Three for the Road by Shannon Waverly

Author:Shannon Waverly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1995-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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BY THE TIME HIS CATCH was flapping around in the bucket with its hapless mate, Mary Elizabeth felt she’d regained an admirable grip on her composure. She hadn’t intended to divulge quite so much about her personal life, but Peter had been surprisingly easy to talk to, probably because he was a stranger, she reasoned—although he didn’t feel like a stranger anymore. He felt like a friend.

“Okay,” she said, “you know my story, now let’s hear yours. What’s the reason behind your asking me to attend your brother’s wedding?”

She watched him settle on the bench facing hers and cast his line. When the baited hook had sunk, he said, “All right. Here’s the way it is. Someone I’d rather avoid is going to be at the wedding, a woman named Sue Ellen Carlisle.” The rippling circles around his line widened outward. “She and I used to be an item in high school, but you know how life is. After graduation she went her way, I went mine.”

Mary Elizabeth tried to read his expression, but it had gone blank. She hadn’t a clue how life was with him, and evidently he didn’t plan to tell her.

“Now Sue Ellen is divorced, and I’ve got a hunch people at the wedding are going to be trying to get us together again.”

“People?”

“Hmm. My brother. My two sisters. Friends who knew us back in high school.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“Basically, because some folks don’t know how to mind their own business.”

She sidestepped his cynicism. “Were you and Sue Ellen really serious? Like, king and queen of the prom or something?”

The corner of his mouth lifted lazily. “I wasn’t exactly king-of-the-prom material back in high school, Mary Elizabeth.” His smile faded. “But, yeah, we were serious.”

She wasn’t sure she was glad she’d asked. She’d finally picked up a reaction, a thread of sadness in his voice, a hint of remembered heartache that, illogical as it was, made her jealous. Apparently, breaking up hadn’t been his idea, and this Sue Ellen was a person capable of hurting the inviolable Peter Mitchell.

Mary Elizabeth murmured, “And now she’s divorced.”

“Yep. Fifteen years later she’s divorced, and people are saying dumb things like, ‘Hey, Pete, why don’t you ask her out?’” He shook his head in disgust. “Especially my sisters. They’re married, so they think the whole world should be. They’re always trying to fix me up with somebody. I think it’s really just a case of misery-loves-company.”

The slap of the water softly lapping the boat filled the ensuing silence. Mary Elizabeth wanted to probe deeper. Each new thing she learned about him only made her hunger to learn more. But she wasn’t sure she should.

“What do you have against marriage?” she asked hesitantly.

“Nothing, as long as it doesn’t involve me.” He gazed out over the sun-shot water, again avoiding her question with flippancy, firming her suspicion there was more to his past than he was letting on.

“You don’t intend to ever get married?”

“Nope. Not cut out for marital bliss.

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