“Enough of weddings and brides and my wayward girls.” Jeff leaned a little closer so his voice was for her ears alone. “I still don’t want you to vanish from my life five minutes after the girls have said ‘I do.’ Am I asking too much, or asking too early?”
She stared down at her plate, trying to form a cool and not unpleasant rebuff. “I…enjoy your company, Jeff, but as I told you before, we’re involved in a venture drenched in drama and ripe for crisis. Small things can suddenly take on too much importance; what seems alluring today may only be a temporary distraction. To make everything work out to your satisfaction, and to make the girls’ dreams happen, I need to stay focused on them. I think we’d best just get Candace and Shelby through this and then see where we are.”
“I’ll take that for the moment, Lucinda Parks, but it’s only for the moment.”
“We’ll see.” Lucinda reached for her bag and gloves. “It’s getting late, and I have a full schedule tomorrow. I’d better get back to my place. I’m so glad I got the chance to talk to the girls and get to know them a little. They’re both lovely.”
Bundled against the freezing night, Lucinda and Jeff hurried from the restaurant, reaching the curb just as the valet delivered the car. Grateful for the warmth it held, Lucinda fastened herself in as Jeff tipped the young man and then slipped in beside her. They talked very little during the drive back to Spotlight Celebrations. Lucinda hoped she hadn’t been too abrupt in her answer to Jeff. She did like him, liked him more than was sensible for a woman in her position. Found him attractive, much too attractive, if she were to be totally honest. But she couldn’t let attraction become anything more. Lost in her thoughts, Lucinda scarcely noticed the route he took. It seemed only minutes before the Mercedes pulled up to the curb in front of her shop.
She put her hand in his as he helped her from the car. “It was a very productive evening, Jeff. I think we accomplished quite a bit.”
“I hope we moved things forward a little.” He stood beside her as she extracted the door key and unlocked the heavy door; then, as he had before, he followed her inside. “You said you were seeing the florist tomorrow. Do I need to go along?” She heard an undertone of reluctance in his question.
He’s not eager to spend an afternoon in a flower shop, and I can’t blame him. She put a reassuring hand on his arm. “Oh, no, Jeff. I don’t think there’s a thing you need to do there. I’ll get some photos and suggestions and send them along to the girls by e-mail. You’re excused from this particular bit of the business.” She started to move away, to open the door for him, but he caught her hand and stopped her.
“But I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She tried to put space between them, but he had her hand in his. “Jeff, I have a very full day. Appointments, about a hundred phone calls to return… You know how it is.”
Before she could remove her hand from his, he turned, and she found herself enfolded in his arms. He pulled her close, tight against his cashmere overcoat. “You’re a very beautiful woman, Lucinda. But you keep your pretty self carefully distant from the masculine side of the population. I’d like to kiss you. In fact, I’d like to do considerably more than kiss you, but every time I move a little closer, you put up a chilly wall shutting me out. I think you’d like to take that big wall down. I see it in your eyes, a flicker saying you’d like to let me get closer. Then you duck back behind your fortress again. What’s holding you back?”
She tried to draw away, but she couldn’t move. His grey eyes looked into hers, holding her in place with a glance. “I told you. My kind of business doesn’t leave me much time to socialize. And it wouldn’t be right for me to encourage… Oh, Jeff, you’re a wonderful father. You’re an attractive and charming man. I know at least a dozen women who would be delighted to entertain your interest. But my world just doesn’t have a place for casual dating. I knew long ago I had no desire for the romantic romps or the passionate flings I saw my friends leap into. And I saw their consequences, as well—mostly painful, and sometimes tragic. I don’t want to be involved in something that would only bring hurt. The price is more than I’m willing to pay for a passing pleasure. It’s something I know about myself, and you should see it, too.” She stopped, a bit breathless, feeling somehow her explanation fell short of conviction. “Besides, I’m just too busy for that sort of thing.”
“Really?”
She should have seen it coming, should have realized she’d challenged him and he would react, but somehow his kiss caught her completely by surprise. The first one surprised her. The second demanded a response. And by the time Jeff Sinclair kissed her the third time, she was lost in a delicious, spinning world where words were useless and the hot, sweet need of the moment blotted out everything else.
“Tomorrow night.” His lips were warm against her hair. “Tomorrow night. Wear something pretty. Not another black suit. Something soft and silky. Woman, I’m taking you to a cocktail party where you’ll see everybody in town and they’re going to see you, the warm, real person, not the shadow in the black suit blending into the background. And afterward, well, afterward will take care of itself.”
“I…” She stopped, drew a breath, and tried again to form words. “I don’t have anything. I don’t wear…don’t need…”
He stopped her words with another kiss. “My dear, you’re in the business of clothes. I’ll bet you damn well can find something between now and tomorrow evening.” He tipped her chin up. “Can’t you?”
She was going to agree. She knew it. And she saw in his eyes he knew it, too. “I might.”
“Might?” He moved back, giving her space to change her mind. “Tomorrow, about eight?”
She still could have said no; she knew she could. She didn’t. “Yes, around eight.”
“And not one word, not even a thought, about this wedding or any other business. I want to spend one whole evening with a beautiful woman and have her complete attention.” He kissed her again, sweetly, gently, only his lips brushing hers. “Been wanting to do that since the first time I saw you.” He traced the line of her lips with one finger. “Even better than I thought it would be.”
Chapter 4
In spite of having two new brides, and their mothers, coming in the next morning, and needing to get to the florist to discuss the Sinclair wedding, Lucinda got away from her shop long enough to stop by one of her vendors. Galaxy provided many of the bridesmaids and mother-of-the-bride gowns for weddings she arranged. As she’d hoped, a selection of sample gowns had been marked down for a quick sale before the season’s new models arrived. Among the samples she found a teal organza gown in her size, marked down seventy-five per cent. Its single shoulder strap of organza tea roses kept it from being a too-young strapless cocktail dress, and the floaty skirt just brushed her knees, short enough to show her legs off but long enough to be modest. She didn’t know if it met Jeff’s criteria of soft and silky, but Lucinda felt very pretty in it. She hurried back to her shop and left the dress, rushing to make her appointment with the florist across town.
Several other shops offered excellent, but predictable, floral arrangements. Lucinda felt the Sinclair wedding needed the unique touch of Boots and Bling. She’d alerted her colleague there to the details of the wedding, so she wasn’t surprised to find a file of suggestions waiting for her.
“The all-white bouquet with roses and blue ribbons isn’t a problem, of course.” The florist spread a fan of colored pictures before her. Any one of the arrangements would have done nicely for Candace, but not one had the bit of originality Lucinda wanted for Jeff’s tradition-minded daughter.
“The other one, the no-fuss, no-frills cowgirl, now she’s another matter.”
Lucinda knew the floral arrangements would be difficult, but as the afternoon wore on, she began to think the situation was hopeless.
“Well, I have one more suggestion,” the florist said when Lucinda had rejected the last offering in the files. “I saw something done as a display when
I went to a design show last summer. The bouquets were made up on tightly looped grapevine, not many flowers, but spaced so that the arrangement balanced. In between the flowers, the florist had inserted silk butterflies. They looked so real, you expected them to fly off. I have a picture or two I took. Let me see if I can e-mail them to you. I could make those up, use blue and yellow butterflies with, oh, let’s see, buttercups or daisies? Or how about wildflowers with natural herbs? I’ve done that. And I’ve seen ribbon printed like a blue bandanna. Could you make something like that work?”
Lucinda could imagine the result. It would be perfect for Shelby and might even make up for the denim skirts and western shirts her attendants would be wearing. With slightly more formal flowers, the design would work for Candace’s blue gowns as well. “I think so. I can see the butterflies with wildflowers and herbs for Shelby and our cowgirls, and ranunculus, sweet pea, and miniature calla lilies for the others. And if you could manage a butterfly—or two or three—in Candace’s roses, it would make the two styles blend, wouldn’t it?”
The florist made copious notes. “It shouldn’t be a problem at all. Now you want tall arrangements in white—glads, blush peonies, and that sort of thing—in those thirty-six-inch crystal vases and the antique arch on one side of the aisle. That’s for the traditional girl. What about the other one?”
“Perhaps we can carry on with the wildflowers of the bouquets? With some grass fronds and pussy willow? Use a rustic arch, the one like an old garden gate, and put tall, neutral-toned pottery jugs with it.”
Nodding, the florist made a couple of sketches. “We can do it, but right next to each other, they’re going to fight. What if we put some kind of break between them? A line of ferns and smaller pots of green? I can manage a graduated display to keep the two styles from running into each other.”
“Great.” Lucinda visualized the plan and saw how it could work. “Then we can move all the flowers and greenery down to the dance area while the tent is being set up for dinner. I think it’s a go.”
The page was filling with small sketches and notes as Lucinda and the florist talked. “Good! I think we’re on the right track. Perhaps a single rose for the men in the traditional party and a small cluster of wildflowers for the other group?”
Lucinda laughed. “I have no idea what the men will be wearing for Shelby’s side of the house, but the traditional men are wearing midnight blue tuxedos. A single rose will be perfect.”
“And the father of the brides?”
Jeff in Armani and one wedding party in denim? His elegant Italian shoes beside all those cowboy boots? Lucinda could only shrug helplessly at the pictures in her mind. “I have no idea. I don’t suppose he’s thought about it. I’ll let you know when I know.”
****
“We had no idea Jeff was finally seeing somebody. And we couldn’t be more pleased to find he is and it’s you.” The hostess fairly gushed as she escorted Lucinda to a guest room and took her evening cape and scarf.
“Oh, it’s not like that,” Lucinda insisted. “His daughters are getting married in the summer, and I’m coordinating the wedding for them. Jeff and I are working together since the girls can’t be here for a while. We’re just business friends.”
“Of course.” With painted eyebrows raised to their highest peak and an amused sideways glance, the grande dame in black velvet made it perfectly clear she thought there was far more to the relationship than Lucinda said. She led the way down a wide hallway lined with paintings and niches holding small objets d’art to a room with a bar at one end and a panoramic view of the wintry hills at the other. “Would you like red or white, dear? Or do you prefer cocktails? My son imagines himself quite an accomplished bartender.”
“Red wine, please.” With a glass of wine in her hand and her hostess off greeting another arrival, Lucinda was free to appreciate the spectacular sweep of the Colorado River beyond the glass wall. In addition to the natural scenery outside, she could also assess all the artificial glamour of the guests inside. Recognizing many of them from weddings and celebrations she’d helped arrange, Lucinda felt a bit strange to be mingling with people who would never invite her to be a guest in one of their homes. It was a pretty world, however, and she enjoyed a little tingle of satisfaction knowing she’d slipped inside it for an evening.
“And who is the stunning lady in the peacock green dress?” The voice behind her was little more than a whisper. “And how did that lucky dog Sinclair manage to lure her out with him?”
“Jeff, I’d begun to think you were conducting secret negotiations in some smoke-filled room somewhere.” She turned slightly so she could see him.
“Negotiations? Yes, indeed, I was negotiating, or perhaps dodging a runaway locomotive. Our host is one of my former clients, and he’s got a full head of steam about a new project—putting a guest house out there beyond the driveway. I keep telling him, he doesn’t have anything solid out there to build on. He has a slope full of sinkholes just waiting to swallow up his million-dollar playhouse. He’s come up with at least a dozen impossible schemes to make it happen. And wants me to do it.”
“You don’t want to take on something doomed to fail, so you’re trying to discourage him without making him feel like an idiot?”
The noise level of the party was rising. Jeff moved close so his words were not lost in the general chatter. “Between you and me, I’m afraid he’ll find someone who will build the damn thing. I keep hoping to make him see the folly of it before someone takes advantage of him.”
A cold touch of disillusionment lowered Lucinda’s pleasure in the scene. “So I take it I’m window dressing for social purposes while you try to steer a client in a safer direction?” She kept her tone light and teasing, but some of her disappointment came through.
“Indeed you are not! You’re here because I wanted to spend an evening with you that didn’t revolve around a wedding starring the Sinclair daughters.” Jeff brushed a curl back from her face. The long finger teasing a line from her forehead to her cheek made her shiver. “You’re the glamorous siren every man in the room would like to take home with him. And the gorgeous brunette every woman wants to interrogate. A beautiful new lady on the scene where everybody else is a little too familiar to be interesting. But I’m the lucky man who brought you and gets to leave with you—soon. And that’s why you’re here, Ms. Parks. So I could show you off and then whisk you away where I can be with you, alone.”
Lucinda felt her cheeks grow warm. The look in his eye, the intense, intimate “you, alone” was too much. It stirred butterflies and a throbbing pulse at the base of her throat. She tried to channel the conversation in another direction. “You said our host was one of your clients.” She looked around at the subtle, elegant room. “Is this one of your houses?”
He nodded. “For my sins, it is. And our enthusiastic hosts love it, every un-ecological, inefficient, over-the-top, wasteful inch of it.”
“But it’s gorgeous. The view, the arrangement, the style, it’s all perfectly beautiful.”
He grinned at her appreciation. “Yes, my dear Lucinda, it is perfectly beautiful. Homes I build, if I say so myself, are beautiful. But if I were building it now, it would be more efficient, cheaper to heat and cool, and leave a smaller footprint on the environment. I’ve learned a lot since I built this house seventeen years ago. At least I hope I have.”
The party revved up to a higher notch as more people arrived. A few of them had been former clients who remembered her, and, passing among them, Lucinda had a chance to hear news of some of the young women she’d only known as brides. Some, inevitably, were no longer married. Some had new babies or children in school. She had a bit of a shock when she learned the daughter of one of her earliest brides was to be married at Christmas. Goodness, I’m on my second generation of weddings. How did it happen so quickly?
The thought was a little alarming. She had a moment of dismay when she remembered she’d soon celebrate, if celebrate was the word
, her forty-third birthday. As if sensing her loss of interest in the party, Jeff approached and took the empty wine glass from her hand.
“Had about enough of the proud and pretty trying to outshine each other, Lucinda? Would you trade this uproar for a quiet drive in the country?”
The room had filled in the time they’d been there. To all appearances it was a success. Not two square feet of free space could be seen in the swarm of guests. She cupped her hands over her ears to lower the assault. “Anywhere quiet would be nice. Do you know where our coats are stashed?”
Once they located their hostess, made their apologies for leaving early, and retrieved their outerwear, Jeff and Lucinda made a quick retreat from the growing noise of the party. The crisp night air and the silence of the car were welcome after the overheated clamor of the house.
“Cold?” Jeff asked as the lights of the house faded behind them.
Lucinda pulled her cape closer and turned up the collar. “Beginning to be. The chill felt good at first, but it’s starting to get to me.”
“Me, too.” He adjusted the temperature. “By the way, if I didn’t mention it, you are radiant tonight. Color suits you much better than black. And I’m glad you left your hair loose. It’s too pretty to be pinned up all the time.”
Self-conscious from his praise, Lucinda touched the dark brown waves, feeling it a little strange to have them brushing her shoulders. “Thank you. It was nice to have a reason to get out of uniform for a change.”
He drove in silence for some distance. The CD player provided quiet background music, and the star-spattered sky enclosed them in a frosty winter scene. Twice Jeff seemed about to break the silence. His sidelong glances, followed by an awkward shifting in the seat, suggested he had something on his mind he couldn’t quite put to words.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked the third time he seemed on the verge of speaking and stopped. “Something happened to one of your girls?”
As if a weight had fallen from his shoulders, Jeff loosened his grip on the steering wheel, drew a long breath, and nodded. “Nothing is wrong with the girls, Lucinda. They’re fine. It’s just I want to ask a favor, and somehow I’m having trouble getting it said.”
Double Wedding, Single Dad Page 4
