Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (37 page)

“It wasn’t an attack. It was a great shot gone astray. If the ball hadn’t—” She broke off as he turned and she caught sight of the tattered lettering on the front of his shirt:
Phantoms
. And then she laughed. “Michael, I can’t believe you still have that shirt! You’re even more sentimental than Paul.”

He grinned that little boy grin at her, tinged with self-directed amusement. “It’s really starting to fall apart, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away.”

“How about using it for rags?” She lifted one brow at the holes that had worn through where the letters attached to the T-shirt’s thinned fabric. “It looks like it’s halfway there anyhow, and that way you could still have a piece of it around. So to speak.”

“That’s sacrilege, even suggesting such a thing.”

She moved closer and caught glimpses of tanned chest through the holes. “I guess it is.” Maybe she wanted to touch him so badly because touching the shirt would be like touching a beloved piece of her past. Maybe.

Was she just now discovering what Bette and Judi had seen long before her?

Had friendship blinded her to Michael?

Almost absently, she smoothed her fingers across the surface of the shirt and absorbed the sensation of warmth and hardness beneath it. Dipping inside one of the larger holes, she reveled in the texture of a dusting of hair over firm skin. She could feel his heart beating strong and hard and the lift and fail of his breathing, faster now than only an instant before.

She could smell the soap and the water on him, and wondered, if she put her lips to one of those holes would his skin taste of soap? Soap was supposed to taste terrible, so why did the idea of discovering the flavor melded of soap and Michael send a zing through her blood?

Because she wanted to be kissed.

By Michael.

Now.

“Tris.” Michael’s voice sounded deeper than usual. Almost a rumble. Low enough and soft enough to easily pretend she hadn’t heard. Even when he spoke a second time.

“Tris. Don’t.”

She ignored him until he wrapped his fingers around hers, stilling her hand.

“Don’t what, Michael?” She heard the words, but had no recognition of having said them. Her mind, like her gaze, still rested on the tantalizing view through those holes. She wanted the shirt gone.

“Don’t touch me like that, Tris.”

The roughness in his voice drew her eyes up at last. There was that same look she’d seen outside the library when they posed for the picture. A tautness. A sharpness. And, yes, a hunger. Almost as if . . . as if—the thought stunned her, but she couldn’t help completing it—almost as if he wanted her.

Without warning, he dropped her hand and spun away, pretending he needed to devote all his attention to piling a towel and spare pair of socks into a tote bag.

Astonishment swallowed her. Michael Dickinson desired her. The rough need in his voice was for her. Her. But that didn’t shock her nearly as much as her own reaction. A bit of relief that he’d backed away, more than a bit of disappointment, plenty of confusion . . . and triumph so strong she was dizzy with it.

When Paul had suggested Michael cared for her as more than a friend, had felt that way since they’d all come together twelve years ago, she’d tried to tell herself she wasn’t thrilled by the idea. But she couldn’t deny this reaction.

The question was, what had caused it?

Was she so shallow that she would glory in such a conquest? So vain that the idea of a man wanting her that way appealed to her? So cruel that a wonderful, caring man being hurt, even inadvertently, didn’t bother her?

“All ready. Let’s go.” He turned to her with a neutral expression, and she allowed him to usher her out the door and down the stairs, pretending nothing had happened.

Maybe nothing had. Maybe Paul was out of his mind, and maybe she was becoming the kind of woman who read more into a look from an old friend than was there. But, good Lord, how she wanted it—all of it—to be there.

“Uh, Tris. How about swapping spots so you’re playing in front of me?”

“You’re not going to start that again, are you?”

Hands on hips, she glared at him, but he read the humor in the depths of her eyes.

He’d been trying to coax that look from her ever since his reaction to her touch had produced a cloud of awkwardness between them. He’d seen the puzzlement in her face, probably wondering why he’d made such a big deal out of a friendly, affectionate touch. And he’d felt her withdrawal as she must have realized that to him it had other implications. Well, at least now she seemed to have returned to their usual easy camaraderie, even if he hadn’t. But he would. Dammit, he would.

“It’s all for the good of the team,” he said, guiding her into position in the row closest to the net. “You’re a much better digger than I am.”

She eyed him with mock suspicion. “No ulterior motive?”

“Certainly not. It’s just from this position you can get those drop shots and set them up for me.” He gestured across the net to where Grady, on the opposing team, was poised to serve. “You better get ready.”

Tris gave him one more searching look. If he’d been fooling himself he might have been able to pretend it had more meaning than the little game of words they were playing. “All right, I’ll be the digger so you can feed your male ego by being the spiking star,” she grumbled. She turned toward the net as Grady made contact with the ball.

“Plus, this way you can’t hit me in the back,” Michael said just as the ball skimmed the net, the words low enough that only Tris could hear.

“You rat! “she hissed back, but her eyes didn’t leave the ball, which their teammate in the far corner returned rather weakly.

“A mere matter of self-preservation.”

Across the net, Grady leaped to meet the floating return and drove down the ball at a fearsome angle, destined to land right at Tris’s feet.

She crouched low, getting her locked hands under the ball, preparing for the perfect setup. Michael couldn’t deny a rush of pleasure at their teamwork as he moved in to turn her set into a winning spike. Nor could he help a more basic pleasure at the sight of her rounded bottom, stretching smooth the fabric of her shorts as she rose, sending the ball high and easy for his shot.

Already going up to spike the ball, he was amazed when he felt his balance thrown off by an unexpected impact with Tris. She’d been clearly out of his path. The only way they could have collided . . .

He twisted his body in midair to compensate and still make the hit, sending the ball across the net with less force but a devastating spin, but he couldn’t save himself from falling to the ground, hitting hard on his side, then rolling to his back.

The only way they could have collided was if Tris had deliberately knocked into him.

“So much for self-preservation.” He heard the devilment in her voice even before he looked up into her mocking expression, and concluded that he hadn’t lost his mind. Tris had deliberately thrown her hip into him.

Curling to a sitting position, he heard a squeal from the other side of the net, and saw that his shot had left the other team in disarray. Grady was on the ground, with his arm firmly around the waist of one of his teammates, the dark-haired woman named Melody, a longtime friend of Bette’s and the other bridesmaid. Neither Grady nor Melody seemed in much of a hurry to get disentangled as they exchanged accusations about the missed shot and their fall.

He looked up quickly to see what Tris’s reaction would be, but she was laughing and holding out her hand to help him up. Maybe she hadn’t seen— No, he saw her eyes flick to the pair still on the ground, the laughter never dimming, and come back to him. Almost as if she didn’t care.

No. Of course she cared, of course it bothered her that Grady was showing another woman such attention. She had to care because if she didn’t still care for Grady— He grasped her hand hard and pulled himself up, the abruptness of his move propelling him a step too far, so he brushed against her, feeling the smooth, long line of her leg against his, the curve of her hip just below his. Immediately, he let go of her hand. He saw the slight questioning in her eyes as she unobtrusively flexed the fingers he’d just crushed in his own. He ignored it.

“C’mon. Let’s get this game going. Our serve.”

Concentration on the game kept other thoughts at bay until it came his turn to rotate out and sit on the sidelines, trying to watch the other players. Paul, Grady, Bette, Judi. Paul’s longtime secretary, Jan, and her husband, Ed, taking turns chasing nearly ambulatory Ed, Jr. Bette’s high-school friend Melody. Former neighbors, a smattering of relatives. All people who’d gathered to share this wedding with Paul and Bette.

He hardly saw them. Watching just one player, really, kept him fully occupied. That and trying his damnedest to ignore the voice from so deep inside him that it could barely be heard, asking exactly how to label his reaction to the idea that Tris didn’t still care for Grady.

The momentary elation was understandable, but had that been fear mixed in? Fear? No, it couldn’t be. Why fear? It wasn’t fear. What could he be afraid of? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

If Tris didn’t still care for Grady . . . Then maybe what Paul had said wasn’t so crazy after all. Then maybe what he’d seen in Tris’s eyes this afternoon really had been dawning desire. But . . . but if Tris didn’t still care for Grady, how could she be the Tris he’d always known? The Tris whose heart was steady, constant? So unlike his family.

He shook his head, trying to clear the questions. It was all moot, because Tris
did
care for Grady, had always cared for Grady. He repeated the words to himself with the emphasis of a curse.

He watched her laugh at Paul’s ungainly lunge for a ball, then lavishly praise him when he managed to connect with it.

“C’mon, team!” he shouted. “How about winning a point, so I can get back in there?”

“Why do you think we’re losing all these points, Dickinson?” Tris shot back. “We want to keep you on the sidelines where you can’t do any damage.”

Damage
. If he’d done damage to their friendship these past few days, he’d repair it. If these past few days had done damage to his belief that he could treat Tris as strictly a friend, he’d repair that, too.

By God, he would.

Michael had expected that he’d be escorting Judi, as maid of honor, at the various formal functions of the weekend. But with everyone getting ready to leave for the rehearsal, Nancy Monroe came up to him with a preoccupied smile and said she’d decided to go against form. She wanted Tris and him riding herd on Paul for the next twenty-four hours.

“Paul will be less likely to get one of his wild ideas with Tris around than with his little sister. You don’t mind, do you, Michael?” she asked with a smile. “After all, you see Judi all the time. This way you and Tris can catch up on old times more. That will be nice for both of you.”

Nice. If he were a cynic, he’d believe that being paired off with Tris for the wedding activities constituted one of fate’s nasty jokes. “Of course, Mrs. M. No problem.” No problem, just a bit of torture.

His gaze slid to Tris as Nancy Monroe explained to the group who would be driving with whom. That dress she was wearing . . . At first look he’d thought it conservative enough, with its nonplunging V neck between staid lapels. It didn’t cling, although the way it slid over her curves certainly indicated that what was underneath was worth clinging to. But the color was another matter. It had him thinking of lush, ripe peaches and the sweet coolness of their flesh, and that had him thinking of other lush, ripe, sweet flesh and that had him thinking…

“All right, everybody ready? Shall we go to the cars now?”

“Gentlemen, start your engines!” Judi intoned.

Michael was congratulating himself on disciplining his errant thoughts into hibernation as they started out to the cars. Then he got a closer look at Tris’s dress. Good Lord, the thing had only one button. One pearly, white button. He’d been opening buttons since he was three years old. How easy . . . No, there had to be more holding it together than that. He felt sweat slide down the center of his back and film his forehead as he held the car door for Tris, ignoring her slightly puzzled look.

Tris slid into the car gracefully. He couldn’t have looked away from the deepening V at her neck and the rising slit over her leg at that moment if it had meant guaranteeing Joan the election. Something hot pooled in his throat so he had to swallow an extra time, but the reasoning part of his mind insisted the dress had to have undercover fastenings of some sort or a lot more would have been revealed than a few inches of sleek thigh and a hint of a shadow that might or might not have been the curve of a breast.

Though that was more than enough for him in this state.

Driving to the church gave him an excuse for silence while Paul, Bette and Tris chatted, and that gave him a chance to deliver to himself a stern lecture. By the time he’d listened to instructions on the next day’s preliminaries and escorted Paul, Grady and the other groomsman, Bette’s married brother, Ron, to the front of the church to practice the actual ceremony, he figured he’d reasoned his hormones into submission.

It was understandable. When they’d been in college, he’d kept a constant alert against thinking of Tris in those terms. In the years apart his willpower had gotten out of shape, and the strain of this week was showing. Especially since this afternoon. Since hearing Tris’s voice, not quite steady, apologizing and saying she wanted to be friends again. Since watching the sunlight through the window gilding her.

When she’d turned, he’d seen that look in her eyes. It resembled what, in another woman, he would have recognized as desire. But he knew that couldn’t be. Because Tris wanted—would always want—Grady. Because constancy was a part of her he’d always valued.

So it couldn’t have been desire that had had her fingertips sending heat to his skin through the tattered shirt. It could only have been his reading something into it. He would keep his body firmly in check if he had to devote every spare minute to exhausting runs or numbing showers.