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

by Patricia McLinn

  While she’d been thinking along more personal lines, she realized Paul had returned to the subject of getting ready to come to D.C. for the inauguration. “And he’ll understand perfectly that I need to call to make arrangements for such a high-powered trip.”

  “Uh-huh. Like what arrangements?”

  “Like checking to see if Michael’s asked you to all these party things.”

  “Yes.” She decided to ignore his self-satisfied chortle. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, asking if Bette and I can stay with you. Grady can rough it at Michael’s, but I don’t want Bette sleeping on the floor, and Michael’s furniture probably won’t arrive in time.”

  Tris smiled a little to herself. She wasn’t the only one of their group who’d changed. Come to think of it, there were differences in all of them. Commitment-shy Paul had a wife he loved and looked out for. Self-centered Grady fretted about two friends’ problem. And Michael . . . the changes in Michael were much more difficult to define. Maybe because she was still discovering them.

  “Of course you can stay with me.”

  “Good. That’ll give me more time to ask questions, too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  She’d polished two-thirds of the wooden kitchen cabinets, punishing her arm and shoulder muscles with harder and harder strokes each time her mind threatened to stray to Michael, when she heard the front door open and close.

  About time. Not that she’d really been concerned about him out there without a proper jacket and with the winter sun rapidly losing strength. Pneumonia would serve him right.

  She rubbed the cabinet front vigorously when she found herself envisioning Michael stretched out in bed—her bed—with her as his very devoted nurse.

  “Tris.”

  A cool glance over her shoulder revealed him leaning against the doorjamb, cheeks ruddy with the cold, hair whipped by the wind, and looking incredibly healthy and vital.

  “You’ll freeze,” she said coolly. “You’d better go change out of those clothes. If they’re wet, the dryer’s in the closet across from the bathroom.”

  “Are you worrying about me now because you don’t want to be accused of cruelty to idiots?”

  She refused to respond to his lopsided smile. “Right.”

  He pushed his right hand through his hair, and she had to turn away before she did something stupid like burst into tears. Or throw herself into his arms.

  “Tris, I’m sorry. I was an ass.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Dammit, Tris, are you even going to listen to me?”

  Fairness demanded that she give him that much. She turned around, but she crossed her arms across her chest and leaned against the counter at the farthest point from his position. She could see him read her body language and she heard his sigh. He moved into the kitchen, but stayed more than an arm’s length away.

  “I never meant to hurt you, Tris. Not by anything I said, not by anything . . . we did.”

  His voice was low, and a little husky. There was no doubting his words. He cleared his throat. “It was just that as long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted Grady, and I thought— All right, I didn’t think.” He held up a hand, palm out, as if he sensed the words welling up in her and wanted to stop them. “Maybe I’m a little slow adjusting. Maybe I don’t always like changes, like you said.”

  She watched his brows draw together and saw a shadow pass over his face, something more than puzzlement. Something almost like pain. Her arms came uncrossed, and she stopped herself from reaching to him only by gripping the edge of the counter at either side of her hips.

  “But let me tell you, it takes some adapting to get used to you.” He glanced up quickly at the involuntary sound she made, his frown disappearing into a rueful grimace. “I didn’t mean it quite like that. For someone who’s supposed to be pretty good at stating political positions, I’m really making a mess of this.”

  His sigh carried a load of frustration.

  “What I’m trying to say is I knew this leggy, impulsive girl, knew her through and through. And then it seems as if I blinked and she was transformed into this woman—-this lovely, warm, sensuous woman.” His eyes met hers for the space of a long exhaled breath that forced thought out of her and replaced it with the remembered sensations of his arms around her, his body moving against hers. And for that instant, her heart soared with the hope that he did cherish the woman, not just the girl. Then he looked away, and rationality returned. “But I still see flashes of the girl and I don't know . . .”

  His hand worked a path through his hair once more. “I just don’t know, Tris. Maybe you have a better idea what’s going on.”

  Maybe, maybe not. Was friendship all he could feel for her? Was it the memory of her as she’d been or the person she was now that he cared for? The possible answers frightened her. But one issue held no terrors for her, one issue was absolutely clear.

  “I don’t deny I had a longtime crush on Grady. There’d be no sense in denying it even if I wanted to, because you were there to hear all about it. And I wouldn’t want to deny it. It was part of my growing up. But I grew out of it long ago, Michael. I’d discovered a long time ago that Grady wasn’t the man for me. That week we were all together just confirmed it for me.”

  The question of what she’d discovered about Michael during that week hung in the air between them, unspoken. She could try to tell him now. But she wasn’t entirely sure of the answer . . . And she could see from his face that he was even less sure.

  “And I would never, ever use somebody the way you accused me of using you.”

  “Tris, I—”

  She didn’t want to hear him say he was sorry again. Not now, with undeniable hope surging in her. In his whole explanation, he’d never once said that all he felt for her, all he could ever feel for her, was friendship. With that to build on, hope was already reaching skyscraper heights.

  “You better get that shower. Then I could use some help getting dinner.”

  And a lot of help chasing memories out of her head. About the way he’d looked coming out of a shower in August in Illinois, and her wonderings about the taste and feel and scent of his shower-clean body. About the fact that she’d experienced those sensations. Just once.

  * * * *

  She said she’d gotten over Grady Roberts. What did that mean to him? And why the hell wasn’t he elated?

  Michael stared at his reflection in the shower-fogged mirror and asked himself the questions that had been echoing in his head since he’d plucked himself out of a snowbank several hours earlier.

  She said she was long over Grady. Infatuation, she’d called it. A college crush.

  He toweled off vigorously, and pulled on his clothes.

  There’d certainly been no mistaking her anger at his belief that she’d seen him as a substitute for Grady that night in the bedroom over the garage. He caught the image of his wry expression in the mirror as he picked up the discarded clothes.

  But that would mean that all she’d given that night was really given to him—for him. He saw again the concentrated desire on her face, a face framed by the silken sweep of her hair that tangled and teased his hands. He heard again her voice, saying his name in a way that made him know he gave her pleasure. He felt again fingers that curled into his shoulders in urgent desire, fingers that held on to him with a wonderful tightness as the body below his rose to meet his demands. Lord . . . Tris.

  He scooped up his damp clothes and headed to the dryer across the hail. The clothes inside, he absently twisted the knob to set the timer, then started the machine up. It hummed and whirred under his hand. If only his mind, this roiling mix of fear and hope, were as easy to turn on . . . and off. Instead his thoughts tumbled with about as much order as the clothes being dried.

  Tris had always stood for dependability to him, for affection and caring that would never waver. She gave her heart and never took it back. Knowing that about her, admiring that about her had ma
de it possible for him to accept that she would always want Grady. But now . . . What now?

  She had thought she loved Grady and then Terrence. She certainly had cared deeply for them. He didn’t doubt that. Yet now she thought she cared for him. How long would it last? How long before he, too, was in the past tense in her heart?

  She would never hurt him on purpose, but many people in this world hurt without intention. Many people did not equate love with permanence. They took the moment’s emotion and left it behind when the moment ended. But he wasn’t one of them. He’d sworn he’d never be one of them. He’d been certain Tris wasn’t, either. All these years he’d believed that she would always care for Grady, knowing with total conviction that she was not the type to move on from one “love” to another.

  What if he was wrong? What if he’d been wrong all this time? What if the person he’d given his heart to twelve years ago turned out to be that kind? What then? Because he very much feared that his heart at least had never strayed in twelve long years.

  * * * *

  “So you like living here?”

  Michael’s murmured question broke a silence that had been long and comfortable. They were both sitting on the floor, backs supported by the couch and legs stretched toward the flickering fire, the remains of their dinner on the coffee table they’d pushed aside to better enjoy the fire. Tris felt mellow with the aftereffects of the day’s exercise, the food, the wine and most definitely the company.

  “It’s a great neighborhood. Quiet. Safe. Wonderful neighbors, but still near everything.”

  “Yeah, I was surprised to find it so suburban-looking this close to downtown.”

  “That’s me, just an old suburban matron.” She twisted a little, feeling a twinge in her shoulders from the double strain of shoveling and polishing.

  “Sore?”

  “Mmm. A little.”

  “Here, turn around.” As she complied, he sat up straighter and shifted so he was behind her, close enough that she felt the warmth of his presence, but touching only where his hands kneaded her shoulders.

  She clutched the pillow that had been supporting her head and let out a hum of satisfaction, not bothering to speculate how much came from the easing of groaning muscles and how much from the delicious tightening of other muscles at his touch.

  “Better?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I wouldn’t worry about being viewed as a suburban matron if I were you. I have it on the best authority that you’re the hottest thing in the neighborhood. Especially in the summer when you wear shorts.”

  “What? Who in the world said that?” She turned to look over her shoulder at him, chuckling despite the utter seriousness of his expression.

  “Mikey Grabowski.”

  She laughed outright. “Mikey? Mikey’s all of nine years old!”

  “Uh-huh,” he agreed with no abatement of solemnity. “But Mikey has a sixteen-year-old brother whom he cites as his source, and there is no greater authority on women on the face of this earth than sixteen-year-old boys.”

  “Good heavens. Chris Grabowski? He’s just a—”

  “Don’t say it. And don’t ever let him know you think it. He’d be crushed.”

  “Lord, I will never be able to garden in shorts again. I’ll feel like I have to wrap myself up in a sheet every time I walk out the front door!”

  “Ah.” His breath of satisfaction whispered at her ear, even as his fingers traveled from her shoulders to the tops of her arms, still soothing the muscles. “Then this little talk hasn’t been wasted.”

  “Why, you manipulative. . . manipulative politician!”

  She twisted around to land a blow with the pillow.

  “Just trying to keep this fine neighborhood safe from hot women gardeners.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She landed another pillow blow, and another. He interrupted his laughter for a pro forma “ow” after each one. Then, as he dodged a fourth strike, the “ow” sounded different, and his hands instinctively went to his neck.

  “Aha! Sore?” She pounced on the sign of discomfort, but stopped her attack.

  “A little.” He shot her a sheepish smile as he echoed her earlier words, and she felt her heart constrict in a most distracting way.

  “Well, turnabout’s only fair, so turn around,” she said lightly.

  He sent her a look hard to decipher, then turned with a trace of reluctance. She knelt behind him, contemplating the broad shoulders under the old sweatshirt, narrowing to where the snug jeans molded to him, and decided that turnabout could also be taken a step further. She scooted closer, until her knees enclosed his hips. His back straightened as if his whole body had just been called to attention, but before he could protest, she put her palms to the tight muscles at either side of his neck, rocking and pressing so effectively that she heard his small groan of reaction almost immediately.

  Leaning forward, she spoke into his ear, trying to imitate his earlier conversational tone. “I have it on pretty good authority that you’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Tris.” His tone was admonishing, but his head dropped forward under her questing fingers, so she figured that outweighed any warning.

  “ ‘Hunk,’ I believe, was the description. Not, perhaps, as strong a term as ‘hot.’ But then there was a member of the older generation present, and their sensibilities had to be taken into account.” She brushed against him, not quite sure herself if the touch of her breasts to his back was deliberate or not, but most pleased by the sound he tried to swallow. “And this judgment came from someone considerably older than nine, or sixteen. For that matter, I believe I saw the opinion reflected in the eyes of several women last August.”

  “Tris—”

  Oh, she knew the dangers of not heeding his cautions, of turning the conversation from the teasing of a moment earlier. But somehow, even with all that had happened between them, she knew Michael would not let her fall if she took a misstep on this tightrope.

  “And I realized they were right. I was the one who hadn’t been seeing clearly.”

  Her fingers slipped into the sweatshirt neck widened by age and fanned wide across the smooth, tight skin of his upper back. She wanted more.

  “I’d always thought you so calm, so rational. I didn’t recognize the heat underneath. Until . . . until you held me. You surprised me, Michael. I thought I knew you so well but you surprised me.”

  She wanted to touch him more, to slide her palms across the well-remembered contours of his back, but he surprised her again, twisting around abruptly and catching her wrists in a hard grip.

  He bit off a word even before he’d spoken it, but she knew it was going to be “don’t.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, instead watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His hands on her wrists hurt a little, but she didn’t want him to let go. She might fall completely if he did.

  “It was an artificial situation, Tris.” He’d regained most of his calm when he spoke. That irritated her. Why should he be calm when she felt such confusion? “I understand that.”

  “I don’t. What are you saying, Michael?”

  “It wasn’t real. The whole week. A wedding’s a pretty emotional time anyway, and then there was all the emotion of all of us together, and remembering the past, and the way things were and . . .”

  She knew Grady had edged into his thoughts from the tenor of extreme reasonableness in his voice.

  “And the way things weren’t,” she finished for him.

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  “And you think that’s why I made love to you?”

  “It’s natural, Tris. All those emotions . . . Old emotions and new emotions. Changes.”

  “If you’re going to say again that I used you as some sort of substitute—”

  He held up a palm in a peacekeeping gesture. “No. No, I promise. Besides, you can’t push me down this time. I’m already down.”

  He recaptured her hands, one in each of his, and she found something hopeful in
that.

  “Okay.” She let her ire subside. If he could be reasonable, so could she. And they’d just see where reason led. ‘So you think I made love to you out of an excess of emotions that I didn’t know how to deal with.”

  He grimaced at her summation. His slight shrug could have acknowledged her accuracy or the uselessness of trying to explain further.

  “All right, so let’s say that’s why you think I made love to you.” She drew a deep breath and he seemed to still suddenly as if he sensed a danger. She issued her challenge. “Then why did you make love to me?”

  Motionless, he stared into her eyes. But she could read nothing in his. She controlled the urge to shiver at their blankness, and met his look as steadily as she could, very aware that he still held her hands where they rested on her knees.

  When he shifted his weight and grinned at her, she felt as if he’d crossed a line of some sort. But her heart sank at the unfamiliar slant of his mouth. There was no hint of a dimple, and this wasn’t his usual little-boy grin. It was an impostor.

  “Well, you got to admit you came on like gangbusters. A guy would have to be crazy to pass up . . .” He started off fine, but it didn’t last, and soon his voice faded into nothing. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks that he had been made so incapable of lying.

  He lifted his hand, taking hers with it, to brush a lock of hair back from her cheek with his knuckles, then let a pent-up breath escape in the sound of a small defeat. “I made love to you because you were so damn beautiful. Because you’re you, Tris. And I have never been able to resist that temptation.”

  “I don’t want you to resist, Michael.” She wanted the words to be strong and assured. They were a whisper. Her laugh came out shaky and low. “I’ve done my best to show you that, Good heavens, I’ve brazenly thrown myself at you every time trying to show you that.”

  “Not every time.” In that low-voiced denial she heard the gruffness of desire, and she remembered how he’d awakened her during the night in the bedroom over the garage, and how he had shown her how much he did want her, needed her. His words now and the memory of his loving then gave her the courage to say more.