had the opportunity to do the wedding of anyone as prominent as a Camden and refused, there would be hell to pay. It would likely cost her her job. So she had to at least hear him out.
“A haircut and talk about your sister’s wedding,” she reiterated.
“For now, here. And then maybe we can set up something for later so I can tell you the rest. Somewhere neutral, where you feel completely safe and can just listen to what I have to say.”
Abby glared at him, again adopting her tough-girl attitude.
But once more she thought of how much she’d be risking if she didn’t accept the business he was offering, so she signaled her shampoo boy to come and lead Dylan Camden to the sinks. She stayed where she was, watching from there and wondering what was up with this guy.
When he’d first confirmed his connection to the Camden Superstores, she’d wondered if he was there to offer her a job. She’d heard that the Camden salons were really slipping these days and it wouldn’t be the first time someone had come in to steal her away from Sheila under the guise of having her do their hair.
But then he’d brought up the hospital. And he did seem to know things...
It was stupid. Totally stupid, and it hadn’t happened in years and years and she hated herself for lapsing into some old childhood dream. But a stranger coming out of nowhere, knowing something about her past, saying he had more to tell her, provoked the old fantasy just the same.
The fantasy of someone appearing in her life unexpectedly to tell her she’d been misplaced by loving parents who had finally found her and wanted to whisk her away to somewhere she belonged. To a family she belonged to.
It was far-fetched. She knew it. And Dylan Camden was only a few years older than her own thirty so he certainly wasn’t one of her long-lost parents.
But what if...
What if he was coming to tell her he was her brother? They both did have dark hair.
No, she decided. Dark hair was too common for her to draw conclusions just from that. And she certainly didn’t have the signature blue eyes the Camdens were known for—the Camden Blue Eyes, the papers called them. They were even more striking in person than she’d expected.
But the Camdens were a big-deal family with a huge number of associates and connections. There were countless ways the Camdens could have known her parents. Could she be the daughter of a socialite friend who had had her when she was very young and ultimately given her away to avoid humiliation and embarrassment?
Pie in the sky, she told herself.
Pipe dreams.
Dumb.
But what if Dylan Camden really did know something—anything—about her background?
It wouldn’t take much to know something she didn’t. And just in case...
It was insanely far-fetched.
But even so, the longer she thought about it, the more she knew that she was going to agree to meet with him.
In order to find out if he really did have even a morsel of information about who she was.
Dylan paid the bill for his haircut at Beauty By Design’s reception desk then leaned around the partition behind it to call back to Abby Crane. “The park on Thirty-Second and Bryant, tonight at six-thirty, at the picnic tables—I’ll find you,” he said, repeating the time and location of the meeting she’d agreed to.
From her station she nodded that so-full head of shiny hair. He’d noted that it was the color of the Belgian bittersweet chocolate that he’d gorged on for the past three months.
“You’d better be on the up-and-up,” muttered the receptionist.
“I am, don’t worry,” he assured her before leaving the salon.
It was only a little after four and Dylan knew he should go back to his office for a while. But as he got into his black Jaguar the thought of that just didn’t sit well.
He wasn’t far away—he was on the very outskirts of the city, and it wouldn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to be sitting behind his desk again.
But since returning from three months of working on the security in the European stores—which he’d done to escape Lara and let the situation here cool off—everything seemed to require so much extra effort. It was taking its toll on him.
Sure, it was effort he was willing to put in. Effort he knew that he owed his entire family. And he definitely wanted to make things right again because he couldn’t even put into words how much he hated the way things were between himself and the family now.
But it wasn’t easy keeping up that eager-to-please attitude nonstop, day in and day out. It wasn’t easy doing things like today’s mea-culpa lunch with Cade and Nati—one of many he’d done during the three weeks since he’d been back. And sometimes he just needed to crawl to the back of his cave like a bear and take a few minutes before he could do more of it.
Like right now.
So rather than heading for the offices of Camden Incorporated where he would be around any number of siblings and cousins who were never particularly happy with him these days, he drove to his lower downtown penthouse loft instead.
There, he parked in his spot in the underground garage, rode the private elevator to the top floor and sighed in relief as he passed through the elevator’s doors when they opened directly into his loft.
His cave wasn’t very cave-like, admittedly.
The living room, dining room and kitchen were all one expansive open space decorated in glass, leather and chrome with mere hints of serene sky blue accents. The lines were smooth and there was no clutter. It was quiet, clean, and everything was in its place.
Lara had hated it.
And maybe that, and the fact that her own condo was decorated in what he’d considered “clutter chic,” should have been an indicator that she thrived on chaos.
But like all the rest of the clues, he’d missed that one, too.
As nice as it was to be home, and as tempting as it was to just chill out until he needed to leave again to meet Abby, he realized that he still had to let his sister and grandmother know what was going on. It was part of being on his best behavior, after all.
He took his phone out of his pocket and walked to the wall of windows that allowed him a view of most of Denver. Lindie was first on the list, to tell her that he’d arranged for her and her bridesmaids to have the hair and makeup trial by the special occasions team of Beauty By Design.
Abby had said that she ordinarily took Wednesdays off, but after some persuasion—and a conference with China who was apparently the head of the makeup-artist portion of it all, and the manicurist in charge of the nail division—they’d all agreed to do the trial next Wednesday.
And,
