by Jill Shalvis
And then, somehow—Diego would never know how—Tyler gently nudged him into his chair, fussing over him a moment and making sure he had his water and napkin.
Tyler then turned and did the same to Rocco, letting his hands linger. “Darling, you too. Let’s sit. Let’s toast. Let’s lunch. Let’s have our little chitchat to clear the air, it’ll all be good.”
Diego’s brother took a deep breath and nodded. Downed a glass of something that was most definitely not champagne. He started to speak but stopped, then swore beneath his breath and rubbed his eyes.
“He’s all verklempt,” Tyler explained to Diego.
Diego nodded. Same. “So…this wasn’t a wedding planning lunch,” he said, wishing he had more than a glass of water in front of him. “It’s what? An intervention?”
Daisy met Diego’s gaze for the first time. Her eyes were still slay-me gray, framed by inky black lashes that drew a man in like she was the only warm haven in a world gone mad. “Diego,” she said softly.
“Daisy.” Hey, look at that. His voice sounded perfectly calm. Casual. Not at all like his heart was about to pound right out of his chest. The heart she’d once slayed.
“Diego.” She didn’t seem surprised to see him. As for what her thoughts might be, she kept them damn well hidden, though her voice when she spoke trembled a bit. “Thanks for coming,” she said, like this was a normal thing and not the first time they’d seen each other in ten years. “We’re all just hoping you and Rocco can talk out any…issues so we can make sure things are smooth for the wedding.”
Her voice was still quiet but husky, just as it used to be, the same tone that had given him more sexual fantasies than any other.
But these days, he no longer thought about her. At least, not that he’d admit. “And you’re here…why?”
“Because I asked her,” Rocco said.
At his older brother’s words, Diego cocked his head but didn’t take his eyes off Daisy. “Because…?”
“She’s our wedding planner,” Tyler said smoothly, waving down a waiter and signaling for more wine. “The best in the business.”
Daisy smiled at Tyler and then turned back to Diego. “It’s nice to see you.”
What the hell? He’d fallen asleep on the boat and was dreaming this, right? Nice to see him? Was she kidding? He’d told her that he loved her, and then she’d left. Moved to New York for college without looking back. He opened his mouth to remind her of that fact, but Rocco stood up and tugged on his arm.
“I think we should talk outside.”
Diego wrenched free without looking at him and turned to Daisy. “I need to talk to you.” He had no idea what game she was playing, but he intended to find out.
Daisy opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Rocco once again put a hand on him.
Diego looked down at his arm. Rocco was older by two years, but at six foot four, Diego had four inches on his brother—most of them harder and leaner. Rocco with his bulkier mass outweighed Diego and was more badass when it came right down to it, but Diego was working on a lot of resentment and anger, so it’d be a solid match.
And a fight long overdue.
Rocco dropped his hand from Diego and shoved his fingers through his shaggy, black hair that was the same as Diego’s. Apparently, Rocco had learned some restraint over the years, but not too much as he jerked his head to the door and lumbered out.
Diego followed without looking back.
Which wasn’t easy because Daisy had looked…different. Among other things. She’d always been girl-next-door pretty. And part of what Diego had loved about her was that they’d had a lot in common. Both had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, the poor kids who didn’t have a penny to their name.
She was still girl-next-door pretty, but there was a whole new air about her now, as well. She was dressed in a blue suit dress and matching heels, looking professional, smart, and incredibly sure of herself—which he had to admit, was attractive as hell.
But she also looked like someone he didn’t know. Certainly not the type of woman who’d mesh with a guy who lived on a boat.
“Well,” he heard her say to Tyler as he walked away. “That went about as well as expected.”
In response, Tyler laughed softly, apparently unconcerned that his fiancé was about to get the pretty punched off his face.
Ahead of him, Rocco pushed out the restaurant doors and walked down the pier to a relatively isolated spot. Instead of turning to face Diego, his brother leaned on the piling and let out a whoosh of air.
Diego stood behind him, waiting.
Finally, Rocco straightened and faced him.
“Nice blind side,” Diego said.
Rocco winced. “I knew you’d take it like that, but Tyler thought a neutral spot would be best.”
“Since when is a place like The French House neutral?”
“We both know you wouldn’t have come to Dad’s house or the tat shop, so I don’t know what the hell your problem is.”
“My problem,” Diego said trying to temper himself, “is that you didn’t even try to contact me yourself. And then to sit there like we’re having tea with the queen, only it’s Daisy, my—” He broke off. First love? Hell, first everything. But he wasn’t about to say that. “You could have called me.”
“You wouldn’t have come if I asked.” Rocco shook his head. “I should’ve told you to stay the hell away. Because telling you not to do something makes you do the opposite. You were like that as a kid, too. When Dad told you not to sneak out, you’d do it twice and take pictures.”
True. And besides the point. “I agreed to be your best man,” Diego said. “Why wouldn’t I have come?”
“Because we haven’t gotten along since the day you took off ten years ago.”
“I took off?” Diego repeated in disbelief. “Are you serious? You’re rewriting history to suit yourself now.”
Rocco took a step toward him and poked a finger in Diego’s pec. “You don’t know what it was like here alone after Dad died. You’re my brother, you should’ve—"
Diego stepped into Rocco’s finger so that they were toe-to-toe, effectively cutting off Rocco’s words. “I’m the one who took care of him night and day for two years after his stroke. When he couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, couldn’t care for himself. I was eighteen and in my first semester at college—which I had to junk. Where were you then, brother?”
Rocco didn’t say anything. Diego knew he couldn’t say much since it was all true.
Growing up, Diego and their dad had fought. A lot. Diego got it. He’d been a handful and trouble-bound. Rocco had been just as wild, but he had a way of hiding it, and he’d definitely been the favored son. He and their dad had shared a real relationship that Diego had robbed himself of.
He’d always planned to resolve their issues, he’d just never known how. But time had run out because after their dad’s stroke, the guy had been completely nonverbal, and they couldn’t resolve shit. At the time, Diego had wanted to keep him in hospice because all medical opinions led to one thing—his dad wasn’t going to come back from the stroke. The man had been fiercely proud, and Diego knew that being at home in that condition with his sons having to take care of his personal needs would have killed him even faster. He’d never have wanted to be that helpless in front of them.
But Rocco had disagreed. Vehemently. And one night after Diego had left the hospital, Rocco had checked their dad out. It’d taken him half a day to realize his mistake. That in fact, he wasn’t capable of the level of care their dad required. But by then, the insurance wouldn’t cover the costs of readmittance—not unless their dad ended up back in the ICU.
The next morning, Diego had woken to find Rocco gone. He’d left a note saying that he had to get away.
Leaving Diego alone and in charge.
And Rocco had stayed gone. Turned out he’d been in the Bahamas, falling in love and finding a life thousands of miles away.
Their dad had died two years later. Diego had waited until the funeral, which Rocco had shown up for. He’d handed Rocco a stack of medical bills and the keys to the house and The Canvas Shop—the tattoo parlor that had been their dad’s legacy. “My turn,” he’d said and left town.
That had been a decade ago.
Now, they stared at each other until Diego shook his head. “You wanted me here, and I came. Let’s just do what has to be done.”
That’s when Diego heard the click, click, clicking of high heels coming towards them, loud and clear. Even before the wearer of those shoes came around the corner, he knew who it’d be.
Daisy, with her carefully pinned-up hair that he happened to know felt like silk between his fingers. She’d slipped on sunglasses so he couldn’t see her eyes, but if the grim set of her pretty, lightly glossed lips was anything to go by, she wasn’t nearly as impressed with him as he was with her.
“Look,” she said, stopping a few feet back from him and Rocco. “If I’d wanted to watch two men go at each other, I could be doing it from my couch in my PJs with any of my fave reality shows.”
There she is, Diego thought. The feisty, sassy, sexiest woman he’d ever met.
Rocco started to speak, but Daisy held up a hand. “This is clearly a family affair, so I’m going home. Rocco, I’ll see you tomorrow at the cake testing.”
“Daisy,” Diego said, her name feeling incredibly rusty on his lips.
She hesitated a moment before meeting his gaze, making him wonder if she felt any of what he did. As for what the hell it was that he felt, he couldn’t have put it into words even if someone had a gun to his head. “We need to talk too,” he said.
That got him the barest hint of a smile, one completely devoid of humor. “That’s me,” Daisy quipped lightly. “Always second in the lineup. Why am I not surprised?”
What the hell? He was the injured party here, but she strode away as quickly as she’d arrived, leaving him staring after her, stunned.
“Listen,” Rocco said. “I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m getting married next week, and you’re my only family. I want you by my side, dammit.” He jabbed a thumb toward the restaurant, which thanks to the glass walls, meant they could see inside.
Tyler was still at the corner table, alone now, watching them. When he saw them look his way, he gave a small finger wave and an encouraging smile.
“See that?” Rocco muttered. “He thinks we’re civilized enough to be trusted alone with each other simply because we’re brothers. That’s how his mind works. And I love him ridiculously enough to want him to keep believing that this is going to be okay.”
Diego stared at his brother. He hadn’t taken the time until this very second to really soak in the sight of the man in front of him, the one he hadn’t seen since…well, their dad’s funeral.
Christ, that had been a day.
“Listen,” Rocco said quietly, more seriously, his eyes solemn. “I get it. I shouldn’t have tricked you into coming here, calling the lunch a best man’s thing. But I just…I just wanted to see you, man. I wanted you to be involved this week leading up to the wedding. I wanted… Shit. I wanted it like old times. I was hoping that maybe this could be a chance for us to put our issues aside. Or, hell, maybe we can even figure them out.”
At the unexpected mature side to his brother, Diego took a step back and ran a hand over his face. “When did you grow up?”
Rocco gave a rueful smile. “It started the day I screwed up with you. I’ve had ten years to perfect it.”
Diego drew in a deep breath. “Why is Daisy your wedding planner?”
“She’s one of my best friends.”
This caught Diego by surprise on a day where he’d thought he couldn’t get more surprised. “Since when?”
“Since she came back to the city like five years ago.”
Diego could feel his chest tightening. Maybe it was an impending heart attack, because what the actual hell? Diego and Daisy had been best friends and far more, but they’d not managed to keep in touch once they split. Though somehow, his brother who was the king of not keeping in touch had taken up a relationship with her. It shouldn’t have pissed him off, but it did.
“She’s the best at what she does,” Rocco said. “I need her. But I need you more.”
Diego had no choice here. He wasn’t a complete asshole. And if he were being honest, he’d missed Rocco—much more than he was ready to admit. “Okay. You’ve got me. What do you need?”
Rocco appeared to breathe a sigh of relief. “The first thing is tomorrow’s cake tasting. We’ve had a last-minute change of bakery. Daisy arranged this new one.”
“I don’t know,” Diego said. “If you want this to go smoothly, having me and Daisy in the same room probably isn’t a great idea.”
“I really need you both there, man.”
With a shake of his head, Diego looked out at the water and took a beat to breathe. He was being manipulated, he could feel it. And he hated that. “I’ll need to talk to Daisy first.”
Rocco pulled out his phone and did something, and from within Diego’s pocket, his own cell buzzed. He pulled out the device, eyed the text, and then looked up at his brother.
“Daisy’s address.” Rocco held his gaze.
“She lives in the same building as The Canvas Shop?”
“Yep. Fourth-floor, one-bedroom apartment. Consider the intel a peace treaty. But, uh…” Rocco grimaced. “Maybe lie about how you got it. No sense in her hating both of us, right?”
Chapter 2
Daisy sat in a conference room at work while her boss, the sole proprietor of an event planning company, droned on about a new event at the opera house in a few months. It was important, and Daisy was trying to pay attention.
But it wasn’t work that she had on the brain. Not even close. Nope, all she could see was Diego’s face from earlier, just before she’d walked away.
He’d gone from boy to man in the past ten years. It didn’t help that he still had a way of drawing her in, even by just standing there on the dock, eyes lit with a restrained temper. Even pissed off, he was all kinds of hot. His body was hard and muscular, with an ass that looked amazing both in and out of jeans. He was six feet plus of pure sexiness, with black hair that fell over his forehead and curled around his collar when it got too long—which it always was. He had eyes the color of well-aged whiskey that darkened whenever he felt something deeply, like anger.
Or arousal…
“Are you even listening to me?” her boss asked, sounding unhappy.
But since that was Carol’s default mood, it was hard to tell. The woman was in her seventies, but thanks to good, ahem, genes—AKA the best plastic surgeon in the city—she looked mid-fifties. She catered mostly to her own generation, which meant that she wasn’t getting younger clients.
That’s what Daisy had supposedly been hired for. But it turned out that Carol really didn’t want younger clients.
Which left Daisy working a whole lot of fiftieth-anniversary parties. She’d tried to bring in Rocco’s wedding, but Carol hadn’t been comfortable with it, saying that the timing was too tight.
So, Daisy had happily taken it on herself as a side job. Planning a good friend’s wedding seemed infinitely more appealing than some huge IT tech company’s annual employee party and the opera event her current workload consisted of. “Sorry, yes, I’m listening,” she said with an inward grimace. “And I agree wholeheartedly. The opera event will be wonderful, thank you for trusting me with it.”
Carol nodded frostily and started to leave but stopped. “I count on you, Daisy. I hired you because you’re focused and you work hard.”
“And because you know I don’t have a personal life, so I’ll work all the overtime you need,” Daisy said.
Carol let out a rare smile, small as it was. “Yes. So, don’t go getting a life on me now.”
Even if Daisy wanted to…
Carol shrugged. “Your good work might pay o
ff in ways you never imagined. You never know.”
That was true. One never knew. When Daisy was young, the future had been some intangible thing that she couldn’t begin to grasp because she’d been too busy worrying about surviving the present.
Some things never changed. Thirty years old and still worrying about her present.
“In any case, I’ll need the specs for the new job by the end of the day,” Carol said, turning to walk away. “Hope you don’t mind working late tonight.”
“Actually, I do.”
Carol stopped and raised a brow.
Daisy worked at not quailing. “I’ve been working since five a.m. because we had that UK phone meeting.”
Carol didn’t look moved. “And?”
“And…it’s going on six p.m.” Daisy didn’t have a set of balls, but she liked to think the equipment she did have was even tougher. She stood up and shut her laptop, tucking it into her bag. “I’ll get back on this first thing in the morning.”
Suddenly looking thoughtful, Carol nodded. “I wish I’d had your fiery spirit when I was your age. Things might be different.”
“What things?”
Carol turned to look out the window. “Sometimes, I think about giving it all up,” she said softly. “And retiring to a warm beach somewhere.”
Daisy blinked in shock. “What?”
“Yeah… I’m tired of the rat race. There’s got to be an easier way to live.” Carol turned and looked at Daisy. “I want you to take over for me.”
Daisy just stared at her boss. “But you’ve worked your whole adult life to build this business. You’re booked out solid for two years.”
“You can handle it. I’ve got faith.” Carol gave a small, rare smile. “Just say you’ll think about it.”
