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herself.
    “So what about dinner tonight?”
    “Dinner? Okay—”
    “Great. I know a wonderful French place—”
    French? Probably tiny tables, candlelight and wine? Naturally he’d think of that first. But she’d show him another way.
    “I’m in the mood for a burger. Give me twenty minutes to change into jeans and I’ll meet you at this place I know on Connecticut Avenue.”
    “Oh.” She could practically hear his plans shatter, and she grinned. But he rallied quickly. “Okay.”
    Two minutes later she hung up with a sense of accomplishment and great optimism that handling Grady Roberts wouldn’t be so tough, after all.
    * * * *
    “You look a little tired, Leslie. Are you okay?”
    Tris studied her with narrowed eyes; Leslie wished the blinds let less revealing sunlight in her office. Tired? Try exhausted. But Tris was the last person she’d admit it to.
    On rare occasions when her subtlety slipped she had been accused of interfering in friends’ lives, though she preferred to think of it as redirecting their thoughts. For their own good, of course. Tris—dam her perception—was the most frequent accuser. Leslie counted herself fortunate Tris had been too preoccupied with the joys of newly married life these past few weeks to be her usual observant self.
    Leslie had said no to nearly half of Grady’s invitations, but since he wanted to get together every day, she wondered if cutting their outings in half was enough to let a friendship grow slowly, naturally. Though she persisted in making their encounters unrelentingly casual, paying her own way as often as she could beat him to it, talking about strictly impersonal matters and avoiding situations he could turn toward a more romantic bent.
    That took a lot of energy. Grady did not give up, and he was adept at turning a look into a potential bone-melter, a touch into a possible skin-burner. He’d had a lot of practice at this romance stuff. Remembering that kept her knees locked the couple times she’d been on the verge of slipping under his spell.
    Some people cracked their knuckles or twirled their hair; Grady flirted. Things like that made no difference in your feeling about the person, if you liked them.
    Ah, that was the question. Did she like Grady?
    If Grady were merely handsome—could anybody that good-looking be considered “merely” anything? she wondered with a wry face—he’d be easy to dismiss. If he were merely successful he’d be easy to forget. If he were merely charming he’d be easy to write off. But there was the evidence of his friendship with Tris and the others, and Leslie’s own observations of him . . .
    “Are you all right, Leslie?”
    Tris’s question jerked her back to the present.
    “Of course. Why ever wouldn’t I be all right?” She smiled brightly.
    “Well, I don’t know why, but you just made this strange face, and I’ve had the feeling you aren’t really listening to me. Is something wrong?”
    “Noth—”
    “Are you still worrying about April?”
    “April? Yes, I suppose I am.” It wasn’t a lie. Since her young relative’s visit nearly two weeks ago, her concerns had remained, just below the surface of her mind.
    Tris frowned. “Leslie, you can’t solve everybody’s problems. As much as you’d like to mother two-thirds of the world—”
    “I wouldn’t have enough place settings for dinner,” she demurred, “and Grandma Beatrice would never approve of paper plates.”
    The frown tightened as Tris fought a grin, and Leslie was satisfied.
    “All right. I won’t lecture—”
    Leslie thanked her with a heartfelt, “Bless your heart,” and the grin defeated the frown.
    “But I’m going to agree with Michael and insist you come with us this weekend to the beach. Until last night I thought, well . . . But now I see how much you need the rest. And we’ll make sure you don’t think of anything more demanding than whether to sit in the sun or the shade.”
    “That sounds wonderful,” she