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eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: Confirmed bachelor Grady Roberts had been attending too many friends' weddings recently. It made his single life suddenly seem less that completely satisfying. Leslie Craig, the only woman who interested Grady, was suspicious of this handsome man's pursuit--and knew he'd wind up hurting her when he found out her secret. Contemporary Romance by Patricia McLinn; originally published by Silhouette Special Edition

eBook Publisher: Belgrave House, Published: 1993
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2005

23 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.3 MB], eReader (PDB) [235 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [225 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [201 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [196 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [246 KB], hiebook (KML) [563 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [304 KB], iSilo (PDB) [183 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [231 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [272 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [294 KB]
Words: 67881
Reading time: 193-271 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I now pronounce you husband and wife...

Grady Roberts felt as if he'd been hearing that phrase more often lately than "Have a nice day."

It still echoed in his head as the reception shifted from the dinner phase to the dancing phase.

He smiled reflexively at the knockout redhead who'd ignored her date to make eyes at him as he'd sat with the others at the head table. She was truly a knockout. He was stupid to let it bother him that she looked at him like a succulent chocolate dessert she wanted to devour.

Then the bride and groom moved into the open expanse of polished wood floor to begin the dancing, and his smile softened.

God, Michael and Tris looked good together. Rightness glowed from them. A rightness that had spurred them to move up the date of their wedding three times, until the caterers, dressmakers and gift givers could only sprint like mad to keep up with the bride and groom's eagerness. A rightness that left a hole deep inside him. Or maybe the hole had been there a long time, and the fact of his best friends getting married one after the other had simply brought it out of hiding.

Paul and Bette joined them on the dance floor. Then other couples.

First Paul and Bette, now Michael and Tris.

How could you be so happy for people and also feel so left out and so ... what? He'd say lonely except that was an odd word for someone who'd never spent an evening--or night--alone unless he wanted to.

Even odder, he'd recently found himself spending more and more of his evenings and nights alone.

Maybe he just needed to get out more. Maybe that was all that was the matter with him.

"Grady? Grady, come back to earth."

He blinked into focus on Bette Wharton Monroe's smile. "Paul's dancing with the bride. Are you feeling brave enough to dance with a pregnant lady?"

"For as long as the pregnant lady's husband will let me." He smiled back. "Which we both know won't be long."

A dance and a half later, Paul claimed Bette. Then Grady danced once with Tris before Michael claimed her. Even his dance with Judi--Paul's kid sister and practically his own--ended with her father claiming her.

He looked around for Leslie Craig, the remaining member of the wedding party, Tris's co-worker and her maid of honor. He wouldn't mind dancing with her. She didn't look at him like a high-caloric goody. Leslie more likely would slip in some pointed remark than gush or stumble over her words.

But she was still dancing with a man Judi had informed him was someone's recently widowed uncle. Grady frowned.

The man looked young for an uncle and a widower. Some might even consider his gray hair and dark mustache distinguished. And from the way Leslie smiled, at least one person found them charming.

Grady turned away and danced on. The redhead. Friends' mothers. Michael's boss, U.S. Senator Joan Bradon. Leslie moved on to other partners, though the uncle showed up a couple more times, and Grady never could reach her before someone else did. He danced with miscellaneous relatives of Tris or Michael and assorted wedding guests. The redhead again.

She made it clear she was willing and eager. Trouble was, he wasn't either one.

The dance ended, and she stayed at his side.

"All right, everybody, while the band takes a break, my cousin Tris is going to toss the bouquet." Paul had a firm grip on the microphone and the crowd. Dancers wandered off the floor, anticipating his next announcement. "Will all the unmarried ladies please move over there by the doorway."

The redhead gave Grady a look under her lashes, slid her hand down his sleeve until her fingertips brushed the back of his hand, then started across the floor to the designated area with a walk that should have gotten her arrested for attempted arson.

Maybe he just wasn't flammable lately.

To let another bouquet candidate pass, he moved to his right, and bumped squarely into Leslie Craig.

"I don't object when men trample on my affections," she said in that faint drawl of hers, "but I draw the line at my toes."

He grinned. "Sorry, Leslie." He stepped back to open her path to the growing group of would-be flower catchers.

She didn't move.

He stepped farther back, making the opening more obvious, even gesturing that the way was clear.

She arched a brow. "What're you doing there, Grady? New dance step?"

"That would be the closest I'd come to dancing with you tonight." Her hazel eyes glinted with humor at his dry response. "But what I was trying to do was politely let you past so you'd have a chance to catch the bouquet."

She shook her head. "Thanks, but I'll stay here."

He saw Tris, already with her back to the growing group of women, glance toward Leslie.

"I think Tris is looking for you."

"She'll understand."

"You object on feminist grounds?"

"Not me. I'm from the feminist school that says a woman can do anything a man can do--including love and marriage. No, I think bouquet tossing is a quaint and archaic tradition, and I'm all for that. You learn to cherish your quaint and archaic traditions when you're from Virginia. It's just that I'm too archaic myself to go in for this one."

Grady had been watching Paul consult with Tris some eight feet away, but now turned to consider the woman by his side. He knew from Tris that Leslie was older than his thirty-three, but it couldn't be by much.

Besides, he'd spent time with enough attractive women to qualify as something of an expert, and her appeal was the kind age didn't diminish. It came from her bones, and her brain. He'd spent many childhood hours with old movies as his only companions, and he could see a lot of the young Katharine Hepburn in Leslie Craig.

But he was too late to make his observations. She'd continued the conversation without him.

"Believe it or not, Tris and Michael want to get things moving faster. You'd think moving their wedding up from June to late April would be fast enough for anybody."

She smiled at him, a friend sharing their mutual friends' happiness, and he felt the uncharacteristic urge to ask her if she didn't have any of the feelings he'd been experiencing. The left-out feeling. The wondering about when--or if--it would ever be his turn.

Doubly uncharacteristic. To have the feelings, and then to consider confiding them. Even Paul, who'd been his first friend, would be astounded if Grady Roberts ever said what he'd just been thinking.

Leslie's smile had slipped and she studied him in some puzzlement.

In their encounters since Tris introduced them last fall, he'd realized Leslie was a perceptive woman. Dangerously so. He turned on his smile. "They do seem in a hurry, don't they?"

In the background, he heard Paul giving final instructions.

All Leslie's puzzlement didn't disappear, but her smile returned. "I heard Tris telling Paul that if he wanted her to throw this bouquet he'd better get a move on because she had a honeymoon to start. And Michael flat out said he wasn't going to waste time throwing the garter. He was going to hand--"

A missile struck Grady a glancing blow on the right shoulder, deflected straight at Leslie Craig's chin and shed three petals before dropping into the hands she'd instinctively raised.

A whoop went up from the general direction of Tris, Michael and Paul, quickly picked up by the rest of the crowd.

Leslie's head was bent over the bouquet that had landed in her hands, so Grady had to bend to get a look at her face.

She looked stunned.