Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (58 page)

“How about if I order in pizza and we see what the TV has to offer?”

“Okay.”

That was one of the two answers she’d gotten all day, the other being “Yech.” At least her dinner plans elicited the more positive choice, even if it followed a martyred sigh. She chewed on a piece of chocolate licorice as she dialed the pizza number and watched April flop on the sofa with remote control in one hand and the TV listings in the other, showing probably more enthusiasm than for any other activity.

The chocolate licorice provided a surefire barometer to Leslie’s low spirits. Her father had introduced her to the treat when she was nine. Chocolate licorice had been her father’s cure for the tragedy of a broken arm that had restricted her the last two precious weeks of that summer, and she still followed it.

She straightened her shoulders and finished off a second stick of licorice.

Maybe April Gareaux thought she’d worn down her older relative, scored some sort of victory. Leslie was made of sterner stuff.

She poured them each a soft drink, slipped off her shoes and sat next to April.

“Yes, it’ll be good to take it easy tonight, because tomorrow we’re getting up bright and early for church, then we’ll change and take the train up to Baltimore for a baseball game. I have tickets and—”

April groaned, Leslie persevered.

“—great seats and the weather’s supposed to be perfect. We can cheer and yell and stuff ourselves on hot dogs. You’ll love it.”

“I’ll hate it. I don’t know why I had to come here again, anyhow,” April grumbled. The most words she’d said at one time since her arrival.

Leslie had always loved kids. Whenever the numerous Craig relatives and connections had gathered—as they often did at Grandma Beatrice’s sprawling estate outside Charlottesville, Virginia—she’d entertained and cared for those younger than herself.

Since leaving Charlottesville for Washington ten years ago, she’d bypassed most family gatherings. But that didn’t stop Grandma Beatrice from involving her in family business. Including what she saw as the sad state of her great-granddaughter April’s upbringing.

“Your Cousin Melly is making a botch of raising that girl, Leslie,” Grandma Beatrice had said.

“I’m sure it’s not easy for Melly, with Jeff dying like that—”

Grandma Beatrice’s disapproving sound—much too genteel to be called a snort—had stopped Leslie’s excuses cold.

“He wouldn’t have died like that if the two of them hadn’t been trying to climb some fool cliff,” her grandmother retorted. “If you’re a reasonable human being and you want to go somewhere, you take a road, and if there’s no road there’s a darn good reason. Bunch of nonsense. And Melly’s gotten worse, not better. Only thinks of herself and her latest adventure, never the child, and now the child’s growing up a brat.”

Beatrice Waverly Craig would have torn her own tongue out by its Southern roots before saying such a thing to anyone outside the family, but with Leslie she had always been bluntly honest. Sometimes painfully so.

“You’ve always loved children, Leslie, and you have nowhere to direct that love. Well, this is a child who takes some effort to love. See what you can do.”

“But in a weekend how can I—”

“A weekend might be the most that should be asked of anyone, Leslie.”

Now, looking at April’s drooping mouth and pugnacious chin, Leslie thought a weekend might be more than should be asked. She also thought April deserved an answer.

“You’re visiting me again because I’ve always enjoyed kids, and our family thought we’d have a good time together.”

“Well, I’m not.” Leslie took that to mean April wasn’t having a good time, though April might have been declaring she wasn’t a kid, or perhaps that she wasn’t a member of the family. “And if you enjoy kids so much why don’t you have some of your own to drag around to all these stupid places instead of picking on me?”

From long practice, Leslie stifled a wince, grateful when the downstairs buzzer gave her time to regain her equilibrium. After buzzing in the pizza delivery man, she opened her eyes wide at her cousin’s daughter and said, with her most exaggerated drawl, “Why, darling, April, it’s exactly because I don’t have any of my own that I turn to you. Because I do so looooove torturing young girls.”

April’s mouth twitched, and Leslie hoped a smile might follow. But April, after all, was a Craig.

“Very funny.” She snarled, and her face slipped into accustomed unhappy lines as she again faced the TV.

The doorbell cut short Leslie’s mental debate whether to push April toward a real conversation. She dipped into her purse for her wallet to pay for the pizza and opened the door.

It should be arriving just about now.

Grady grinned to himself.

The roses had been standard, as classic as a Tracy-Hepburn movie. And he’d send more next week—he wondered if he could have garden roses delivered like the ones they’d seen at the Smithsonian. But some situations, some women, called for something different, and this had never failed.

The only question had been timing. He didn’t want to be too obvious, but he also wanted Leslie to feel his presence this weekend. Friday would have been overanxious; Sunday might have been too late. Yeah, this would work.

He might need lessons in housewarming gifts, but nobody could question Grady Roberts’s success in wooing women.

Leslie stared at the man outside her apartment door.

Instead of the familiar red, white and blue shirt of the pizza delivery, there stood a man in a neat tan uniform, a man who looked closer to retirement than puberty. Instead of a flat box showing grease spots and oozing tempting smells, he held a large wicker basket with its contents hidden by tinted cellophane and its handle decorated with a silken yellow bow.

“Leslie Craig?”

“Yes.”

“Delivery from Not Just Another Gourmet.”

She gawked at him. She’d shopped there, but the prices were so high she saved it for special occasions. And delivery? With what they charged? Never. “For me?”

“Yes, ma’am. If you’ll sign here.”

Dully, she followed his order, fished out a tip and took the basket.

“That’s not pizza,” April accused when Leslie sat beside her with the basket on her lap.

“No.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I’m not sure.”

April shot her a disgusted look and started peeling back the cellophane. “Well, look.”

The retreating cellophane first revealed the long thin neck of a bottle of wine—a very good bottle of wine. Then an assortment of foreign cheeses, two tins of pate, four kinds of crackers, a minibowl of strawberries and another of raspberries.

April had the flap of a small envelope opened before Leslie took it away.

“Yech.” April vibrated disapproval as she rooted through the basket’s contents. Leslie wished she could have appreciated that April was more interested than she’d been all of her visit. “Who’d send junk like this? What’s the card say?”

Leslie had a suspicion, a fear, really. She drew the card from the envelope and read:
You wouldn’t come to dinner with me, so I’ve sent an appetizer to you. Enjoy. Grady
.

“Well?” April demanded.

“It’s from a friend.”

“I know, a man,” April said wisely. “Mom gets stuff like this from men, too. But only when they really want to get in her pants.”

“April!”

“Well, it’s true. That’s when men send the yuckiest things. I like it better when they send candy. But the ones who send this sort of junk are usually the ones she gets all wound up about and goes off with. For a while.” She pulled out a white bakery box and sniffed diligently. “Well, at least he sent dessert. Chocolate. So who’s this guy who wants to get in your pants?”

“He does not want—” She stopped. She would not debate this with a child. It was ludicrous. She wrapped herself in Grandma Beatrice’s dignity and looked down her nose. “That is an extremely unseemly topic of conversation for a young lady. Especially for a Craig, who should—”

The doorbell rang again. With the basket and its contents spread out on her lap, Leslie looked at April. “That must be the pizza. Could you . . .”

April gave a martyred sigh, but took Leslie’s wallet and conducted the swap of money for pizza. Leslie repacked the basket so she could get plates and napkins.

April ignored the plate and silently plowed through the pizza without removing her eyes from the TV screen.

Leslie ate more slowly, but just as silently, pushing aside thoughts of Grady by mulling over what April had revealed.

Melly had always craved excitement and variety, never settling to anything or—to be honest—anyone. Even Jeff. For better or worse, that marriage probably had lasted because he shared her love of adventure and her very fluid definition of fidelity. Neither Melly nor Jeff had been subtle about such things. Leslie wondered how much April had picked up in her first six years of life, and since her father’s death seven years ago.

With Jeff gone, Melly rushed from adventure to adventure, from man to man. At first she’d taken her daughter with her, but more and more in recent years Melly had left April with varied relatives.

Leslie leaned back in the corner of the couch, looking at the girl’s profile. She had the long Craig nose. Grandma Beatrice called it aristocratic. Leslie remembered at April’s age lamenting her own Craig nose as plain
big.
Eventually, as her grandmother had promised, she grew into her face; her other features strengthened, balancing the Craig nose and creating an attractive whole. But she could remember the agony of waiting.

“I guess this means the ball game’s off tomorrow.” Beneath April’s insultingly hopeful tone, Leslie caught discomfort, and knew April had been aware of her scrutiny.

“No. Why on earth would it?”

“Because you’ll be doing something with this guy.” Her tone said she was addressing someone who’d flunked remedial logic.

“No, I most definitely will not. I am taking you to a baseball game, that’s what I am doing tomorrow. You’re my guest, and you’re the one I’m spending time with.”

April flopped back; just looking at her slouch made Leslie’s back ache. Had Leslie detected a flash of surprise before the sullenness slipped into place? “Well, you can force me to go to this stupid baseball game tomorrow because I’m still a kid. But how about this guy, huh? He’s not some poor kid you can boss around. What’re you going to do about him? Huh?”

Good question.

And one she sidestepped. Sunday she’d been too tired from the weekend with April. Monday she’d convinced herself the flowers and gourmet basket were gestures, no more.

But today, when she got home from work, she discovered a package outside her apartment door with the logo of a local department store. She tucked her attaché more firmly under her left elbow, shifted the mail she’d just collected into the same hand and warily picked up the package the size of a truncated shoe box.

Nothing on the label except her name and address, and the store’s return address. She’d have to open the thing to solve the mystery of its origin.

Juggling her burdens, she fished out her keys and let herself in, tumbling her attaché, purse and mail on top of the wide bookcase near the hallway to her bedroom. The package she handled more gingerly.

She looked at it a full minute, then tore off the wrappings. Plunging through padding, she fished out a container of her favorite scent. Not cologne or the thumbnail-size bottle of perfume she indulged in only when she felt particularly rich or so blue even chocolate licorice couldn’t perform a cure. What she held now was a bottle big enough for a case of the blues to drown in.

The phone rang once but she ignored it, placing the bottle carefully on the bookcase and staring at it until the phone rang again. She snagged the plain envelope that had nestled amid the padding, had the envelope open and was reading the single word on it when she snatched the receiver up as the third ring faded away.

“Hello.”

Grady,
she read.

“Hi, Leslie. It’s Grady,” she heard.

Damn.
Her heart sank. She could have used another moment to consider this. Which might explain why her heart picked up speed at the same time it sank.

But Craigs didn’t waffle when it came time to charge ahead.

"Hello, Grady. I’ve just opened the most extraordinary package from you.

“Extraordinary?”

“Yes. I didn’t know perfume could be purchased by the half gallon.”

He chuckled, a very masculine, very satisfied sound.

“Really, Grady,” she went on in a tone she kept light and friendly, “it’s most generous of you to keep thanking me for helping you decide on the gift for Paul and Bette, but totally unnecessary. I enjoyed it. So, please, no more.”

In his momentary silence she read indecision over whether to deny the flowers, food and perfume had been expressions of thanks, and perhaps a bit of confusion.

“All right,” he said slowly. “But then let me take you to dinner tonight.”

Her eyebrows rose. What was the man up to? She’d told Tris he wasn’t trying to charm her, but she was beginning to wonder. “You’re in Washington again?”

“Yes, the client I told you about wanted to introduce me to some of his connections. There’s really a need for my sort of business here in Washington. I’ll have to learn more about the links between the private sector and government around here, but other than that, I think a branch could practically open itself . . .”

She listened to his discussion of the prospects of a branch of his business brokerage in the Washington area, enjoying his enthusiasm, while another level of her mind focused on a more personal issue.

If he was trying to charm her, why?

Surely he must see she wasn’t a candidate for his usual romantic interlude. At the very least he’d recognize that the web of their mutual friendships would make the post-interlude period awkward for all concerned. And with Grady, post-interlude followed interlude as surely as day followed night—and nearly as quickly.