he wore a deep tan and a sleepy smile. One that said, hmm, how can I mess with Ivy today?

      She ignored the sudden lightness in her chest, the jittery, nervous feeling in her stomach. She repressed the why me groan working its way up her chest.

      “Morning,” he said. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw and his hair had that mussed, just-rolled-out-of-the-sack look.

      She wondered how long he’d been sitting there watching her. She’d never seen him crawl out of bed before ten in the morning. Usually it was closer to noon.

      She swam to the ladder and climbed out, facing away from him, feeling uncomfortable despite her modest one-piece suit. It was still too revealing. Too likely to show off the changes in her body, when his own physique appeared to have only improved with age.

      And really, why did she care?

      She wrapped herself in a towel, squeezing the excess water from her hair. “You’re awake early.”

      “I’m an early riser these days.”

      Just her luck. More time he could spend harassing her.

      Yet nothing good would come of letting him see that he was irritating her. Last night was an unfortunate setback. It was imperative that today she play it cool. She had to be patient.

      She grabbed her iced coffee from the table where she’d left it and turned to her ex. When she realized how he was dressed, the cup nearly slipped from her grasp.

      Deep down in the rational part of her brain, she knew he was going for shock value. She knew the appropriate reaction was no reaction at all.

      Unfortunately, at the moment, her rational brain was not calling the shots. “What are you wearing?”

      He looked down to his lap, at what appeared to be a pair of very expensive black silk boxers. “Skivvies,” he said casually, as though there was nothing at all inappropriate about walking around a strange house in his underwear. “I would have put on pajamas, but as I’m sure you recall, I don’t wear any. Besides,” he said, with a slight wiggle of his eyebrows, “it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

      “There are six other people in this house, you know.”

      “And they’re all sound asleep.”

      “Not to mention the housekeep—” She stopped abruptly and spun away from him. “For pity’s sake, at least have the decency to button your fly.”

      “Whoops,” she heard him say, although he didn’t sound all that concerned with his faux