A Camden Family Wedding. Victoria Pade

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ