Still the One

by Jill Shalvis

  “Say it one more time and maybe I’ll believe you.”

  AJ just kept working the weights, eyes open. Every time he closed them he could still see a certain woman in her pj’s standing in her kitchen looking sexier than he could possibly have imagined.

  When had Darcy gotten so sexy?

  “Did you seriously just ask me that?” Wyatt asked.

  AJ nearly dropped the weights on his face and just barely managed to not kill himself. “Um, what?”

  Wyatt stared at him. “Zoe’s worried about this weekend,” he finally said. “And now maybe I am, too.”

  “I’d never put Darcy into a situation she can’t handle.”

  “Actually, Zoe’s worried that it’s a situation you can’t handle,” Wyatt said.

  “I’ll be fine.” One could hope.

  “Remind me again—when have you ever successfully handled Darcy?”

  Shit. “I don’t plan to handle her at all,” AJ said. “She just needs to be herself. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Wyatt was quiet a moment, and AJ went back to the weights, thinking they needed a subject change quick.

  “You two have always rubbed each other the wrong way,” Wyatt said after a minute. “Since I can’t even remember when.” He met AJ’s gaze. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know why.”

  AJ stayed very busy with the weights but could see from his peripheral that Wyatt didn’t do the same. In fact, Wyatt got up and stood behind AJ like he was going to spot him.

  AJ tilted his head back and met Wyatt’s upside-down face staring down at him. “What?”

  “Is there something I should know?” Wyatt asked.

  “About?”

  Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “My sister.”

  Yeah, there was a lot he should know. Like the fact that AJ couldn’t stop thinking about her. That they’d had a near miss. And she smelled like heaven. All important details, but they paled before the biggie—he wanted her. “No.”

  Wyatt pointed at him. “You hesitated.” He stopped AJ from pumping, holding the weight down on AJ’s chest. “What was the hesitation?”

  “Can’t. Breathe—”

  “Answer the damn question.”

  “I’ve already told you,” AJ managed to say past the weight on his chest. “Nothing’s going on.” He met Wyatt’s gaze straight on and let out the rest. “But you should know, I want there to be.”

  Wyatt stared at him for a long beat. “You want there to be,” he repeated. He went back to his bench and sat hard, rubbing his chest.

  AJ sat up, rubbing his, holding eye contact with Wyatt because this was important. Getting this right, being honest, was important to him. And the easy part. “Yes,” he said. “I want there to be.”

  There was the slightest wince on Wyatt’s face, like maybe he’d rather be having a root canal right now than discussing this, without drugs.

  “So then why the fuck do you two fight like cats and dogs?” Wyatt finally asked.

  And now for the hard part. “I don’t fight with her. She fights with me.”

  There was a long beat while Wyatt processed this. “Explain.”

  “A while back she came to me and wanted to …” AJ hesitated, unsure how to tell his best friend that his baby sister had wanted a quickie in the parking lot.

  His silence must have spelled it out for him, because Wyatt scrubbed a hand over his face and muttered “Christ” beneath his breath.

  “I turned her down,” AJ said quietly.

  Wyatt dropped his hand and stared at AJ, the implications chasing each other across his face. “You rejected her?”

  “Would you rather I hadn’t?”

  “Yes. No. Shit. I don’t know.” Wyatt dropped his head into his hands. “Did you do it for me?”

  It was AJ’s turn to scrub his hands over his face. “I told myself I did it for her. That I couldn’t give her what she was looking for.”

  Wyatt’s eyes sharpened. “Meaning?”

  “She didn’t want me,” AJ said. “She wanted oblivion. And I couldn’t give her that.”

  “Why?”

  “Jesus, Wyatt—”

  “Yeah, I am going to need to scrub my brain with bleach after this conversation, too,” Wyatt said. “Just finish it.”

  “I refused to be a one-night stand for her. Okay?” AJ shoved his fingers into his sweaty hair. “That never would’ve worked.”

  “Because …?”

  AJ stared at Wyatt, hoping like hell this wasn’t going to change a damn thing between them, because Wyatt was the brother he’d never had. “Because I have feelings for her. I always have.”

  Wyatt didn’t move a single muscle for a long moment. Then he let out a shaky breath. “Why didn’t I see this coming?”

  “I didn’t want you to see it. I didn’t want to feel it.”

  Wyatt took that in. “You could’ve told me. You can tell me anything.”

  “Yeah? Like your shirt’s on inside out?”

  Wyatt looked down at himself and let out a wry laugh. “Emily and I shared a ride into town this morning.”

  “And your fiancée didn’t happen to notice you were dressed incorrectly?”

  Wyatt actually flushed. “I started out with it correct, but then we got held up by the train and …” He shook his head and tugged off his shirt, righting it. “Never mind. And nice job on the distraction technique.”

  “So … we okay?” AJ asked warily.

  “We’ve been together a long time.”

  “And yet you asked Emily to marry you and not me,” AJ said.

  Wyatt’s lips quirked. “She’s prettier than you.”

  “No doubt.”

  Wyatt’s smile faded as he met AJ’s gaze. “Hell. Yeah. We’re okay. We’ll always be okay.” He paused. “She really doesn’t know how you feel about her?”

  “No.” Hell no. She’d make his life a living hell.

  “So all she knows is that you rejected her,” Wyatt said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And Darcy, being Darcy, didn’t take the rejection very well,” Wyatt guessed.

  “Not well at all,” AJ confirmed.

  Wyatt actually grinned.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got to spend a lot of hours in the car with her this weekend,” Wyatt said.

  “That’s funny?”

  “Very.”

  “I thought you said you were okay with it.”

  “I am,” Wyatt said. “Doesn’t mean I want it to be easy for you.”

  Darcy had been working on training Oreo for an hour—with less than wondrous results—when AJ pulled up. He parked his truck on the street and crossed the yard to where she sat in the grass.

  “We’re in a showdown,” she said, nodding her chin at Oreo, who sat facing her. “I’m trying to teach him to stay.”

  “He looks like he’s got the hang of it,” AJ said.

  “Because I’m holding a doggie cookie. He’s like every other man on the planet. He can be bribed.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got us all figured out,” AJ said.

  “Yep.” Every single one of them but him. “Zoe’s not here.”

  “I came for you.”

  Her heart had started a heavy thumping the moment he showed up. He wore faded Levi’s and an untucked buttondown, and she thought no one wore clothes quite the way he did.

  And he thinks you’re a druggie.

  “Wanted to make sure we’re on for the morning,” he said.

  “You mean am I still going to show myself off to your money guy?”

  His expression didn’t change. He was one of the few people she couldn’t easily rattle. She didn’t know what to make of that. Never had. “Said I would. I don’t go back on my word, AJ.” She rewarded Oreo with a cookie. “Now let’s work on come,” she said. She stepped back to the edge of the grass. “Okay, Oreo. Come.”

  Oreo sat.

  AJ crouched on the balls of his feet and whistled. “Come,” he said.

 
; Oreo ran to him, tail wagging, tongue lolling, staring adoringly up into AJ’s face.

  AJ rubbed Oreo up and down until the dog was nothing but a puddle of boneless goo.

  Darcy tried not to be jealous and failed yet again. “So is that all you wanted to know?”

  “For now.”

  “You mean there’ll be more later?”

  AJ met Darcy’s eyes. He looked grim. Resigned. “To be determined,” he said.

  His frustration didn’t give her near the satisfaction she’d thought it would. Because if he had to spend the long car ride with her, she had to spend it with him as well.

  It would be a miracle if they both survived.

  “Be ready to go by seven a.m.,” he said, and left.

  Oreo cried.

  Darcy sighed. “You’ll get over him,” she told the dog. All she needed to do was the same.

  Seven

  At seven the next morning, AJ stood outside Darcy’s house in a freezing mist, leaning against his truck. He knew better than to rush a woman, but they really needed to get going to allow for any unplanned incidents on the road.

  Although considering Darcy was one really big Unplanned Incident, it probably wouldn’t matter when they left.

  He was in for a rough time today and he knew it. If there’d been any other way—any other way at all—he’d have taken it. But he needed her.

  He’d been raised to show no weaknesses, and that usually worked for him. But when it came to anything having to do with one Darcy Stone, he instantly went off axis.

  The front door of the Victorian opened and Darcy stepped out wearing a formfitting, thigh-length sweater, leggings, and boots. Zoe stood in the doorway looking worried.

  “Let’s get this drama-free adventure over with, shall we?” Darcy asked.

  “She hasn’t had caffeine yet,” Zoe warned.

  AJ looked Darcy over. “You think caffeine’s going to help?”

  Zoe laughed, blew him a kiss, laid one on Darcy’s cheek, and vanished back inside.

  Darcy went on the move, walking with an uneven gait, signaling that she was tired, possibly to the point of exhaustion.

  She still wasn’t sleeping. Why, if she was still taking pain pills, wasn’t she sleeping?

  As she stepped off the porch it began to sleet in earnest, and she looked up at the sky, a slow smile crowding the exhaustion away from her face.

  She loved the rain, always had.

  Pushing off the truck, he strode forward to take the duffel bag from her. “You’re not supposed to carry anything over five pounds,” he reminded her.

  Her sleepy gaze locked onto his and he felt both a stirring and a discomfort.

  Yeah. He had a hell of a long day ahead of him.

  “It’s been eleven months,” she said.

  Eleven months and two weeks. He took a step closer, ordering himself not to breathe her in, but damn he loved the way she smelled. He shouldered her bag and held out his hand for the purse hanging off her other side.

  She relinquished her purse without a word.

  Another sign that something was wrong. He’d expected her to be pissy, but it wasn’t temper he saw.

  “Hey,” he said, moving closer, bending to see into her face. “You okay?”

  “Terrific, never better.” She hit the first step and her leg buckled.

  It was instinct for him to reach for her, but at his movement her head whipped around like Carrie in the horror film and she gave him a back off or die look.

  He lifted his hands.

  She put earbuds into her ears and hit play on her iPod. Then she very carefully gripped the railing on the porch and took the second step.

  Killing him. He looked at the time on his phone and eyed the distance to his truck, torn between keeping his big trap shut and mentioning that not only were they in a hurry, but a fall on the slippery steps would be bad. “I’ll carry you,” he said.

  She pretended she couldn’t hear him over her music and made it to the third step, completely drenched now. Her hair loved this weather as much as she did, the curls rioting around her face.

  Two more steps.

  AJ watched, holding his breath, hands itching to help. Jesus. How did Wyatt and Zoe do this every single day?

  When she nearly bought it on the last step, he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep them off her.

  She held still a moment, fighting for balance—which she won. And the cocky smile she sent him over her shoulder was worth every second of the torture.

  “Did it,” she said, clearly proud of herself. “And this time I didn’t eat dirt.”

  He’d been with her just about every step of the way since her doctor had approved PT. He’d seen her flat on the mats at his wellness center, writhing in agony as he dug into her scar tissue to loosen it up. He’d seen her fighting her way through the pain as she worked the weights and stretches he’d given her. He’d seen her stand up out of her wheelchair and take her first steps again.

  All of it had moved him.

  Deeply.

  It was why he did what he did. He never got tired of being such an integral part of someone’s recovery.

  But now, right this very minute, watching her do a triumphant dance, which included a very carefully orchestrated hip boogie and body shake that had his eyes going straight to her sweet ass, made his day.

  “Nicely done,” he said.

  She slid him a look, and he had no idea if it was the morning huskiness of his voice or something else, but she blinked in surprise at him.

  And then turned left instead of heading to his truck. She walked to the middle of the grass in her yard and …

  Lay down on her back. Despite the fact that the air was chilled and the ground even colder, she stared up at the sky and smiled as the rain hit her.

  He stared down at his feet, blew out a breath, and tossed her bags into his truck. Then he joined her, sprawling out on his back on the—oh, perfect—wet grass next to her. Their arms touched and she reached for his hand, squeezing his fingers. “Perfect start to