Page 13 of Free to Dream
Back and forth on the questions. I think the only two items that even mildly threw her for a loop was when I dropped that there would be well over 500 guests in attendance, Thanksgiving weekend or not, and that we wanted unfettered access to her anytime, day or night, due to the scale and significance of the wedding.
Cassidy quickly sorted many details with an efficiency that, had I actually been planning my own wedding, would have impressed the shit out of me. Mentally shaking my head in wonder over how her brain works, there’s a knock at the door.
Oh shit. Ryan and Jared are here.
“One moment, please,” Cassidy calls out. “Caleb, I do believe we have about seventy-five percent of the major decisions made. You appear to know what Ryan and Jared are looking for with the wedding. I may make a few suggestions and recommendations for enhancements along the way, but nothing to detract from the vision coming together.”
“Cassidy, there’s one more thing.” I look directly into her eyes. I want that physical connection between us before that door swings open. There’s something between this woman and me, and I need more time to figure out what it is. I stand and hand her my business card. “I’d like to continue this conversation later, but I need to get going. That’s my number on the card to reach me any time.”
“Of course. And here’s mine. Let me write my cell phone on the back for anything you might need. After all, once the contracts are signed, you’ll need this if any of you have questions that arise in the middle of the night.”
As she hands me her card, I feel my body already yearning for the connection to hers, which I know is about to be severed in just a few short moments. I continue to stare into her amazing eyes. I figure I have less than thirty seconds before my brother and his fiancé come in to wrap up this appointment, sign the contract, and the stunning pixie before me starts making a list of who to kill first—her brother or me.
“Cassidy? There’s something I need to tell you,” I say, as the door swings open, revealing Phillip, Ry, and Jared. Right on time.
“Yes, Caleb?”
“I’m not one of the grooms. I’m Ryan’s brother.”
5
Cassidy
After Caleb introduced me to his brother Ryan and Ryan’s fiancé Jared Dalton, the actual grooms, Caleb escaped with one of those man-hug things to both men and a wink at me with a reminder that he’ll be using my number to talk with me soon, and that I should, of course, feel free to use his sooner if I don’t hear from him. As if I would after he’d just spent the better part of an hour posing as a groom. I was mortified.
Thinking about everything that transpired, I wonder if my face might be turning as red as Holly’s hair. If my body temperature is anything to go by, it might be close. As I sit at the conference table watching the final contract negotiations occur, I look over at a rare picture of my sister on the wall.
For the following hour after Caleb strolled out of my office, I pull every emotion in after the lingering embarrassment I feel over the behavior in my office this morning. We’re a bunch of professionals trying to run a business. This is potentially our largest client ever. And between my brother’s antics, my abnormal reactions to the presumed groom, and Caleb himself, I was better off not feeling anything. So, nothing was getting through. If Phil showed up with a trio of his exes who were a naked troupe of pole dancers for a ceremony the next day requiring latex wedding attire, I think I would still have been as cool as a cucumber. There wasn’t a single emotion that crossed my face that I didn’t have one hundred percent control over. My smiles were friendly, my laughter light. I was warm without being too invasive.
I’ve perfected the professional mask.
Under it all sat a simmering irritation that Caleb knew his brother so well, that Ryan and Jared loved everything Caleb had picked out for their wedding the previous hour.
Maybe I was just being a bitch, but I wanted them to dislike or hate something— anything, so I could be a little uncontrolled, and maybe completely stupid.
Like use that card Caleb left me to call him.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want an excuse to pick up that phone, because despite the fact that up to an hour earlier he played me into thinking he was about to marry two other men, I still think he’s the most intriguing man to cross my path in…forever.
Something about him called to me on some elemental level I didn’t understand. I’d never experienced the feeling before. I felt sensitized to his presence in my office. I felt his dark eyes burn through me as I moved around my office. His hand when it touched mine, rough and strong, caused an immediate reaction. His broad shoulders begging to allow me to rest my head on them, leaving my burden with him.
Shit, where the hell had that thought come from? Shaking my head, I try to refocus on the room and its occupants.
The conference room seemed to glow. The former ballroom in the mansion where we worked was something we spent long, hard hours to restore. Jewel tones played off the rich mahogany. Diamond panes of the leaded glass windows offered privacy without diluting too much of the sunlight streaming in. The seating areas scattered around the room were warm and inviting with tufted velvet. We had also designed the more formal table we were presently sitting at.
Because of the size of the Lockwood-Dalton wedding, all the siblings, as well as the grooms, were gathered around the conference table. Truthfully, if Ryan and Jared had smaller wedding expectations that required fewer negotiations, it would have been just Ali and me finishing up this part. But a five-hundred-person wedding in a little over two months for the Greenwich elite? I knew that everyone present wanted to make sure each detail was captured in this preliminary document.
Apparently, I was the biggest chip in the negotiations. Unfettered access to me for two months. Completely non-negotiable by the grooms. Damn Caleb for being right about that.
Ugh. I needed to get him out of my thoughts and fast.
My thoughts drift again to the older Lockwood brother, and I don’t hear my name being called. I feel the kick to my shin under the table from my sister, Emily.
“Cass,” Em hisses at me.
“I’m sorry,” I interject smoothly. “I was envisioning the wedding plan for the next week, mentally writing it out. As my family can tell you, I start daydreaming when lists are involved.” I deliberately keep my chin held high, allowing my blush to show.
Ryan and Jared laugh outright.
