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The Unexpected Wedding Guest
By Patricia McLinn Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © 2003 Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-24541-6
Chapter One
"Hey, Suz."
The voice and the touch came from behind her. The voice was a rumble in her ear, the touch a warm hand on her shoulder. A hand not only warm, but large and strong. The kind of contact between a man and a woman that was a play all to itself, complete with three acts.
The opening was a faint caress, stroking across the skin left bare by the narrow straps of her dress, followed by the main act of its solid presence, telegraphing strength. Then, before the curtain came down, that little squeeze saying it sure would be nice to have an encore.
In the flash before she recognized the shoulder gripper, Suzanna Grant couldn't think of a single man who might greet her that way at her best friend's wedding reception here in Tobias, Wisconsin. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not a one. And wasn't that a cheerful thought?
She turned at the same time the shoulder gripper dropped into a seat beside her, and saw the familiar black hair, the dark eyes so thickly lashed they could look like smudges, the strong nose, the powerful shoulders. Max Trevetti, the bride's older brother. The best man. Oh, yes, and the man who at one time could have earned a standing ovation from her if that touch had truly carried all those hidden meanings.
But that time was years ago, before she'd figured out it wasn't going to happen. Before he'd established himself as a big brother in all but name.
"You look great, Suz. Beautiful."
She scanned him for obvious signs that pod people had taken over his body.
You look great, Suz? Beautiful? These were not the words of the Max Trevetti she knew. He was more likely to tell her to tie her shoelaces so she wouldn't trip, or to wear her gloves in the winter so she wouldn't catch a cold.
"Why're you looking at me that way, Suz?"
"Have you been drinking?"
"Sure I've been drinking. It's my little sister's wedding. And every time I finish my champagne, some waiter comes by with a new one." He touched the tip of one finger to the spaghetti strap of her red dress. Two touches in under a minute - that had to be a record.
She glanced at the spot he'd touched to see if it had caught fire. Nope. Must be the tactile version of an optical illusion.
"Looked like it was slipping," he said.
Of course, he had a practical reason for touching her.
That first time she'd turned from greeting the fellow transfer student who'd become her new roommate at Northwestern University and laid eyes on this roommate's older brother, she'd seen satin sheets and white picket fences.
He'd seen ... well, she didn't know exactly what he'd seen. His view of her seemed to alternate between honorary kid sister and androgynous robot. Neither did much to boost a girl's ego. But she'd recovered from that ages ago.
"You've been drinking, too," he said now. "When I gave the toast."
"That's what you do after a toast - and a beautiful toast it was. I was just surprised to see you so relaxed, and I was speculating on its cause."
"Isn't my little sister getting married enough? Isn't Annette's wedding cause?"
"Sure."
"Then why aren't you celebrating?"
"I am, in my own quiet way."
He laughed, full out, head thrown back. "Your own quiet way. That's rich. Your way's never been quiet. It's fireworks and confetti." He waved over a waiter. "So have more champagne."
He took another glass for himself and one for her. She didn't touch hers.
"Who's driving you home, Max?"
"I dunno. Somebody." He looked at her, and the flippancy vanished, his deep-brown eyes softening with familiar concern and sympathy. And with the memories. "Sorry, Suz. I wasn't thinking. Annette has seen to it that no one will drive out of here after drinking and meet some innocent ... I wasn't thinking," he repeated. "I was just concentrating on gettin' through the wedding. And we did this time, even with ..."
In a second display of unusual tact for Max, he took another sip of champagne rather than finishing.
Suz wasn't in the mood for tact. Besides, talking about today's wedding would keep him off the other topic.
"Even with my untimely arrival?" she asked.
She had certainly never meant to re-create the intrusion that had stopped Annette's wedding to Steve Corbett nearly eight years ago. The first time, a pregnant woman had come in the side door while they were at the altar, declaring she had a reason the wedding shouldn't go on - the baby was Steve's. Annette had immediately left Tobias, she'd thought for good. But since Annette's return to town three months ago, Annette and Steve had gotten back together.
Gotten back together so well that they had arranged a new wedding, at a different church, heck, even in a different century.
Then Suz had inadvertently repeated the pattern - at least part of it - by arriving late and bursting in the side door at the moment the preacher asked if anyone had cause that these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony. At least she hadn't been pregnant. And she would never say there was reason Annette and Steve shouldn't be joined together.
The fact that they already were joined together in the ways that counted had been obvious in their reaction to Suz's arrival. Without hesitation they had looked at each other and laughed. After a moment everyone joined in.
Everyone except Max.
From his position next to the groom, he'd stood like a statue and stared at her as if he'd never seen her before - and never wanted to again.
"Your unexpected arrival," he corrected now.
"Unexpected? I was invited."
"Of course you were invited. If they'd had anyone more than Nell and me in the wedding, you'd've been in it - you know that." She did know that. And she thoroughly understood Annette and Steve's need to limit the wedding party to her brother and his daughter. "But you said you wouldn't be able to make it because of your family situation."
Ah, yes, her family situation.
"It turned out not to be as big an emergency as they thought. I left yesterday."
Actually, to her parents and four older brothers, getting her to stay safe at home permanently probably did constitute an emergency. And living back in Dayton, Ohio, would be easy in so many ways. But not when the timing of their "emergency" meant missing Annette's wedding.
"Yesterday? Then why were you late? Get lost?"
There had been that one wrong turn when she hit the edge of Tobias. But she'd already been late by then.
As she'd driven across Indiana yesterday evening, she'd received a call that there'd been a last-second snafu with a transfer of records to the corporation she and Annette had sold their business to. The administrator who'd slipped up said it could wait. But those records represented a score of small businesses that could miss a week's worth of potential work when jobs were assigned Monday. So instead of driving on to Wisconsin, she'd stayed in Chicago last night and insisted a VP meet her downtown this morning to finish the exchange, so those businesses would be eligible to work.
She'd changed clothes in the restroom of the office building and headed straight here.
But Max was right - she had a notoriously bad sense of direction.
"I could've been lying in a ditch somewhere and you wouldn't have cared," she said with mock tragedy.
"I'd've cared." It would have been a more touching declaration if it hadn't been so breezy. And it was followed by an abrupt "Let's dance."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Unexpected Wedding Guest by Patricia McLinn Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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