He’d parked in his garage around back while Vonni had parked at the curb in front, just outside of the walled-in courtyard. He’d told her to wait in her car until he came through the town house to open the front door.
She didn’t wait long, but it had been long enough for her to assess the very-high-end row houses that took up a full block in the country club neighborhood. They were a contemporary southwestern style that was sophisticated and chic, but didn’t strike Vonni as inviting to family or pets.
She had the same impression when she went inside Dane’s particular condo—it was impeccably decorated in very angular modern Scandinavian furniture with several sculptures on pillars that would be at risk with a dog or kids running around.
“Fancy place,” she commented when he closed the door behind them.
“Is it?” he asked as if it didn’t strike him as that. “I know it has a different feel to it than what we looked at for you, but fancy?”
To Vonni it had a museum feel to it, but she didn’t want to say that, so she stuck with fancy and added, “It’s beautiful,” because it was. There just wasn’t any warmth to it, unlike Dane himself.
“What about your place?” he asked then. “Have you heard anything on your offer?”
“The seller accepted it, but the house has to be inspected before the deal goes any further.”
The brick cottage with its front porch, its big backyard, and its homey feel inside and out was nothing at all like this place. This place could have come straight off the pages of an architecture-and-interior-design magazine. But she still couldn’t imagine actually living in it.
“Pie in the living room or the kitchen?” he asked then.
Margaret’s gourmet rehearsal dinner had left them too full for dessert, but both Margaret and Dane’s grandmother had insisted that they take slices of the apple pie with them.
Vonni had been hesitant about following Dane to his place tonight. After three days of not seeing him and only talking to him on the phone about wedding things, she was well aware that she should continue the more professional tone that they’d set. Despite having just spent the evening dining with his family as if she were one of them, when it came to Dane she should maintain the distance that the three-day break had provided.
So now that she’d accomplished the business she’d come for, she knew that she shouldn’t stick around to eat her slice of pie. That she should take it and go.
But suddenly even that absolute certainty didn’t carry any weight.
She’d missed him so horribly the past three days that she was at the mercy of those feelings. And even having seen him at his grandmother’s house earlier in the day and again tonight hadn’t helped. There had been so much going on and so many other people around, that it hadn’t felt as if she was with him.
It had been three days. Three days that had seemed like three years. And she needed just a little of him...
“Your house, your rules,” she said in answer to his inquiry about whether they should have pie in the kitchen or the living room, telling herself that it was only pie after all. Harmless pie that wouldn’t take long to eat and then she’d go.
“Living room,” he decided.
Vonni was wearing a red wraparound dress tied at her waist, with four-inch spike heels that matched. Her shoes made a hollow-sounding clack-clack-clack on his hardwood floors as they took their plates into the stark living room.
There were square white leather cubes to sit on or a long black leather-and-chrome sofa, so she opted for the sofa, sitting not quite at one end but not quite in the middle, either.
Dane joined her there, sitting smack-dab in the center so that he wasn’t far from her.
He’d been wearing a dark blue suit during the rehearsal and dinner but had since shucked the coat and tie, unfastened the collar button of his pale blue shirt and rolled his sleeves to his forearms.
And he just looked so good....
“So what did you think of us?” he asked bluntly after Vonni had tasted the pie and rhapsodized about how good it was. “Think we’d be all right to work with? Or did you think that you wouldn’t be able to stand it?”
“Everyone was very nice,” she said truthfully. “I can’t imagine anyone not liking your grandmother—she’s so friendly and she was appreciative of everything we planned for the wedding. She gave me so many compliments my head started to swell. And every one of your brothers and sisters and cousins said they hoped I’d come on board with Camden Superstores.” But she hadn’t felt as if she’d been on one giant interview, which had been a pleasant surprise. “They all made me feel like visiting royalty rather than the plain old wedding planner or someone they were thinking about hiring.”
“Want to sign on the dotted line here and now?” he asked buoyantly.
Vonni laughed. “Really? It’s almost eleven o’clock on a Friday night and we’re having pie.... Do you really want to talk business?”
“I do if it means you’ll say yes to heading up Camdens’ wedding departments.”
But that wasn’t her answer. The Camdens had been far more friendly than most of her clients and not at all daunting, but there was still a sour history there, and she remained on the fence about the job offer. Or, actually, just standing at the fence because while she was concerned with what wedding departments at Camden Superstores would do to her friend’s business, she continued to prefer the idea of the promised partnership that would turn Burke’s Weddings into Burke and Hunter Weddings.
So what she said was, “I loved Jonah, too—what a sweetheart.”
Dane smiled. “So maybe not a no on coming to work with us but not a yes yet, either. Okay, I get it,” he conceded. “Let’s talk about something else.... Jonah—he’s a great guy. He’s good for GiGi, he makes her happy. So don’t get any idea about stealing him.”
Vonni laughed. “Too late, I’ve already thought about it, tried and been shot down.”
Dane smiled again but this time it was more inquisitive. “I just realized that I’ve never asked about your own marital status.... By now it’s pretty clear there’s no husband, but how is it that the wedding planner isn’t married herself? Or have you been and it didn’t work out and it’s a sore subject?”
“I’ve never been married. But not for want of trying,” she said, laughing again.
“Ah, so there have been other grooms like Jonah who you’ve made a play for....”
“I’ve been dumb when it comes to men, but not that dumb.”
“Dumb? You? I don’t believe that. You told me you were smart enough in school to stay away from guys you knew wouldn’t end up taking you home to meet the parents, and now you’re telling me something changed when you got out of school to make you dumb about dating?”
“I’ve been misled more than I let myself be in school, and I’m beginning to feel kind of dumb, yeah. That’s part of why I’m taking time off from dating and regrouping.”
His eyebrows arched. “You said you’ve met a lot of guys who are not the marrying kind. Have they jerked you around?”
He sounded as if he wanted to go out and defend her honor, and that made her smile. “They’ve strung me along,” she amended. “I give you credit for letting women know right from the start that you aren’t interested in marriage. I’ve run into too many who either say they are and aren’t, or say they are, they’re just not ready yet, and then never get ready. Or there was the last one—when he was ready he went back to an old girlfriend.”
“No? Seriously?”
“Seriously,” she confirmed.
“Are we talking long-term or short-term stringing you along?”
“Three that were long-term—just like you. But there have been too many that go on for a few months—sometimes six—before I figure out that it isn’t going where I want it to.”
�
�But the three long-term were the worst....”
“Sure. Two of them cost me four and a half years between them, and the third cost me almost three years all on its own.”
“Was the guy who went back to an old girlfriend around for almost three years before he did that?”
“That was the one.”
“And the other two just pretended they wanted to get married but it never panned out?”
“The first guy, Tanner, kept saying he did want to get married, but not before we were both twenty-five—”
“Then you hit twenty-five and no deal?”
“We hit twenty-five after over two years together, and when I pushed, he bailed.”
“And the second?”
“David. I was with him for just under two years, thinking that he was going to propose because when I’d talk about marriage he would agree that it had a lot to recommend it and he’d make some reference to our being together in the future. Just under two years of thinking maybe he would propose on my birthday, or on his birthday, or maybe for Valentine’s Day. Thinking he might propose on the next vacation, the anniversary of our first date, his parents’ anniversary, two Christmases, two New Years—”
“That’s a lot of disappointed hopes.”
“A lot,” she agreed. “Only to have him shrug when I asked when it was going to happen, and say he just couldn’t commit.”
“And that led to the guy who went back to an old girlfriend?”
“Mark.” Her voice had begun to echo with the pain that had accompanied all of her romantic defeats and Dane apparently heard it, because rather than asking for details, he said, “So you’ve been kind of bruised up and you need some time off from dating to heal.”
“I’ve been bruised, yes, but it isn’t only that I need time off to heal. I’ve also put my whole life on hold waiting to have a husband—as if life wouldn’t begin until that happened—and I’m not doing that anymore. I’m taking a hiatus from the husband hunt and—”
“Buying a house and getting a dog—that’s what you’ve waited for,” he concluded insightfully.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“Soo...taking a hiatus from the husband hunt.... Have you been hunting?”
Regardless of the fact that being with Dane always felt like a date, Vonni was not in dating mode when she was with him, and she liked that. She liked that there had never been any coyness between them, that there hadn’t been any game playing, any of the dating ritual or the subterfuge. She liked that they could just talk openly.
“It may be hard for you to understand—given your own mind-set—but I do want to get married. To have kids. A family. Someone to go home to at night, someone who’s there for me. And I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to find that someone.”
“You weren’t kidding about the dating profiles?” he said, referring to the slip of the tongue she’d made last week in response to a compliment he’d given her.
But then, she hadn’t wanted to reveal too much and she considered whether or not to now.
She’d come this far, though, and thought why not. He’d been honest with her about what he wanted and didn’t want; why shouldn’t she be honest with him?
“After trying all the usual routes to just meet someone—”
“Bars and clubs and friends of friends, and brothers of friends, and blind dates?” he guessed.
“Right—after all of that, I decided to go the more organized route....”
“Organized?” he echoed, taking her empty dessert dish and setting it down with his on the rectangular glass box that served as his coffee table.
Then he resettled himself by angling more in her direction and propping an elbow on the top of the sofa back before he said, “First of all, the same way I find it hard to believe that every guy you ever went to school with didn’t jump through hoops to have you, I find it even more hard to believe that you’ve had any trouble finding someone to marry if that’s what you want. And I admire you for not letting your parents’ unhappy marriage scare you from wanting marriage yourself—”
“Because I told you I want to believe that it’s possible for two people to find each other, make a life together and live happily ever after.”
“But it isn’t just that you want to believe that—you’re actively beating the bushes for it?”
“I have been....”
She readjusted a little, too, turning more toward him on the slippery leather couch so they were facing each other. When she did that, her thigh came through the split where the two ends of the wrap dress’s skirt draped together and she had to cover it.
Which caught Dane’s attention, but he raised his gaze from her thigh after a split-second’s ogle and looked at her face again.
“So what have you done?” he asked.
“Pretty much everything,” Vonni admitted with a laugh at herself. “I’ve tried dating sites on the internet, and groups in town, and meet-a-mate events, and the just-lunch thing, and one that sends you a message on your phone if you’re in the same vicinity as someone else who belongs. I’ve done speed dating, and mixers, and I even went to a matchmaker....”
“You’re serious serious....” he said, sounding truly surprised.
She shrugged. “It’s what I want and when it wasn’t happening naturally, I decided to do it like any other project—to dedicate myself to it.”
“And is that what you’ll do again—after your hiatus?”
“Probably,” she said frankly. “But whatever I do, I know I’m going to go at it differently—”
“How so?”
“I guess it isn’t just the guys—I haven’t been as up-front as you are, either. It’s supposed to be bad form to say from the get-go that you’re in the market for a husband, that you want kids and a house and dog and the whole package. You’re supposed to play it cool so you don’t scare the guy off. You’re supposed to let them pursue you. Ease them into the idea of marriage and family by showing how domestic you can be, by hanging out with happily married couples—”
“Is there a handbook out there somewhere?”
“Many—there are self-help books for women, women’s magazines, talk shows aimed at women, mothers.... It’s the advice women are given. And I’ve followed it—”
“But you aren’t going to when you go back on the hunt?”
“No. I’m going your route—I’m going to let it be known right out of the gate that I want marriage and a family. And if that isn’t what the guy wants—and wants right away—then that’s it, no second wink or second coffee or lunch or dinner or whatever it is that starts things off. Either we’re looking for the same thing or we aren’t, and if we aren’t, then I’m not wasting my time.”
His grin came slowly, as if she was amusing him, but only in the nicest way. And just the sight of that handsome face erupting into an approving expression gave her goose bumps.
Goose bumps that she tried to ignore.
“I like it,” he decreed as if she was selling him on something. “In the first place, I don’t think you should have to put what you want on hold for any reason—you should have a house if you want a house, and you should definitely have One-Eyed Charlie the dog if you want One-Eyed Charlie the dog. And I agree with being up front—why should there be any illusions or false hopes? There’s nothing wrong with wanting what you want and going after it, and not wasting time on anybody who isn’t on the same page. Or the same timeline.”
“That’s what I’ve decided,” she concluded, having no idea why it pleased her to have his sanction.
Or why it was so easy to get lost in the smile that went with it....
For a moment neither of them said anything and it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t even seem the slightest bit awkward that they were sitting there just looking at each other.
Then, in a quiet voice, Dane said, “You really are one of a kind and I missed you fiercely the past three days.”
Vonni didn’t want to admit the same thing so she joked, “Should I add fiercely missable to my dating profile when I get out there again?”
“Hmm,” he muttered with a tiny frown creasing his brow. “Why don’t I want to think about you getting out there again right now?”
She had no answer to that. But he reached around to clasp her nape then, moving them both into a kiss that made it unnecessary and impossible to say anything, anyway.
Vonni had missed him, too, but even though she’d thought that she’d missed him intensely, she realized only when his mouth took hers just how much she’d longed for him. For this, as well as his company. It really was as if kissing him was something vital to her that she’d been without, and in that moment she could only let herself have the sustenance of it. She could only give herself over to it and let it restore her.
His kiss was so wonderfully familiar by then that it seemed completely natural that her lips parted in answer to his, that their tongues met and toyed with each other, that Dane’s arm went around her and pulled her closer and her hands rose so her palms could lie flat against his chest.
Familiar and natural and then more as their mouths widened and that kiss found a new level. A new, intense level...
Dane’s hand slid from her neck down her shoulder, down her arm, jumping off the cliff of her elbow to her side, her hip and then to that thigh that had peeked from the split in her skirt earlier.
Had he been thinking about doing this ever since?
She thought it was possible as he massaged and caressed her thigh.
And it did feel great. His hand was big and warm and strong and those long fingers pressed into her flesh just enough.
Just enough to make other parts of her come awake and crave the same thing—that hand, that caress, that massage. Only it was her breasts that were suddenly calling out for the attention.
Vonni’s own hands coursed up to his shoulders and over them to his broad back, learning the hills and valleys through his shirt and wishing she could slip her fingers underneath the fabric.
A Camden Family Wedding Page 14
