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

by Patricia McLinn

  She shouldn’t take it. She’d be much better off without any whimsical teddy bears around to remind her of Grady. Definitely she shouldn’t take it.

  “Thank you, but—” She looked up then. Somewhere under the surface blue of his eyes she thought she saw a shadow of that vast loneliness she’d sensed earlier.

  If it had been there at all, it was gone in an instant. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing. She should still say no thank-you.

  “Thank you, Grady. I love him.”

  * * * *

  Paul and Bette drove back. The rest of them decided to walk. They followed the shoreline, shoes off. Sometimes single file so each could let the waves wash over their feet before pulling back to the dark ocean to their left. Sometimes they walked four abreast as they talked easily.

  Eventually Tris and Michael, holding hands, fell back, leaving Grady and Leslie to walk on as a couple.

  Whether she liked it or not, he thought with satisfaction.

  But he made no effort to break the silence until the lights of their destination glowed in front of them.

  “Looks like Tris and Michael will be a while,” he said, with a nod of his head back to where two barely visible forms sat on a dune looking out to the water.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed. “Understandable that they’d want time alone."

  An opening like that couldn’t be passed up.

  “Paul and Bette, too, probably.”

  “What?”

  “They probably want time alone.”

  Two figures sat close together on the porch swing. No creak reached them over the sound of the waves, but from the movement, the swing was swaying gently.

  “How about if we give them some time alone,” he suggested, fully aware of producing time alone for another couple, as well. “We can walk to the other side of the house and sit for a while.”

  “Okay. For a while.”

  Her easy acceptance surprised him, and put him on guard. So when they found a comfortable natural hollow in the side of a hillock of sand, he was prepared for her opening comment.

  “I’m glad we’ve settled this, so we can be comfortable being friends, Grady.”

  “We haven’t gotten anything settled.” He echoed her reasonable, even tone precisely.

  She arched her brows at him. “But yesterday—”

  “Yesterday you said it was impractical for us to get involved for geographic reasons, and I demolished your argument. So there’s no reason—”

  “There are reasons.”

  He shook his head. “Face it, Leslie, I’m going to be in Washington a lot. And I’m going to be calling you a lot. And I’m not going to be calling you ‘friend.’ ”

  “Well, even if you were going to be in Washington every minute of every day, there’s nothing you can do about the fact that I’m older than you. Not even Grady Roberts can do anything about birth dates.”

  Smug, that was the only word to describe her expression. She’d been waiting to deliver that line. He had all he could do not to laugh at her. But she apparently read his silence as a triumph for her logic.

  “How much older than me are you?” he finally asked.

  “Let’s just say I could be your older sister.”

  He shook his head. “That’s no good. Lots of women could say that. Let’s get down to facts and figures. I’ll be thirty-four in October. How old are you?”

  “That is not a question to ask a woman."

  “You’re going to have a hard time convincing me you’re too old for me if you won’t tell me how old you are.”

  He had a point, and her expression in the soft light of the moon showed that she knew it.

  “Let’s just say I have wrinkles.”

  “Character.”

  “And gray hair.”

  “Where?”

  Defiantly she swept back her hair over her left ear. Against the darker mass he saw strands of silver. Maybe five.

  He reached up, gliding his fingertips into her hair, letting his hand graze the top of her ear. She shivered, trying to bide it by shifting and dropping her hand. But he held her hair back and leaned forward to touch his lips to the exposed skin just behind her ear. Only a touch, but a long, slow one.

  “I’ll buy you some Clairol.” His voice carried a trace of huskiness.

  She glared at him.

  “Are you frowning at the kiss or the comment?”

  “Both. You aren’t taking me seriously, Grady.”

  “Sure I am.”

  “We’re from different generations.”

  “Then we’ve bridged the generation gap because we’ve spent the whole weekend doing the same things, and enjoying the same things. I haven’t noticed you having to make any concessions because of your advanced age.”

  She studied him a long moment, then apparently reached a decision.

  In the tone of one prepared to take extreme measures, she said, “I can remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show.”

  He laughed. He laughed until he dropped back flat on the sand.

  “Grady!”

  He sat up, but the chuckles still rumbled. “Sorry. Really, I’m sorry. But you made it sound so heinous.”

  “Well, it proves how much older I am. You probably don’t even remember Paul McCartney before he went solo.”

  “Hardly that, Leslie. But even if I were that much younger than you it wouldn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. It means—”

  “Because I’ve always had a hankering for a Mrs. Robinson sort of character in my life.”

  “Mrs. Robinson! I said I’m old enough to be your older sister, not your mother!”

  “She wasn’t Dustin Hoffman’s mother.”

  “Or your girlfriend’s mother!”

  She tried to look incensed, raising her eyebrows and looking down her nose at him. But she wanted so badly to grin that her mouth trembled.

  And looking at her mouth made him want badly, period.

  He scooped her to him with one arm before he could think or she could protest. Her lips were cooled by the night air and tasted of salt, lingering ice cream and surprise. But only for a moment. Because then the chemistry, the hormones, the sparks, the whatever she wanted to call it, fired between them, and he tasted on her lips what she must be tasting on his. Desire.

  “Two, three years difference doesn’t stop us from feeling like this.” He’d meant to make the words a smooth persuasion, but they sounded gritty even to him.

  “Almost four years, and—” She protested, though her hands rested on his shoulders without pushing him away.

  “I don’t give a damn, Leslie. This is what’s important.”

  His other arm completed his circle of her as he bent to her mouth. Her lips weren’t parted at first, but she didn’t resist his invasion. He delved more deeply, feeling his own heartbeat’s hammer skip to a harder rhythm. For an instant that was nearly longer than he could bear, she remained absolutely still. Not withdrawing, not responding.

  Something much deeper than his pride ached, but he knew he would release her if she remained passive. He would let her go in a second. One more second of tasting her. . .

  She made a soft sound in the back of her throat that he felt, not just heard. And then she was kissing him back, meeting his tongue, leaning into him, sliding her arms around his neck.

  He shifted so he bracketed her between his legs, her back against one of his bent knees, her legs stretched under his other. He needed her closer. He had to have more.

  He touched her, tracing the curves and hollows of her body through the soft cotton of her shirt. The straight, clean line of her collarbone, the swelling curve of her breasts. More than flesh and blood and bone, he felt as if he were touching liquid fire briefly transformed to human form. Under his breath, as his mouth followed the descent of her satin throat, he muttered a prayer that she was half as close to drowning in the sensations as he was.

  How had he gotten so far so fast? And without any conscio
usness of the gradual escalations whose timing he prided himself on judging to perfection?

  Had he simply vaulted from meeting her lips to near explosion or had the heat of the kisses, of her fingers in his hair, her palms on his cheeks, seared the intermediate steps from his memory?

  It didn’t matter. This is what’s important.

  Her shirt had ridden up, so they were skin to skin where his arm circled her back, where his hand caressed her midriff. His fingers grazed the silky material at the lower curve of her bra, and he craved much more. With his free hand on her legs, he pulled her tightly against him, the pressure of her hip against him a pain that made him groan with pleasure.

  He stroked the long line of her thigh, dipping inside the wide cuff of her shorts. He spread his hand, marveling at the smoothness. But he wanted more. He pushed the shorts up, delving nearer the mysteries Leslie hid.

  She made a sound he could almost tell himself was surrender, but an instant later she shifted in his hold, moving infinitesimally away from him.

  “Grady—”

  He moved with her, following her, taking her mouth, sweeping his hand lower, lower, until his fingertips encountered the silky material of her panties.

  But she retreated again, and this time he did not follow.

  Though he didn’t give up her lips until she exerted firm pressure against his shoulders.

  “Grady. Stop.”

  “You really want me to stop, don’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t understand her at all. “But you are attracted to me.”

  Her body had told him that, but he waited for her lips to try to lie.

  “You’re a very attractive man.”

  If she’d denied the power between them, he could have proven her wrong. But how could he argue with agreement?

  “Then why?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  She shook her head a little—he guessed at his stubbornness—but she answered evenly. “Because I don’t believe in short-term flings. And even if I did, with both of us being friends with all of them—” Her gesture took in the house behind them. “It could only lead to strained feelings, at best, when it ended.”

  “What’s to say it would have to end?” he demanded boldly. His question must have surprised her less than him, because she answered calmly enough.

  “Two things right off. First, we don’t have anything in common. And second, your history.”

  Her voice held no condemnation, yet he felt like a condemned man. He couldn’t even claim he was innocent.

  He couldn’t deny that short-term romances filled his history. When he’d been younger that had made him no different from most of his contemporaries. But now he found most men his age had something deeper with one person, while he still jumped from relationship to relationship. He’d felt vaguely uncomfortable about that for some time. Most often when his friends teased him—because he valued their opinion of him, and he discovered he wasn’t particularly proud of this aspect of his life. And lately he’d found the chase so much more of a burden than a pleasure that he hadn’t bothered. Though the reputation had lived on.

  But never before had it made him feel so shoddy.

  He didn’t look at Leslie as he stood, brushed the sand from his shorts and extended his hand to her.

  “Guess it’s time to call it a night.”

  * * * *

  Good-nights were brief. Only minutes after Leslie and Grady reached the porch, Tris and Michael arrived. Before long, everyone was heading off for bed.

  But an hour later she sat on the edge of the bed, staring at a framed print of daisies in an earthenware jar.

  She decided to pack.

  She’d have time in the morning, but she had time now, too, along with too many thoughts and too many nerve endings still singing a siren’s song. She’d folded everything except her robe and what she’d wear tomorrow and started sorting through her cosmetics bag when she realized she’d left her brush on the porch.

  The only way to the porch was through the living room, where Grady slept on the couch.

  Her heart started beating more quickly and her breathing grew shallower.

  How ridiculous! Afraid to walk through a room because of a man! She resolutely pushed aside the question of whether fear was an accurate description of her reaction.

  She put on her robe, allowed herself a deep, steadying breath, then eased open her door. Finding her way through the dark living room, she kept her eyes from the couch.

  But opening the front door produced a squeak that jerked her head around to see if it had trumpeted as loudly to the couch’s occupant as it had to her.

  Moonlight picked out the white of the sheet that draped across his hips and one leg, leaving bare the other leg and his chest. From where she stood, it was entirely possible that he was naked under that sheet.

  More important, she reminded herself, he wasn’t moving.

  She slipped outside and padded barefoot to where she’d left the brush. Back through the open door, with one hand on the knob and one on the frame, she closed it inch by unsqueaking inch. When the door was closed and locked, she released a breath, but she did that quietly, too.

  Two steps away from the door she stopped.

  She turned back and looked at Grady. His position hadn’t changed. But something about him suggested movement. She counted to ten. Nothing. Letting out a breath, she relaxed.

  Maybe too much, because that’s when it struck her, with the golden body she’d seen being bronzed by the sun now shining silver in the moonlight. Lord, he was an attractive man, with a smoothly sculpted body to match his handsome face. A smile that heated cool blue eyes. A touch that knew how to please a woman. And heaven help her, she was attracted to him, though she’d fudged her answer to him.

  Well, of course she was attracted to him. And of course she fudged her answer. She needed distance from him. Even at the cost of producing that bleak expression on his face when she reminded him of his pattern with women. An odd reaction, she thought again; she would have expected a veritable Don Juan to be proud of his conquests.

  She shook her head. He was an expert at making himself attractive to women and he had all the raw material to work with. He also was far from stupid. He’d recognize that his reputation wouldn’t appeal to her; he couldn’t hide it, but he could make her wonder, so his other appeals came through. And she did, and they did. Yes, she was definitely attracted.

  Physically.

  Lust, that’s all. Little case of lust never hurt anybody, as long as you didn’t act on it.

  I seem to be everyone’s knight in shining armor except yours, Leslie.

  There was his kindness to friends. His humor. His need for remedial gift-buying lessons. His pleasure in pleasing his friends. And, most disconcerting of all, that aura of basic isolation.

  All right, maybe lust was complicated by less clear-cut issues.

  That didn’t change the bottom line. The reasons she’d told him for remaining strictly friends were as strong as ever.

  The one she hadn’t told him was even stronger.

  “You better hurry back, Leslie. Back to the safety of your room.” She jumped at his voice, but he didn’t move. As far as she could tell he hadn’t even opened his eyes. But his whisper in the dark was very sure. “And you better do it fast.”

  She hesitated, adding another ounce to his discomfort of lying still and silent under the weight of her regard. Then she left without a word, without a sound, except, finally, the click of a door closing down the hallway.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to lock it, too, Leslie,” he whispered into the shadows that still carried her scent.

  * * * *

  With Paul and Bette staying on at the beach a few days before flying back to Chicago, Grady joined Leslie in Michael’s and Tris’s car for the return to Washington.

  Grady watched Leslie arrange herself in a far corner of the back seat and turn to w
atch the scenery out her window. Then he stared unseeing at the view out his. Tris looked straight ahead, answering Michael’s comments with monosyllables. As thickening traffic required more of his attention, Michael stopped carrying the conversational ball, and it dropped with a thud.

  Grady preferred it that way. He’d had enough of talk in the past twelve hours. First, that exchange with Leslie last night. And this morning, Paul.

  They’d been alone in the kitchen, drinking the strong black coffee they’d needed to revive on many a morning during college. The only hangover this time, though, was from a night of tossing and turning.

  “Leslie Craig’s a very nice woman,” Paul had started.

  “Yeah,” he’d said, wondering where this was going.

  “Glad you agree. You know, Grady, I’ve never known you to deliberately hurt anybody. Oh, sure, you’ve hurt people—by accident, from misreading them, from honest thoughtlessness. I guess we all do that sometimes. But never when you realized that what you were doing could hurt somebody, and especially never somebody nice.”

  Then the man who had been his friend since they were boys clapped him on the shoulder and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Grady feeling as if he’d been blindsided.

  “Let’s drop Leslie off first.”

  Tris’s suggestion—an order really—brought Grady’s attention back to the present. He didn’t know the area well, but he knew that dropping off Leslie, then him before Michael and Tris returned home, would be a roundabout route.

  But no one protested. Leslie wasn’t transparent enough to look openly relieved when they pulled up in front of her small apartment building, but the tense line of her shoulders eased.

  “Thanks for the weekend, it was wonderful.” She addressed the car at large. Michael got out to retrieve her bag from the trunk, and Grady started to follow. “No, please don’t get out.” Their eyes met an instant. “There’s no need. Goodbye, Grady, good luck with your business. Tris, I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. Thanks again.

  The door closed. He heard her exchange goodbyes with Michael, then she was gone.

  Michael turned into the hotel’s driveway. But before Grady could put his hand on the door handle or marshal words of cheerful farewell, Tris slued around to face him.