He started the engine and then said with some disbelief, “I won’t see you until things get going at the end of the week?”
“When I do the setup and staging at your grandmother’s house, yes,” she confirmed. “I’ll do most of that on Friday and a few things on Saturday before the wedding.”
“Well, I didn’t know that,” he complained. “I mean, I knew about the setup—we discussed that. But there’s really no more for me to do between now and then?”
Vonni laughed slightly. “I thought you’d be thrilled....”
He frowned.
“What two things did you need to talk to me about?” she asked, remembering what he’d said.
He didn’t answer for a moment as he pulled out of the parking lot, then he said, “I think I needed some warning for this. I’m not ready to be done....”
With the wedding planning or with her?
It seemed odd that he should lament being finished with his part in the wedding planning.
But Vonni couldn’t believe—or let herself believe—that he wasn’t ready to be done with her.
“How about if we take a drive?” he suggested then. “It’s beautiful out, we can cruise a little, maybe park somewhere and put the top down....”
Vonni had already worked a fifteen-hour day. She had to be at the shop by seven o’clock the next morning and would be in the last crunch for the rest of the week for a Thursday-evening wedding, a Saturday-afternoon wedding and his grandmother’s wedding on Saturday evening. Surely he could tell her the two things he needed to tell her on the way to her shop where her own car was parked, so there was absolutely no reason she should say yes.
But she did.
“And then you’ll tell me those other two things?”
“I will,” he said, holding out.
He left Larimer Square and the city behind and was on the highway within minutes, headed west.
That was when he said, “GiGi called tonight just before we left and wanted me to ask if you could have the caterers do a brunch for us on Sunday at the house. I know, this is really last-minute. But it doesn’t need to be anything big or flashy. She just thought it would be nice for our out-of-towners to have a send-off. She also thought that if the same caterers who do the wedding, do the brunch, the overlap might help.... What do you think? Any chance?”
“I can talk to the caterers.” Vonni knew they would bend over backward to do it. They were thrilled to have the Camdens’ business and hoped to be hired by them again in the future so they were likely to be accommodating. “If they do omelet and crepe stations so the food is cooked on-site, that cuts down on advance preparations,” she added. “And the trays and serving things will already be there—along with some other equipment they could probably use, and supplies and ingredients that they’d need both times.... It might be workable if they aren’t already booked for something else and can get enough staff....”
“That would be great. We’re fine with anything. I know this is even more incredibly short notice than the wedding was, so whatever it takes, whatever it costs.”
“I’ll talk to them first thing in the morning and let you know.”
He got off the highway and drove through a quiet suburban neighborhood with large old houses set far back from the streets behind well-manicured lawns. Winding through the scenic area where huge trees reached their full branches overhead, they passed a pristine golf course with a stately clubhouse that could be seen in the distance. Then he turned onto a street Vonni hadn’t even noticed was there and went up a steep hill that took them into a small park that looked out at some of the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
They were the only car in the lot when he pulled into a prime spot, pushed a button that caused the car’s soft-top to rise and then fold away behind them before he turned off the engine.
“This is nice. I’ve never been here,” Vonni said, looking out at the suburban lights below them with the silhouette of the mountains and the clear, star-strewn sky as a backdrop.
“I came up here a lot in high school....” he said with insinuation in his tone.
“To be alone with girls,” Vonni goaded.
He angled to face her, stretched his arm across the top of her headrest and merely smiled, neither confirming or denying anything.
“The second thing I wanted to talk to you about is Friday night,” he said instead.
“Don’t tell me you want the caterers to do the rehearsal dinner now, too, because I don’t think that’s as workable as a last-minute brunch.”
“No, the food’s all taken care of.”
“I told you I’ll make sure we’re finished with the setup and out by the time you have the rehearsal so we won’t disturb anything,” she said, trying to anticipate any problems.
“I remember—although I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be seeing you between now and then. I figured tonight you’d tell me what we needed to do for the wedding tomorrow night, and the night after that and the night after that, and we’d spend this week the way we spent last week....”
Together.
Deep down Vonni wished that was the case, but she squashed the feeling as soon as she recognized it.
“Anyway,” he went on, “what I wanted to talk about is you coming to the rehearsal dinner Friday night. Margaret is cooking the whole thing herself as a gift to GiGi—it’ll just be family, along with the judge who’s going to do the ceremony and his wife, and—”
“Oh, no, thank you, but I don’t do that,” Vonni said before he could go on. “Even when I’m coordinating the ceremony, too, I do the rehearsal, then leave before the dinner so I can gear up for the big day.”
“Still—”
“The rehearsal dinner is a private event,” Vonni continued. “Close family, the wedding party.... I don’t feel like the wedding planner belongs at that.”
“You can belong because you’ll be with me—come as my date.”
Worse yet...
And not only because it crossed the line between herself and a client—the line she kept kicking herself for not adhering to more faithfully—but also because attending the rehearsal dinner would mean she was not only working for the family that had helped swindle her own, but was socializing with them, too.
“I’m sure you have a legion of women better suited to be your date to your grandmother’s rehearsal dinner,” she concluded.
“A legion?” he repeated.
“At least. You’re a hot commodity.”
He laughed. “I don’t know if that’s as good as it sounds—what am I, a piece of meat?”
If he was a piece of meat he was the choicest cut she’d ever seen. But she wasn’t going to say that. Instead, she said, “I’ve been told that being with you feeds the soul, so maybe in that sense.... Rumor has it that you’re a great spirit lifter. That you make the women you’re with feel good about themselves.”
Vonni certainly couldn’t refute that because it was how she felt whenever she was with him. He made her feel as if he appreciated her intelligence, her abilities, her insight. As if he found her interesting, attractive, witty, intriguing and just about everything she hoped she was. Being with Dane made her feel special, as if he saw things in her that other people—other men—might miss. Things of value.
And they were just together for business. She could only imagine what women came away with when he was wooing them. The man just had some kind of skill that other men she’d known lacked.
But she didn’t want to say that, either.
“Where are you getting this stuff?” he asked.
“My brides and their bridesmaids talk. And sometimes you’re the subject,” she informed him. “You seem to have dated a lot of them....”
He gave her a look that said he wasn’t going to talk about that, so she opted to veer sl
ightly off the conversational path they were on and use the talk of his serial dating to satisfy her curiosity about something else.
“Have you always been so—” she wasn’t sure what word to use and settled on “—casual about women?”
“Casual?”
“You know—have you always avoided serious relationships because you don’t want to get married?”
“Who says I’ve avoided relationships? What do you think, that my life is just a series of one-night stands or a different woman for every day of the week?”
That was how gossip had made it sound.
“It isn’t? You don’t avoid relationships?” Vonni challenged.
“I avoid relationships—and even dating—anyone who’s actively looking for a husband and the whole domestic package.”
Her....
“But I’ve had—and will have again—relationships with women who aren’t looking for that. Who can get involved, enjoy the ride while it lasts—for months or even years—before we go our separate ways. And in between finding those kinds of relationships, I date just like everyone else does, until I find someone else I want to focus on for a while.”
“And then you’re monogamous?”
“I never juggle women.”
“I guess I haven’t heard it all,” she admitted.
“And you just figured—what? That I run through women like water and sleep with every one of them?”
“I never hear anything bad about you like that. But yes, I did sort of assume that, well, you’re a guy—you sleep around. One woman one night, a different one the next....”
He smiled as if he was enjoying dashing her assumptions about him. “So you think I’ve slept with every woman I’ve dated?”
“Maybe most of them?” she said, finding it difficult to believe that every woman he’d been with hadn’t slept with him—especially as she sat close beside him, looking at how moonlight dusted the sharply defined features that made him one of the most handsome men she’d ever known. She was looking into eyes so blue it was as if they’d drained the sky of color. And broad, broad shoulders and a chest she still wanted to press her cheek to even though they weren’t dancing anymore. Of course she’d assumed that he’d slept with every woman he’d ever dated—he was hard to resist.
“But you haven’t?” she asked.
“I’m actually very selective about who I get that far with. My grandmother raised me to treat women right, not to be some kind of hound.”
So maybe that was why his reputation—although colorful—wasn’t a bad one. Why no one seemed to come away with a grudge against him. Why he was known as an ego booster, but not as a womanizer or a philanderer or a cad or a creep.
“You’re not indiscriminate,” Vonni said.
“No, I’m not. If that’s what you’ve heard, somebody’s lying.”
“I haven’t heard that,” she assured him. “I just figured that as much as you get around—”
“I must really be getting around....”
“Right,” Vonni admitted a bit contritely.
“Nope. I make sure that whoever I’m with knows where I stand and if it gets as far as the bedroom, that still isn’t a—”
“Commitment to something more,” Vonni filled in for him, knowing that she was guilty herself of making assumptions that men were more committed than they were, and reading too much into what went on with them. It was one of her regrets and part of what she’d sworn to stop doing when she returned to her search for a mate.
“So would you say you’re particularly careful about who you take as far as the bedroom—that that’s what makes it a relationship for you?” she asked, her curiosity about him growing rather than being satisfied by this conversation.
But he didn’t seem to resent it. “Well,” he hedged with a self-deprecating laugh, “I’d say that yes, I am particularly careful about who I take as far as the bedroom. But has it always been connected to a full-out relationship...? You’re right, I am a guy, so—”
“No,” she finished for him. “Have you ever lived with a woman?”
He shook his head. “Once I got out on my own I never wanted to share space again. A sleepover, sure. But by morning...” He shrugged. “I’m just the most comfortable on my own,” he concluded.
“Have there been women who’ve tried to change your mind about marriage and kids and domesticity?”
“Sure, there’s been a couple who thought they could do that.”
“But they couldn’t.”
He shrugged again.
“Because you are not the marrying kind,” she filled in. “I’ve met a lot of you....”
Just not any who were as forthcoming with that information.
“But you have had long-term relationships in your past—even if you haven’t lived with anyone?”
“A few.”
Which went back to what she’d originally been wondering—if he might have been hurt, if that was what had really brought him to his no-marriage-ever stance.
“I was with the same person all through college,” he went on. “And there have been two relationships since then—one for two years and one for almost three that ended about two years ago.”
“Those are reasonably long relationships, and when things ran their course they just ended?” Vonni asked, trying to grasp that.
“Yeah, basically,” he said as if it genuinely hadn’t been a big deal.
“No drama? No heartache? No tears?”
He shrugged as if apologizing for not having a juicier story to tell. “When my college girlfriend and I graduated, she went back home to Detroit to go to medical school. Medicine was her dream and she didn’t want a husband and family tying her down. She’s doing a fellowship in neurosurgery now. We hit it off and had a good time while she was here, but we both knew all along that it had a time limit.”
“Plus, it was college, so you were both young,” Vonni concluded. She could understand that.
“After Nessa, there was Donna,” he continued. “She’s a photojournalist and when she started getting regular assignments overseas she took off, and I was happy for her for getting what she wanted.”
And again there wasn’t the slightest indication that he might have been hurt.
“Then there was Rebecca,” he said. “She was a lawyer with visions of sitting on the Supreme Court, so her career came first. Which was okay with me. But somewhere along the way she changed her mind. She decided work wasn’t everything, that she did want marriage and kids after all.”
“Only she was with you....”
“And she knew where I stood—”
“And just accepted it?”
He made a face that said no. “There was a lot of talking. She was a lawyer, she was used to arguing her case.”
“But in the end she couldn’t win you over.”
“I fixed her up with a friend who’d always had a thing for her,” he said as if that should count for something. “I was best man at their wedding in Hawaii last year.”
“And you were okay with that?”
“I didn’t hand her over as if she was a magazine I’d finished reading. I did some soul-searching about how I’d feel seeing her with Buzzy,” he confessed. “But in the end, it couldn’t have worked out better for everyone involved.”
“And even at their wedding you didn’t feel so much as a pang?”
“I was happy for them both. Is that bad?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Vonni answered honestly, thinking that he couldn’t have had deep feelings for any of the women he’d been in relationships with because if he had, the endings wouldn’t have been so cut-and-dried. She wondered if she should feel a little sorry for him for that. But he seemed so content with it all.
“I suppose fixing your ex up
with someone else is actually generous. Just weird.”
He laughed, and when he did Vonni got lost all over again in how good he looked. “That’s pretty much what my family thinks, too, so you’re not alone,” he said. Then he grinned a slow grin. “But hey, it’s better that you think I’m weird than ugly or stupid or smelly or something.”
Vonni laughed again. “You’re a long way from any of those things....” she said, thinking out loud.
And why had her voice become softer suddenly? Almost inviting...
You’re not going to change him any more than you could change the others, a voice in the back of her mind warned her. And she knew it was true.
But she also knew that it was a warm summer night and she was sitting with a gorgeous guy parked in a convertible under the stars. And she felt a little like the teenager she’d once been who might have come here with a guy she liked.
To do exactly what Dane did then, when his hand went from the top of her headrest to her nape and he brought her toward him for a kiss.
A kiss that was identical to the one the night before.
Vonni had relived that kiss a million times in her head since yesterday. But this one managed to be even better, as his lips parted farther and he deepened it.
And while she was aware that she could—and should—put a stop to it, it began to sink in that she just loved kissing him and she couldn’t cut that short....
Instead, she raised a hand to the side of his neck and indulged in the feel of his warm skin. She tilted her head a bit more. She let her own lips open. And she kissed him in return with all the abandon of any hormonal, carried-away teen.
Enough abandon to ignite some passion that hadn’t been in their previous good-night kiss. Some fire that brought his tongue in search of hers.
His hand massaged its way up into her hair, cradling her head as the kiss settled fully into a make-out session that went on and on, that saw them come up for air only to dive back in, picking up where they’d left off but with even more fervor.
Vonni had no idea how much time passed; she wouldn’t have known it if another car had joined them. Nothing existed for her but Dane and his kiss. And what that was stirring up inside of her....
A Camden Family Wedding Page 12
