A Camden Family Wedding

“Or, while you’re off getting a house and a dog, the kind of guy who wants the same things you want will have found someone else who wants them, too, and they’ll be coming to you to plan their wedding.”

“I won’t let myself think like that,” Vonni said with a firm shake of her head. She needed this breather. She needed to put some things in her life that made her feel as if she actually had a life. She needed not to just be in limbo, putting everything off until she found a husband.

“Well you should think like that,” Chrystal decreed, getting up from the sofa in the office to signal that she was leaving. “But you’re right not to hang any hopes on Dane Camden—I’ve heard he has a no-marriage-ever policy. Although...” Chrystal added as if something had just occurred to her. “If you know that going in and you’re not looking for a husband right now anyway, a little rest and respite with Dane Camden might be just the ticket.”

Why did that idea inspire a wave of excitement?

“No way,” Vonni swore to herself and to Chrystal at once. “A dog, a house, a vacation as soon as there’s enough of a lull between weddings for me to get away—besides work, those are the only things getting my attention. No men!”

Not even Dane Camden.

“And speaking of work...” Vonni said as Chrystal headed for the office door. “Getting a Camden wedding is a big deal. And it could lead to more of them since there have been a couple other Camden engagement announcements lately—that seems like something to point out to your dad when we have that meeting he promised me this month to talk about partnership.”

In spite of the fact that Burke’s Weddings had been Chrystal’s graduation gift, it fell under the umbrella corporation that Chrystal’s father ran, so he had ultimate say and control.

Vonni had decided against telling either Chrystal or her father about the job offer with Camdens yet.

“I’ll tell Daddy.”

“And set up the meeting?”

“Maybe. But the new girlfriend is keeping him busy so I don’t know....”

“He said June and this is business so it’ll be during business hours, not girlfriend hours. And we’re starting a new fiscal year July 1, so this is a prime time,” Vonni pointed out.

“I’ll talk to him,” Chrystal said. “And you think about having a rejuvenating fling with Dane Camden so you can give me all the details and I can live vicariously through you!”

“All I want from him is his business,” Vonni maintained.

“That’s the saddest thing you’ve ever said,” Chrystal countered.

But as Vonni walked her friend out, she refused to let anything about her self-imposed holiday from husband hunting get her down.

* * *

Dane Camden arrived at Burke’s Weddings at six-thirty Thursday evening and Vonni immediately got to work on a marathon of choosing the basics for his grandmother’s wedding—times, locations, colors, decorations, floral arrangements, invitations, seating, menu, napkins, linens and chair covers.

They went on until after eleven o’clock, when Vonni began to talk about whether to opt for lace or satin sashes to tie around the chair covers.

That was when Dane sat back in the white velvet tufted seat he was sitting in, held up his large, powerful-looking hands in surrender, and said, “Okay, okay, uncle! I’m crying uncle! Have some mercy, woman! I need food! I need hard liquor! Maybe I need to hunt wild game or toss around a football or something that proves I’m still a man!”

Vonni laughed at him and at the notion that he needed anything to prove that he was more man than he was.

He’d again come with his tie and suit coat already removed, wearing bluish-gray slacks and a barely gray dress shirt with the collar button undone and the sleeves rolled midway up his forearms. Thick, muscular forearms.

And sitting in her elegant, all-white and definitely feminine planning room with the Queen Anne chairs around the ornate antique table, he most certainly did not fit in. In fact, he had the air of a bull in a china shop.

But she got the point.

“Enough for tonight,” she said.

“More than enough! It’s hot wings and beer time. Come on, let’s go. I’m gonna get you out of the glare of all this white before you go blind!”

Vonni laughed again. “I spend every day here and haven’t gone blind yet.”

“It could happen anytime,” he said ominously. “We need to get somewhere dark and dingy on the double!”

“I should organize things here before I leave,” Vonni said, knowing that what she shouldn’t do was go anywhere with him. Especially when he’d already banned her from working any more tonight so it couldn’t be considered business.

“Come on.... You wouldn’t make me eat alone, would you? And you can’t tell me you haven’t put in at least a fourteen-hour day already.”

Sixteen, but who was counting.

It was true—Vonni was tired and hungry. So she blamed that for not having the stamina to fight him.

Plus, she wasn’t inclined to say good-night to him quite yet because even planning his grandmother’s wedding with him for the past several hours had been fun....

“Somewhere close by?” she asked.

“We’ll hit that little place in the basement around the corner from here—they have local beers on tap.”

Vonni knew the place—it was a pub that served a few comfort-food dishes. It was also a prime spot people went after work. Which was what she’d be doing with Dane Camden, so it would also not qualify as a date, she told herself.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I am hungry, and maybe we can still talk sashes for the chairs to get just one more thing done?”

“No! You’re relentless,” he said as if she were torturing him. But he’d joked around and teased her through most of the work they’d done, so she recognized when he wasn’t being serious now. She did, however, believe that he had no intention of talking any more about his grandmother’s wedding tonight.

He stood and grabbed his suit coat. “Lock this white nightmare up and let’s get out of it!”

Vonni shook her head at his incorrigibleness. “Let me get my purse and keys out of the office.”

“Hurry or I might swoon.”

She laughed at his melodramatics again and went to retrieve her things, glad that she’d worn her most comfortable wedge sandals today because she could easily walk the distance to the pub in them.

In her office she put on the crocheted shrug that went over the yellow dress she had on, took her purse from the desk drawer and resisted the urge to pop into the bathroom to check her hair and makeup. She’d worn her hair pulled back in a clasp at her nape and she didn’t think anything had come loose, anyway. And fussing with those things made it seem as if she cared what she looked like for Dane, and she wouldn’t let herself.

Instead, she left the office without a clue, merely hoping for the best, and returned to the front of the shop where Dane was waiting for her.

And one glimpse of him after even so short a break somehow caused her to be struck all over again by how terrific looking he was. Tall and lean and strong and so much man that there was no question of his masculinity even if they had been talking all evening about doilies and decorations.

But the power of his presence and how terrific he looked were as inconsequential as her hair and makeup, Vonni silently ruled. And in the hope of stifling the effect he seemed to have on her no matter how hard she tried not to be affected by him, she glanced beyond him at the door he held open for her.

“Go ahead out, I have to set the security system,” she advised.

He did, still holding the door for her from the sidewalk while Vonni punched in the code to start the alarm. Then she joined him outside, using her key to lock the door after he’d closed it behind her.

It was a beautiful, balmy summer night, and that was what they talked about on the way to the pub. But it wasn’t the only thing Vonni thought about.

Images kept flashing through her mind of him taking her hand as they walked. Or putting his arm around her. As if they were a couple.

It was absurd and it was Chrystal’s fault, she decided, for planting the idea of having a fling with the man.

But that wasn’t going to happen! It absolutely was not going to happen!

Attempting to make sure there was nothing personal going on between them, she walked a few inches farther to the side, away from him.

The pub was half-full when they got there. There was no one to seat them so they took a free booth, sitting across from each other.

Positioned like that, it became impossible for her not to look at him and appreciate all over again how terrifically handsome he was even after what was probably a fourteen-hour day for him.

Then, out of the blue, he said decisively, “Satin ribbons, not lace sashes—the lace would be too froufrou for GiGi. You decide whether they should be green or gray or both to stick with the color scheme. Now don’t make me talk about any more of this stuff.”

“Deal,” she agreed, unable to suppress a smile at his unexpected outburst and the fact that he’d complied with what she’d wanted despite his reluctance.

He was a hard man not to like, she realized then. He was easygoing, upbeat, good-natured, smart, quick, funny, warm and altogether nice and pleasant to be around.

Pleasant to work with, she mentally corrected when she realized that she had slipped into doing what she’d done when she was dating—she was cataloging attributes that would have helped her judge whether or not to devote more time to someone she’d just met. To judge whether or not he had husband potential.

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