Grady's Wedding Read Online Free Page B

on her machine that Sunday night she’d understood. He’d been in town, didn’t know many people, probably wasn’t accustomed to an evening without a date to fill it. And the message at work the next day had been a polite follow-up. But that had been a week ago, and she certainly hadn’t expected to hear from him now.
    She’d let the silence drag on too long.
    “Grady Roberts,” he prompted, without sounding the least put out.
    She smiled. “I know. How are you?”
    “I’m fine. And I’m coming right along with that project we talked about.”
    “Project? Oh, the present?”
    “Yeah. I contacted that landscaper I mentioned and he went by the place yesterday, right after they closed on the house. He said it’s got a lot of potential. Now he’s drawing up a few general ideas for them, rough sketches, so I’ll have something to put a ribbon on when they have their moving-in party in a couple weeks. Then he’ll work with Paul and Bette so it’s just what they want.”
    “That sounds terrific. I don’t think you could have come up with a better present.”
    “Thanks to you.”
    “It was your idea, Grady.”
    Tris Donlin Dickinson’s head came up from where she was reading the news release Leslie had been going over with her and an architectural consultant to the historic preservation foundation they both worked for. Leslie met her questioning look with a faint shrug.
    “My idea that I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t insisted I actually give it some thought.”
    “True.”
    He laughed, and she smiled at the sound.
    “Well, I hoped I could thank you—”
    “You already did and you just have again.”
    “—properly. This weekend. I’m coming in to D.C. and I hope we can get together. Dinner, and I hear there’s a great place to dance in Georgetown by the river, and—”
    “I’m sorry, but I have a visitor coming in and I’ll be tied up all weekend.”
    A short silence, before his cheerful response. “Ah, well. Guess I’ll have to wait to make my proper thank-you, then.”
    “Truly, Grady, there’s no need—”
    “Depends on whose need you’re talking about.” His voice had dropped half a tone. “Talk to you later.”
    “I don’t—”
    “Bye.”
    She held the phone through the click and the dial tone. She considered faking a more normal conclusion to the conversation, then decided against it.
    Hanging up, she turned to Tris and Dick Welsh. “Now as I was saying, the coverage I’m hoping for . . .”
    Tris’s eyebrows had nearly disappeared under the blond hair across her forehead, but she cooperated in the return to business. Temporarily.
    Twenty minutes later, the discussion had ended with a few revisions to the release and contingencies for the campaign they hoped would draw attention to a developer’s plan to claw a section out of a Civil War battlefield.
    Dick Welsh left. Tris rose, but only to close the door before resuming her seat with an air of settling in.
    “So,” she started, “that was Grady on the phone, huh?”
    “Um-hmm.”
    “Didn’t know you two were exchanging phone calls on a regular basis.”
    “We aren’t.”
    “You didn’t tell him who your weekend visitor is.”
    “Didn’t I?”
    “You know you didn’t. Trying to make him jealous?”
    “Good Lord, no!”
    The vehemence slipped out and Leslie would have tempered it if she’d had the words to speak again, but Tris relaxed.
    “It’s not that I don’t love Grady,” Tris said. “I mean, really love him, as a friend. For the person he is, not for the god I’d imagined him to be as a kid.”
    Leslie couldn’t help but smile. She’d been around to listen nearly a year ago when Tris had prepared to finally test the college crush she’d harbored for Grady for a dozen years, and she’d been there this fall after Tris realized her feelings for Grady had become friendship, while her feelings for her longtime “buddy” Michael Dickinson had deepened to love. There’d been some rough spots