Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (47 page)

“Yeah, well, I was talking to him on the phone yesterday morning—” her lips tilted up slightly as he spoke right on cue, and some of the tension left her “— and he mentioned it was snowing some. Then it was all over the news last night how our nation’s capital had ground to a halt because of a little white stuff. I’ve been trying to get through all day. You and Michael. All I get are recordings at the offices, and the telephone company saying your phone was out of order until just now. But there’s no answer at Michael’s.”

“He’s here.”

“He’s… he’s
there
? With you?”

She couldn’t deny a small thrill at nonplussing her unflappable cousin.

“Yes. With me. Although right now he’s outside with Mikey Grabowski. Still, I think that qualifies as being here with me.”

“Hot damn! That’s terrific!”

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She did neither. She sighed, deeply and wearily, sank down on a stool and rested her elbow on the breakfast bar.

“I’ve known it for years. Years! I told Bette, and she just said to leave you two alone because—”

“Oh, Paul.”

The silence was abrupt and complete for all of three seconds. “
Oh, Paul’?
That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not.”

“You don’t still have a thing for—”

“Don’t you start, too!”

“All right, all right. What happened?”

Telling him came surprisingly easy. And somehow, saying the words out loud, the problems didn’t sound quite so insurmountable.

“Sounds to me like you just have to talk out this Grady issue, and the two of you will be all set.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Why?”

Wondering if she’d imagined an indecipherable note in Paul’s voice, she shifted her shoulders in frustration. “I don’t know. There’s something . . . It’s like there’s something he knows that I don’t, but somehow I’m being held accountable, or judged or . . . Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know what that means.”

“What are you going to do about it? Give up?”

“No.” She hadn’t honestly known what she was going to do until she heard her heartfelt answer. Heartfelt. That was the key. She couldn’t give up, not the way she felt about Michael. Her heart wouldn’t let her. She had to follow these emotions to wherever they led. Even if that meant heartbreak.

“Cheer up, kid. I seem to remember you telling me over and over how true love could conquer all.”

“When did I say that?”

“When Jean Marie Rustin broke up with me.”

She made a sound of disbelief. “You were a freshman in college and I was a sophomore in high school at the time, Paul. Are you holding me accountable for what I said then? People change, grow up.”

“Yeah, people do.” Tris thought she caught an echo of something in his voice, but then it disappeared. Had the same thought occurred to him, that Michael didn’t want her to grow up, that he was still stuck on the girl of twelve years ago? “So, what about now? You still think love should automatically be perfect?”

“No.”

“Don’t you?” He asked the question almost absently, as if his mind had started on another track.

Did she? Maybe it was a question to consider. Did she expect an easy solution, a painless transition from feeling friendship for Michael to feeling . . . what?

“I gave the proposal to that contact I told you about last week,” she said abruptly. “He said he’d get it to Joan Bradon this week.”

Honesty might force her to recognize her blurted words as a detour from considering the proper label for what she felt for Michael Dickinson, but it made sense—a long-distance phone call wasn’t the time to get into such thorny questions.

“Does Michael know?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t told him.”

“That much I’d figured out myself. What I want to know is why you haven’t told him?”

“It just seemed to complicate things. And he’s got enough to worry about, with getting settled in on the Hill and moving and everything.”

“Is that really the reason?”

Was it? The proposal was part of her adult life, far from the Tris that Michael knew in college, the one he might still care for in a way he didn’t care for the new her.

“I bet your accountant would love to know you’re calling long distance to play Twenty Questions.”

“My accountant’s thrilled that I’m going to be in D.C. next weekend making important contacts with important people. Although he won’t be half as green-eyed as Judi. She was practically spitting bullets she was so mad. But she’s got some big test coming up in school and can’t get away.”

“She must be disappointed.” But Tris knew she wasn’t disappointed her young cousin wouldn’t be coming, although that made her feel a little guilty. She’d always liked Judi, but having her around, flirting with Michael, was more than she could take right now. Especially if he flirted back.

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.”

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 made 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.