He stood ramrod straight, his dress uniform starched, his cap square on his head, and he glared at her with undisguised hatred.
“All dressed up and no place to go?” he asked, his voice as sharp as the bite of the wind.
So much for pleasantries.
“I could say the same about you.” Her gaze drifted from his shoulders to his spit-and-polished shoes.
His chest was still broad, his waist trim, his hips as lean as ever. He hadn’t even had the decency to start to bald. His hair was as thick and coffee brown as it had been all those years ago and his eyes, hazel, shot with silver, could cut right to her soul.
“I don’t suppose you came here to escort me to the wedding?” she asked, deciding to give as much as she got.
He snorted.
“I didn’t think so.” She rolled back the cuff of her coat and glanced at her watch. “We probably should get going. We’re already late.”
“I can’t believe you were invited.”
Echoes from the past rippled through her mind as an old memory surfaced and she thought of the first night she’d been with him. She swallowed hard and kept her mind on the present. She didn’t think for a minute that Nadine wouldn’t have told him her name was on the guest list. No doubt Ben’s sister had warned him. So what was his game? “Believe it, Ben. I don’t show up where I’m not wanted.”
“That’s not the way I remember it.”
She felt the color drain from her face, but she inched her chin up a notch, refusing to give him an inkling that she remembered with crystal clarity the party she’d crashed, just to be with him. “Look, you don’t have to pretend to like me—”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Then we’re even,” she lied, her pride ruling her tongue.
His lips tightened at the corners.
“Now all we have to do is endure your sister’s wedding. We don’t have to speak, touch or so much as look at each other. Then, after the reception, you can go your way and I’ll go mine.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and seemed to wrestle with something on his mind. “I just didn’t happen to show up here,” he said. “I was at Nadine’s dock and I saw you through field glasses.” The stubborn set of his jaw didn’t alter. “You’re right, I knew you were invited to the wedding, but I thought I should warn you.”
“About what?”
He stared at her long enough that she was certain he’d studied every pore on her face.
“My dad won’t appreciate your being there.”
“Your dad didn’t invite me.”
“You’re not wanted, Carlie.”
That stung, but she wasn’t a virgin in the pain department. “Not by you maybe, but—”
“Not by me ever.”
The old wounds opened, but she wouldn’t give Ben the satisfaction of knowing he still had the ability to hurt her. She shook her head and sighed. “I was hoping that it wouldn’t be like this between us.”
“It couldn’t be any different.”
“Why?”
“Because Kevin’s dead, damn it. Don’t you remember?”
“Every day of my life.” She swallowed back that old, painful lump that filled her throat when she thought of Ben’s older brother. “But—” she forced the words over her suddenly thick tongue “—nothing I can say or do will bring him back. We have to let it rest. Both of us.”
He looked as if he planned to disagree. Shadows darkened his clear eyes and he quickly glanced away, past her, to the mountains rising in the distance. Seconds drummed by, punctuated by the silence that stretched between them. A tic throbbed near his temple and his jaw was clenched so hard, she wondered if his teeth were being ground into his gums. “I don’t think we should talk about this,” he said at length, but his voice was less harsh; the accusations in his eyes had faded.