But now he seemed almost… gentle?
“Are you the older twin or the younger twin?” I asked, suddenly curious and looking for a distraction from my current predicament.
Dallas’s auburn brows drew together with confusion before he answered. “The younger, why?”
That surprised me. Everything about the alpha oozed older sibling energy.
“You…” I trailed off trying to find the right words. “You just seem like you’d be the older brother.”
Dallas’s face smoothed into a soft grin as he pushed his wire framed glasses up his nose. “We get that a lot. Brooks is… well, Brooks. He’s too nice for his own good, which is where I usually come in. I have to take care of him.”
Dallas looked like a completely different person when he spoke about his brother and it tugged at something in my chest because I felt the same way about mine.
Carter may have been the older sibling, but the dynamic had always felt very flip-flopped. He needed me to take care of him and help him—especially now that our dad was gone.
“He’s very sweet,” I agreed, thinking of the gentle giant who had been friendly to me from the moment I’d met him. Compared to the other three, Brooks Wilson was an open book—right down to the ghost of sweet honey mead that seemed to cling to his skin and clothes despite the suppressant pills we all took.
Dallas eyed me, his smile dropping as he seemed to draw back into himself again. “And very off-limits to you.”
I blinked, shocked at the sudden shift in his tone. “I didn’t mean—”
The half-melted ice was removed from my neck and Dallas straightened his spine. “Are you ready to head to the bus?”
I opened my mouth to—well—I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t really feel like anything I had said warranted an apology. In fact Iwas complimenting Dallas’s brother, someone he seemed to love and respect.
For a moment there I had thought that we’d gotten somewhere, but the alpha who had seemed kindly flustered as he tried to help me feel better had all but disappeared and in his place was the cold, almost soldier-like man again.
“Yes,” I said with a sigh as I stood experimentally, hoping my knees would hold my weight, and thankfully, they did.
I couldn’t wait to get back onto the bus into the blessed air conditioning and change out of my outfit, promising myself that next time I would fight to leave the blazer behind so I didn’t cook at any of the future tour stops.
Staring at Dallas’s back as he descended the metal steps in front of me, I wondered why he had such a prickly personality in the first place. Despite being twin siblings, Brooks couldn’t be more different.
The older twin had been nothing but friendly over the last two weeks, coming out and sitting with me while I worked on my computer, asking me questions about my speeches and Ginny and how working on my mother’s campaign worked.
He kept it professional but easy.
So why couldn’t Dallas do the same?
I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t realize Dallas had stopped in his tracks until I ran into his back with a thud, nearly falling back until he reached back to steady me, his hand on my wrist.
The movement caused his sleeve to ride up and my eyes caught the edges of a tattoo of some kind of a plant on his arm as the scent of apple whiskey filled my nose.
I tried to reorient myself and figure out just why the hell Dallas had stopped like that when he knew I was right behind him.
“Lennon,” the familiar Louisiana drawl of Frank Delano filled my ears and when I peeked around Dallas’s shoulder, I foundthe vice president grinning at me with his usual wide smile that I’m sure was meant to be charming. “I’m surprised you’re still backstage. Your speech ended almost fifteen minutes ago, right?”
The man said it like he was concerned, but something deep inside of me wiggled uncomfortably underneath the man’s blue-eyed gaze. He’d always acted like an older brother for Carter and me—which made some sense seeing as he was only seven years older than me.
At twenty-nine, Delano had been the youngest vice president ever elected and now at thirty-four he was gearing up to be re-elected alongside my mother.
He’d always hovered on the outskirts of our family—my grandfather taking him under his wing when he was a young congressman and grooming him into the man standing in front of me today…
Which meant he was rarely ever genuine.
I loved my grandfather, but Farrow Holloway was a commensurate politician, which meant he was full of flowery words and a wide, agreeable (read: electable) smile and his protege was much of the same.
Most of what Delano said was overly complimentary and the two other men in his pack were much the same.
