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

by Patricia McLinn

  Grady sat at her right. And Michael was at the opposite corner of the table from her, as far as he could get at a cozy table for six in a crowded restaurant.

  What did he think he was doing? Trying to force the clock back to twelve years ago? Was this some sort of test? Or worse. Was some part of him trying to make her return to what, to who she had been, because that was who he loved?

  Wasn’t that a kick? she thought, when she allowed herself to think.

  The girl Tris had thought she was in love with Grady. The woman Tris knew she loved Michael. But Michael was still caught up with the girl Tris. All it would need to be a complete mess was for Grady to fall for her, now, as the woman she was. That would make all three of them miserable.

  But, despite her own troubles, Tris was observant enough to believe that Grady, long the oblivious corner of this triangle, was far from miserable when Leslie came hurrying up to the table.

  At least someone was happy, she thought, with a swell of self-pity. Amid the easy banter of old friends and somewhere between the salad and the main course, anger started chipping away at the self-pity. Who did Michael Dickinson think he was? How dare he push aside the past week as if it hadn’t existed? Because it sure as hell had existed, and so did she. And she wasn’t about to let him pretend otherwise.

  By the time the waiter had cleared the main course and Leslie started to excuse herself from the table, temper had enough strength to push Tris out of her chair and slap her napkin down on the table as if it were a gauntlet as she glared at Michael.

  “I’ll go with you.” She had a sense that everyone looked at her a little strangely then, but the only reaction that really interested her was the startled uncertainty in Michael’s eyes. Good. Let him wonder what was going on in her mind. Let him be concerned just a fraction as much as she had been. Let him worry about how she felt about him for a change.

  She was still considering exactly what she would do to him when the wonder and the concern and the worry finally wore him down enough to break through all his barriers, while she and Leslie stood before the mirror in the ladies’ room, reapplying lipstick and combing their hair. It abruptly struck her that Leslie had been talking earnestly and watching her intently for a couple of minutes. She struggled to catch up with the thread of the conversation.

  “ . . . since we’ve been friends for so long, and your friendship’s very important to me, I think being honest is best. So if you tell me hands-off, that’s the way it’ll be. Not that there’s been any hands-on. Nothing like that, it’s just sometimes I get a sort of vague impression . . . I’d rather head it off beforehand than wait to see if it’s my imagination. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to infringe.” Leslie’s uncharacteristic babbling had Tris staring at her friend, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Never mind. I think it’s all my imagination.”

  “What’s your imagination, and what are you talking about, infringe? Infringe on what?”

  Leslie took a deep breath. “Not ‘what,’ ‘who.’ Grady.”

  Tris stared at her a moment in the mirror, then turned to face her. “Oh, God. Not you, too. Not one fool. Two.”

  Leslie’s expression froze. “I know you think you were a fool to care about Grady when you were in school, Tris. But I am not getting involved, and I’m not a fool—”

  Tris shook her head. “Yes, you are, but not the way you think. I don’t mean you and I are the two fools. I mean you and Michael.”

  Leslie’s stiff dignity evaporated instantly. Curiosity could do that. “Michael? How are Michael and I being fools?”

  “By thinking I still have a thing for Grady,” Tris said tartly.

  “I never said—”

  “No, you never said. But why else would you start talking this junk about ‘infringing’?”

  “I just thought . . . I mean, we’ve been friends a long time and I wouldn’t want you to . . .

  “To think you were trying to cut me out with a guy.” Leslie started to protest, but Tris stopped it with a wave of her hand. “Lord, it’s bad enough getting it from Michael, but you! Leslie, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly than I already have. I don’t love Grady Roberts. I never did, not in the way I understand love now. I had a severe case of unrequited infatuation, but that was years ago. Whatever you want to call it, it stopped a long time ago. I know it was gone by the time I met Terrence. And I can tell you that by the third day with Grady last August, I knew with total, utter, absolute certainty that there’d never be anything other than friendship between Grady and me. That other feeling was like a ghost—a pleasant, friendly ghost of a long-gone memory.

  Leslie smiled at her a little sheepishly. “I knew that. I really did. I knew it when you came back from Illinois in August, and I would have had to be wearing a blindfold not to know it when I saw the way you and Michael were looking at each other that day on the Metro. Otherwise I never would have interfered that way.”

  “Oh, no, you never would have interfered,” said Tris with affectionate sarcasm.

  Leslie pretended huffy indignation. “I might interfere now and again, but it’s only top-quality interference. And you can’t tell me any different. I’ve seen you come in every day this week with dark circles under your eyes and those turned-inside grins that say that you’ve found something a darn sight better than sleeping to occupy your nights!”

  Tris abruptly turned away to return her comb and lipstick to her purse.

  “Tris? What is it? Is something wrong? Oh, Lord, have I put my foot in it? Was I totally wrong about how you’ve been looking this week?”

  “No. You weren’t, but now . . .” She raised her head to meet Leslie’s searching look.

  “But now you’re not sure,” Leslie supplied, and Tris nodded. “I’ve got to admit I wondered a little at the seating arrangement tonight. That’s why I was asking about— well, you know. So what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what’s so frustrating. Last night everything was fine. Then this morning, when we were talking about everybody coming in, and the plans for the weekend, it was as if he backed up about a hundred miles.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  Through the rest of the meal, and even when everyone returned to her house for a nightcap, she had no opportunity to confront Michael with that question of “why,” because they were always in a group, with no chance for private conversation. Almost as if Michael had planned it that way. And through the weekend rush of sight-seeing and party-hopping that absorbed them all, she had the distinct impression he meant to keep it that way.

  * * * *

  Emerging from the dim, cozy restaurant into the brightness of a sparkling winter day, Michael watched Senator Joan Bradon and their two business-lunch companions blink against the cold dazzle of the sky, trying to get their bearings. He didn’t need to do that because he knew exactly where he was. A block and a half from Tris's office. Tris.

  He flagged a taxi and enclosed the other two in it, then turned to search for another cab to take the senator and himself back to Capitol Hill.

  “Joan! Joan Bradon!”

  Michael watched Joan’s face crease into a smile as a gray-overcoated man separated himself from the flow of the sidewalk traffic. Even the expensive tailoring didn’t mask that this man had a burly enough build to match the deep voice.

  “Hello, Morton. How are you?”

  “Same as always. But how are you? Welcome to Washington, Senator Bradon. Congratulations!”

  “You already congratulated me, or didn’t you know your secretary sent me flowers the day after I won the election?”

  “Of course I knew, and I sent them, not my secretary. But I thought you might have forgotten.”

  “Not a chance. But of course, you were just covering all the bases, weren’t you?” She turned to Michael. “Michael, you remember Morton Treen, don’t you?”

  He did. As he shook hands, he contemplated the man. Tr
uly a political animal, with no official title or power, but with plenty of clout. Gray suited him. Michael knew Morton Treen had done enough expedient, self-serving deals to dim any white hat he’d try to wear, yet he’d accomplished enough good to prevent anyone from ever painting him black. He fit Washington perfectly.

  “Good to see you again, Michael. And Joan, this is absolutely providential running into you this way. I have something I’d like to throw your way. It could get you off to a flying start on the Hill, really make a name for yourself right away. Do you have some time?”

  Michael met Joan’s look and gave an infinitesimal shrug. With the city gearing up for the inauguration festivities, work was rather piecemeal.

  “Certainly, Morton.” She turned to Michael. “I’ll meet you back at the office. Or better yet, why don’t you take the afternoon off? I know you have friends in from out of town, and you’re looking a little tired. You need to relax more, enjoy yourself.”

  She gave him a small push, and turned to take Morton Treen’s arm, heading back into the restaurant.

  Michael smiled a little as he watched them. Morton Treen might be a tough political animal, but he’d put his money on Joan any day.

  He’d walked a block and a half before his conscious mind acknowledged what his subconscious apparently had known all along. He was going to see Tris. He’d missed her. These past few days, wrestling with his doubts and seeing her only in the midst of crowds, he’d really missed her. He paused outside her office building, considering the words emblazoned above the door. One word caught his attention—Preservation. That was what he should be thinking about. Self-preservation. Preserving his heart. Ensuring that when she moved on from him, there was still some of him left. Anything left.

  He stared at the word. Preservation. Self-preservation.

  Hell, who was he kidding? There wasn’t anything left of his heart to preserve. She had it all. Probably had since her freshman year in college, twelve long years ago.

  He pushed open the plate-glass door and went in.

  * * * *

  The quick knock on her half-opened door hardly penetrated Tris’s mind.

  “C’mon in,” she called and started to turn around without disturbing either the half of her mind occupied by a Midwestern group’s convoluted efforts to save a landmark inn, or the half occupied by the complex man who was driving her crazy . . . and who was standing in her doorway with the most curious expression on his face she’d ever seen. As if the desire to smile at her made him frown.

  “Michael.” The tightening of her throat softened the word into a whisper.

  “Hi, Tris. Busy? The woman up front said to come on back.”

  “Yes. I mean, no, I’m not busy. And I’m glad you came on back.”

  She crossed to the door, and he stepped into the room as she closed it. She watched him survey the small office, taking in the bookshelves, the open folders on her desk, the orderly clutter of a space well organized and well used.

  “I’ve missed you, Michael.”

  He completed his circuit of the room and stood before her as she leaned against the door. Something in him wouldn’t allow him to make the same admission. “You just saw me last night.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Me and approximately three thousand other people at the Kennedy Center.”

  “Didn’t you enjoy the gala? All those stars, all those dressed-to-the-nines celebrities?”

  “It was all right.”

  “Just all right? I thought you were the one telling me a week ago that those were the hottest tickets in town.”

  “They were. But there are other things I’d rather do. Things you can’t very well do at the Kennedy Center with three thousand people around.”

  “Other things? Like what?”

  “Like this.” She slid her hands up his chest, burrowing under the open topcoat and suit jacket so only the fine cotton of his shirt separated her palms from his skin. At his shoulders, she moved her hands higher, reaching around his neck to pull herself close, at the same time urging his head down to hers.

  He required little urging. She felt the taut need in him an instant before his mouth found hers. His tongue thrust between her lips as his body pressed her firmly against the door. Welcoming the weight and heat of him, she shifted to accommodate the knee he slid between hers, spreading her legs apart until he bent a little to turn his hips into the cradle that awaited him. She tightened her legs against his. Ah, it felt so good . . . and it could feel so much better. She felt his arousal pressing against her, hollowing out her insides with the ache he’d created.

  He lifted his head, too soon for her desire but nearly too late for her lungs. She gulped in air and joy and relief.

  Everything was all right. Everything had to be all right.

  “God, you feel good, Tris.” He muttered the words against her neck, so they thrilled her both as sound and touch.

  She moved against him, and he responded by pressing his hips into her, and finding her mouth again and again. Until they both had to gasp for air and enough self-control to keep from slipping down to the floor and completing what they both craved.

  He’d eased away from her some, so her forearms rested on his shoulders, and he watched her intently. She smiled into his multicolored eyes, and spoke the words she couldn’t hold in any longer.

  “I love you, Michael Dickinson.”

  She felt the change in him immediately. His eyes dropped and he shifted his shoulders as if they carried the weight of her arms on them as a burden.

  “That’s quite a word to throw around.” He spoke very quietly, very reasonably. The flatness chilled her.

  “Throw around?” The jolt of fear stopped her heart, then hammered its beats so fast she felt breathless once more.

  “You’ve thought you were in love before, haven’t you, Tris?”

  It was more accusation than question. She couldn’t decide if her reaction was sadness or anger. “You’re never going to get over the fact that I once thought I was in love with Grady Roberts, are you?” she asked. “That I had a youthful infatuation with him. You’ll never get past Grady.”

  “Listen. Grady isn’t the issue. I wouldn’t give a damn if you’d married the man and had five children by him. Since you say it’s really over—”

  “Over? There wasn’t ever anything there. Not anything real. Just my infatuation.”

  “And is that over? Your infatuation for him?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good! Because I want to get married. And I only intend to do this once.”

  She sucked in a breath for her next retort. How could the right words sound so wrong?

  How could the right man be so wrong? At last the air hissed out of her as she considered Michael’s belligerent face. “That’s a hell of a proposal.”

  “Then it suits the situation just fine, because I’m in a hell of a fix.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m in love with you, probably have been since you were a freshman in college, but I don’t know if you love me.”

  Very quietly, very dangerously, she spoke. “I’ve said I love you, Michael, haven’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe. All those years—”

  “All those years ago, Michael. That’s the important word you keep forgetting.” But something inside of her wondered if Grady was all that bothered him. “Yes, I thought I was wildly, unrequitedly in love with Grady. When I was seventeen years old. And yes, I held on to that belief for a while. But I grew out of it.”

  “Is that what happened with your marriage, too? You grew out of it?”

  She stilled at the harshness of his words. She remembered her uneasy feeling during her telephone conversation with Paul the week before. The uneasy feeling that there was something standing between her and Michael that she didn’t know about. Something deeper than her long-ago crush on Grady Roberts. Did
her marriage and divorce have something to do with it? What if it was she, not Grady, that he couldn’t get past. The changes in her. If he still loved someone she no longer was.

  She felt something as cold as panic around her heart. Lord, please let it be Grady that’s the issue here. I know, eventually, I can convince him that’s no threat to us. But if it’s something else . . .

  “I made a mistake marrying Terrence. A terrible, unfair mistake. But people do make mistakes, Michael. Especially young people. I grew up. I don’t think you’ve seen that yet—”

  “‘What if this is another mistake?”

  She felt as if the breath, the life, the love, had been sucked out of her. “You don’t know. You really don’t know. You don’t know me. And you don’t trust me. Or my love. God, I thought if there was anybody in the world who would understand.

  “Tris—”

  “No.” She pulled her arm away, afraid she wouldn’t get through this if he touched her. “I very much fear that the Tris you say you’re in love with, the Tris you proposed to just now, is no longer the Tris I am. So I must decline, with very great regret, your flattering proposal.”

  He stared at her so long that she feared the tears would come before he left. Then he muttered a curse word that would have shocked her coming from him, if she’d had any emotion left over for shock.

  He spun on his heel and jerked open the door, almost colliding with Leslie, whose hand was raised in preparation to knock.

  “Oh!” She stepped back in obvious surprise, started to smile a greeting, then stopped. “Michael.”

  He didn’t acknowledge her, but he did alter his route enough to avoid running her down as he strode out. Leslie seemed to be grateful for that courtesy, muttering something dryly about “nice seeing you, too” as she looked in the direction of his departure.

  Then she turned to Tris and, after one long, searching gaze, she swung the door closed behind her and stood there a full minute before breaking the silence.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “No.”

  “Anything anybody can do?”

  “No.” Nobody except that stubborn, pigheaded man who’d just walked out.