“There are fans who know way more about my books than I do and want to talk themes and what I could do instead. Sometimes readers want to give me story lines, which I have to sidestep because of potential legal problems.”
“Your life is really interesting.”
“No, it’s not. Ninety percent of the time I’m sitting at a computer, trying to figure out what to say next. It’s a lot of hours by myself, sometimes with swearing.”
She liked him, she thought with some surprise. She hadn’t really spent time with him before, so had filled in the blanks with her own fantasies, which were more about his body than his personality. It was nice to know there was an actual person behind the gorgeous eyes.
Funny how she’d been thinking about him on and off for the past couple of days and tonight he’d walked into The Boardroom and sat down at her table, as if fate were stepping in.
“Tell me about the apple wedding,” he said, leaning toward her. “No one dresses up in an apple costume, do they?”
She laughed. “No. I promise, nothing like that. An apple wedding is more like a Christmas wedding. The theme inspires the decorations and the colors, not the clothing. Let’s see. The bridesmaid dresses are apple green, there are crab apples in the bouquet and the floral arrangements on the tables. The signature drink is an apple martini. That sort of thing.”
He stared at her, his expression blank. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“What’s confusing?”
“All of it. I get the bridesmaid dresses. I’ve seen women in those before. But the rest of it? You’re speaking a foreign language.”
“What about all the weddings you’ve been to?”
He took another sip of his drink. “I haven’t. I joined the army when I was eighteen. None of my friends were even thinking about getting married then. I got back for a few visits, but no weddings. After my dad died—it was always just the two of us—I never went back. My military friends went home to get married and I usually couldn’t get leave.”
Now he was the one speaking a foreign language. “You’ve never been to a wedding?”
“Nope.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“It’s a rite of passage. It’s how this town supports itself. Happily Inc is a wedding destination town and you have actually never been to a wedding?”
“Pallas and Nick got married in Italy and I was gone when Carol and Mathias got married.”
She stared at him. “Come by Weddings Out of the Box sometime and I’ll show you a video,” she told him. “They’re all variations on a theme, so once you’ve seen one, you’ll be wedding literate.”
“But not fluent?”
His voice was low and teasing. It sent ripples down her spine and made her wish she was the kind of woman who could look a man in the eye while inviting him back to her place. But she wasn’t and she couldn’t. She might want a let’s get naked night with Jasper, but the truth was she’d never once had sex with a man she wasn’t half in love with and it seemed unlikely she could find the skill set to change that now.
“I think fluency is a ways off,” she said lightly, hoping he couldn’t hear the disappointment in her voice. As he had no idea what she was thinking, the emotion would only be confusing and misleading. Man, even without a relationship, the whole boy-girl thing was really hard to navigate.
“You help brides plan their weddings, right?” he asked.
“Yes, although it’s better when the groom is involved, too. Weddings Out of the Box is a wedding venue. We specialize in theme weddings. We’ve done princess weddings and cowboy weddings and apparently the world’s greatest alien wedding based on a computer game, but that was before my time.”
“Interesting.”
She wasn’t sure it was, but it was nice of him to say it.
They looked at each other, then away. Silence stretched between them, grew awkward, got bigger and started making Renee uncomfortable. Crap, crap, crap, this wasn’t going to work. Who was she kidding? She was only confident in limited situations—like work. She was never going to be the kind of woman who could tell a guy she thought he was attractive and ask if he would like to have his way with her. Which left her sad and depressingly aware of the fact that she might never do the deed again, which made her want to stomp her foot. Or cry.