The Bridal Suite. Sandra Marton

she said under her breath, “let it be right.”

      It wasn’t.

      Not that she’d expected it would be. Mistakes, not miracles, were too often the inevitable result in the wonderful world of computing.

      If only Griffin McKenna could get that through his thick skull....

      His thick, handsome skull.

      Dana muttered a word McKenna surely wouldn’t have approved hearing a woman say. She glared at the monitor. Then she sighed, sat back and reached for the closest Styrofoam cup. An inch of black sludge sloshed in the cup’s bottom. She made a face, held her breath, and glugged it down. After a minute, she looked at the monitor again.

      McKenna’s face, complete with its smug, self-confident smirk, seemed to flicker like a ghostly apparition on the screen.

      “That’s right,” she said. “Smile, McKenna. Why wouldn’t you? The world is your oyster.” Angrily, she tapped the keys again, deleting the numbers, but McKenna’s image still lingered. “I should have quit,” she muttered. “I should have told that man exactly what he can do with this job.”

      It wasn’t too late. She could pick up the phone, dial his office...

      She was reaching for the receiver when the phone rang.

      “Hello,” she snarled.

      “Dana?”

      It was Arthur. Dana shut her eyes.

      “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

      “Were you expecting someone else, my dear?”

      Dana shot a glance at the monitor, as if she half expected to find McKenna’s face still etched onto the glass.

      “No,” she said. “No, not at all. I just—I’m, ah, I’m awfully busy just now, Arthur, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

      “Of course, Dana. I only wanted to say hello.”

      “Hello, then,” she said, trying not to sound brusque, “and now, if you’ll excuse me...”

      “Will I see you this evening?”

      “No,” she said. “I mean, yes. I mean...”

      Dammit. She was being rude, and she was babbling, and it was all because of McKenna. She flashed another quick look at the screen. He was still there, smirking. She stuck out her tongue, then rolled her eyes. What had happened to the rational thought process she was so proud of?

      “Arthur.” She took a deep breath. “Are you free for lunch? Because if you are, could you meet me at...” Dana paused and did a mental run-through of the restaurants between Arthur’s office and hers. McKenna might eat in any one of them, and he was the last person she wanted to see right now. “At Portofino,” she said, plucking the name out of the air. It was a name she recalled from a recent review in the Times.

      “Portofino. Of course. But...all you all right, Dana?”

      “I’m fine. It’s just... It’s just that I need you.”

      “Oh, my dear,” Arthur said, and she didn’t realize he might have gotten the wrong impression until she was on her way out the door.

      But by then, it was too late.

      Griffin had been in a lot of restaurants in his life, but never in one that reminded him of a chapel.

      If only he’d been paying attention when Cynthia had turned up unexpectedly at his office, smiling her perfect smile, looking as if she’d just stepped out of a bandbox—whatever the hell that might be—asking if he’d like to join her for lunch.

      Sure, he’d said, even though he knew he should have come up with some excuse because Cynthia was beginning to push things a little too hard. But his thoughts had been on Dana Anderson, and how much pleasure there’d be in firing her, and the next thing he’d known, he and Cynthia had been standing inside this super-trendy, self-conscious watering hole where violins violined and trysters trysted.

      “What is this place?” he’d muttered.

      “It’s called Portofino,” Cynthia had whispered, giving him a tremulous smile. “Your mother said the Times gave it a terrific write-up.”

      My mother, the matchmaker, Griffin had thought grimly, but he’d managed to smile. Apparently, it was time for another little chat. Marilyn McKenna was wise, sophisticated and channing...but she never gave up. She had decided, a couple of years before, that it was time he married and settled down, and she’d switched her considerable energies from her newest charity to getting him to do just that. Poor Cynthia didn’t know it, but she was his mother’s latest attempt at moving him toward the goal.

      “If you’d rather go someplace else,” Cynthia had said, her perfect smile trembling just a little...

      “No,” Griffin had said, because that was exactly what’d he been thinking. “No, this is fine.”

      It wasn’t fine. The Times might love Portofino but as far as he was concerned, the place was a total loser. He liked being able to identify the food on his plate, something you could not do in the artificial twilight of the restaurant, and if the captain or the sommelier or the waiter slid by one more time, smiling with oily deference and asking, sotto voce, if everything were all right, he was going to say no, by God, it wasn’t, and would somebody please turn up the lights, dump half the bordelaise sauce off what might yet prove to be a slab of rare roast beef, and take away these flowers before he started listening for a Bach fugue to come drifting from the kitchen?

      Griffin smothered a sigh. The truth was that he’d do no such thing. He’d come here of his own free will, which made paying the consequences for his stupidity an obligation.

      The captain had seated them at a table for two behind the perfect fronds of an artificial palm tree. The fronds had dipped into his soup and his salad. Now, they were dipping into his beef.

      “Isn’t this romantic?” Cynthia sighed.

      “Yes,” Griffin said bravely, brushing aside a frond. “Yes, it is.”

      “I just knew you’d like it,” Cynthia said, batting her lashes.

      He’d never noticed that before, that she batted her lashes. He’d read the phrase in books but until this moment, he hadn’t thought about what it meant. Blink. Blink, blink. It looked weird. Did all women do that, to get a man’s attention? He couldn’t imagine the Anderson woman doing it. She’d probably never batted a lash in her life.

      “Griffin?”

      Griffin looked up. Cynthia was smiling at him. Nothing new there; she almost always smiled at him. Not like the charming Ms. Anderson, who always glared.

      “Griffin.” Cynthia gave a tinkling little laugh and cocked her head at a pretty angle. “You seem to be a million miles away.”

      “I’m sorry, Cyn.” Griffin cleared his throat. “I, ah, I keep thinking about that conference.”

      “The one in Florida? Your mother mentioned it.”

      Give me a break, Mother!

      “Yes,” he said pleasantly. “It should be interesting. I’ve never been to a software convention before.”

      “I envy you,” Cynthia said, and sighed.

      Griffin’s dark brows angled upward. “I didn’t know you were interested in computers.”

      She laughed gaily. “Oh, Griffin! Aren’t you amusing? I meant that I envied you for getting away from this cold weather to spend a long weekend in Florida. I only wish I had that opportunity.”

      Griffin’s jaw clenched. Marilyn the Matchmaker was really pushing it this time.

      “Yes,” he said politely, “I suppose it sounds terrific, but I doubt if I’ll even get to