Mercy by Julie Garwood Read Free Book Online

wedding.”
    “What about Noah?”
    “He’s in the wedding, of course, but I’m expecting you to be best man. I figured you already knew that, but Laurant thought I should ask you anyway.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah, what?”
    Theo smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
    His brother was a man of few words. “Okay, good. Have you given your speech yet?”
    “No, that’s not until tomorrow night.”
    “When do you get your trophy?”
    “It’s a plaque, and I get it right before I give my speech.”
    “So if you blow it and put all those armed officers to sleep, they can’t take the trophy back, can they?”
    “I’m hanging up.”
    “Hey, Theo? For once, stop thinking about work. See the sights. Get laid. You know, have a good time. Hey, I know . . . why don’t you give Noah a call? He’s on assignment in Biloxi for a few months. He could drive over to New Orleans, and the two of you could have some fun.”
    If anyone knew how to have fun, it was Noah Clayborne. The FBI agent had become a close friend of the family after working on several assignments with Nick and then later assisting Theo with his investigations as a federal attorney for the Justice Department. Noah was a good man, but he had a wicked sense of fun, and Theo wasn’t sure he could survive a night out with Noah just now.
    “Okay, maybe,” he answered.
    Theo hung up the phone, stood, and quickly doubled over from the pain that radiated through his right side. It had started in his belly, but it had moved down, and, damn, but it stung. The muscle he’d pulled felt like it was on fire.
    A stupid football injury wasn’t going to keep him down. Muttering to himself, he grabbed his cell phone from the charger, put it into his breast pocket with his reading glasses, and left the room. By the time he reached the lobby, the pain had receded and he was feeling almost human again. That, of course, only reinforced his own personal golden rule. Ignore the pain and it would go away. Besides, a Buchanan could tough out anything.

CHAPTER THREE
    I t was a night to remember.
    Michelle had never attended such an extravagant affair before, and as she stood on the steps overlooking the hotel ballroom, she felt like Alice about to fall through the looking glass into Wonderland.
    There were flowers everywhere, beautiful spring flowers in sculptured urns on the marble floors and in crystal vases on all the white linen tablecloths. In the very center of the ballroom, beneath a magnificent crystal chandelier, was a cluster of giant hothouse magnolia trees in full bloom. Their heavenly fragrance filled the air.
    Waiters glided smoothly through the crowd carrying silver trays with fluted champagne glasses while others rushed from table to table lighting long, white, tapered candles.
    Mary Ann Winters, a friend since childhood days, stood by Michelle’s side taking it all in.
    “I’m out of my element here,” Michelle whispered. “I feel like an awkward teenager.”
    “You don’t look like one,” Mary Ann said. “I might as well be invisible. I swear every man is staring at you.”
    “No, they’re staring at my obscenely tight dress. How could anything look so plain and ordinary on a hanger and so —”
    “So devastatingly sexy on you? It clings in all the right places. Face it, you’ve got a great figure.”
    “I should never have spent so much money on a dress.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Michelle, it’s an Armani. You got it for a song, I might add.”
    Michelle self-consciously brushed her hand down the side of the soft fabric. She thought about how much she’d paid for the dress and decided she would have to wear it at least twenty times to make it cost-effective. She wondered if other women did that — rationalized a frivolous expense to assuage the guilt. There were so many more important things she could have used the money for, and when, in heaven’s name, was she ever going to have another opportunity to wear this beautiful dress again? Not in Bowen, she