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

by Patricia McLinn

  “Uncle James gave it to me as we were leaving. He said to make good use of it.”

  The frown returned to his eyes, and he pushed his right hand through his hair with the air of someone trying to figure out how to deal with a thorny problem. He opened his mouth, but she hurried on, starting to unwrap the foil from the neck of the bottle.

  “I, uh, thought we’d have another toast. To the bride and groom, of course, and—” She untwisted the metal clasp around the cork and lifted it off. Reaching around him, still standing in front of the refrigerator, she took a clean dish towel and covered the top of the bottle. Then she very deliberately defused his objections by adding, “To old times.”

  She could have opened the bottle, but instead she held it out to him, suddenly needing him to be a participant in this night, too. He looked almost solemn, as if about to deliver a lecture. But after a long, heart-thumping second, he took the bottle from her, and she imagined she heard the crumbling of one line of defenses—the first of many.

  “Glasses are over the sink,” he mumbled, steadily working the cork out.

  She eased past him without touching, concerned he might yet turn her out of his room, and got out two old, scratched tumblers, turning around as the bottle emitted the satisfying thwump of a good champagne, opened well. He didn’t waste a drop by letting it foam over the top, instead tipping the effervescence into the glasses she held out.

  When he’d filled both glasses, he raised his tumbler.

  “So, here’s our toast. To Paul and Bette, to old times, old friends and—”

  “New beginnings,” she interrupted, clinking her glass to his and taking a quick sip to make her addition the final words in their toast. He seemed startled for an instant, but then he nodded and took a drink.

  She reached back to flip off the switch on the wall behind her, leaving a low-wattage bulb over the stove the only light in the room. At least the only artificial light, because moonlight silvered through the bank of windows, its glow doubled by the water’s reflection.

  “There, that’s much better. Now we can see the lake from the windows. Shall we sit down?”

  She took the bottle and headed for the love seat without waiting for an answer. Since his only choices were to sit there or on the bed, she was pretty sure he’d follow. Curling her feet to the side as she sat put her closer to the middle of the cushion than either end. She watched through her lashes as he hesitated, eyeing the narrow space she’d left before he joined her. She heard the long, soft breath he let out as he settled next to her, barely this side of being as far away as possible.

  “It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it?” he started.

  Ah, that was supposed to be her opening to pour out her heart about Grady. I remember your tricks, Michael. “Yes, it has. Quite a week.”

  He eyed her, but when she simply took another sip of champagne, hoping the action would hide her smile, he shifted on the love seat and made his opening a little bigger.

  “It hasn’t been exactly what I expected somehow.”

  “No?”

  Definitely frowning now, he seemed intent on getting a better look at her face, but she foiled him by twisting to slip off her shoes and then arrange them neatly by the end of the love seat.

  “No. How about you? Has it been what you expected?”

  Since he’d abandoned finesse, she figured she could afford to be forthright, too.

  “No. It hasn’t been what I expected.” She felt him start to relax, preparing for the conversation to follow familiar lines. “It’s been much, much better.”

  “Better?” He stiffened, seeming as shocked, Tris decided with some glee, as he would have been if Pollyanna had turned into a siren right in front of his eyes.

  “Much better,” she said firmly. “But what I want to hear now, Michael, is about you.”

  “Me? What about me?”

  “You’ve hardly talked about yourself all this week. I want to know what you’ve been doing these past years— more than the bare-bones outline I get from you on the phone or from Paul.”

  “There’s nothing much to tell.”

  She saw the stubborn line come into his jaw. He didn’t like this shift from their usual script. Too bad.

  “How’s your family?”

  “Fine.”

  “Everybody’s well? Healthy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And happy?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Haven’t you seen them lately?”

  “Not lately.”

  She opened her mouth to batter that flat note in his voice with another question, then stopped. Maybe this wasn’t the topic for an all-out assault.

  “Paul said you’d been dating someone regularly, someone in Springfield. I . . . I, urn, thought you might bring her as a guest to the wedding.” That was a lie. It had never occurred to her that he might bring a guest to the wedding, because back when Paul had told her about this woman in Springfield, she’d refused to listen to the details, refused to admit such a woman existed—a woman who could be important to Michael. Oh, what a fool I’ve been, and for so long.

  “I was seeing someone.” He put the slightest stress on the past tense.

  “What was her name?”

  “Her name? Her name was—is Laura.”

  “Laura.” How could she feel such a clutch of jealousy over a name? She wished she could hate the name, hate the woman. But she couldn’t. She could tell by the way Michael said her name that Laura was a nice woman, someone worth liking. Michael wouldn’t have been involved with any other kind.

  “Did you know her long?”

  “Six months, a little more.”

  “What happened, Michael?”

  He looked away, and she felt a sliver of dismay that the memory of Laura had that effect on him.

  “Happened? It didn’t work out, that’s all. Maybe, without even realizing it, I was too . . . too preoccupied with other things.”

  His words had significance, she knew that instinctively.

  But what significance?

  “Like your job?”

  “My job can be very time-consuming. And with the campaign there’s been a tremendous amount of travel the past year.”

  “Tell me about the campaign, Michael. What’s it like?”

  It took more than that to get him to talk about his job, but in the end she prevailed. It was only while she listened to him talk about some of the incidents and misadventures of the campaign that she realized he hadn’t truly answered her question about whether his job had interfered with his relationship with Laura. But right now that didn’t seem as important as the fact that he was sharing part of his life with her, as she had so often done with him.

  She had shifted sideways on the cushion to watch his face as he talked, so she saw the rise and fall of his chest with the deep sigh he gave.

  “What is it, Michael?”

  “Hmm? Nothing, really.” She waited, willing him to tell her. “It’s crazy, but sometimes I wish none of this was happening.”

  “The campaign?”

  “Yeah, the whole thing. I mean, I know that Joan will be a terrific senator and she’ll work as hard as it’s possible to work to do good things for the state, and the country, but . . .” He shook his head, apparently at his own thought. “We’ve been doing good things in Springfield, too. It’ll be like starting all over in Washington. Everything will be different, and sometimes I think it wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t win, if we didn’t end up in Washington. Heck, then sometimes I find myself wishing the campaign would just go on forever, how’s that for crazy? Because heaven knows I wasn’t wild about the campaign when that started, either.”

  He shot her a sideways glance as he refilled both glasses.

  “If you ever breathed a word to the media that I said I wouldn’t mind if Joan lost, I’d string you up.”

  “Oh, yeah, like I’d run to the media with the scoop.” She was irked, but not as much as she might have been. His wo
rds came from his own self-consciousness, she knew, not doubts of her.

  “Well, you’ve got to admit it would be a scoop. I can’t figure out what gets into me sometimes.”

  “You don’t like change, never have,” she said promptly.

  He looked up quickly in surprise, a frown of concentration between his eyes.

  “What do you mean? You think I’m afraid of change?”

  “Afraid? No. Not afraid. And it’s not that you mind the challenge of something new. Some people can’t stand for their lives to be constant, they have to have change for the sake of change. You’ve never been like that. All things being equal, you always preferred to keep things status quo. It’s more like you distrust change. Does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one doing the analysis here.”

  But his voice didn’t sound as forbidding as his words.

  “I remember when my sister was little and we shared a room, I desperately wanted to redecorate, but she wanted everything the way it had always been. Mom said to be patient, that she was still a little girl and she’d grow out of that. That eventually she’d accept that change happens all the time. And she did, and two years later we did redecorate the room and then we had this horrible fight because she wanted wallpaper with big, gaudy purple flowers.”

  Facing her fully, his expression shifted to rueful. “I’m not sure if you’re saying I’m going to get over this when I grow up or if you’re accusing me of having terrible taste in wallpaper.”

  His voice held chagrin, but the sight of his dimple had her chuckling low in her throat. She saw the change in his eyes, and knew her own were showing some of her feelings.

  “Michael.” She loved saying his name. She loved the sound of it as a whisper, something soft and intimate between them. Could she make him understand what she was feeling? She stretched forward to brush her lips across the lingering indentation of his dimple, and felt him go still and tense.

  Before he could exchange the stillness for movement— away from her; she knew if he moved now it would be away from her—she touched her fingertips to his mouth, then followed them with her lips. Ah, yes, she could be bold when it meant tasting Michael. With the tip of her tongue she absorbed the line of his lips, swept to the corners, then beyond to where faint lines echoed with the years’ smiles.

  But the lines formed now resembled pain. And his eyes closed tightly as if he were gathering strength. Her mouth whispered over the eyelids, the tickle of his eyelashes making her feel something hotter and deeper than laughter. She kissed the bridge of his nose and then his cheek. She came back to his mouth, but he made no move to cooperate. Did he think he could outwait her? Did he think she wouldn’t notice the change in his breathing? The tension in his muscles? The intensity of heat from his body?

  “Michael, will you kiss me?” Asking had gotten him to dance with her and had gotten them here, maybe asking would get her this, too.

  “Tris.”

  If that one stern word was a clue, asking wouldn’t be enough. She met his lips while they still formed her name, taking the sternness from them, taking the stubbornness from them, taking the denial from them and returning desire.

  The tension stayed in his body, but the stillness was gone. He made a sound against her lips as he wrapped his hands around her arms to pull her abruptly against him. For a moment, she sprawled across him awkwardly, and their mouths slipped away from each other. But he shifted her closer still and twisted his body so she was layered against him, and he found her mouth again, delving into it in a sweeping exploration.

  He turned her deeper into the cushion, and his weight seemed to surround her. He left her mouth to kiss a path of live sensation across her cheek, to the point of her jaw, then down the pulsing line of her throat. Her dress had dropped low on one shoulder, and she shrugged it farther down her arm to leave him freer access. The hungry sound in his throat made her shiver.

  But accepting his caresses wasn’t enough. She wanted to give, too. She circled his waist, holding him tightly to her, then slid her hands up his back in long, possessive strokes, feeling the bunching of his muscles under her palms. His hand skimmed over her bottom and hip, and then to her waist. Even before he touched her, she felt her breast tightening in anticipation. His hand still at her waist, he stretched his fingers wide until the thumb feathered the lower curve of her breast. At last his palm shaped to the roundness of her, and then he grazed her nipple, already taut, but tauter still after his touch. She let out a breath in satisfaction, but the need for more was growing in her. Finding the buttons of his shirt, her eager fingers opened them in no special order, but at each she lingered to explore the firm flesh they discovered.

  His mouth took hers once more. The stroke of his tongue in her mouth and the sweep of his hand on her breast set up a beat in her body that built and built until she had to answer it. Instinctively, she rolled her hips against him, straining to match the rhythm. For one glorious moment, he met her movement, pressing against her in promise and hope. Then, abruptly, he pulled back, and the promise and the hope were as quickly gone.

  He sat up, taking her with him and turning her partly away, though he kept his arms wrapped around her abdomen. Confused by his reaction, and still absorbed by the sensations of her body, she felt grateful for that contact. She heard his ragged breathing, then felt his lips on the nape of her neck, caressing the sensitive skin.

  “I’ve wanted to do that.”

  The barely heard murmur and the shivering touch of his lips seemed to liquefy the bones in her neck, so her head fell forward, exposing more territory for him. She covered his hands where they rested on her rib cage with her own, and wished she could reach more of him to touch.

  “We have to stop. God. We have to stop now.”

  “I don’t want to stop, Michael.” Lord, she’d gone beyond bold to brazen. But this was Michael, and with Michael she could be her most brazenly vulnerable. She twisted around to slip two more buttons open, until his fingers caught hers, squeezing them into stillness where they rested against the heated skin of his abdomen. She could feel the silky prickle of his hair against her fingertips.

  “Tris. Don’t.”

  “You always tell me don’t, Michael. But I want to. I want to touch you. I want to know you, the feel of you without the shirt. Without anything between us.”

  He let out a harsh, uneven breath. She looked up from the fascinating sight of her pale fingers against the hard, tanned flesh exposed by his open shirt. The shirt she’d opened. And in his eyes, she saw the bright, hot light of desire. Ah, Michael.

  Maybe he knew then that it was useless to pretend that this was an innocent kiss between friends that had somehow gone astray. The look in his eyes said all too clearly that his body knew exactly what was happening, and what more it wanted to happen.

  “I want you, Tris.”

  That was supposed to shock her, she supposed. The bald statement, gruffly spoken with no embellishments, was supposed to frighten her off. “I want you, too.”

  He shook his head, but she didn’t know if it was in denial of her words or in frustration at her reaction.

  “Last night . . . Well, I don’t think I have as much self-discipline as I had last night. You’re not an innocent young girl anymore. You know what could happen—what will happen. If we don’t stop now we won’t stop at all.”

  “I know.”

  The hand that covered hers flexed, then loosened as if by force of will. She spread her fingers wide and flattened her palm under his to absorb as much of his skin as she could. He seemed unaware that his other hand stroked temptingly beneath the exposed line of her collarbone.

  “Tris, you can’t—”

  “I can . . . I do.” Something about the erratic beating of her heart must have affected her lungs, because the words came out breathless. Yet she knew there was no uncertainty behind them. There was only the rightness of being with Michael.

  She was aware of a faint scent of soap
that clung to his skin, aware of the smooth skin over taut muscle under her hand, aware of his breath against her skin. She leaned to him, brushing her lips across his, a sudden shyness keeping her from doing more. What if she were wrong? What if he didn’t share this feeling?

  “You’re… God . . . I don’t want you to be sorry about this.”

  His mouth came down on hers, hard, demanding, then he broke away abruptly.

  If she could have laughed, she would have. Sorry? How could she be? How could she ever regret what felt so right?

  “I won’t be sorry.” She kissed him gently, but he pulled away. Then immediately came back to her, kissing deeply before he backed away once more.

  “Can’t take any more. Willpower . . . gone . . . God, I can’t…”

  She had no time to assess the ragged words slipping out between kisses, to decide if they were meant as a yes or a no, because his lips were on hers, his arms surrounding her, and his weight bearing her back against the love seat’s arm. The heat of the kiss exploded her doubts, and wherever his hands touched, her skin felt as tender as if it had been singed.

  Like a building brought down by a wrecker’s ball, the crumbling of his resistance set off tremors. She felt them deep inside herself, and she felt them in him.

  His tongue plunged into her mouth again, bringing new heat and sensation. His hand traveled down her leg to the edge of her skirt, pulled halfway up by their maneuvers. When he slid his hand to the bare skin above her stocking, the meeting of fingers and thigh drew a murmur from both of them, exchanged mouth to mouth. He shifted, and even through the fabric of the tuxedo pants, she felt the swollen, heated length of him, as blatant a statement of his desire as his words had been.

  She skimmed her hands over his chest as he unhooked her stocking with enough expertise to make her determine to tease him about it . . . later. When he twisted to strip the stocking off, she took advantage to shift her attention to his back, pushing the shirt out of her way. Impatiently, he shrugged the rest of the way out of it, as she touched her lips to a band of muscle just below his shoulder blades. He took less care in removing her second stocking, reminding Tris of the elements of determination and willfulness in this man that she had not always recognized.