too,” Vonni said, as if she hadn’t been lost in the unwelcome stirrings aroused by cataloging every square inch of the woman’s cousin.
“Say hey to Gideon,” Dane Camden said to January Camden before he shut the door behind her and headed back to Vonni. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. And congratulations, by the way—I should have said that right off.”
“For what?” he asked, his high, boxy brow wrinkling with confusion.
Vonni laughed, thinking that he must be new to his situation. “Congratulations on your engagement.”
It was his turn to laugh. “Oh, I’m not getting married. Not me. Not now. Not ever. Never!”
He seemed very determined.
“But of course you’d think I called you to talk about my own wedding,” he concluded.
“Well...people don’t usually call me about other people’s weddings....”
He laughed again—it was a deep, genuine, sexy sound that resonated through Vonni in a way it had no business doing.
Because even if he wasn’t the groom, it didn’t make any difference to her. Great looking or not, she was on hiatus from her too-long husband hunt. Plus, she’d learned the hard way not to waste time with commitment-shy men—and Dane Camden had just confirmed his reputation on that score. Quite resolutely.
“No, I’m sure they don’t,” he said then. “But this time that’s what’s happening. It’s my grandmother who’s getting married. And she wants it done in two weeks. That’s why she called me—I’m the guy around here who gets the impossible done.”
It took a moment for what he’d said to sink in.
His grandmother was getting married. Not any of the other Camdens whose engagements had recently been announced.
“You want me to do a wedding in two weeks?” Not just a Camden wedding, but one for the matriarch of the entire Camden family....
“Yep,” he confirmed. Then he grinned. It went slightly lopsided and put lines at the corners of his eyes and brackets alongside his mouth, and it just sucked her right in....
“Jani is right, you do have the most beautiful green eyes and they just got so big....” he said as if it delighted him. “They’re the color of jade. Dark jade-green....”
And he was staring into them so keenly. So closely. So thoroughly....
But just as Vonni was getting uncomfortable he went back to what they’d been talking about.
“The wedding in two weeks,” he said, more as if he was dragging himself back into the moment than as if he was reminding her. “Don’t run scared. I think between the two of us it’s doable because we aren’t talking a spectacular production. GiGi—that’s what everyone calls our grandmother—only wants a small wedding at home.”
“How small?” Vonni asked cautiously.
“Maybe a hundred guests. Including family, which... I haven’t done a recent head count and it’s growing, but I’d say we’re about a quarter of that number. And GiGi doesn’t want anything too fancy or elaborate. Low-key, tasteful. She and her fiancé are seventy-five and neither of them wants a lot of hoopla. They just want something nice. And you won’t have to worry about the ceremony—that will be in the den with only family looking on—so that cuts down on the preparations, too.”
“But it’s you I’ll be working with?” Vonni asked, unsure if she liked that idea, since the man seemed to have a strange effect on her.
“GiGi is in Montana taking care of a friend who had surgery. She can’t get back until just before the wedding but this is the date they want—it’s when they started going steady in high school. I’ll be texting her and sending her pictures of everything, but yeah, you’ll be working with me because it goes hand in hand with the other part of what I wanted to talk to you about today, which is my special project....”
“The business proposition?”
“Really slick how I got that in there, wasn’t it?” he joked, laughing at himself. “Anyway, let’s talk about that. We’ve decided that we want Camden Superstores to offer wedding packages. It’s always been our goal to be a one-stop shop and now we’d like to introduce wedding departments to each of our stores to add that—”
“Wedding departments?” Vonni parroted, unclear about what this had to do with her. Then she became alarmed—did he want to learn from what she did for his grandmother’s wedding and use it for his own special project? Camdens was notorious for undercutting and driving other companies out of business.
“Are you talking about selling wedding gowns? Bridesmaids’ dresses? Tuxedos?” Things that she could recommend clients use Camdens for but that wouldn’t take any of her business away....
“I’m talking about everything,” he answered. “Clothes, yes, but the whole deal. Everything you do, too.”
Oh, wonderful. And then she could be up against all of Camden Superstores....
“We want to offer packages that range from inexpensive to very elaborate,” he continued. “From soup to nuts, including venues we can either contract with or that we might buy outright for rehearsal dinners and receptions. We’ll provide decorations, tables, chairs, plates and silverware, linens—whatever’s necessary. We can offer catering through our food departments. Cakes through our bakeries. Liquor through our liquor department. Flowers through our in-store florists—”
“Everything,” Vonni summed up.
“And because you’re known to be the best at what you do, we’d like to hire you to spearhead the whole thing.”
That had not been what she’d thought he was going to say, and Vonni wasn’t sure she’d understood correctly.
“First you want me—through Burke’s Weddings—to do your grandmother’s wedding in two weeks—”
“Right.”
“And then you want me to spearhead the formation of wedding-planning departments in Camden Superstores to put you in direct competition with us?”
He shook his head. “Well, yes, there would be competition, but Camdens wouldn’t be competing against you. I’m asking you to leave Burke’s Weddings to come on board with Camden Superstores. You’d be the division director, responsible for completely designing and developing wedding departments with us that would be uniquely you.”
“I’d come to work for Camden Superstores?”
“Yes. With the kind of contract we give our highest executives, including one of the best golden-parachute clauses around.”
Vonni went from worry to disbelief in a nanosecond.
“You want me to quit Burke’s Weddings—where I’ve been promised a full partnership—to become an employee of Camdens?”
Apparently her tone had alerted him to how unlikely she was to consider
