Chrystal made a face. “I forgot about all of that. And no, I couldn’t do nights or this weekend—Richard and I are going to Napa this weekend to see his mother.” Chrystal sighed regretfully. “But Dane Camden...I’ve barely gotten to see him across a room at parties. I can’t ever get anyone to introduce us—men are afraid if they do, you’ll go off with him and leave them behind, and other women just want him to themselves.”
Vonni was quick to assure herself that that wasn’t what she was doing—even unconsciously—that she was not feeling the urge to keep him to herself.
“How is he—up close and personal?” Chrystal asked confidentially, as if to find some appeasement.
“I’m just working with him. We haven’t been—and won’t be—up close or personal.”
“Still, you’ve talked to him—I haven’t even done that.”
“He’s very nice,” Vonni conceded. “He has good manners—old-fashioned good manners—holding the door and ordering for me—”
“You’ve been out to eat with him?” Chrystal demanded, sounding jealous.
“Just at the Cherry Cricket for a dinner meeting because it was the only time and place we could both fit it in.”
“But it was just the two of you and he ordered for you? That sounds like a date.”
There was no question in Vonni’s mind that last night had been a business meeting, not a date. And she made that clear to Chrystal. All the while not admitting that she had still gone away from her time with Dane feeling as if she’d been on a date. With someone she wanted to see again....
“He’s pleasant enough company,” was all she would admit, however. “And nice looking—better in person than in any pictures I’ve ever seen of him. But you must know that because you’ve seen him. Otherwise, he’s just another guy.”
“And wasted on you right now,” Chrystal said in a chastising tone because she didn’t agree with Vonni’s current course of taking a break from the husband hunt.
“And definitely wasted on me,” Vonni agreed.
“You’re serious about the no-men thing, aren’t you?” Chrystal said disapprovingly.
“Yes, I am,” Vonni confirmed.
“You’re losing valuable time, you know.”
“I’ve already lost valuable time. Years and years of it. I’ve been on the husband hunt since college. It’s been my second job.”
“Still,” Chrystal persisted.
Vonni had been over and over this. With Chrystal, and on long-distance phone calls with Vonni’s mother in Arizona who was in the blush of new romance with a man she’d met at the retirement community she’d moved into. Neither Chrystal nor Elizabeth liked the idea of Vonni taking a hiatus from the husband hunt, and Vonni was almost as frustrated with defending her decision to them as she was with the husband hunt itself.
It was that frustration that pushed her into a rant. “I’ve been on every internet dating site, Chrys. I’ve gone to every dating event I’ve ever heard of. I’ve done blind dates, dates with friends who I thought maybe could become more than friends, dates with guys I wasn’t attracted to just in case an attraction might develop. I’ve been on dates with newly divorced men to see if I could snatch them up before someone else did. I’ve been there for a widower so when he finished his grieving I might be the one he turned to for the future. I even paid the eighteen-hundred-dollar fee to that private matchmaker and took all of her criticism and all of her advice, and still no husband. Instead, I’ve invested myself in relationships with go-nowhere, commitment-phobic men and ended up with nothing but lost time, lost money and lost energy.”
All the while putting her life on hold.
And that was what she wasn’t going to do anymore.
“I’m taking Vonni time,” she said to Chrystal, what she’d told both of the naysayers several times. “At least six months of Vonni time.”
“I just don’t understand that. Vonni time? It just sounds boring. And lonely. What are you actually going to do?”
“I’m going to get a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog, but thought I should wait—husband first, then a dog. Now I’m just going for the dog. I’m going to buy a house to bring that dog home to. I’m going to decorate that house with no one in mind but me. I’m going to take a real vacation to somewhere that isn’t a meet-a-man destination or cruise or resort. To somewhere I just want to go for the fun of it—”
“It won’t be fun if you don’t have someone to share it with.”
Vonni pointed an accusing finger at her friend. “That’s the kind of thinking that’s kept me putting everything off. And what do I have to show for it? No husband so no dog, no house, no vacation to anywhere worth going, no nothing. I’ve denied myself what I wanted because fate has denied me a husband. Well, no more! Fate may deny me a husband forever, but I’m giving myself the rest.”
Chrystal looked at her with pity and shook her head. “We’ll find you a husband. I’ll talk to Richard—some new lawyers have come into his practice. Maybe one of them is single.”
“It doesn’t matter if they are!” Vonni nearly shouted. “I don’t care. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to meet them. I can’t, Chrystal. I’m tired—exhausted—by the husband hunt. It’s drained me dry. It’s sucked the life out of me. And for now I’m done! I just have to be.”
“I think that’s dumb. Especially now. You’re thirty. Every year—every day—you let go by without trying to get a man puts you a day closer to being forty. Or fifty. Or sixty. And alone with nothing but a dog and a house and some vacation snapshots you had to ask a stranger to take of you.”
“Thank you for making it sound awful,” Vonni said, laughing because to her the course she’d set for herself for at least the rest of the year didn’t feel oppressive, it felt freeing.
“Let’s look at it like this,” she reasoned with Chrystal. “I’m only thirty. I can afford to take six or eight or ten months off the husband hunt to concentrate on myself, to regroup, to recharge, to reset. Then, when I can face it again, I’ll be fresh and maybe instead of attracting another man who takes, takes, takes and doesn’t give back, another man who doesn’t have any intention of ever getting beyond the have-a-good-time stage with any woman, I’ll attract the kind of guy who wants the same things I want.”
“Or, while you’re off getting a house and a dog, the kind of guy who wants the same things you want will have found someone else who wants them, too, and they’ll be coming to you to plan their wedding.”
“I won’t let myself think like that,” Vonni said with a firm shake of her head. She needed this breather. She needed to put some things in her life that made her feel as if she actually had a life. She needed not to just be in limbo, putting everything off until she found a husband.
“Well you should think like that,” Chrystal decreed, getting up from the sofa in the office to signal that she was leaving. “But you’re right not to hang any hopes on Dane Camden—I’ve heard he has a no-marriage-ever policy. Although...” Chrystal added as if something had just occurred to her. “If you know that going in and you’re not looking for a husband right now anyway, a little rest and respite with Dane Camden might be just the ticket.”
Why did that idea inspire a wave of excitement?
“No way,” Vonni swore to herself and to Chrystal at once. “A dog, a house, a vacation as soon as there’s enough of a lull between weddings for me to get away—besides work, those are the only things getting my attention. No men!”
Not even Dane Camden.
“And speaking of work...” Vonni said as Chrystal headed for the office door. “Getting a Camden wedding is a big deal. And it could lead to more of them since there have been a couple other Camden engagement announcements lately—that seems like something to point out to your dad when we have that meeting he promised me this month to talk about partnership.”
Vonni had decided against telling either Chrystal or her father about the job offer with Camdens yet.
“I’ll tell Daddy.”
“And set up the meeting?”
“Maybe. But the new girlfriend is keeping him busy so I don’t know....”
“He said June and this is business so it’ll be during business hours, not girlfriend hours. And we’re starting a new fiscal year July 1, so this is a prime time,” Vonni pointed out.
“I’ll talk to him,” Chrystal said. “And you think about having a rejuvenating fling with Dane Camden so you can give me all the details and I can live vicariously through you!”
“All I want from him is his business,” Vonni maintained.
“That’s the saddest thing you’ve ever said,” Chrystal countered.
But as Vonni walked her friend out, she refused to let anything about her self-imposed holiday from husband hunting get her down.
* * *
Dane Camden arrived at Burke’s Weddings at six-thirty Thursday evening and Vonni immediately got to work on a marathon of choosing the basics for his grandmother’s wedding—times, locations, colors, decorations, floral arrangements, invitations, seating, menu, napkins, linens and chair covers.
They went on until after eleven o’clock, when Vonni began to talk about whether to opt for lace or satin sashes to tie around the chair covers.
That was when Dane sat back in the white velvet tufted seat he was sitting in, held up his large, powerful-looking hands in surrender, and said, “Okay, okay, uncle! I’m crying uncle! Have some mercy, woman! I need food! I need hard liquor! Maybe I need to hunt wild game or toss around a football or something that proves I’m still a man!”
Vonni laughed at him and at the notion that he needed anything to prove that he was more man than he was.
He’d again come with his tie and suit coat already removed, wearing bluish-gray slacks and a barely gray dress shirt with the collar button undone and the sleeves rolled midway up his forearms. Thick, muscular forearms.
And sitting in her elegant, all-white and definitely feminine planning room with the Queen Anne chairs around the ornate antique table, he most certainly did not fit in. In fact, he had the air of a bull in a china shop.
But she got the point.
“Enough for tonight,” she said.
“More than enough! It’s hot wings and beer time. Come on, let’s go. I’m gonna get you out of the glare of all this white before you go blind!”
Vonni laughed again. “I spend every day here and haven’t gone blind yet.”
“It could happen anytime,” he said ominously. “We need to get somewhere dark and dingy on the double!”
“I should organize things here before I leave,” Vonni said, knowing that what she shouldn’t do was go anywhere with him. Especially when he’d already banned her from working any more tonight so it couldn’t be considered business.
“Come on.... You wouldn’t make me eat alone, would you? And you can’t tell me you haven’t put in at least a fourteen-hour day already.”
Sixteen, but who was counting.
It was true—Vonni was tired and hungry. So she blamed that for not having the stamina to fight him.
Plus, she wasn’t inclined to say good-night to him quite yet because even planning his grandmother’s wedding with him for the past several hours had been fun....
“Somewhere close by?” she asked.
“We’ll hit that little place in the basement around the corner from here—they have local beers on tap.”
Vonni knew the place—it was a pub that served a few comfort-food dishes. It was also a prime spot people went after work. Which was what she’d be doing with Dane Camden, so it would also not qualify as a date, she told herself.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I am hungry, and maybe we can still talk sashes for the chairs to get just one more thing done?”
“No! You’re relentless,” he said as if she were torturing him. But he’d joked around and teased her through most of the work they’d done, so she recognized when he wasn’t being serious now. She did, however, believe that he had no intention of talking any more about his grandmother’s wedding tonight.
He stood and grabbed his suit coat. “Lock this white nightmare up and let’s get out of it!”
Vonni shook her head at his incorrigibleness. “Let me get my purse and keys out of the office.”
“Hurry or I might swoon.”
She laughed at his melodramatics again and went to retrieve her things, glad that she’d worn her most comfortable wedge sandals today because she could easily walk the distance to the pub in them.
In her office she put on the crocheted shrug that went over the yellow dress she had on, took her purse from the desk drawer and resisted the urge to pop into the bathroom to check her hair and makeup. She’d worn her hair pulled back in a clasp at her nape and she didn’t think anything had come loose, anyway. And fussing with those things made it seem as if she cared what she looked like for Dane, and she wouldn’t let herself.
Instead, she left the office without a clue, merely hoping for the best, and returned to the front of the shop where Dane was waiting for her.
And one glimpse of him after even so short a break somehow caused her to be struck all over again by how terrific looking he was. Tall and lean and strong and so much man that there was no question of his masculinity even if they had been talking all evening about doilies and decorations.
But the power of his presence and how terrific he looked were as inconsequential as her hair and makeup, Vonni silently ruled. And in the hope of stifling the effect he seemed to have on her no matter how hard she tried not to be affected by him, she glanced beyond him at the door he held open for her.
“Go ahead out, I have to set the security system,” she advised.
He did, still holding the door for her from the sidewalk while Vonni punched in the code to start the alarm. Then she joined him outside, using her key to lock the door after he’d closed it behind her.
It was a beautiful, balmy summer night, and that was what they talked about on the way to the pub. But it wasn’t the only thing Vonni thought about.
Images kept flashing through her mind of him taking her hand as they walked. Or putting his arm around her. As if they were a couple.
It was absurd and it was Chrystal’s fault, she decided, for planting the idea of having a fling with the man.
But that wasn’t going to happen! It absolutely was not going to happen!
Attempting to make sure there was nothing personal going on between them, she walked a few inches farther to the side, away from him.
The pub was half-full when they got there. There was no one to seat them so they took a free booth, sitting across from each other.
Positioned like that, it became impossible for her not to look at him and appreciate all over again how terrifically handsome he was even after what was probably a fourteen-hour day for him.
Then, out of the blue, he said decisively, “Satin ribbons, not lace sashes—the lace would be too froufrou for GiGi. You decide whether they should be green or gray or both to stick with the color scheme. Now don’t make me talk about any more of this stuff.”
“Deal,” she agreed, unable to suppress a smile at his unexpected outburst and the fact that he’d complied with what she’d wanted despite his reluctance.
He was a hard man not to like, she realized then. He was easygoing, upbeat, good-natured, smart, quick, funny, warm and altogether nice and pleasant to be around.
Pleasant to work with, she mentally corrected when she realized that she
had slipped into doing what she’d done when she was dating—she was cataloging attributes that would have helped her judge whether or not to devote more time to someone she’d just met. To judge whether or not he had husband potential.
But she’d removed herself from the husband hunt. And she already knew Dane Camden did not have husband potential. So there was no reason to be listing his attributes. And she didn’t need to be sitting there admiring him any more than she should have been imagining him holding her hand or putting an arm around her on the walk from the shop!
Luckily a waiter came to take their order just then, offering a handy distraction from the mindset she didn’t want to be in.
Tonight Dane persuaded her to have a glass of wine to go with her nachos, and he ordered beer and wings. When the waiter brought their drinks moments later, Dane took a long pull of his beer, seemed to relax more and after a replete sigh, he looked her square in the eye and said, “You have a horrible job.”
“I do not,” she countered with another laugh. “I love my job.”
“Is this what you always wanted to do?”
“Be a wedding planner? Well, no, not specifically. But I didn’t have any really clear idea of what I wanted to do. My degree is just in business.”
“So how did you get into it?”
“The shop was Chrystal Burke’s college graduation gift from her father—”
“Chrystal Burke...” he repeated. “The name sounds familiar but I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“She says you haven’t. But you do travel in similar circles. Her father—”
“Is Howard Burke—the architect and developer who ran for mayor a couple of years ago?”
“That’s him. Chrystal and I grew up together and when he gave her the business, she asked me to work with her.”
“With her? Not for her?”
“With her. We’re friends. But Chrystal discovered early on that she doesn’t much like to work and since she has a substantial trust fund from her grandmother—plus the support of a husband—she doesn’t need to. So Burke’s Weddings has basically been me for eight years. Well, me and the four people who also work at the shop as my assistants, and then the waitstaff and valets and security and the other people it takes on the actual day of the wedding, depending on the size of the wedding.”
A Camden Family Wedding Page 5