He raised an arm and swept his big hand across an imaginary banner. “Weddings by Vonni Hunter,” he said as if reading what the signs would say.
But Vonni had had an entirely different sign in mind for years now. Stylishly painted in script letters on the shop’s front window, Burke’s Weddings would be replaced with Burke and Hunter Weddings.
She didn’t say anything, but he must have sensed her lack of enthusiasm for his offer because as the elevator doors opened and Vonni stepped inside and turned to face him, he said, “Just think about it. And let me know when and where Wednesday.”
“I will,” she answered, pushing the button for the lobby.
Then as the doors began to close, he cocked his head to one side and said, “Wow. Yeah. Beautiful eyes...”
Which was strange because that was exactly what she’d been thinking the minute she’d turned and looked straight at him—how terrific looking he was and what beautiful blue eyes he had....
But then the doors closed completely and the elevator began its descent.
She was thinking about Dane Camden on the entire ride down, though.
And how she could definitely see his appeal.
Even if she had no intention whatsoever of tapping into it.
Chapter Two
“How can you be so hard to get hold of when you’re taking care of a sick friend in Northbridge where there’s next to nothing to do?” Dane had finally connected with his grandmother after four calls to her cell phone the next morning.
“Oh, Dane, I’m sorry. We needed to take Agnes to physical therapy so that’s where I was, and I forgot to bring the cell phone with me when we left,” Georgianna Camden explained. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine. But if you’re gonna make me put on a pinafore and do your wedding like a girl, then you have to at least be available, Geege,” he chastised, using his particular pet name for her.
“You’re wearing a pinafore? That I’d like to see,” she said with unabashed glee.
“I figure that’s next since you’ve given me a job one of the girls would be better at. You know I’m not ever going to have a wedding of my own, so it isn’t as if I’ve paid a lot of attention to what goes on at them. And now you want me to plan one? Come on, me?”
“Jonah and I are doing just fine, thanks for asking,” GiGi said, ignoring his complaint.
Jonah Morrison was GiGi’s fiancé, a man she’d known since they’d both grown up in the small Montana town of Northbridge.
“And how’s Agnes?” Dane asked, knowing he was being cautioned not to venture too far from the manners his grandmother had taught him.
“She’s doing well. Her knee replacement was a success and she’s even getting out of the wheelchair to use the walker a little.”
“Tell her hello for me and that she’d better be ready to get out on the dance floor for your first anniversary.”
GiGi laughed and relayed both messages to her friend.
“Agnes says she’ll be ready,” GiGi repeated, though he’d already heard the seventy-nine-year-old herself in the background.
“I guess if I’m going to have a first anniversary, that must mean I’m getting the wedding when I want it?” GiGi asked.
“I met with Vonni Hunter last night and she says it won’t be easy, but yes, she’ll do it. I still don’t understand why you want me to organize it,” he persisted. “I don’t know anything about weddings. I don’t even pay attention when I go to them, I just look for the bar.”
“And whatever single women you can pick up,” his grandmother muttered.
He laughed. “That’s what single guys do at weddings.”
“Sorry, but I elected you to be my proxy,” GiGi said remorselessly. “Just let the wedding planner guide you.”
The prospect of being guided by the delicious Vonni Hunter did make the situation more palatable. But he wasn’t going to admit that to his grandmother.
“Planning my wedding,” GiGi went on, “will teach you what goes into the process and give you some background for setting up the stores’ wedding departments.”
“Developing the wedding departments is business. That I can do. And I’m fine taking my turn at making amends for old H.J.’s wranglings.” H.J. was H. J. Camden, Dane’s great-grandfather and the founding father of the Camden empire. “But all the frilly details for one specific wedding—”
“When have you ever known me to be frilly, Dane?”
The thought made Dane smile despite the fact that he was in protest mode. His grandmother was a tough cookie and she was right—there was nothing frilly about her.
Still, he liked giving her a hard time. “This stuff is frilly all on its own. Better suited to the girls than to me.”
But his grandmother was adamant. “It’s you I’ve asked,” she said with finality. She obviously had no doubt that he’d do it—how could he deny any request from the woman who had taken him and the rest of his siblings and cousins in to raise when they were orphaned by a plane crash that had killed their parents?
“Okay, but if you end up with cigars as wedding favors, it’s your own fault.”
“There will not be cigars as wedding favors. There will be little bags of candied almonds—five in each bundle for good luck.”
“See? That’s not something I know about—”
“Which is why we have a wedding planner. Now tell me about Vonni Hunter,” GiGi commanded.
“Jade-green eyes.” Dane said the first thing that popped into his head.
“Jade-green eyes...” GiGi repeated. “They must be pretty....”
“Remarkable,” he confirmed matter-of-factly. “She also has long blond hair, flawless skin, the kind of perfect nose that women usually pay for, though I think she was born with hers, lush lips that catch your eye and a petite, trim little body with just the right amount of curves to complete the package.”
“So you hardly noticed what she looks like?” his grandmother goaded.
Oh, he’d noticed all right....
The woman was a knockout, and even though he didn’t usually go for blondes, she’d hit all the right notes for him. So much so that the image of her had lingered in his mind since she’d left his office last night, even when he was thinking about other things. Even when he’d closed his eyes to go to sleep—there she’d still been in living color, making it tough for him to drop off.
But it didn’t mean anything.
“I’m describing her to you strictly to let you know that if I can get her on board, she’s beautiful and we won’t have any problem at all putting not only her name but also her picture on all the promotional material,” he informed his grandmother. “The way she looks will be a good marketing tool to go along with her track record as a wedding planner. So she’d be the perfect person to head our wedding department even if we weren’t trying to compensate her—as the last remaining Hunter—for H.J. buying stolen goods and helping to give her grandfather the shaft.”
H.J. had long been suspected of using any means necessary to get what he wanted. The recent discovery of his journals had confirmed for the family what they’d hoped wasn’t true—that H.J. had been unscrupulous in his business dealings.
It was something the current Camdens were intent on making amends for. But in order not to incur a multitude of frivolous lawsuits, they were trying to atone for the misdeeds quietly, on the sly, without drawing too much attention or bringing the worst of H.J.’s behavior into the limelight.
“I see,” Dane’s grandmother said facetiously. “Memorizing every little detail about the way Vonni Hunter looks was purely business related.”
Nothing got by GiGi. Her tone let him know she was fully aware that he was attracted to the wedding planner.
But that still didn’t mean he was admitting
anything. “Yep,” he said, not letting her get a rise out of him. “I’m just looking ahead to marketing and advertising.”
“Sure you are.”
It was true, though. Regardless of how struck by Vonni Hunter he might have been, for Dane, women were just for fun. And he didn’t play and work on the same field.
Plus there was the unsavory connection between the Hunters and Camdens in the past—he would never get mixed up with someone who could have any kind of ax to grind.
So there were two reasons he wouldn’t let anything happen with her.
“I’m just telling you, Geege, that if matchmaking is what you have up your sleeve with this, don’t run the risk of me screwing up your wedding for it. The past few of these assignments may have gotten some of us coupled up, but it isn’t going to happen to me.”
And Dane didn’t have so much as a shadow of a doubt about that.
Yes, his younger brother Lang and cousins Jani and Cade had met their mates on these restitution projects atoning for H.J.’s sins, but Dane was going to break the pattern.
And for a third and very good reason over and above the fact that he didn’t mix business with pleasure and that there was history with the Hunters.
He wasn’t ever getting married or having kids.
As one of the three eldest Camden grandchildren, he felt as if he’d already been domesticated to death. He’d been answerable to GiGi, to his great-grandfather and to Margaret and Louie, the household staff who had been involved in raising them all. He’d done plenty of adapting and compromising. He’d helped care for and look after and teach so many younger siblings and cousins that he felt as if he’d already been a parent.
And now he just wanted the blissful quiet and sanctuary of living alone in his own house.
He wanted not to keep anyone’s schedule but his own.
He wanted company when he wanted it and not when he didn’t.
He wanted the perfect freedom of a single man who was not a parent.
So no matter how green Vonni Hunter’s eyes were, it wasn’t possible for her to get to him any more than she already had.
“I do not have matchmaking up my sleeve,” GiGi objected. “I need my wedding planned. I decided it was you who should handle making things up to Vonni Hunter, and the wedding departments were just my suggestion.”
“Uh-huh...” Dane muttered at her feigned innocence.
Because he knew his grandmother. He knew that she wanted all of her grandchildren to get married and have great-grandchildren for her. And he also knew that while his cousin Jani might be newly married, pregnant and on a lighter work schedule, either of his sisters could have also been given all three of these projects without any problem. And certainly, they both would have been better suited to planning GiGi’s wedding than he was.
“I’m not getting married, Geege. And no woman on the face of this earth is going to change that. Not you, not Vonni Hunter or anyone else.”
“That’s fine,” GiGi claimed loftily. “You’ll just be Poor-Old-Uncle-Dane-Who-Doesn’t-Have-Anyone.”
Dane laughed. “How about if I’m just Fun-Uncle-Dane-Who-Doesn’t-Have-Anybody-Tying-Him-Down?”
“Finding a woman you love and having a family lifts you up, Dane. It raises you to a higher level and makes you a more well-rounded person. It’s what we’re put here to do.”
“And your opinion wouldn’t be at all colored by your own romance, would it? Plus, I’ve found a woman to love—more than one—you and Jani and Lindie and Livi—”
“Me and your sisters and cousin don’t count.”
“And I have plenty of family to lift me up and raise me to a higher level and make me about as well-rounded as I’ll ever be.”
“Kids you have with a wife—that’s the family that elevates you and makes you complete,” his grandmother persisted.
“I’m complete just the way I am. And happily single. Forever!”
GiGi’s sigh on the other end of the line was pronounced, but Dane decided it was time to end this back-and-forth and return to the work he had to do. So he said, “I’m supposed to meet with Vonni Hunter tomorrow night to get started. So keep your cell phone with you—you never know when I’ll have to call or text or send you pictures for approval. And we don’t have any time to spare.”
“I feel the same way about you,” she muttered.
“You love and adore me no matter what I do with my life?”
“Yes,” she confirmed begrudgingly. “I just don’t want you to be a lonely old man.”
“Couldn’t happen in this family,” he said, before saying goodbye and finally getting off the phone.
He was resigned to accomplishing all his grandmother had asked of him—short of getting personally involved with Vonni Hunter, which was not going to happen.
“Sorry, GiGi,” he muttered as he set his cell phone on his desk. “The best I can do on the personal side is enjoy the view.”
Of the lovely Vonni Hunter.
Who could not change his mind about marriage and family any more than any other woman could.
* * *
Vonni was standing outside the Cherry Cricket at eight o’clock Wednesday night when she spotted Dane rush out of the Camden Building a block down.
Neither of their schedules had allowed for an earlier meeting, and since the rough-and-tumble bar and grill was between their offices on Second Street, Dane had suggested he buy her a burger as they began the process of planning his grandmother’s wedding.
Vonni had hesitated. She’d found it unnervingly difficult not to think about this guy since she’d met him, and because of that she knew it was better to keep this strictly business. A burger at the Cricket hardly qualified as being wined and dined, but there would be dining and she didn’t want anything about her contact with him to seem date-like.
But he was very persuasive.
Plus, she knew she wouldn’t have the chance to eat before they got together and didn’t want her stomach rumbling through a business meeting.
So there she was, watching the intensely attractive Dane Camden coming toward her.
He was tieless, the collar button of his white shirt was unfastened and his suit coat was slung over one shoulder. He very much looked as if he was done with business for the day and ready to relax. Like on a burger date.
Luckily Vonni was still wearing what she’d put on this morning for work—a white cowl-necked blouse under a teal green jacket and pencil skirt with the toes of her four-inch heels pinching to remind her she was still working even if he wasn’t.
“I didn’t keep you waiting, did I?” he asked as he approached, flashing a smile that was enough to make her forget about her aching feet.
“I was a few minutes early.” Which she always tried to be when it came to business. And that was all this was, she reminded herself when he held the door for her, told the bouncer sitting on a stool in the alcove that they were two for dinner then ushered her with a hand not quite touching her back to the table when the bouncer passed them off to the hostess.
All very date-like.
He requested a table outside where it was quieter and the hostess took them beyond the noise of the bar to a café table in the patio section that ran alongside the building.
Then the hostess traded places with a waitress who asked if they would like something to drink.
Before answering, Dane said to Vonni, “I’m having an end-of-the-day beer. How about you—beer, wine, something harder...?”
Vonni shook her head and spoke to the waitress. “I’ll have a lemonade.”
Dane ordered his beer and the waitress pointed out the menus that were stashed in the handles of a caddie that held ketchup, mustard, hot sauce and liquor ads.
“I’m starving,” he said, grabbing the menus and handing one
to Vonni. “Let’s decide what we’re eating so we can order when she comes back and then we can just talk.”
About his grandmother’s wedding, Vonni said to herself to neutralize the effect of his very casual attitude. And his appeal. And the feeling that this was a date.
But it wasn’t! she reminded herself yet again.
Vonni focused on the menu, and by the time the waitress returned with their drinks, Dane ordered for them both, not forgetting a single detail of how Vonni wanted her burger or what she wanted on the side, proving just how attentive he’d been even as he focused on deciding his own meal.
Attentiveness that would have gained him points if this had been a date.
“Okay,” he said when the waitress had left. He reached around to the breast pocket of the suit coat he’d draped across the back of his seat and withdrew some folded papers. “Here’s the contract—signed, sealed and now delivered.”
He handed her the Burke’s Weddings contract she’d given him to look over.
“The deposit check is there, too, to get the ball rolling.”
Vonni glanced over them both and meticulously put them in a pocket of her leather binder.
“Now let’s talk turkey instead of burgers,” he suggested.
Vonni outlined the to-do list and the pace at which it would have to be done, then opened her date book to sort through some very tight scheduling.
“It’s June—prime wedding month—and I’m booked to my eyeballs,” she warned.
“Anything that works to fit us in. I’m completely at your disposal,” he assured her, and he meant it because he agreed to everything she laid out for him—including evenings and the weekend.
“So,” he said when they’d gone through it all by the time their burgers arrived, “we’ll be seeing a lot of each other....”
“Until the wedding, yes, we will be,” Vonni qualified.
He smiled as he checked out his bacon-and-blue-cheese burger. “Is that my limit? GiGi’s wedding? If I haven’t convinced you to come on board with Camdens by then will I have lost you for good?”
A Camden Family Wedding Page 3