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

by Patricia McLinn

  “Certainly, Senator.”

  She pulled her dark-rimmed glasses off impatiently, ruffling her smooth cap of gray-sprinkled hair. “Enough of that ‘Senator’ stuff, Michael. The first few days it was fun, but it’s been Joan for five years, let’s leave it that way.” She didn’t wait for an answer, tossing a folder to his side of the wide desk. “Here, look at this.”

  He picked up the folder, but wasn’t surprised that she kept talking as he opened it; people who couldn’t do two things at once didn’t last long around Joan Bradon.

  He looked at the title page and felt a curious shifting in his chest. It couldn’t be . . . But if it was. . . why? Why did she do it this way?

  “This came to me from Morton Treen. He doesn’t often steer me wrong. I found it quite impressive. Well thought out, well presented. And certainly the idea of two benefits from the cost of one project has a lot of appeal. In fact, I thought you’d mentioned something similar to me back before the election. But then you didn’t follow up. Wasn’t there a project you wanted me to look at? Something similar to this?”

  Michael raised his eyes from the pages. “Yes, there was, Joan. But it wasn’t similar—it was the same project. But with some changes in the proposals for how the funding would be accomplished.”

  “The same project, hmm?” She studied his face a moment longer, then put her glasses up to her eyes to check a note. “Morton says someone named Tris Donlin is the brains behind this. You know her?”

  “Yes, I know her.” At least he’d thought he did. But she’d gone to Morton Treen with her proposal instead of bringing it to him. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Hadn’t she trusted him?

  “She’d talked to you about the project before and then decided to approach me from another direction, hmm?”

  He forced himself to say the word that confirmed what he didn’t want to acknowledge. “Yes.”

  “This funding looks pretty reasonable, like she knew what might fly. You say the funding proposal was changed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes changes are for the better, Michael.” Her voice was soft, but her look seemed to pierce right through him to his soul. He didn’t look away. “I know you don’t always care for change, but— What is it?”

  He didn’t think he’d betrayed his reaction, but she was sharp. “Someone else has said that to me recently.”

  “Ah.” She looked from him to the papers in front of her and back to him. “Someone perceptive. Someone who knows you well.”

  His brief nod accepted her words.

  “I was a little concerned about you when you were talking this fall about not coming with me here to D.C., Michael. I’ve been glad to see you seeming more settled the past week.” Her hand moved over the paper with Tris’s name on it. “Just remember, you’re a skeptic and not a cynic. I need your talent for seeing the holes, but don’t ever forget that there can be damned fine cheese surrounding those holes. Don’t focus on the holes to the exclusion of the cheese, Michael.”

  This time she didn’t wait for him to respond, putting on her glasses and briskly rearranging the papers before her. “Anything involved here that will prevent your review of this proposal from being objective and fair?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” If anything, he might be a tougher judge, knowing Tris had chosen to bypass him with her heartfelt project. Why, Tris?

  “Good. I’d like you to take a look at it and leave me something brief with a preliminary opinion.” She consulted her slim gold watch. “Not now. It’s time to leave for the swearing in. After the parade this afternoon?”

  She left just enough of a question in it that he knew he could beg off if he wanted to. He didn’t. He nodded.

  “Good. I know you men don’t need as much time to get all dressed up, so I thought you would have time before tonight’s ball. Leave a note on my desk and I’ll look at it in the morning. If you like the idea, we can get a few other people involved right from the start. It never hurts to make people think they were in on the discovery of something great. See you tonight, Michael.”

  “Okay, Joan.”

  * * * *

  “I have never seen so many horses! Not since the day my great-uncle took us all to the Kentucky Derby in Louisville.” Leslie emphasized her exhaustion by flopping on Tris's couch. Tris had long envied Leslie her ability to flop gracefully. “And let me tell you, the jockeys’ outfits at Louisville were a darn sight more conservative than some we saw today.”

  “Where is that you said? Lu’ville? Is that somewhere in Kentucky?” Grady perched on the couch arm and handed her a cup of coffee.

  “That is how we in the South pronounce it,” Leslie intoned, but her eyes gleamed at the teasing.

  Tris had a momentary vision of Leslie and Grady sitting on a wide, white veranda in the dress of a century and a half ago, and Leslie rapping him on the knuckles with her fan. But rapping gently enough to encourage him to go right on with his flirting. She stifled a grin as she put down a tray with cream and sugar, and a plentiful supply of cookies, then added her review of the parade they’d just seen.

  “I thought the horses were fine and the marching bands sounded great, but you could have cut out all the smiling politicians for my taste.”

  “Try to remember all those smiling politicians are the reason for the whole thing,” recommended Michael, bringing in the last two cups. “Coffee, Bette?”

  “No coffee for Bette,” Paul answered for her. “Don’t you have milk?”

  Tris tried to remember the contents of her refrigerator. “Uh, I might. You want milk, Bette?”

  “Or hot chocolate?” Paul asked his wife.

  She patted his hand. “No, thanks. No milk, and no hot chocolate. I’ll just have a cookie.”

  She leaned toward the tray, but before she could reach it, Paul had jumped up, snagged the cookie plate and brought it back to her.

  “You sure you don’t want something hot to drink? It was awfully cold out there.”

  “It was fifteen degrees warmer than most January days in Chicago, Paul.”

  “But the wind was raw, and we were out a long time, with the swearing in and then the parade. Maybe we should have come back earlier. It’s a long day, and with the ball tonight . . . Maybe we should skip the ball, stay home and rest.”

  “I’m fine. Honest. And if you think I’m going to miss my one and probably only opportunity to go to an official inaugural ball you’re crazy.”

  “Then maybe we should all clear out now and let you take a nap before you get ready. You should rest.”

  “I’m not tired enough to take a nap. Sitting here like this is fine, Paul. Besides, I want to talk to everybody.”

  Tris listened to the exchange with growing amazement. She couldn’t resist seeing if anyone else thought Paul was acting out of character. The stunned expressions of Grady and Michael told her they agreed.

  Bette obviously also had been checking out her audience because she gave a giggle. “Paul, I think your friends are suspecting I’ve had your personality altered while they weren’t looking.”

  Paul colored a little, but gruffly intimated that he didn’t care. “Husbands are supposed to look out for their wives,” he mumbled.

  “Especially when they’re looking out for two,” added Bette. She surveyed the blank faces around her, and prompted, “You know, as in eating for two.”

  “A baby.” Michael was the first to get it.

  “A baby.”

  “Congratulations!”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “When are you due?”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Have you picked out names?”

  “A boy or a girl?”

  “We won’t know that for a while yet, Grady,” said Bette with a laugh, then started separating the spate of questions. “Everything’s fine. The baby’s due in mid-August. So that leaves us several months to thrash out the name issue. Bu
t we know a few we’re considering,” she added with a big smile at all of them.

  “This calls for champagne, and I just happen to have a bottle in the fridge.”

  “I’ll help.” Michael followed her into the kitchen.

  “No champagne for Bette,” Paul called out after them.

  “That doesn’t seem fair,” Tris heard her protesting.

  Michael had the glasses out by the time she’d retrieved the bottle from behind items in daily use. She peeled foil from the bottle’s neck. An effervescence bubbled into her bloodstream as she remembered another bottle of champagne, and what had followed it. Was Michael remembering?

  “You want me to open it?”

  Tris met his intense eyes. He remembered.

  “Yes. Please.” Her voice seemed oddly breathless for such a mundane request.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so odd, she decided as she watched him wrap one strong hand around the bottle and the other around the towel-covered cork. How hopeful she’d been that night. It had all seemed so simple, so inevitable. She’d discovered a bright, new feeling for Michael Dickinson and had been certain, deep in her heart, that he shared that feeling.

  Now she knew the name for that feeling—love. She also knew that simple and inevitable were not among love’s guarantees.

  He filled the last glass and put down the bottle, two drops from the lip of the bottle dropping to his finger. She followed his automatic motion as he brought his hand to his mouth, reaching out quickly to stop him short. He stood very still. Meeting his eyes, she brought his hand to her lips instead, sipping those two precious drops slowly and carefully.

  He finally moved, twining his fingers into her hair and bracketing her cheeks with his palms, holding her face so his eyes bored into hers. She felt, as she had before, that he was searching for something that would answer forever his questions. She opened her eyes and her heart to him, hoping it would be enough.

  When he abruptly brought his mouth down to hers, she couldn’t help a feeling of sadness at the same time she relished the feel of his lips and tongue and teeth. He hadn’t found the answer he’d been seeking.

  Michael, if I could give you certainty I would. But only you have the power to believe in me, in my love .

  “Did you say you were going to find out what’s taking so long? With the champagne? In the kitchen?” Leslie’s raised voice of warning penetrated the mist of desire Michael so easily raised in Tris. She backed away quickly and was fussing with the tray when Grady and Paul came around the corner.

  “Good. Here, you each carry a couple glasses and then we won’t need a tray.” She handed them the glasses and hustled them out of the kitchen, taking one covert look at Michael before heading to the living room with him following.

  The look told her that he had been as affected by their kiss as she was. There were so many emotions in it. So many questions. So many declarations. She knew she couldn’t begin to sort them out.

  She looked from Bette to Paul. She was thrilled for them, and she envied them.

  They hadn’t always had a smooth road, she knew. But they’d passed that. They’d been sure enough to marry, and now sure enough to have a baby.

  She wanted a baby. She wanted Michael’s baby, with Michael’s warm eyes and tousled hair and errant dimple. But how could that be, how could a marriage work for them if he didn’t truly believe she loved him?

  “A toast,” Michael announced.

  Everyone raised a glass, turning to Michael to say the words. His eyes never wavered from Tris. “To Paul and Bette, to old times, old friends and…”

  She remembered the words she’d added to this same toast he’d made in the small room over the garage five months before. Would he remember? Would he give her hope by using them?

  “ . . . and new beginnings.”

  “Hear, hear,” came the voices around her. Michael leaned forward to clink his glass softly against hers. She saw him through a mist of tears. If only he could truly believe in the power of new beginnings.

  * * * *

  Tris stared at her image in the bathroom mirror, and wished Michael’s were next to hers.

  He’d said he was going to his office for a while before returning to his apartment to dress for tonight’s ball. He and Grady would pick up Leslie, then come here to get her, Paul and Bette.

  She’d put on her dress, a shimmer of garnet red that rippled with light when she moved. But she’d never be ready if she didn’t stop staring into the mirror making useless wishes. She picked up her brush with determination.

  If Michael were beside her, the wishes wouldn’t seem so useless. If she could keep him beside her all the time, maybe his doubts would finally be eased.

  But that wasn’t realistic. Just as her first expectations five months ago that the new feelings they’d discovered for each other would be perfect weren’t realistic. How could she have expected them to switch from years of friendship to being lovers without any hitches? That was the foolishness of someone who, indeed, led with her heart, and she wasn’t that person anymore.

  It made sense that Michael had doubts and concerns. It was reasonable and understandable, especially considering his family history and what he’d seen of her track record with relationships. She couldn’t blame him for not feeling the absolute sense of rightness that she experienced every time they touched. She might wish he could feel it, but she couldn’t blame him if he didn’t.

  No, what she had to do was work to overcome his doubts.

  And work she would, until he couldn’t do anything but believe she loved him. And when that happened, then . . . then, she’d take about two seconds to say yes if—no, when, when he again asked her to marry him.

  “If you keep sighing like that you’re going to fog up the mirror.” Paul grinned at her from the doorway before being scooted aside by his wife.

  “Why don’t you go wait downstairs? You’re all ready, but we have a few more finishing touches. Just a few minutes.”

  Paul groaned as he went down the stairs but was wise enough not to question Bette’s time estimate.

  Pulled from her reverie, Tris rapidly finished arranging her hair and checking her makeup. Gradually, she became aware of Bette watching her in the mirror. She met the look and saw sympathy and understanding there.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Bette confirmed, but stayed where she was a moment longer. “Hang in there, Tris. It’ll work out, and he’s a wonderful man.”

  “I know he is.”

  “It’ll work out,” Bette repeated with a brief squeeze of Tris’s shoulders before they headed downstairs.

  It had to. Please, it had to.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He closed the report slowly, not wanting even the rustle of paper to disturb the total quiet of the office or the acceleration of his thoughts.

  Tris had done an impressive job. Her proposal sold itself. It was solid and professional—not the work of a wide-eyed, idealist girl, but of a pragmatic, resourceful woman. He’d responded to the former when she’d first talked about the proposal in August. He’d seen glimpses of the latter in the notes on her desk ten days ago. Which had he been expecting to encounter within the pages of this report?

  He’d checked the phone number and was dialing before his mind acknowledged the impulse.

  “Hello.” The voice was familiar and—yes, for all the faults—loved.

  “Hello, Mom.”

  “Michael! Dear, how wonderful to hear from you! Is everything all right? It’s been so long! Are you enjoying Washington? So exciting! Are you going to all the parties? Tell me what you’ve been doing!”

  At the characteristic mixture of exclamations and questions, he found himself smiling a little as he complied. Then he listened to her enthusiastic description of the widower she’d seen every night since she’d met him the week before in the grocery store.

  She was still like an exuberant teenager, still a kid. And for all his smooth sophistication, so was his father. To
give them their due, he knew they’d done their best to love and care for him. But they’d never really grown up.

  They’d never really grown up .

  The phrase seemed to slam into his mind, pumping an adrenaline mixture of hope and fear so strong that his hand shook a little as he said goodbye and hung up the phone.

  They’d never really grown up .

  But Tris had.

  The proposal under his hand was the solid proof of that. But he shouldn’t have needed that. His fear had made him equate her with his parents, but she’d never been like them. Even as the seventeen-year-old he’d first met. And certainly not as the woman he’d made love to five months ago and over the past two weeks.

  Only now could he look into the past and see how his craving for permanency had blinded him. He’d seen Tris’s youthful infatuation for Grady, and because he wanted her to be so different from his parents—needed her to be so different—he’d imbued it with the trappings of a lifelong love. Even her marriage he’d twisted into some sort of echo of the one love his view of her had allowed. To meet his needs she could make no mistakes of the heart. Because if she did, then the fear lurking in him would pounce, and would convince him she indulged in the same undependable, unenduring loves he’d seen his parents go through.

  He’d left her no middle ground, no room to be first a girl, trying out her heart, and then a young woman, making her mistakes and learning her way, and now a woman.

  She was a woman now. Wasn’t she? A mature woman, who would know her own heart. Wouldn’t she? Who, if she said she loved somebody, truly did. Didn’t she? She’d been telling him that, and showing him, but he hadn’t believed it—he’d been afraid to believe it.

  Afraid of the change?

  What about her accusation that the person he loved was the girl Tris had been, not the woman she’d become? Was he so afraid of change that he couldn’t accept changes in her? Or was he so afraid of being his parents’ son that he refused to admit that his own love might have changed, might have grown out of a young man’s infatuation and into something deeper and richer?