‘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?’