Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (52 page)

Why didn’t she cry? Her eyes and throat held the hot ache of tears, but no tears fell.

Maybe tears seemed too small. Or maybe the feel of Michael’s leg, heavy and intimate, thrown across hers, and the warmth of his arm, resting just beneath her breasts, and the rhythm of his breathing, communicating itself to her through the periodic whisper across her skin and the rise and fall of his chest against her shoulder, all combined to make her feel too right, too cherished to cry.

How could he doubt the feeling between them when their bodies were so right together? When they found each other and brought each other joy every time they made love?

She tipped her head to see his face and confirm what she already knew; he was asleep. In the fading winter light, his hair and eyebrows and lashes stood out darkly against his skin. Carefully, she shifted so she could bring her right hand up to brush back his thick hair from his forehead. She smiled to herself as she thought of his characteristic gesture, and mimicked it with gentle fingers. Touching the darkened skin under his eyes that betrayed his weariness and the fan of grooves that seemed to be cut more deeply than they had been just a few days ago, she frowned.

He looked tired, worried. And she knew she was the cause. That seemed so wrong, so very wrong—that loving him the way she did she was somehow causing him pain.

He mumbled something in his sleep, and his arm and leg tightened around her, bringing their bodies into more secure contact.

Her heart swelled at the unconscious movement, because she thought she understood the instinct that prompted it. She thought—she hoped—it was the same possessive, protective emotion that was welling in her.

Love. The forever kind.

The kind that could leave a scar forever, too.

Grady had been an infatuation, as unreal as a teenager’ s swooning for a rock star. Even the failure of her marriage to Terrence, embarked on too young and for the wrong reasons, hadn’t hurt her the way Michael could. Because Michael was passion and companionship, candlelight and sunlight, seduction and security . . . lover and friend.

At least now she knew what she had to conquer. At least now she knew what he needed—certainty. The utter, complete belief in her love. The girl she’d once been might have thought that would be easy to give him. She knew differently.

In the years since college she’d learned very well that achieving the bright, shining goals of idealism required the hard work and hard head of realism. From wanting to save the world, she’d come to the challenge of trying to preserve one small part of it for future generations. She’d learned that succeeding at that could bring an abiding satisfaction. But she’d also learned that, even with the hardest work and the hardest head, for some buildings—and perhaps for some hearts—the endings weren’t always happy.

He didn’t trust her love. Didn’t trust it not to evaporate, to disappear overnight as he had seen “loves” disappear from his parents’ lives. She couldn’t force him to trust her love. There was no final test, no hurdle she could jump and then have Michael Dickinson convinced once and for all that she would love him for as long as she breathed.

It was her personal catch-22. If the girl Tris had fallen in love with him all those years ago, he might have believed in the reliability of her love. But she knew that it had taken the experiences, and especially the mistakes, of the past twelve years to mold her into the woman who could love Michael as deeply, as completely as she loved him now.

All she could do was endure. And keep loving him.

There was no choice about that.

Michael turned in from the quiet hall where his footsteps had echoed hollowly, and heard voices coming from the senator’s office. He wasn’t surprised to find he wasn’t the only one who’d stopped by to slip in an hour or so of work before the Inauguration Day festivities.

The next few weeks were going to be hectic and draining; at least he’d start them with a clean desk. Anyhow, that was a better use of his time than staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of his apartment bedroom and wishing for things that weren’t going to happen. Such as he’d be magically transported to Tris’s bed. Or she’d be magically made to love him for the rest of her life.

He’d left Grady sleeping soundly in the new bed in his spare room, with a message that he’d meet all of them at the Metro stop nearest the Capitol in plenty of time for the swearing in.

His desk was nearly empty and he was twenty minutes from leaving when a voice spoke from the doorway: “She wants to see you.”

He looked up to see Sharon Karik, the senator’s confidential secretary and general assistant, leaning against the jamb. He was one of the few people who knew she’d met the senator many years ago when she was a battered wife and the senator was a volunteer counselor with no political ambitions. They’d both come a long way, but he knew the trust built in those first encounters had never wavered. Some relationships were built to last. The thought stung on his raw doubts about Tris’s feelings for him.

“How’d she know I was here?”

“Radar, I guess. You know how she is.”

“Yeah, I know.” They exchanged grins mixed of pride and accomplishment. “Any idea what’s up?” he asked as they walked the short corridor to the inner office, but without much expectation of an answer. If Sharon had thought he should know she would have told him.

“Nope. Go on in.” She swung the door wide. “Here he is.

“Good morning, Senator.”

Joan Bradon glanced up from the papers on her desk with a swift smile, then finished jotting a note even as she started talking. “Morning, Michael. Have a seat. I’m glad you stopped by today. I have something I’d like your opinion on.

“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. But 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?”