A Keep You tie-in story: Better Than You

In Keep You, the Walker family travels to Ireland for Mike's wedding. His fiancee, Delta, is a pampered, demanding, perfectionist princess...at least, that's how Jo sees her.

But so rarely is a person ever just what she seems from the outside.

This is Delta and Mike's story, as seen through their eyes, accompanied by all their preconceived notions and biases. Jo doesn't know all there is to know about her future sister-in-law, or her older brother, for that matter.

It's a tie-in story, and is set before Keep You. I'll be posting it in installments for the next few weeks and I hope you enjoy this very different side of the Walker family.

 

Better Than You

 

1.

 

“Let me make some phone calls,” were the first words out of Dennis Brooks’ mouth the day his only daughter graduated cum laude from the University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business with dual degrees in marketing and management. Delta’s middle name may have been Charity, but it was something she hadn’t wanted – nor did she want now – from her father. The resulting argument when she told him “no” had been the kind that left her with a headache like screws being twisted through her temples, but she’d won. “Fine,” he’d snapped, and strode out of the bedroom she would call her own for only a fortnight before her meager savings were put up as a security deposit on an apartment and her best black suit was put to good use in a business meeting her pretty straight teeth and stunning post-college resume had cinched for her.



Delta had been born into money, and despite all the hype she’d ever suffered about rich children having no appreciation for hard work, she knew the exact value of every dollar her parents had ever lavished upon her. And it was why her father’s help was declined, and why (despite the plummeting economy) she’d walked into Nordstrom at Phipps Avenue in Buckhead with nothing but a diploma and now, one short year later, held a management position with sights set on climbing higher. No one was rich because they were lazy – they were rich because they worked their asses off and she was not going to be a disappointment to her family.

 “Um, Ms. Brooks?” One of the new sales associates, a reedy, nervous, twitchy thing with limp hair and a rough complexion who was probably five years Delta’s senior peered over the top of the cosmetics counter mirror Delta was using to check her lipstick.

 

 A firm believer that employees in a high-end department store should look the part – makeup, heels and tasteful clothing choices lent sophistication and authority in a world in which it was sorely needed – Delta wanted to pull the girl down into the free makeover chair and attack her with the entire Clinique product line. Instead, she smiled, checked that none of the poppy seeds from her sandwich at lunch were stuck in her teeth, tidied a strand of her dark hair, and asked the associate, “yes?” as she straightened.

 

 She had her long fingers laced together and worked them nervously. Her face held nothing of the confidence it should have – retail was not the sort of business where a meek disposition did anyone any good – and she took a deep, frightened breath before she spoke. “There’s been…well, there’s been a bit of an incident over at the fragrance counter.”

 

 The week before Thanksgiving, the mall and the store were bustling with shoppers, obnoxious Christmas music already blaring over the intercoms. Having just come from the rear of the store, Delta wouldn’t have heard an “incident”. “What happened?” she asked, already moving.

 

 The associate hustled to keep up with her. “Well, two customers, they, um…”

 

“Knocked over an entire display of Taylor Swift perfume.”

 

“Yes!”

 

“I can see that.” And she could. The pretty little blue bottles with their teen queen cursive script were smashed to bits on the tile and two associates were hastening to clean up the broken glass before someone slipped and sued the store. The clumsy clods who’d done the smashing stood off to the side, dazed and helpless and trying not to look like they’d just embarrassed themselves.

 

One looked like he should have been knocking stuff over in Hot Topic instead: leather jacket and too-tight jeans, those Converse sneakers people still insisted on wearing, a mess of dark hair that probably took longer to style than her own. Typical mall rat. He had clearly not been the one scoping out the teenager perfume.

 

No, that had been his friend. Tall – six-two or six-three, maybe taller – big football shoulders, shirt and tie and sleeves rolled up, good gray slacks and not the ill-fitting kind men his age usually scrimped by with. Blonde and square-jawed and very Captain America.

 

Cute, she thought, and then squared her shoulders and put on her manager face and strode up to them, neatly stepping over the smashed shards of a bottle one of the associates was trying to collect into a dust pan.

 

“Gentlemen,” she greeted and both of them glanced at her with a start. “I trust you’re finding everything alright this afternoon?”

 

The one with the black hair jammed his hands in his pockets and turned away from her. But Captain America stared at her stupidly. He had green eyes.

 

“I’m sure one of our associates can help you find a fragrance more to your liking, though I’m afraid courtesy would demand that you not destroy products you find offensive. You will of course be required to compensate the company for the merchandise.”

 

He finally found his voice. “Yeah…yeah of course.” He raked a hand through his blonde hair and it stood up in short spikes. His green eyes widened. “I didn’t mean to knock all that shi…stuff over though. I swear!”

 

“You were trying to purchase it then?” she motioned to the mess at her feet. “The…” the name of the stuff escaped her, “Taylor Swift perfume?”

 

The guy with the black hair snorted into his hand.

 

“No. Well, I mean…” a blush rose along the hard lines of his cheekbones.

 

“If you’ll meet me over at the register,” she indicated one on the far side of the fragrance counter with a practiced wave and a smile her best friend had always told her was “totally Cleopatra”, “then we can take care of this little…incident.”

 

He blew out a loud breath through his nostrils. “Yeah. Sure.”

 

Her first week on the job, Delta had watched a woman with a whole unruly pack of children wreak havoc upon the shoe department. When the youngest of the bunch – he’d been maybe four – snapped the heel off one half of a  two-hundred-ninety-eight dollar pair of Cole Haan pumps, Delta’s then manager had slipped the shoes beneath a counter somewhere and the woman had walked away without paying for the damage. The manager had been fired, and now Delta was a manager, and no one, not even flustered, blonde, doofy football-looking guys with poor taste in perfume were getting a pass.

 

He’d wrangled his embarrassment by the time he met her on the other side of the counter and the color had bled out of his cheeks, his smile steady and just the right, controlled amount of sheepish. Which was a bit of a shame; he’d been cuter when he was upset.

 

“I wasn’t actually trying to buy any of that,” he said as she started ringing up the sale.

 

“Uh-huh. Linda, how many bottles was that?” she called over her shoulder to the associate.

 

“Five!”

 

“I’m buying a gift,” he continued.

 

“What a lucky girl she must be,” Delta said and knew from his silence that he had no idea if she was sincere. “Your total comes to three hundred and five dollars and ninety eight cents.” To his credit, he wasn’t making a face when she glanced up at him. “Will that be all or would you like to purchase something besides broken bottles?”

 

**

 

“Saturday’s my birthday!” Stephanie had said only a hundred times. She’d tossed her hair and batted her false eyelashes. “What are you getting me?”

 

Mike hadn’t known – what did he get the girl he was not-dating, sort-of-dating, maybe-dating but didn’t want to be doing anything with? Okay, that wasn’t fair. He wanted to be doing something…but even if she was Gwen’s friend, and even if she looked great on paper, she just…wasn’t doing it for him. She didn’t really like him. Under the smiles and sex and perky exuberance, she didn’t give a damn about him. And he didn’t give a damn about her. They were so blonde and professional and preppy together and…well, Tam wasn’t the only one sick to death of the two of them.

 

So Saturday was her birthday. And after one too many insistences on her part that she couldn’t stand teen pop (she was only into Jack Johnson and John Mayer and, quote, “deep music”) he’d decided a bottle of teen pop perfume might be just the thing to shut her up about her birthday and drive the final, irreparable wedge between them he was too chicken shit to do all by his lonesome.

 

His shopping trip freaking sucked so far.

 

Except for the barely there smile the girl on the other side of the counter was giving him. It wasn’t a happy smile, or a smile that found him smart or charming. It was a cutting, condescending sort of smile. And for some reason, Mike found that terribly attractive.

 

The body didn’t hurt either.

 

She was tall, long and lean and leggy, with dainty ankles and delicate wrists and a finely-boned face that bespoke of generations of careful breeding. Her hair was dark, and her dark, tightly arched brows said the color was natural. Her eyes were rich coffee, lipstick dramatic red. She should have been on a runway somewhere modeling for Nordstrom rather than working one of its registers. The gold nametag pinned to her cream poplin shirt read Delta, and wasn’t that just Old South and ridiculous?

 

Bitch, the look Tam shot him from under his fringe of hair said, and that was true. It didn’t mean she wasn’t hot, though. And it didn’t mean he wasn’t interested.

 

“Actually,” Mike said and shook off the last clinging shreds of embarrassment. Totally shameless, his sister Jess had said of him once, and it was true: he had no shame. “I still need that gift.” Her eyes were devoid of all expression as she stared at him, nude painted fingernails drumming along the top of the register. “Can you suggest anything?”

 

A sigh picked up her shoulders and dropped them again. She opened her mouth, thought better of it, and a quick, false smile made an appearance. “Who are you buying for?”

 

“A chick.”

 

Her brows lifted. “Really? The perfume wasn’t for you?”

 

He’d stepped right into that one. “A friend,” he amended with a grin.

 

“Your girlfriend?”

 

“Just a friend.”

 

“Do you know what she might like -,”

 

“Nope. And I couldn’t care less.”

 

Her head tilted, dark hair rustling against her shirt front. Her smile didn’t change, but her face became somehow disapproving. She probably spent hours perfecting her ice queen routine in front of the mirror. “Charming.” She gave another little sigh. “I’d go with Juicy or Jessica Simpson if she’s really just a friend and likes a warm scent. Coach or Dolce if you want to impress her.”

 

Like hell was he shelling out for Coach for Stephanie. He wasn’t even really thinking about Stephanie at this point. “What would you wear?” he asked, smiling, proud of himself.

 

She looked taken aback. And then her lips pressed together into a red line and she regarded him a long, unimpressed moment. He hadn’t run across anyone this hard to flirt with in…well, ever.

 

He didn’t think she would answer, but finally she said, “Clinique Happy.”

 

“I’ll take one of those, then.”

 

**

 

“A harpy,” Tam said as they stepped out into the echoing, gray depths of the parking deck and headed for the car. “I’m not kidding.”

 

“I dunno.” Mike was leaving the mall in a much better mood than the one in which he’d entered. He smelled a challenge. And he’d always loved those. “Maybe she’s one of those poor little rich girls Daddy didn’t love enough. I bet you get a few drinks in her and the ice starts to melt.”

 

“Even if that’s true,” Tam raked a hand back through his hair and made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “Who gives a shit? She’s just some chick at the mall.”

 

“See, this is what’s wrong with you.”

 

He groaned.

 

“You don’t see the possibility in anything, man. Yeah, she’s a chick at the mall. But she’s a hot chick. And maybe she’s the hot chick I can get to go to dinner with me.”

 

“And her stunning personality makes it worth the effort?”

 

Mike sighed. Friends since the seventh grade, Tam’s advice usually came from a good place. Unfortunately, it was usually tainted by the guy’s overly sober perspective on everything and his general contempt for everyone. Tam’s home life had been the stuff of nightmares growing up – and Mike took that more seriously than anyone – but sometimes, and he felt guilty about it, he wished some of his own carpe diem philosophy had rubbed off on him. Always fast and inconsistent with the ladies, in the last few years Tam had been living a dark head space in which he didn’t even relish the chase. It was an itch that got scratched. Miss too-good-for-everybody Delta at the Nordstrom counter couldn’t even get a whistle or an up-and-down glance from him.

 

Whatever.

 

“I’m asking her out.”

 

“That’ll go well. She thinks you’re a total jackass.”

 

“We’ll see.” They reached Mike’s silver Beemer and he unlocked it with the remote, the interior lights coming on. “You coming to dinner Sunday night?” he asked to change the subject, frowning inwardly because he couldn’t remember the last time Tam had accepted an invitation to anything familial.

 

As predicted, Tam tidied the spikes of hair across his forehead out of unconscious habit and chewed at the inside of his cheek. “Probably not.”

 

**

 

“My heart beat faster. I looked at him. His eyes burned. ‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said in a low, dominant voice. ‘Come here,’ he said, and I went to him. I -,”

 

“No,” Delta said and heard the tight note of anger in her voice she just couldn’t seem to shake. “No, Sydney. No, no, no. That is not literature. It shouldn’t even be in print. It’s like porn a seventh grader wrote. We are not reading it for book club.”

 

“But,” Sydney was wounded, her eyes wide and startled, the copy of Chains of Seduction she’d been reading aloud from open across her knees. “But…but everyone’s reading it. It -,”

 

“And if everyone said horse manure tasted good, would you eat it?” Delta asked to the sound of nervous twittering from the other girls. They were in her white and cream and black tasteful little apartment living room, the lamplight warm and carefully used to the best possible advantage in the small space. Behind Sydney and the delicate bamboo chair she was sitting in, the white built-in bookshelves boasted a flat-screen Vizio TV and over a hundred books – classics old and new, first editions and autographed copies, dramas and romances and mysteries and thrillers – that laughed down at the drivel Sydney held. “That’s not a book club book,” she said with finality, “I wouldn’t use it to prop open a window, much less read the thing.”

 

“Let’s pick something different,” Regina suggested with a scowl for the rest of the girls that ended discussion on the manner.

 

But Jennifer leaned over and patted Sydney – who now blinked hard like she might cry – on the back of the hand. “It’s okay, Syd. You and I can read it.”

 

Book club had been, Delta now knew, a futile effort. She’d finally convinced her friends and sorority sisters that a book of the month and little get together wine and cheese evening to discuss it would be fun. They’d all agreed, but so far, few of them read. And even fewer wanted to read anything of substance. Their infatuation with hundred page, trendy little non-erotic, poorly written erotica novels brought bile up the back of her throat, and turned her, for some reason, sour mood downright rotten.

 

She unfurled her long legs from the sofa and got to her feet, plucked her empty wine glass up off her blonde coffee table and slipped out of the room. No one asked where she was going. Everyone rushed to assure Sydney that Chains of Seduction was “really good” and “super hot” and “cigarette worthy”.

 

The apartment was anything but open concept, split into small, elegant rooms separated by glass-paned French doors. Some might have called it claustrophobic. Delta called it cozy. And very European. It had heavy, expensive moldings and chair rail, tall baseboards and quality cabinetry. The kitchen with its butcher block counters and marble island was her favorite room. She loved the antique tin ceiling and diamond inlay glass in the window above the sink, her little planter box full of mums. She propped a hip against the island and took a deep, calming breath, willing herself some scrap of patience so that she might not take off her friends’ heads before the night was over.

 

“It’s just books, you know,” Regina’s voice came from over her shoulder and she sighed. “Stop taking it so personal, Delt.”

 

The full color spectrum of wines was arranged in a cluster on the island and Delta uncorked a bottle of merlot with another sigh. “It’s proof that intelligence is declining,” she countered, and watched the dark, rich wine splash against the smooth, belled sides of her glass. She poured herself more than she needed and hammered the cork back into the bottle with more force than necessary.

 

Regina walked around to the far side of the island and leaned her elbows onto the granite countertop, a thick bundle of red curls coming loose of her hair clip and falling down onto her shoulder. “Like you thought Syd was gonna win the Nobel Prize or something. Let’s get real.”

 

“That’s how stupid people stay stupid, you know,” Delta felt a certain grudging sense of reality edging into the voice she tried so hard to keep so perfect all day every day. She was perfect at work, perfect in front of her parents, perfect in front of her boyfriend. Regina was the one person who provided her with even the smallest bit of safety – freedom to let it all hang out and be twenty-five for ten minutes at a time. “Even if they disappoint us, we have to have some expectations for idiots.”

 

They regarded one another a moment, and then both grinned. “God,” Delta groaned. “They’re idiots. Every one of them.”

 

“Hey, they’re your friends,” Regina said, going for the white zin. “I just stick around to keep you from going postal and shooting one of them.”

 

“I appreciate that, believe me.”

 

A laugh echoed from the living room, punctuating the din of chatter. They were no doubt calling her a prude and commiserating in their love of crap fiction. Delta took a long swallow of wine and acknowledged that book club was over for the night.

 

“So when’s Greg back in town?” Regina changed the subject, but really, it wasn’t a better subject.

 

“Tomorrow. He’s taking me to Ray’s on the River.”

 

“Don’t sound so excited about it.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

Regina frowned. “I thought Greg was Mr. Perfect?”

 

“He is.” And that was why her heart rate didn’t pick up and her stomach didn’t fill with butterflies when she thought about dinner with him. Three months in and she should have been crazy for him. Or, as close to crazy as she could get. But he was another perfectly acceptable piece that fit into the perfectly acceptable puzzle of her life and she just couldn’t find room to care.

 

**

 

He was back.

 

“Miss Brooks?” the same twitchy, confidence-lacking sales associate from the day before caught Delta as she was coming out of the restroom. “There’s a customer requesting you in women’s.”

 

And she just knew, before she reached the display bench full of sweaters, that she would find the destroyer of Taylor Swift perfume – Mr. Michael Walker who’d paid with his Am Ex card and signed his name at the bottom of the receipt with the adeptness of a child or serial killer. She was right, and there he was, tall and blonde and big-shouldered and wearing this awful brown leather bomber jacket over his khakis and patterned oxford.

 

Lord help me, she thought with a deep, steadying breath. She gave her navy pencil skirt a little tug and squared up her shoulders, approached him with the sort of determined, heel-clipping stride that would have told any man that this wasn’t a social call and she didn’t intend to stick around longer than necessary.

 

“Mr. Walker,” she said and his head came up like she’d startled him. If she had, it didn’t last, the same wide, white smile he’d tossed her across the fragrance counter yesterday making an appearance. Delta couldn’t really come up with her own smile. “You wanted to see me?”

 

His hands – and they were big hands because today, without the counter between them, and maybe even an uneasy tremor in the pit of her stomach, she saw that he was probably closer to six-four or six-five than she’d originally thought – went in the pockets of his jacket. “Yeah.”

 

Delta gave him a second, and then two, to say something more, but then her hands settled on her hips. “Well,” she fought to keep crackling impatience out of her voice, “we have a whole store full of helpful employees, so unless you have need of a manager, I -,”

 

For some reason, his smile widened before he cut her off. “I’m no good at picking out chick clothes.”

 

She blinked. “That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think those sweaters would complement your complexion.”

 

He laughed. He had one of those big, deep laughs that belonged to someone’s father. “No they wouldn’t.”

 

Delta bit back a sigh – all she did lately was sigh. “Mr. Walker -,”

 

“Mike.”

 

“ – Mr. Walker, if you need some shopping assistance, then I’m sure one of my sales associates could -,”

 

“I want you.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

He rolled his eyes. “That came out wrong.” A hand came out of his pocket and raked back through his blonde hair, standing it up on top. “I want you to help me shop,” he amended. “You can do that, right? I mean, you do work here.”

 

No, was her initial reaction. Hell no. He was messing with her, and she didn’t like to be messed with.

 

But he wasn’t just doing that – he was challenging her responsibility as a manager too. And the obnoxious way he was smiling at her, the way he just assumed he could…charm her or something…well, that couldn’t be tolerated. He thought he could mess – he didn’t know a damn thing about mess.

 

“Of course,” she said with a shrug.

 

His grin widened.