Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (33 page)

“I’m sweaty. I need a shower.”

She slanted a look up at him and invited again, “Aw, c’mon, sit down. I’ve had enough of my own company.”

Against his better judgment, he sat on the edge of the deck, swinging his legs out over the water as she did. The sun had crested the horizon of Lake Michigan and was turning the surface into dazzling fragments. He couldn’t seem to prevent his eyes from going to Tris, to see the effect of that clear, soft light on her. But something in her face and the way she was turning a small stone over and over in her hand caught him in a way he hadn’t expected.

“What is it, Tris?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not just a matter of early rising, is it? I thought yesterday there was something . . . There’s something on your mind that got you up so early, isn’t there?”

He saw her prepare to put him off with a denial, but then she sighed and gave a half smile. “I promised a friend at work—and myself —that I’d give it a rest for a week, but my subconscious doesn’t want to cooperate. I wake up every morning with my mind going ninety miles an hour.”

“What is it, Tris?”

“There’s a project I’ve been trying to put together at work, taking historic buildings that might otherwise be razed and fixing them up as facilities for the homeless. Last spring, I saw a place in Cincinnati that’s really making it work and I knew I had to try to create more. It’s the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever been involved in, Michael. Do you know how many cities could use something like this? And how many have buildings that are going to waste? But there’s a problem.”

“Money.”

She nodded. “As always.”

Still turning the stone, she described how she’d campaigned for the backing of the preservation association she worked for and how she’d lined up funding for several prototype projects around the country, based on the one in Cincinnati. But a major backer had pulled out— “for political reasons,” she said, with a pointed look at him— even after the first project had been started, leaving both the project and the association in the financial lurch.

Leading with her heart
. He could see exactly why the project appealed to Tris, and how she could have rushed into it without adequate preparation. Going out on a limb, as surely as she had when she’d tried to get from Harris to University Hall all those years ago.

“If we don’t come up with funding in the next year, it could mean a major retrenching for the association. There could be a lot of buildings destroyed because there’s no money to fight for them. And it’s my fault. I sold the association on getting involved.”

“You were the only one?”

“No, not alone.” She gave him another half smile as if she recognized and appreciated—but also dismissed—his attempt to make her see she wasn’t solely responsible. “But I was the driving force. And some others expressed reservations, concerns about exactly what’s happened. I thought they were being too cautious.” She made a soft, scoffing sound at herself, then slung the stone Into the lake. “You know the really frustrating thing? There are federal agencies that could help us fund this, but they can’t decide exactly whose umbrella this falls under, so we’re left standing out in the rain.”

“That’s a bitch, when other people can’t see the value of what you’re trying to accomplish because they’re looking at their own narrow view. But I know you, Tris. When you believe in something you never give up.” Not even the times when she probably should have, he added to himself. He'd hate to see her hurt by this.

“No, I won’t give up.”

Her matter-of-fact tone surprised him, but he had little chance to consider it as she turned and the startling blue of her eyes caught him once again. He jerked away from her look, staring out over the placid water toward the horizon. “Would you help, Michael? Paul tells me that with this campaign you’ve made good connections in D.C. I could use advice from someone with your political savvy. And if Joan wins, she'd be a great ally to have in the Senate. This is just the sort of project she’s been campaigning on.”

He knew that. It was what had drawn him to Joan in the first place five years ago and it was what frustrated him mightily as she fought for election. He was having enough trouble keeping her campaign geared to the pragmatists in the party without this sort of issue being introduced.

Two longstanding instincts warred within him—the instinct to help Tris Donlin and the instinct to keep Joan Bradon as far as possible from lost causes. Lost causes like the ones Tris invariably backed.

“We’d look at any official proposal you send us, but not until after the election,” he said. That might have sounded too formal, too harsh. “I have a responsibility to Joan,” he added, hoping to mitigate his first response. “Personally, I’ll help you as much as I can. The thing is, you might want to consider compromising, backing off a little. If you looked at just saving the buildings first, then maybe down the road fixing them up for the homeless, that might be one way to safeguard the association’s investment.”

There, that was clear. A careful expression of a moderate position, treading between the extremes of his two instincts. He’d kept Joan out, but he’d offered to help her as her friend—even knowing her propensity for hopeless causes—and he’d added sound, practical advice.

Tris gave him a rather odd look. “I understand. Political issues.” He felt a prickle of discomfort at the look and the flat tone, but then she added, “Maybe we should get back to the house,” and she sounded nearly normal. His imagination must have been working overtime.

He walked along next to her, feeling more at ease than he had since he’d gotten Paul’s letter. How many times during her freshman year had she come to him for talks like this? He’d done a pretty good job of helping her then and he’d do his best to help her now. He’d also done a good job back then of keeping his feelings under control; surely he could do as well now. The intervening years almost seemed to have slipped away. No, that wasn’t exactly true, because he’d certainly changed with the years. He was stronger. Strong enough not to let feelings run away with him.

Still, the comfort with each other remained. He felt the mutual acceptance and affection, even in the silence.

Impulsively, he took her hand.

“Seven years . . . In some ways that’s a long time, but in some ways it’s hard to believe it’s been seven years,” she said, and he knew her mind had followed the same track. “After that one time you visited me in Washington, Paul told me several times that you had trips planned to D.C. for that law firm you started out with. But you never called me when you were in town. Why?”

The question rocked his tranquility. How many telephone talks had they had since the times he’d been in and out of D.C. without contacting her? Fifteen? Twenty? She’d never asked then. Why now?

“You had a new life. It seemed like a good time to, uh, back off. I didn’t want you to think I was checking up on you or anything.”

He could have said:
You had a new husband, and I couldn’t stand to see you unhappy with him. Or happy.
He’d believed for years just what he’d told her—that he’d thought it was time to back off, let go of a college friendship. But his mental answer was the real one. He’d been fooling himself. All those years. At the realization, his hand clenched involuntarily before he consciously eased his hold.

She looked at him steadily for a moment.

“You didn’t like Terrence, did you?”

Damn, that question cut a little too close to the bone. Well, the truth could be as good a camouflage as any.

“No.”

“Why?”

Because he had you
. “I didn’t think he was good enough for you.” He tried to keep the words bland. They were true, too. “I thought he leaned on you too much, used up your strength.”

She laughed, a dry sound but not harsh. “You were right. That’s exactly what happened. Too bad you didn’t tell me all that before we married.”

“You wouldn’t have listened.” She wouldn’t have listened if he’d told her similar things about Grady back then, either.

Hearing Tris was getting married had jolted him. He
knew
she would always care for Grady, so how could she marry someone else? But one look at Terrence—tall and blond, handsome and charming—and Michael had recognized him as an obvious substitute. She might have been mixed up enough to marry Terrence, but in a way she’d still been loyal to Grady. “Nobody who thinks they’re in love listens to advice or reason,” he added.

“So you figured the best you could do was stay away and not let me sense the disapproval,” she said with conviction.

“That was some of it,” he said. The part he’d admit.

“You’re probably right, I probably wouldn’t have listened at the time. I probably would have resented being told the truth before I saw it for myself. So, all around, you were your usual wise self, Michael Dickinson. And I think it’s only fair now to tell you that you were totally right about Terrence.”

For all the lightness in her voice, the words had the slightest edge and her eyes were solemn as she faced him.

She looked into the flecks of many colors in the depth of his hazel eyes, and wondered at her odd mix of feelings.

She recognized an element of irritation. He had said he knew her while she told him about the homeless shelters, and she’d always thought he
did
know her, in some ways better than anyone else. But then he'd talked to her as if she hadn’t aged a day or learned a thing or suffered a hard knock since her freshman year in college. He’d actually suggested she safeguard ownership of the buildings, as if she hadn’t done that immediately when the backer pulled out.

For heaven’s sake, he acted as if she would hand him some pie-in-the-sky dream. Didn’t he know she’d never risk something this important to anything less than a thorough, professional job? Couldn’t he guess what even the severest critic of her proposal in the association had said—that the financial strain had happened despite her efforts, not because of them? He doubted her ability, her sense. Maybe he still looked at her as the Tris of all of those years ago. She couldn’t stifle a pang of disappointment at that.

And he’d sounded so distant and unfeeling when he’d talked about being practical. His words had sounded more like that backer who’d found it suddenly expedient to pull out of his commitment, than the Michael she had known. She felt sadness at that.

But she also realized an overwhelming need to acknowledge that he had been right about her marriage and to make him understand why it had come apart. The urge was strong enough that she didn’t stop to consider why it seemed important that Michael understand.

“I wanted a mate, a partner. He wanted someone to arrange all the practicalities of his life. Someday, for some woman, he may make a great husband, because he really is a basically decent human being. But it's going to have to be a woman willing to do a lot of the work. The kind of woman who has the patience to
enjoy
house-training puppies.”

Michael chuckled, and rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. Unexpectedly, warmth flooded her, swamping the disappointment and irritation. Warmth for his understanding and acceptance. She’d spent so long nourishing her crush on Grady in college that she hadn’t seen clearly what a wonderful companion she’d had by her side. She’d come here thinking about showing Grady that she’d grown up; maybe she had another one to convince, too.

“He wasn’t irresponsible,” she said. “He just wasn’t responsible. I couldn’t count on him. He was charming and endearing. And utterly exhausting. I could never relax. That may be exciting at first, but after a while, it left me too weary to remember that first, wonderful feeling.”

Without warning, an image of Grady flashed into her head. Grady and Terrence. They even resembled each other superficially, although underneath they were very different. No,
they
weren’t alike, but what had been identical was her reaction, the same knee-knocking awe of them—so charming, so endearing, so handsome. For a college crush that was fine, but as a basis for marriage it stank.

Poor Terrence. She never should have married him. But barely out of college and caught in the whirlwind atmosphere of their brief courtship, she hadn’t had the maturity to say no. She’d paid for that mistake with a lot of pain, but she’d also benefited from it. She’d grown up.

She felt as if she’d just seen her marriage through a window, long clouded but now clear. And there was more. Another window was clearing, another piece of her past would open. All she had to do was look and—

“The divorce must have been rough.”

Michael’s voice came low and gentle, but it made her blink. She felt as if she’d just cracked a code—the code to her own past. She not only saw past mistakes, she had a grasp on why she’d made them, and she could forgive herself for them. Everything, even the sensation that she’d just missed another insight, paled in the triumph of that. She beamed into Michael’s puzzled eyes. “Yes. Hellish.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about it now,” he said with a frown.

“Not anymore. I’ve grown up a whole lot since then. A whole lot.”

“Yeah?” The note of doubt in his voice mixed with something else she couldn’t identify as readily. Somehow she connected it with that look she’d seen in his eyes when they’d had their picture taken in front of the old library.

For an instant, she felt a heightened awareness of the sun warm on her face, the water lapping, the trills of the morning birds and the nearness of Michael. It beckoned her. Tempted her to step forward, nearer to some discovery.

“Yeah, so grown-up that I don’t mind being a kid now,” she said, stepping back from the edge. Not yet, a voice seemed to whisper deep in her mind. Not yet. “Race you back to the house—last one there has to wake up Paul and Grady.”

She dashed across the morning-dew-cooled green lawn, trailing her own laugh behind her like a pleasant memory.

“Do you think four more sandwiches will be enough?”

“Aunt Nancy, I think you’ve already packed enough food for us to sail from here to Northern Michigan and back three times,” Tris said, as she and Judi exchanged glances. Nancy Monroe had never allowed anybody to walk away hungry, and the prospect of her houseful of guests going sailing for the afternoon had spurred her to mammoth picnic activity.