A Camden Family Wedding

by Victoria Pade

  Not to mention who might have reeled in such a big—and elusive—fish....

  When the elevator reached the top floor and the doors opened again, the mail boy charged through them, nearly knocking someone out of the way.

  Someone who happened to be her potential client.

  Dane Camden.

  Who was remarkably better looking in person than in any of the pictures she’d seen of him....

  “Vonni Hunter?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, wondering if she should let him know she knew who he was or wait for him to introduce himself.

  But there was no wait.

  “I’m Dane. Our receptionist for this floor left for the day so I thought I’d meet you out here and save you having to figure out which office is mine.”

  “Thank you,” she said, surprised that someone with this guy’s clout would be that considerate.

  “Let’s go on back,” he suggested. “Can I get you something? We have coffee, tea, soda, water....”

  “No, nothing, thank you.”

  “I really appreciate you coming to me,” he said as he ushered her into a plush corner office and motioned to the sofa against one wall instead of the chairs that faced his huge mahogany desk. “As I mentioned in our phone call, one of the things I want to talk to you about shouldn’t be discussed at your place of business.”

  Vonni sat down on the edge of the couch, hugging the arm, as Dane Camden took the matching chair across the small coffee table from her.

  Almost immediately, there was a knock on his office door and a woman who resembled him poked her head in. “Hey, sorry for interrupting, but you have to take a look at this before I can go home,” she said.

  “Vonni, this is my cousin January—we call her Jani. Jani, this is Vonni Hunter.”

  “Nice to meet you,” January Camden said.

  “You, too.”

  “And, oh, do you have the most beautiful green eyes in the world!”

  “Thank you,” Vonni answered, a bit taken aback by the compliment that was not at all businesslike.

  “You’re the wedding planner. I got married on the spur of the moment in a judge’s office or I would have begged you to do a wedding for me. Maybe you could branch out into baby showers....”

  Vonni merely laughed, unsure by the look of the other woman in the loose-fitting sundress if she was in the market for that.

  “But, Dane, I really do need you to—”

  “I know,” he said to his cousin before pivoting back to Vonni and aiming some pretty incredible blue eyes at her. “You’ll have to excuse her. Jani is pregnant and using it against us to get her way,” he said good-naturedly, obviously teasing Jani and confirming that a baby shower was likely on the horizon.

  “Doctor’s orders,” Jani said with a beaming smile.

  “This will just take a minute.” Dane went over to his cousin, who was still standing in the doorway, and looked over the papers with her.

  The two were engrossed in whatever it was they were dealing with, which gave Vonni the perfect opportunity to study the infamous Dane Camden and try to figure out why he was sooo much better looking in person.

  There was no denying that in every picture she’d seen of him he was an attractive enough man. But the real thing? Wow! So much better....

  His brown hair was a tad lighter than his cousin’s—dark brown but the rich color of chocolate rather than espresso. He wore it short on the sides but a touch longer on top where it had just the right amount of wave to make him look sporty and casual but not unkempt.

  She’d already noted the remarkable Camden blue eyes—and they were remarkable. It was another thing her brides and attendants swooned over when they were discussing him, and now she could see why.

  Blueberry blue—that was what they were, Vonni decided. And penetrating and intelligent and warm and kind and surprisingly open for a person in his position.

  But after more study, Vonni concluded it was his nose that made the difference between the way he looked in pictures and in person. He had a thin, longish nose with a bit of a bump in the bridge before it narrowed and slid down to a slightly squarish tip. It didn’t photograph well, but was somehow very sexy in real life.

  Overall, his face was lean and angular and very masculine, complete with lips that weren’t at all full but were still so sensual they alone could chase fuller ones out of fashion at any moment.

  He wasn’t a refined kind of handsome, Vonni decided. He was more a rugged, outdoorsy, approachable kind of handsome.

  The kind that got to Vonni.

  And it didn’t help that the face and hair weren’t all he had going for him. He was also tall and trim, but with enough muscle to fill out both the sleeves of his gray suit coat and the thighs of the matching pants. Plus his shoulders were wide, his back was straight and he looked strong and healthy and virile and...

  And altogether terrific.

  There was just no denying it, even though Vonni wished she could because she should never be looking at someone else’s groom and thinking how very, very hot he was....

  “Nice to meet you, Vonni,” Jani said then as she turned to go.

  Vonni jolted slightly out of staring at Dane Camden, unaware until that moment that the two had finished with their business.

  “You, too,” Vonni said, as if she hadn’t been lost in the unwelcome stirrings aroused by cataloging every square inch of the woman’s cousin.

  “Say hey to Gideon,” Dane Camden said to January Camden before he shut the door behind her and headed back to Vonni. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem. And congratulations, by the way—I should have said that right off.”

  “For what?” he asked, his high, boxy brow wrinkling with confusion.

  Vonni laughed, thinking that he must be new to his situation. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Oh, I’m not getting married. Not me. Not now. Not ever. Never!”

  He seemed very determined.

  “But of course you’d think I called you to talk about my own wedding,” he concluded.

  “Well...people don’t usually call me about other people’s weddings....”

  He laughed again—it was a deep, genuine, sexy sound that resonated through Vonni in a way it had no business doing.

  Because even if he wasn’t the groom, it didn’t make any difference to her. Great looking or not, she was on hiatus from her too-long husband hunt. Plus, she’d learned the hard way not to waste time with commitment-shy men—and Dane Camden had just confirmed his reputation on that score. Quite resolutely.

  “No, I’m sure they don’t,” he said then. “But this time that’s what’s happening. It’s my grandmother who’s getting married. And she wants it done in two weeks. That’s why she called me—I’m the guy around here who gets the impossible done.”

  It took a moment for what he’d said to sink in.

  His grandmother was getting married. Not any of the other Camdens whose engagements had recently been announced.

  “You want me to do a wedding in two weeks?” Not just a Camden wedding, but one for the matriarch of the entire Camden family....

  “Yep,” he confirmed. Then he grinned. It went slightly lopsided and put lines at the corners of his eyes and brackets alongside his mouth, and it just sucked her right in....

  “Jani is right, you do have the most beautiful green eyes and they just got so big....” he said as if it delighted him. “They’re the color of jade. Dark jade-green....”

  And he was staring into them so keenly. So closely. So thoroughly....

  But just as Vonni was getting uncomfortable he went back to what they’d been talking about.

  “The wedding in two weeks,” he said, more as if he was dragging h
imself back into the moment than as if he was reminding her. “Don’t run scared. I think between the two of us it’s doable because we aren’t talking a spectacular production. GiGi—that’s what everyone calls our grandmother—only wants a small wedding at home.”

  “How small?” Vonni asked cautiously.

  “Maybe a hundred guests. Including family, which... I haven’t done a recent head count and it’s growing, but I’d say we’re about a quarter of that number. And GiGi doesn’t want anything too fancy or elaborate. Low-key, tasteful. She and her fiancé are seventy-five and neither of them wants a lot of hoopla. They just want something nice. And you won’t have to worry about the ceremony—that will be in the den with only family looking on—so that cuts down on the preparations, too.”

  “But it’s you I’ll be working with?” Vonni asked, unsure if she liked that idea, since the man seemed to have a strange effect on her.

  “GiGi is in Montana taking care of a friend who had surgery. She can’t get back until just before the wedding but this is the date they want—it’s when they started going steady in high school. I’ll be texting her and sending her pictures of everything, but yeah, you’ll be working with me because it goes hand in hand with the other part of what I wanted to talk to you about today, which is my special project....”

  “The business proposition?”

  “Really slick how I got that in there, wasn’t it?” he joked, laughing at himself. “Anyway, let’s talk about that. We’ve decided that we want Camden Superstores to offer wedding packages. It’s always been our goal to be a one-stop shop and now we’d like to introduce wedding departments to each of our stores to add that—”

  “Wedding departments?” Vonni parroted, unclear about what this had to do with her. Then she became alarmed—did he want to learn from what she did for his grandmother’s wedding and use it for his own special project? Camdens was notorious for undercutting and driving other companies out of business.

  “Are you talking about selling wedding gowns? Bridesmaids’ dresses? Tuxedos?” Things that she could recommend clients use Camdens for but that wouldn’t take any of her business away....

  “I’m talking about everything,” he answered. “Clothes, yes, but the whole deal. Everything you do, too.”

  Oh, wonderful. And then she could be up against all of Camden Superstores....

  “We want to offer packages that range from inexpensive to very elaborate,” he continued. “From soup to nuts, including venues we can either contract with or that we might buy outright for rehearsal dinners and receptions. We’ll provide decorations, tables, chairs, plates and silverware, linens—whatever’s necessary. We can offer catering through our food departments. Cakes through our bakeries. Liquor through our liquor department. Flowers through our in-store florists—”

  “Everything,” Vonni summed up.

  “And because you’re known to be the best at what you do, we’d like to hire you to spearhead the whole thing.”

  That had not been what she’d thought he was going to say, and Vonni wasn’t sure she’d understood correctly.

  “First you want me—through Burke’s Weddings—to do your grandmother’s wedding in two weeks—”

  “Right.”

  “And then you want me to spearhead the formation of wedding-planning departments in Camden Superstores to put you in direct competition with us?”

  He shook his head. “Well, yes, there would be competition, but Camdens wouldn’t be competing against you. I’m asking you to leave Burke’s Weddings to come on board with Camden Superstores. You’d be the division director, responsible for completely designing and developing wedding departments with us that would be uniquely you.”

  “I’d come to work for Camden Superstores?”

  “Yes. With the kind of contract we give our highest executives, including one of the best golden-parachute clauses around.”

  Vonni went from worry to disbelief in a nanosecond.

  “You want me to quit Burke’s Weddings—where I’ve been promised a full partnership—to become an employee of Camdens?”

  Apparently her tone had alerted him to how unlikely she was to consider that.

  “You wouldn’t just be an employee. What we’re talking about is making your name a signature brand. And you’ll be in an executive position,” he repeated. Then more somberly he said, “I know there might be some bad blood here.”

  The unsavory dealings between the Hunters and the Camdens went all the way back to 1953. Vonni hadn’t been sure coming here today whether or not this generation of Camdens would know what she knew. Apparently Dane Camden did.

  “But try to keep in mind that it wasn’t a Camden who did the dirty deed—” he said.

  “It was the Camdens who benefited from it.”

  “So did—”

  “Yes, I know,” Vonni cut him off.

  “I’m just pointing out that we didn’t have a hand in what went on,” he insisted. “So couldn’t you put aside what happened all those years ago? Especially since what I’m offering you is an opportunity for something much bigger and better than a potential partnership at Burke’s Weddings. What I’m offering is a bird in the hand....”

  As if her partnership wasn’t.

  Now he was making her a little mad, and the involuntary cock of her head must have alerted him to that fact.

  “We want the best here,” he said before she had a chance to comment. “And when it comes to wedding planners, you’re it. We’ve all seen your work in weddings we’ve gone to. We know your reputation. And we know that you are Burke’s Weddings. But it’s Burke’s Weddings getting the real credit.”

  “And with you it would be Camdens getting the credit.”

  He shook his head. “No. With us, you’ll be the draw. People will have to come to Camdens to get a Vonni Hunter wedding. From high-end to lower-end—even couples who couldn’t otherwise afford a Vonni Hunter wedding will be able to get more conservative packages designed by Vonni Hunter, with Vonni Hunter’s eye, with Vonni Hunter’s taste, with Vonni Hunter’s expertise. Brides who can afford you will get more personal attention—and with us that could be not only Denver brides, but celebrities and European royalty that we’ll send you off to do first-class. What we want is to bring you into the spotlight, give you credit. And all the perks that go with it.”

  Okay, so it was flattering. And an intriguing idea. Enough to rid her of that small wave of anger.

  “So you’re going to put all the world at my feet as a wedding planner if only I can pull off a wedding in two weeks for your grandmother?” Vonni asked.

  “The job offer is on the table no matter what. And we’re figuring that if anyone can pull off a wedding in two weeks, it’ll be you and me working together. I told you, around here I’m the guy who gets things done, and from what I understand, when it comes to weddings, you do, too.”

  Reminding herself that planning a Camden wedding would look very, very good for her, Vonni said, “Doing any kind of wedding for any number of people in two weeks is a push. But since I already have long-standing relationships with everyone it will take to accomplish it, it can probably be done. But as for the other—”

  It was terrifying to think of what could become of her existing job if Camden Superstores did what he was proposing. But it was also completely unnerving to think about turning her back on Chrystal and Burke’s Weddings to sign on with the Camdens and then ending up with nothing the way her grandfather had....

  “Don’t say anything about the business stuff for now,” Dane Camden advised, interrupting her spinning thoughts. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it. You can grill me, and negotiate, and tell me everything about it that might worry you, and shape it into exactly the kind of deal you’d feel most comfortable with. And if you need to yell at me or slap me around to feel better a
bout what happened with your uncle and your grandfather and the way things turned out on that front, you can do that, too.”

  Oh, but when the man grinned it made her knees weak....

  “You’re not afraid that slapping you around might be pretty tempting?” she asked impudently.

  “Just say the word. I’ll get the gloves and you can beat the hell out of me.”

  She couldn’t not smile at him. Although she made sure it was reserved. There was just something about him, and she could see how he got away with being the player he was.

  “But you’ll do GiGi’s wedding with me one way or another?” he asked.

  “That I’ll do,” she conceded.

  “Then why don’t you come up with a get-started list and we’ll—” he shrugged one of those broad shoulders “—get started.”

  “I have two weddings on Saturday and this week is my race to the finish line for them both, so I’ll have to do much of this after-hours—like this meeting.”

  “I’m open to evenings if you are.”

  “And the weekend—after the weddings on Saturday, and Sunday...” she said as if challenging him to back out.

  “I’ll be available whenever you can fit me in.”

  “Okay, then. I’m already swamped tonight working on place cards for five hundred but hopefully sometime tomorrow or tomorrow night I’ll come up with the list and a schedule that we will have to stick to. Maybe we can meet again on Wednesday night?”

  “I’ll clear all decks.”

  “Then I guess we’ll do a wedding. In two weeks.”

  The grin again. “I guess we will,” he confirmed.

  Vonni took her business card from her binder, along with her standard contract for him to look over, and the printout of what her services entailed.

  Then, with nothing more to discuss at that moment, she stood to go.

  “I’ll show you back to the elevator,” Dane offered, and she again had to give him points for courtesy.

  While they were retracing their steps through the outer office, he said, “And when you’re not thinking about my grandmother’s wedding, think about your name on signs in every Camden Superstore—”