Not Quite Over You

“How would you make that happen?”

She pointed to the ceiling. “I’d get rods installed so I could easily hang drapes to make the setting feel more intimate. We’d have seating like at any dinner, but also a few sofas and love seats. It would all be movable so we’d be able to support whatever theme they wanted.”

“There’s a theme?” All the bachelor parties he’d been to had focused on liquor and giving the groom a hard time.

She nodded. “Say a spa theme. So there would be a massage table and pedicure stations. Those would be brought in but we certainly have the room.” She looked at him, then away. “And we could put in some poles.”

If she hadn’t already mentioned rods for the drapes, he would have assumed she meant poles for that. “What are you talking about?”

She cleared her throat. “You know. Poles. Like stripper poles. They’re actually very popular. The bride and her friends learn moves they can, ah, share later.”

He kept his expression neutral and did his best not to wonder if Silver had any moves he didn’t know about. “Stripper poles?”

“It’s just a thought.”

He reminded himself this was a business meeting and that picturing Silver doing a pole dance was wrong on many levels. “Sounds like a good one.”

“Let me run some numbers. The poles have to be secured to the floor and the ceiling. I’d have to check my lease as well, to make sure I could do it. Or I guess I could phone Violet and just ask.”

Violet was the owner of the retail space and loft above, and Silver’s landlord. The previous year she’d fallen in love with an English duke and had moved across the pond, so to speak, and married him.

“If you can install stripper poles?” He laughed. “I almost want to be in on that call.”

She rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to talk about anything sexy.”

“No, but it will still be interesting.”

“You’re such a guy.”

“I can be, yes.” He looked around. “I would say if you think renting out this space for parties is something we should try, let’s spend the least amount we can. The poles shouldn’t be too expensive. Better lighting and some soundproofing. But nothing that expensive, at least at first. The main business is always going to be the trailers.”

“That’s a really good point.”

“Have you thought of starting a franchise?”

She stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Your trailer bar idea is brilliant. What about a franchise? It would be great for a lot of people. Retirees, anyone who only wants to work a few days a week.”

She made a T with her hands. “Let’s take this just a little slower. You’ve been my business partner all of fifteen minutes. Let’s put franchising on the back burner for oh, say a month.”

“It wouldn’t be hard. Once we got the legal stuff out of the way, we’d need to come up with a plan, then maybe do a little internet advertising.”

“Is that all?”

“You have to have vision.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had a lot of business experience.”

“I wasn’t.”

“My business partner, the bank mogul.”

“It’s just one bank. Does that make me a mogul?”

She laughed. “It’s one more bank than anyone else I know owns. I’m kind of surprised you stayed in town.”

“Why would I leave?”

“You could be a bigger mogul somewhere else. Plus, you know, the parents. I’ve never actually met them, but I remember what you told me about them when we were going out. Your mother is very ambitious for her only child.”

“Why would you remember that?” he asked.

“Because it was important to you.”

It had been, and still was. He didn’t normally talk about his parents, but with Silver he’d felt a connection that he hadn’t experienced before or since. He’d trusted her with every part of himself, including the doubts he rarely admitted to, let alone shared.

He’d talked about his parents and their odd sense of the world—that being connected and having political and financial power mattered more than anything else, including family. His mother especially was driven to be influential. Ambition drove her to an extent that was almost frightening.

Drew had done his best to rebel against their dreams for him but it had been a losing battle. Then his father had received an ambassadorship that had sent his parents to Europe. He’d been in high school and after much discussion, they’d agreed to leave him with his Grandpa Frank.

Drew had loved the freedom, the normalcy of simply being one of the grandkids. He’d been able to relax, to learn and grow because it was what he wanted and not because of some unrealistic master plan. And he’d fallen in love with Silver.

“What is this really about?” she asked, her voice quiet. “Are you really that interested in being a business partner or are you rebelling against what your parents expect?”

“You mean run the bank for two years, then join them in their lobbying firm?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Is that the current plan?”

“Last I heard.”

“What do you want?”

What he’d always wanted. He wanted to run the bank, to modernize the various processes and make every department responsive to the community.

“Remember about three years ago when there was that big push to raise the money to build a new fire station?”

One had desperately been needed, but there hadn’t been the money. Business leaders had come together to raise the funds privately.

“I ran the committee,” he admitted. “I wasn’t the public face, but I took care of all the details, brainstormed most of the ideas. I convinced my grandfather to donate a sizable portion of our profits for the quarter. Everyone kicked in and we got the station built.”

“I remember, but I didn’t know that was you.”

“It wasn’t me. It was the whole town. That’s what I want—to be more than a guy who runs the bank. I want to make the bank relevant and important. Not some heartless institution.”

“Wow.” She looked at him. “And here I thought you just gave orders and counted the money.”

He grinned. “I let Libby do that.”

He looked at Silver. She was the more mature version of the girl he’d fallen in love with. Back then she’d had attitude, but now she had life experience to back it up. He wanted to say she was fearless but didn’t everyone fear something? As the question formed, he wondered what she worried about in the middle of the night.

“Do you ever think about what would have happened if we’d stayed together?”

Her eyes widened. “You and me?” She gave a strangled laugh. “Sometimes I do, but it would have been a disaster.”

“Why?”

“We were too young to have a baby. You had just started college. I appreciate that you said all the right things, but we both know you would have hated to come home. Where would you have gotten a job? Where would we have lived? You would have ended up resenting me and it would have been awful.”

She spoke with an authority that made him realize she had thought about them staying together. She’d considered the possibilities and had rejected the premise of the question.

“We might have been okay,” he said, not knowing why he wanted that to be true. It had been a long time ago—the decisions had been made and they’d both moved on.

She looked at him. “I don’t think so. Besides, you’d already let me go and were ready to move on to someone else.”

“I was still in love with you.” Maybe a little less than he had been when he’d left for college, but there had been feelings. Not that he’d wanted a baby. Not then. She was right about them being too young for that.

“I appreciate you saying that but we both know it was long over. We’d moved on.” One corner of her mouth turned up. “Besides, your mother would never have let us get married.”

“We were legally adults. We could do what we wanted.”

“Uh-huh.” Her expression turned sympathetic. “You don’t actually believe that, do you? We’re talking about your mother. She would have found a way to stop us.”

Silver was right about that, he admitted to himself. Not only had he been raised to respect his parents’ wishes, his mother had a way of manipulating people he couldn’t begin to master. Regardless, he liked to think he would have been strong.

“I would have married you,” he told her. “If that was what you’d wanted.”

Emotions flashed across her face. She opened her mouth, as if she were about to say something, then shook her head.

“Thank you for saying that. I, ah...” She drew in a breath. “I have a meeting in an hour with a lot of prep work and you have to get back to the bank. Let’s talk soon.”

“The sooner the better. We need to get the trailers remodeled and figure out what to do with this space.”

“Absolutely.”

He hesitated, unable to shake the feeling that there was more she wanted to discuss, but she only smiled.

What had she been thinking and what had she wanted to say? He was about to cross the street toward the bank when he realized what it was. He’d told her he would have married her if that was what she wanted—a long way from saying he’d wanted it, too.

Not that they were in love anymore, or even dating. But they’d been in the middle of a “what if” conversation and he hadn’t played along.

He thought about going back to say something, only he couldn’t think of what. What would he tell her? That he was sorry she’d given up the baby? That he wished they’d gotten married? He wasn’t sure either of those statements were true. What he did know was that both he and Silver had come a long way and he was looking forward to finding out where they went after today.

* * *

SILVER COULDN’T SHAKE the fact that she’d been a complete and utter coward. She’d always thought of herself as reasonably brave and self-aware, but at the exact moment when she should have told Drew about Autumn and Leigh and the wedding, she’d said nothing.

Drew had given her the perfect opening. Honestly, what had she been waiting for? But instead of taking advantage of the moment, of coming clean, she’d bolted. Now, not only did she still have to tell him, she got to beat herself up. She’d been five kinds of dumb.

She walked into the conference room at Weddings Out of the Box. Renee was already there, tablet in hand, samples scattered around the table and a laptop opened to the teleconferencing program.

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