A Camden Family Wedding

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.”

In spite of the fact that Burke’s Weddings had been Chrystal’s graduation gift, it fell under the umbrella corporation that Chrystal’s father ran, so he had ultimate say and control.

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!”