A Camden Family Wedding. Victoria Pade
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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