One Good Friend Deserves Another (2 page)

“But Dhara and Cole belong together. I know it.”

“You’re working yourself up. And the air-conditioning in this place stinks. Come on, run some cold water over your wrists. Just try to breathe.”

Kelly bent more deeply over the sink. Nothing made sense anymore. Her thoughts circled and short-circuited one another like a jury-rigged motherboard. She was the wrong friend to send on this job. She understood patterns, logic, and flowcharts. Amid the complications of human relations, she was a lumbering dolt.

Above all came this thought: If such a couple as Dhara and Cole couldn’t make it, then what possible hope did
she
have, with the mercurial man who’d just swept back into her life?

“Are you coming, Kelly?”

Wendy let go of Kelly’s hair. As she twisted her string of pearls, Wendy waited for an answer to a question Kelly hadn’t heard.

“Ahh …”

“No way, Kell,” Wendy interjected. “We might not approve of this engagement, but it’d be disrespectful to leave before the ceremony. Afterward, you can tell me and Marta exactly what happened.” A line appeared between Wendy’s brows. “In the meantime, we have to get back to the hall.”

Kelly realized she’d been asked to join the party again. She also realized, as a redhead with a frightening tendency to faint in the heat, that she had a legitimate excuse to delay.

“It’s like Bombay in that hall.” Kelly flattened the wet palms of her hands against her cheeks. “You and Marta go on ahead. I’ve got to cool off. I’ll catch up later.”

Wendy’s gaze narrowed, but then she nodded and headed out. As soon as the ladies’ room door squealed shut, Kelly slipped into the other room and made a beeline to a stall. She locked the door and leaned up against it. Blindly she tucked her hand in the pocket of her purse and clutched the hotel key card so hard that the edges dug into her palm.

She was free now. Free to dance with Dhara’s flirtatious cousin Ravi, free to stuff herself with tandoori chicken, free to join in the line dance from last week’s showing of
My Name Is Khan
at the Bombay Cinema.

Free to go to
him.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her rational mind—the one that served her so well in the IT department where she worked—was screaming. She knew she shouldn’t do this here, not now. It was dangerous. It was too soon to take the risk. If Wendy, Marta, or Dhara caught her with him, the intervention to follow wouldn’t be a gentle version of lock-the-bride-in-the-bathroom. It’d be a full-blown screaming match that wouldn’t end well.

Trey.

The edges of the card cut more deeply into her hand. Who was she kidding? She’d known she would go to him. She’d known the minute he’d slipped the key card in her pocket.

Kelly tucked her clutch under her arm and exited the bathroom. As she passed by the open doors of the banquet room, still throbbing with music, she caught a glimpse of Marta and Wendy but she didn’t pause. She reached the main lobby and walked to the bank of elevators, pressed the
UP
button, and darted inside the first open one. The last thing Kelly saw as the elevator doors closed was the young clerk behind the reservation counter bobbing to the Bollywood beat.

The eighth floor was blessedly empty. She slipped down a corridor and found the room. She ran the card through the slot and watched the light turn green. Just then, the door opened under her hand.

There he was, his brown eyes bright with mischief.

Tall, mussed, and shirtless.

And once again she was struck by the fact that she, little Kelly Palazzo from the North Shore, who spent every summer of her teenage years in rubber boots on a fish-stinking trawler, was an object of affection for this Princeton-educated scion of an old family whose smile stole her capacity to breathe.

Trey hauled her into his arms. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry I was delayed.” Kelly dug her fingers into his shoulders. He smelled like clean, powdered starch. “I couldn’t get away from your sister.”

“Where’s Kelly?”

Wendy glanced around the hotel lobby, now swarming with guests saying good-bye. Mrs. Pitalia beamed beside her daughter. Even Mr. Pitalia—normally a quiet man who preferred the comfort of his own den—stood with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking, a beatific smile on his face. In this swirling, chaotic crowd of mostly dark-haired Pitalias and Boharas, redheaded Kelly should be easy to spot.

“I haven’t seen her since she disappeared into the ladies’ room with Dhara.” Marta scrolled through her email as she slipped a wireless headset in her ear. “Maybe she left without us.”

“She wouldn’t have gone without telling me.” Wendy worried her pearls with her fingers. “She never got a chance to tell us what happened in there.”

“Poor kid. With this mess with Dhara and Cole, I guess she figures she lost her matchmaker magic.” Marta dropped her phone into her purse and glanced up the street in search of a cab. “Hey, maybe she just bumped into Ravi—he’s an engineer, right? They’re probably so absorbed talking about the latest
Star Trek
movie that they forgot there was a party. Here’s your car.”

Wendy turned to see the sleek white Benz pull up in front of the hotel. She took the keys from the valet and slipped a bill into his hand. “Marta, you know I would drive you both—”

“Don’t be silly. No sane woman would drive into Manhattan during rush hour.” Marta tilted her head so one oversize gold hoop gleamed on her cheek. She gave Wendy a sly smile, showing off white teeth against bright red lipstick. “Unless, of course, you’re determined to miss that appointment with the wedding planner?”

Wendy’s stomach did one of those funny little drops, like it did sometimes on Parker’s sailboat when they ventured into rougher seas. It was silly to worry about a meeting that would revolve around world-rocking issues like whether to fill the table vases with river stones or glass beads. Silly to worry about it, even though tonight she was determined to confront her mother about her sister Birdie.

The sight of a familiar silhouette saved her from responding. “Ah, here’s my brother.”

Marta lit up. “Trey! Where have you been hiding?”

“Dancing with one of Dhara’s gorgeous cousins.” Trey sauntered over and leaned down for Marta’s airy, double-cheek kiss. “Missed you, Marta. We could have shown them how it’s done.”

“Oh, how sweet, you,” Marta said, and then gave him a playful slap that would probably leave a mark. “It’s
such
a pity you’re a player.”

Trey’s smile widened as he rubbed his cheek. “Know a hot Latino who can settle me down?”

“Latin
a,
baby,
Latina.
” Marta gave him a wicked smile. “Unless there’s something you want to get out of the closet…?”

“You know me better,
chica
.”

Wendy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Since the ugliness with Kelly all those years ago, she’d spent most of her adult life keeping her older brother, Jeremiah “Trey” Warner Wainwright III, clear of her friends. The patter that sounded so banal to her seemed to work wonders with an alarmingly wide range of intelligent women. Even worldly-wise Marta came to life in Trey’s presence, but Wendy knew Marta understood his type.

“Come on, Trey.” Wendy swung around to the driver’s side. “Bitsy’s waiting for us at the club, and I’d like to get there before her third gin and tonic. You’ll take care of Kelly, Marta?”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll find our disillusioned friend and share a cab with her back to the city.” Marta gave her a sassy wink. “Have fun picking out wedding favors.”

Marta headed back into the hotel as Trey slipped into the car. He flung the jacket of his Savile Row suit in the backseat.

Wendy slipped the car into gear and said, “Next time, I’m making you take the train.”

“What?”

She reached over and tugged the Egyptian cotton of his Oxford shirt. “Your shirt is buttoned wrong.”

“The dance floor was packed. I unbuttoned to cool off.”

“You
stink
of sex.”

“That’s sweat.” He gripped his collar and buried his face in the cloth.

“Trey, I asked you to meet me here for
convenience.
So I wouldn’t spend two and a half hours trying to fetch you out of the bowels of Manhattan. I did
not
ask you here so you could cause trouble at Dhara’s engagement party.” Wendy felt her temper rising. “And just because your driver’s license is suspended doesn’t mean I have to be responsible for driving you upstate every weekend.”

“Relax, relax!”

“Just convince me,” she said, as she turned into traffic, “that you didn’t hook up with any of Dhara’s cousins.”

“Hey, I don’t ‘hook up’ with your friends anymore.” He fumbled with the buttons. “Ancient friggin’ history, Wendy.”

Wendy’s jaw tightened. He was right, of course. The thing with Kelly was a long time ago. And he’d made his apologies back then, as best he could after the emotional damage was done. But Trey’s screwups were frequent and had a very predictable cycle: he’d do something stupid and then spend an inordinate amount of time flailing about, looking for ways to patch things up.

Problem was, a fragile woman’s heart just couldn’t be made new again.

“So,” Trey said, settling back in the leather seat, “it’s finally getting to you.”

“What?”

“You know, Bitsy’s plan to make your wedding the Event of the Millennium.”

Wendy’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. She would have closed her eyes, if she weren’t weaving through rush-hour traffic. “Mom’s heart is in the right place,” she said. “But you’d think, if you hired a Manhattan wedding planner to coordinate an event, that the wedding planner would make most of these decisions
for
us.”

“As if Bitsy would let that happen.”

“Dhara got engaged only a week ago,” she said, “yet her parents managed to throw together a party for two hundred relatives.”

“Balloons, Wendy. There were balloons.”

“They called a relative who manages the hotel, and they had a hall. They called another family friend who catered the food. They hired a DJ who was a member of the family. Voilà, a party.”

“Right, I can just see Bitsy eating lamb curry with a plastic spork.”

“No sixteen-piece band, no harpist at the cocktail party, no—”

“My dear,” he said, imitating their mother right down to the cadence of her speech, “that’s just the way things are
done.
”

Yes, Wendy thought, that was the way things were done with the Parkers and the Wainwrights and the Livingstons of Westchester County, that’s the way it had been done for generations, and so that was the way it was going to be done now and for all generations going forward, like a succession of rogue waves battering each bewildered young couple.

Poor little rich girl.

Wendy cleared her throat to cover up a humorless laugh. Poor little Wendy with her rich-girl problems. What she really needed was perspective: There were much worse wedding situations than hers. Dhara, for example. Agreeing, for reasons Wendy still couldn’t fathom, to marry an utter stranger.

Wendy wasn’t marrying a stranger. She was the luckiest woman in the world. In three months, she’d be married to Parker Pryce-Weston.

An hour later, when she pulled up the long drive to the Briarcliff Country Club, she glimpsed Parker leaning against one of the Corinthian columns that flanked the entrance. His blond hair made him instantly recognizable, bleached a shade short of white by weekends spent sailing the Long Island Sound. The moment the Benz rounded the long, curved driveway, a sexy Mario Lopez dimple deepened in his cheek.

She stepped out of the car and tossed the keys to the valet. Trey vaulted up the steps. “Hey, bro. Get in any sailing today?”

“Nah. Worked all day.”

“Parker Senior’s a taskmaster, eh?”

“Hey, at least I’m not in the mailroom anymore.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Listen, I’ve got to shower and change.” Trey tripped backward toward the door. “See you later for a drink?”

“Count on it.”

Parker watched Wendy come up the stairs. He held his drink with cocksure preppy confidence. He gave her that sideways little smile that always made her feel like he knew what she was thinking, and knew better than to ask.

“Hey, you,” she said, raising her face for a kiss.

“Hey, beautiful.”

He tasted like breath mints and lime. His hand stretched across the small of her back, comfortably familiar.

“You shouldn’t let Trey bait you,” he murmured. “You know it only pisses you off.”

“I believe that’s his mission in life.” She noticed that the sunburn on his forehead and forearms was just starting to darken. “I suppose they’re waiting for me?”

“Bitsy just ordered number three.” He guided her toward the doors. “Sorry I missed Dhara’s party. I was looking forward to watching her aunt Indira rocking on the dance floor.”

Wendy smiled. Parker had attended a party Dhara’s family had thrown after Dhara finished her medical residency. Inspired by the family’s exuberance on the dance floor, he’d stripped off his tie with admirable abandon and joined them. It had been one of their first dates.