Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series)

by Patricia McLinn

  The string of curses he muttered under his breath would have astonished most of the people who knew him. But not the one who came up next to him at the tail end of the self-directed tirade.

  “About time to get things turned around, don’t you think, Dickinson? How about letting me take the helm a while?”

  Michael looked at Paul blankly a moment, then focused on the shoreline. They’d come farther than they’d planned. Without a word he handed the wheel over to Paul to maneuver the boat for the return trip. But he didn’t move away. There wasn’t much space on the boat, and Tris already had staked out the opposite end of the deck.

  When Paul finished bringing the boat about, he looked at Michael. “I meant what I said about it being time to get things turned around.”

  “What do you mean?” Michael’s hope that the other occupants of the boat might not have noticed his exchange with Tris ended with Paul’s next words.

  “You and Tris.”

  “You heard?”

  “No. But I could see. That was enough. I hate to see it. You two were always so close.”

  Michael shrugged, the facade nearly in place again. “It happens. People grow apart. Friendships die.”

  Even friendships with people you thought had given you a permanent corner of their heart—a small, platonic corner, but given forever. Even that could change.

  “Bull.”

  “You can’t expect to come back to reunions like this and have everything the same.” Lord knew he hadn’t expected his feelings to still be the same. He didn’t want them to be the same. He wanted to be perfectly happy with the friendship he and Tris had shared for so long. Now even that might be gone, maybe for good.

  “Bull,” Paul repeated without heat. “Not all people grow apart. Don’t go judging everyone by your mother and father, Michael. I understood it when we were kids in school, but you know better now. There are plenty of people around who take a while to figure out exactly what’s right for them, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily jump from marriage to marriage.”

  Perhaps he sensed Michael’s stiffening because Paul’s next words shifted the conversation’s course. “And it’s bull that all you’ve ever wanted from Tris was friendship.”

  In the silence that followed, Michael wondered a little at his own lack of surprise. Maybe some part of him had suspected that Paul had known how he’d felt for Tris back in college. In some ways it was a relief to have it out, at least with one person.

  “That obvious?” He managed a wryness he didn’t feel.

  “Obvious? Yeah, you’ve been practically shouting it from the rooftops,” Paul said with heavy sarcasm. “So obvious that nobody else has even got a hint of it. That I— renowned for my acumen in. such matters as everyone knows—wasn’t really sure until . . .” He hesitated, then added in a very different tone. “Until Bette.”

  Until he’d met Bette, and fallen in love himself—the message was clear. But Michael couldn’t accept what it said about his feelings. He met Paul’s eyes directly, and saw empathy and more than a hint of impatience, “Dammit, Paul, whatever you saw—thought you saw—it’s gone, if it ever existed at all. All that’s left is putting the ghost to rest, once and for all.”

  “You can’t put to rest a ghost of something that’s not dead.”

  Michael shook his head, trying to free it of Paul’s words and the stupid, crazy hope that the words bred. “There’s never been anything more than friendship between us, and now that’s hurting.”

  “Maybe there hasn’t been anything more than friendship in the past, but maybe it’s time that changed. Maybe friendship isn’t right for the two of you.”

  “What do you mean?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he’d asked the question, and he didn’t have time to retract it before Paul was answering.

  “You know another term for putting a ghost to rest?” He glanced over his shoulder to where Judi and Bette were heading for them and didn’t wait for Michael to shake his head.

  “Laying a ghost.”

  * * * *

  “Play ball!

  Tris added her perfunctory cheer to the roar of the Wrigley Field crowd. Blue sky, hot sun, cool breeze, bleacher seats with good friends and the Cubs on a winning streak. If that didn’t make for a perfect afternoon at the ballpark, she didn’t know what did.

  So why did she feel as if she’d just been scheduled for an IRS audit?

  She didn’t have to search for that answer as she munched on hot dogs and chips and watched the batters come and go. It sat three seats away. Michael Dickinson.

  They hadn’t spoken two words to each other since their exchange on the boat. She kept waiting for something, some sign that he was sorry he’d said those terrible things to her. But all she saw was a hard, stubborn man she’d only had glimpses of before. She remembered his telephone conversation with his office and his reference to himself as ruthless. For the first time, that element of him was directed at her. She didn’t like it.

  At last night’s cookout at the Monroes’ they’d managed to stay at opposite ends of the patio. By accident or by design. the group had sorted out to form buffers between them at breakfast, in the drive to the ballpark and for sitting in the bleachers. She was relieved her parents were arriving for the weekend and would be taking her out to dinner tonight. It would be good to get away from this oppressive atmosphere. No one had said anything, but it was clear that Bette, Judi and Paul sensed the strain between her and Michael. The silences were longer and the rush to fill them more noticeable, the laughter louder and the causes for it smaller than she could ever remember. The only one who seemed unaffected was Grady.

  She turned to him with a rush of affectionate gratitude.

  Thank heavens for the sense of normalcy he provided.

  But Grady’s attention remained all on the game and, as he started rising from his seat, she became aware of the roar of the crowd and the surge to their feet of the people around them. A ball was headed in their direction. If it reached them it would be a home run, and put the Cubs ahead by three runs.

  She jumped up, caught in the game’s excitement for the first time. She could see it! The ball was coming, a home run for sure. And it was coming right at them!

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

  “It’s yours, Jason! Get it, Jason!”

  She heard the passionate shouts of a young boy and his father in the row behind them and felt a tingle of goose bumps. This would be a memory the boy carried with him his entire life.

  She half turned to watch the joy on the youngster’s face as he reached up to cradle the ball in the glove he’d so hopefully toted to the game. But the ball didn’t reach the glove. Inches away, a pair of long arms stretched up, and a bare hand snared the ball. Grady Roberts’s.

  “I got it! How ‘bout that! Did you see that catch, Tris?”

  “Grady! You took the ball away from that little boy. You can’t do that!”

  “I didn’t take it away. I caught it. Whoever catches the ball and holds on to it gets to keep it and I’m the one who caught it.” He tossed a grin over his shoulder at the crestfallen boy and his father. The father patted his son’s arm, still holding out his glove, waiting for the ball that didn’t come.

  “He’s right, son. The ball goes to whoever makes the catch.”

  “That’s terrible! You’re two feet taller than him! What’s fair about that?”

  “Aw, Tris . . .”

  “Give it to the boy, Grady.”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not kidding. Give it to the boy.”

  Grady tried a charming smile on her, but it faded as he seemed to read the determination in her face. Perhaps seeking reinforcements, he turned to the others. Bette and Judi wore identical reproachful stares. Michael’s and Paul’s expressions held a bit more sympathy—he who catches keeps was the rule of the bleachers, but . . .

  “He’s only a kid, Grady.”

  Grady didn
’t respond to Paul’s words, hut he did turn and place the ball into the boy’s glove.

  “Gee thanks, mister! You see that, Dad? I got the ball. Maybe I can get it autographed after the game. I nearly caught it myself, didn’t I, Dad?”

  “You did catch it,” Tris told the boy, who was all grin and freckles. “You had your glove right on it.”

  The father beamed at his son, then spread a wide thanks to their entire group. They all smiled back as everyone settled in for what looked sure to be a Cubs victory.

  Tris glanced at Grady from the corner of her eye. Even he had managed a smile for the boy, but now he sat a little slouched in his seat. He shouldn’t have snatched the ball away from the boy in the first place. Maybe he had acted purely on instinct, but still . . .

  I’m annoyed at him . The realization seeped into her. Annoyed at Grady Roberts. She couldn’t remember ever being annoyed with Grady before, not in all the years she’d known him. Awed, infatuated, overwhelmed, but never annoyed.

  The hero had fallen off his pedestal. No, not fallen. If there’d been a pedestal, she’d built it under him; he hadn’t stepped up on it on his own. He’d always been the same Grady; it was her view that had changed.

  She turned to stare at him. The breeze ruffled his hair attractively and the sun brought out its gold. Healthy color underlined the clean lines of his handsome face. None of that had changed. Yet she saw more. She saw a charming man, not perhaps totally grown-up. Used to having things, large and small, go his way in life. A good man. Yet enough the not-right man—for her—to irk her now and then. She wasn’t even surprised. It was as if she’d finally articulated something she’d long known.

  Grady was a major college crush that you’ve never had a chance to check against adult reality .

  Leslie Craig’s words, spoken weeks ago, floated into Tris’s mind, along with something she’d told her friend: I’m long past my infatuation with Grady Roberts.

  Maybe she hadn’t even realized then the truth of those words, but she did now. She’d needed this week—not to get over Grady, but to remind herself why her long-ago feelings had never developed beyond that college crush.

  She thought of her feeling of anticlimax when Grady hugged her at the airport and of times the past several days when she’d avoided openings to tell him about the things that were most important to her. At one level she must have recognized this all along. It just took her conscious mind a while to catch up.

  Down the row, she saw Michael lean forward in intense concentration on the game. She’d told Michael about her past and her present, about her home and her work, about the problems with the project and her fears. That was what it meant to be a true friend, and she knew she couldn’t love someone she didn’t share that kind of closeness with. She’d also told Michael about her marriage…

  Her marriage . . . Something Michael had said about her marriage yesterday during that horrid exchange on the boat. What was it? Something that niggled at her, something that left the impression that he thought she’d married Terrence because he was like Grady.

  But he wasn’t. What had been alike was her reaction to them: infatuation. Heady stuff, but like mist burned off by the sun, unable to survive exposure to reality.

  She’d been a fool—a young fool—to rush into marriage with Terrence before her feelings took the test of reality. But she’d never been fool enough to marry one man because he reminded her of another.

  No matter what harsh words they’d exchanged, surely Michael knew her too well to believe that.

  She sat back and raised her face to the blue, blue sky above her. A single tear slid from the corner of her eye. Maybe it was for the touch of sadness at the final letting go of her long-ago hero. Or maybe it was the last farewell to the girl she’d once been. Or possibly it was for the pure joy of knowing that she was, truly, a grown-up woman named Tris Donlin.

  But it might also have been for an estrangement from someone she suddenly wasn’t sure she knew at all.

  * * * *

  Tris clicked off the outside light Aunt Nancy had left burning for her, slipped off her heels and headed for the kitchen, where a single light glowed in the dark house. She wasn’t surprised everybody was asleep. After a long, chatty dinner with her parents, she’d gone back into their hotel room for more talk—until her father’s snoring informed mother and daughter that they’d talked well into the early-morning hours.

  She eased open the refrigerator door in search of something cool to drink. They’d talked of many things, she and her parents. She’d caught them up on details of her life, too small for phone calls or letters, and filled them in on the activities this week. They remembered Michael and Grady from her college days and were interested in how the years had treated them. And of course they had family news to discuss—a tooth for her niece, a new job for her sister-in-law, a boat for her brother, a less-than-charming boyfriend for her sister, a health update on a longtime friend of the family.

  About the only topics they hadn’t touched on were a certain coolness in her relationship with Michael and her recognition of her long-changed feelings for Grady. Her hand closed around a plastic jug of lemonade.

  “‘Bout time you got home.”

  Tris clutched the container to her chest like a shield and swung around with an inarticulate cry.

  “Quiet! You’ll wake up the whole house.”

  “Paul! You scared me to death.” She put the lemonade down and placed a hand to her heart to check if it could possibly be beating as fast as if felt. It was. “What are you doing down here?”

  “Waiting for you.” He closed the refrigerator, then pulled two glasses from a cabinet. “I remembered how you always had to have something to drink before you went to bed, ever since you were a little kid, so I knew you’d come in here.”

  Recovered, she lifted her brows as she poured the lemonade. “Aw, how sweet. You. were worried about your little cousin being out late at night—and with her own parents! Aren’t you supposed to save that role for your kid sister?”

  He snorted. “Hah! Worried? Even if it hadn’t been with your parents I know better than to worry about you or Judi. Only thing I’d worry about with either one of you is the poor guy you’d set your sights on.”

  Tris felt her face tighten at the memory of Judi, encircled by Michael’s arms on the boat, laughing up into his face. Had her young cousin set her sights there? “So if it wasn’t worry; why did you stay up, Paul?”

  He carried the glasses to the breakfast-room table and waited until they had both sat before answering. “I figured you could use somebody to do some listening.”

  “What do you mean? What gave you that idea?”

  “Everybody needs somebody to listen to them, a sounding board. I know you’ve had other people for that before.” He slanted a sharp look at her over the top of his glass as he drank, and she concentrated on keeping her face expressionless. They both knew he meant Michael. “But sometimes, for whatever—um—reason, you need somebody else, and it turns out I’m not half-bad at it. Bette’s been working with me.”

  Tris softened at his pleased-with-himself grin. “That’s a generous offer, Paul, but I don’t have anything right now that I feel I need to talk about, or bounce against a sounding board.”

  He made a noise resembling “Humph,” but didn’t argue. “We can just chat then. It’s been a nice week, hasn’t it?”

  “A very nice week.”

  “Good to see the campus again, and hit some of our old haunts. Sure enjoyed that pizza the other night. And of course the sailing. There’s nothing like being out on the lake.” Tris thought she saw where this conversation was headed and tensed. Paul continued on. “Heck of a ball game this afternoon.”

  “Yes, it was,” she said, willing to cooperate in steering the conversation away from sailing trips. “It’s always great to see the Cubs win.”

  “And to have a home run hit right to where we were sitting—that’s pretty rare.”

  “Cert
ainly is.”

  “And to have one of us actually catch it, boy, that’s something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hard even for a grown man to give up something like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the kid was awfully excited, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was.” Tris fought the urge to grin at him, and took a long swallow of lemonade.

  “Probably made that kid’s day. He’ll be talking about the home run ball he caught at Wrigley Field for years.”

  “Yes.”

  “ ‘Course, so will Grady.” Paul chuckled. “Eventually he may even forget he didn't give the ball to the kid right away.”

  Tris smiled back at him. “Probably.”

  “Are you in love with him, Tris?” Her heart seemed to hold its breath. “With Grady?” he added, and her heart scurried to catch up with itself.

  “No.”

  He exhaled long and deep before lifting his head to look her in the eyes. “I thought from the way you were acting this week that you’d seen things more clearly, but I was a little worried you’d gotten so used to agreeing to everything I said in this conversation that you’d just keep saying yes.”

  More curious than anything else, she tipped her head to study him. “You didn’t want me to be in love with Grady? Why not? He’s been your friend forever. He may not be perfect, but he’s a good guy. And he’s one of your dearest friends in the world.”

  “So’s Michael.”

  “We’re not talking about Michael.” She didn’t think she succeeded in keeping her voice completely steady. The conversation’s unexpected shift made her feel as if one of her old buildings had collapsed on her, weighing her down, making breathing impossible.

  “Aren’t we?”

  ‘‘Well, I’m not.”

  “Maybe you should be.”

  “That’s crazy. Michael and I… I mean, our, uh . . . relationship has been . . .” Dammit! Why was she stumbling over these words? “Michael has always treated me exactly the way you and Grady treated me—like an overgrown younger sister. Only Michael’s been a little more polite about it.”