Vonni was sipping her scotch and she smiled weakly at that notion. “You think I’m a big-enough name to bring couples in?”
“I do,” he said unequivocally. “In Denver, for now. But once customers from all over see weddings you’ve put together, yeah, I think people are going to start asking for you to do their individual weddings. And the reason the deal is better even than a partnership in a small shop is that we’ll give you a contract that will provide more stability and genuine security than you have now or would have as a partner in Burke’s Weddings. Howard Burke is always going to keep a controlling interest, and that means that what he’s doing now, he could do even if you were a partner because he’d still have the ultimate say in running things. Plus small shops can go under in the blink of an eye, and that isn’t going to happen with us.”
He smiled roguishly and added, “Not to mention that we’ll pay you enough to buy three of the houses you have an offer on now and keep your animal shelter in dog food forever.”
Vonni liked that he was injecting some humor into what was very much a business discussion. It helped lift her spirits. But she was still leery of going to work for the Camdens.
“Would I be crazy to do this?” she said, thinking out loud. “Your family helped cheat my grandfather. Should I really go to work for you and hand over all my ideas and designs and experience?”
Dane didn’t respond to that, not even to deny her accusation. Instead, he opened a drawer near the sink, took out paper and pencil and wrote something. Then he handed the paper to her.
“That’s the name of a great attorney who hates us. Hates us, Vonni. He’ll nail us to the wall if he gets the chance. Hire him to hammer out a contract that doesn’t leave you in any kind of jeopardy. That protects you in every eventuality. That doesn’t have a loophole even a gnat could go through. And that—if for any reason you ever part ways with Camdens—provides you with enough severance to start your own business.”
“Should you be giving me advice like that?” she asked.
“You’re worth it.”
He was looking into her eyes when he said that and while everything else so far had been businesslike, there was something about that look that wasn’t.
She was already feeling particularly weak willed. She’d taken a body blow tonight. She’d had her entire future snatched right from under her nose. And here he was, tall and gorgeous and sweet and understanding and offering what seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. So for him to take things to a personal level at that moment was even more heady than the scotch. The scotch that was going into her nearly empty stomach and certainly not helping strengthen her will to resist anything.
“And you’d be my boss....”
He smiled and shook his head. “If you’re asking if we’ll be working together, the answer is no. You’ll be the head of the wedding division, and I’m usually dealing with the big picture of new store development and expansion—getting the impossible done, remember? Our paths probably won’t even cross except maybe by accident—so if you’re hoping to be finished with me because you can’t stand the sight of me, you’re in luck.”
She hadn’t done very well with that in the three days they’d been apart. But it was probably better if they wouldn’t be working together because she really needed to shut down the things he was stirring in her, to get on with her life, to finish regrouping and recharging, and then go back to her pursuit of a husband when she was ready. And none of that was likely to happen if they continued to spend any amount of time together.
After tonight...
“You are pretty hard to look at,” she teased him, realizing only then that somewhere along the way he’d removed all but his shirt and slacks.
“But I will be working for you....” she said, thinking that while she shouldn’t have let things happen between them when he’d been her client, she certainly shouldn’t let anything happen between herself and one of the people who owned the company she worked for.
If she took the job....
Dane nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Technically, if you work for Camden Incorporated, you do work for the Camdens, and I’m a Camden.” Then he paused for a moment and she saw something change in him. Switch gears. And he wasn’t Business Dane anymore. He was the Dane she’d planned his grandmother’s wedding with.
The Dane she was so, so susceptible to....
“But you aren’t working for me right now....” he finally added.
Hmm...
Somewhere in the back of Vonni’s mind she knew that she might be playing with fire or tempting fate or something along those lines. But at that moment she didn’t care about that any more than she cared about the drop of water on her skirt. She just wanted to block out everything else for a little while. And follow nothing but her instincts.
And her instincts were screaming for her to just get herself into the arms of the man she’d planned the wedding with. The man who had a reputation for making women feel better....
She kept her gaze trained on him as she finished her scotch and set her glass on the counter behind her.
“Right now,” she heard herself volley coyly, “you aren’t my client anymore, either....”
“No, I’m not your client anymore,” he confirmed, doing the same with his glass. “Right now you’re just you, and I’m just me....” There was another pause before he smiled with only one side of that supple mouth of his and said, “Could that be a window of opportunity?”
A window of opportunity.
But not a door opening to something more between them because they didn’t want the same things, Vonni thought.
Only maybe tonight that was okay. Maybe tonight that was actually exactly what she needed.
It seemed as if they were in a sort of limbo between so many things. And while she’d thought before that being on holiday from her quest for a husband meant she was taking a break from men in general, it occurred to her then that that didn’t need to be the case. That a moratorium on husband hunting didn’t necessarily mean a moratorium on men in general. And if that was true, what better man to find some much-needed solace with tonight than someone she already knew was absolutely not a potential mate?
Chrystal had made that point when her friend had first heard that Vonni would be working with Dane. Chrystal had encouraged her to have a rejuvenating fling with him because he wasn’t husband material.
And suddenly Vonni decided she agreed with her friend. Wholeheartedly...
“A window of opportunity,” she repeated in a voice that was breathier than it had been. “We’re not talking about a job anymore, are we?”
He laughed. “I’m not,” he confessed. “But I can start again if you want me to.”
She thought about that, gave herself the opportunity to stop before anything got started.
But she just didn’t want to. Not tonight.
So she pushed away from the counter’s edge and took a step closer to him. “No, thank you,” she said.
“No, thank you to talking about the job again, or to the job itself, or to—?”
“No, thank you to talking about the job anymore tonight.”
He grinned. That grin that could turn her into mush, but now just turned her on.
She was an arm’s length away from Dane but close enough to reach for his shirt buttons and unfasten just the one beneath the collar button that was already open.
Dane watched her do it, smiled again, but raised his eyebrows at her. “I wouldn’t be taking advantage of you when you’ve hit a low point, would I?” he asked, his voice deeper than normal.
Vonni shrugged. “I’ll be off-limits when I find a husband and settle down....” she warned.
“Ooh...let’s not talk about that.” He flinched.
Vonni laughed. “You’re never getting married and
I shouldn’t, either?”
He grinned again. “I sure as hell don’t want to talk about you with any other guy now.”
Vonni liked that it bothered him on any level; she smiled and unfastened another button of his shirt.
He watched that happen, too, his hands on either side of his hips grasping the counter and remaining there.
When that button was open he once more looked into her eyes and said, “I really need to know that you’re not just in shock from what happened tonight. Because seriously, Vonni, last night—”
Last night she’d stopped things.
“I know,” she said. “But I’m not in shock. Tonight my eyes are wide-open—about everything. And I’m thinking...why not let there be something liberating about that?”
His hands moved from the counter’s edge to rest lightly on her hips. “Eyes wide-open...” he repeated as if that was very important.
“Eyes wide-open,” she confirmed. “There’s just tonight....” A warning of her own.
“I’ll take it,” he declared.
Then he tugged her closer and kissed her. A first kiss kind of kiss that almost made her laugh because it was as if he was testing her, wondering if she would panic and run after all.
Vonni raised her hands to the back of his head, sensuously slid her fingers into his hair and tempted him to think again.
And she did feel him smile before his lips parted and the kiss got real.
Very, very real....
It jumped almost instantly from first kiss to kissing the way they had been the night before—mouths open and tongues teasing and tantalizing and inviting things to go so much further.
Still bracing his hips against the counter, Dane put a foot out on either side of hers and pulled her between his legs—not so near that they were touching, but close. Then he put his arms around her so his hands were clasped at the small of her back as kissing became more intense, more hungry.
Just tonight, Vonni thought, and a determination not to waste a minute of it made her drag her hands from his hair to his shirt buttons again. She finished unfastening them all and tugged his shirttails from his waistband, exposing his torso—his broad chest and washboard abs.
Ah, his chest....
It had felt terrific through his shirt, but bare was so much better! Warm, smooth skin over rock-hard muscle—and his back was just as wonderful when she sluiced her hands around to it.
His shirt was a mere nuisance by then, so she got rid of it. Once she had, she reveled in being able to run her palms over biceps and shoulders and pectorals and the grand expanse of shoulders that gracefully V’d to a narrow waist she could use as a beltway to taut, taut sides and then to a great, hard, flat belly....
And all the while he merely kissed her and let her have her way with him.
Until he stopped.
Kissing her mouth, anyway.
Instead, he kissed her neck. And where her neck curved into her shoulder. And the hollow of her throat. And down as far as the cowl neckline dipped.
Which was about the time that his hands rose to the dress’s zipper at the back.
A flutter of anticipation and nervousness went through her, but she merely did what she could to facilitate the zipper’s descent to her tailbone.
Dane rose up to kiss her again then, a lazy, luxurious, sexy kiss that was more a mating dance performed with their mouths than it was a kiss.
He brought his flattened palms under the edges of her dress and pressed the heels of his hands upward, opening it more with every inch he climbed.
One strap fell from her shoulder and the cowl dipped to the right, leaving Vonni to feel cooler air on the top half of her breast where it swelled above the navy blue lace strapless bra she was wearing.
And if her breasts didn’t get more attention soon she thought she might scream!
But rather than getting what she wanted just yet, Dane paused in the kissing and merely rested his hands on her shoulder blades.
“Still sure?” he asked in a voice craggy with desire.
She tugged his bottom lip between her teeth and reached for the front of his waistband. “Positive,” she whispered before she unhooked the button. His need for her alone helped lower the zipper.
It also helped unleash something wild and reckless and abandoned in them both when Dane recaptured her mouth with his and brought both hands to her breasts.
Vonni had wondered if he was holding in check all that she was, and now she got her answer as urgency erupted between them and swept them away.
His mouth was on hers as his hands worked at her breasts and released them from their lacy cups. Kneading and caressing and massaging, her nipples hardened to glass in palms where they fit to perfection.
Then he unhooked her bra and let it fall to the floor as he kissed the same path he’d followed before and took first one breast, then the other into his mouth.
His magic, magic mouth—it was warm, wet heaven sucking her in. His tongue traced the outer circle of her nipple, flicking at the crest, nipping with gentle teeth. It was an opus that awakened things in Vonni that filled her and propelled her and brought her alive with wants and needs for more.
Her dress was around her waist by then and he eased it down to fall to her ankles, leaving her in thigh-high nylons and string panties. In the brightly lit kitchen.
And she didn’t even care because all she was thinking about was what had shocked her to her senses the night before—she was thinking about having him naked.
Only tonight it didn’t shock her, it only spurred her on.
Finessing her hands to cup his rear end, she made enough room between him and the counter’s edge to lower everything he had on from his waist down.
He laughed and growled a little at once, then hooked fingers in the strings of her bikini briefs and down those went, too, before he grabbed her derriere in a firm grip, lifted her and spun around to leave her sitting on the countertop.
He was kissing her again—crazy kissing that was all openmouthed and thrusting tongue and wicked temptation. Crazy kissing that he paused only for a split second as he reached for his pants to take his wallet from his pocket and retrieve a condom.
For now, he put the condom on the counter beside Vonni while he returned to kissing her, to having his hands on her breasts, on her backside, on her inner thighs and then in the junction between them where he did something remarkable with his thumbs that shot her instantly into a climax that came as a complete surprise and ended in some miracle that only made her ready for more.
Ready and dying for more....
She hadn’t even realized that her arms had gone around him and she was clasping his tight rear end, but now she took one hand away from there and brought it around front, finding him and exploring the full length and thickness and magnificence of the man.
And he wasn’t the only one of them who could escalate things; Vonni did a little of that herself, feasting on the sight of that nakedness she’d been craving, of that handsome face caught in closed-eyed passion, of that body all chiseled and cut and taut and muscular and masculine.
When he could take no more of what she was doing to him he retrieved the condom, applying it as he kissed her, as he sucked a breast into the cavern of his mouth again, as he churned up so much in her all over again that she didn’t think she would be able to breathe for much longer without him inside of her.
And then he was. Carefully but not too slowly, as if he couldn’t bear it another minute either, pulling her forward, to him, positioning her just so until he was deeply within her.
Pulsing and flexing and drawing out and then back in again, he positioned his hands on her backside, guiding her, helping her keep pace, to meet and match him with her ankles locked around him.
She held on to his massive shoulders and ga
ve herself over to him, at the mercy of what was building from the very core of her. Building and building and building until it exploded into a second peak that made the first a mere shadow, sending the most exquisite pleasure all through her, taking her away to somewhere she’d never been before, somewhere where she was lost to everything but that divine culmination.
That divine culmination that was still rippling through her when his own erupted in him, too, sending him plunging to the depths of her and freezing his entire body into a tall mast of power and vitality and strength that Vonni could only cling to as she came back to herself, weak and spent and collapsing with her forehead on the shelf of his shoulder....
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, burying his own face in the side of her neck, kissing her, his breath hot and heavy against her skin.
“We’re in your kitchen....” she whispered when the fact struck her all over again and she was able to speak.
Dane laughed—a rough, raspy, passion-ragged sound.
Then without saying anything, he slipped out of her, scooped his arms under her to form a seat and carried her from the kitchen with her legs still wrapped around his waist.
He took her up narrow service stairs to the second floor, into an enormous master suite with a king-size bed covered in a downy brown quilt.
At the bedside he continued to hold her, using only one arm to brace her while he flung back the quilt and the silk sheets underneath it and then laid her gently on the mattress and joined her there.
“Better?” he asked as he snaked an arm underneath her to curl her into his side and envelop her in his embrace.
“I don’t know....” she said with a slight, self-conscious laugh, uncertain of anything now that exactly what she’d wanted had happened.
“Better,” he declared, answering his own question. “This way we can rest a little and then try the traditional route.”
A Camden Family Wedding Page 16
