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She finished the margarita, but she wasn’t quite ready to leave. When the cocktail waitress came by to scoop up her empty glass, Jaclyn ordered a cup of decaf. Eric was still nursing his beer, and she was glad to see that he didn’t knock it back and order another one. Like her, he was very much in control.
It wasn’t like her to get comfortable with a man so quickly, but the sense of ease went both ways. From war stories, she moved on to telling him about her business, her mother-slash-business partner, and the absolutely insane schedule she had for the next few days.
He rolled his almost-empty glass between his palms, then glanced up at her. “So I should wait until next week before I call?”
Those hazel eyes were so intent her heart gave another of those disconcerting little thumps, and her mouth went dry. Her first thought was that maybe it was time her personal sexual drought ended. Her second thought was that she bet he’d be an excellent drought-ender. Her third thought was that, damn it, she didn’t have time. But when she opened her mouth, what came out was “Not necessarily.” Then her common sense kicked in again, and she sighed. “But, yes, next week would be better. Six weddings in five days doesn’t leave me with any free time, even though Mom and I share the work.”
“You have to eat,” he said, his voice low and easy and slightly gruff. It was the kind of voice that would be capable of talking her into, well, anything. Oh, damn, he was either good or dangerous, or both.
“Yes, I suppose I do.” Maybe the smartest thing for her to do was get away from the testosterone he was throwing out like a force field, so she could think more clearly. Besides, like it or not, it was getting late and she needed to go home and get to bed. She hesitated, then opened her purse and extracted her gold card case. “My card,” she said needlessly, placing the cream-colored business card—with Premier, along with her name and numbers, in gold foil—on the table and sliding it toward him. “My office and cell numbers are both here.”
He glanced at the card, holding it up to catch the light so he could see it clearly. “Not Wilde Weddings?”
Jaclyn smiled. “That’s not the image we’re trying to project.”
He studied the card. “Classy.” His gaze flicked back to her. “Like you.”
Before she could respond, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and whipped out his own business card. It was black and white, a plain font, all business. It said as much about him as her card said about her. He turned it over, took a pen from his pocket, and scribbled on the back. “My cell number. Call me any time.”
She dropped the card into her purse, stood, and said good night. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said, and she didn’t doubt it. As she walked toward the exit, she could feel him watching her, just as she had that morning. This time she looked back and smiled … and sure enough, his gaze was locked on her. The way he looked at her was enough to make her bones go to butter.
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Damn.
Chapter Three
THE STREETS WERE ALL BUT EMPTY AT THIS TIME OF the evening on a weeknight, so driving didn’t require nearly enough of Jaclyn’s attention as she headed for home. Maybe if there’d been a line of traffic to maneuver through, or maybe some careless pedestrians, she could have kept her mind on mundane matters, but no one was obligingly suicidal enough to step in front of her. Not that she wanted to actually hit anyone, but the evasive maneuvers would at least have transferred her interest away from a certain cop.
No matter what she did to push him aside, Eric Wilder remained lodged front and center in her thoughts. It was everything about him: his voice, his eyes, and, she might as well be honest with herself, his body. She liked his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and, well, everything. He was the kind of man who’d stand out in a crowd no matter where he went; he would draw her eye in any courthouse, in any bar … anywhere at all. The problem was, the very last thing she needed to complicate her life right now was a relationship of any kind, whether it was sexual, romantic, friendly, unfriendly, whatever—even if the man in question occupied her thoughts as she drove home. She didn’t need to be thinking about men, not about him in particular or about men in general. She needed to mentally run through the next day’s work plan, because she and Madelyn were about to enter the insane portion of the week’s schedule, not the least of which was the meeting with Carrie Edwards and the poor, abused vendors she’d selected. After Carrie’s wedding was over, Jaclyn figured she owed each and every vendor an abject, and heartfelt, apology.
Current insane schedule aside, Jaclyn wasn’t against the idea of having a man in her life. In fact, she wanted one. She didn’t want to live her life alone; getting married and having kids someday were definitely in her long-range plans. Someday she’d find a man she loved, and who loved her, and they’d make it work, have one or two kids, and grow old together. Her first marriage had failed, but that didn’t mean she’d given up on men; she was just more cautious. Okay, maybe too cautious. Someday, though …
But this wasn’t “someday,” this was now, and she had her hands full. A man like Eric Wilder was a time-suck; she instinctively knew it, even though she’d spent little more than an hour, if that much, in his company. He might not insist on having a woman’s undivided attention, but she had the feeling that the sheer force of his personality would make him as hard to ignore as an elephant in the living room. Just because he’d been playing nice tonight didn’t mean she couldn’t see the force beneath that civilized veneer. As a general rule, the meek and mild didn’t become cops. And as another general rule, cops were almost perpetually on call even on their days off, worked long, irregular hours, and, like marrying a doctor, a woman should go into a relationship with a cop accepting that the job wasn’t a regular nine-to-fiver in either schedule or importance. Having Eric around would do nothing but muck up her orderly life.
Not that she’d mind being mucked by him.
Crap!
Exasperated by the way her thoughts kept going back to him, Jaclyn rummaged in her bag, snagged her cell phone, and hit the speed dial for her mom.
Her mother answered with her usual, confident “Madelyn Wilde,” her husky voice touched with a Southern accent deeper and richer than Jaclyn’s. Madelyn had the type of accent that could turn a two-syllable word into four, slow and redolent with a lazy charm that was in no way reflected in her personality. Madelyn was charming, beyond a doubt, but she was also tough and ballsy. She’d been a rock for Jaclyn during the tough days when her marriage was disintegrating beneath her, though maybe that was more along the lines of returning the favor, because Jaclyn had comforted her mother more times than one could count during Madelyn’s own breakup with Jaclyn’s dad.
“How did the rehearsal go?” Jaclyn asked. Sometimes she and her mother shared the duties of an event, if bookings were slow, but when things were busy they would split up. This week, things were way beyond merely “busy.”
“As smoothly as can be expected,” Madelyn drawled, her tone calm and amused. “The groom was late, the bride went into hysterics because she thought he was leaving her at the altar, never mind that they weren’t even at the altar yet, and one of the bridesmaids showed up with a black eye. A door, she said, but no one believed that story. I heard she got drunk at one of the showers, knocked over the punch bowl, and the ladle hit her in the eye.”
Jaclyn took a moment to imagine that scenario, and couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice. “Since you didn’t call earlier with bad news, I’m assuming the groom arrived and the wedding is on.”
“Yes, and Peach called a friend of hers who’s a whiz with makeup. She made an appointment for the girl. Tomorrow evening, no one will realize that one of the bridesmaids is sporting a shiner.”
Peach was Madelyn’s friend and assistant, and together the two women could work wonders. It was a large part of the reason Premier not only survived, but thrived. Between the two of them, they knew almost everyone who was anyone in the Buckhead area—and in Buckhead, everyone was someone. What made Premier different was their ability to handle any situation with aplomb, and Jaclyn was definitely her mother’s daughter.
Middle-of-the week weddings were unusual but not unheard-of. The happy couple had been able to snag the reception site they wanted for a bargain price, and they hadn’t been forced to wait months for the church to be available for the ceremony. The affair wasn’t one of the big, extravagant presentations, but Premier handled weddings in all price ranges, and how many duties Jaclyn and Madelyn handled depended on how much the bride wanted to spend.
Madelyn sighed, and asked the inevitable question. “How did your meeting with the bride from hell go?”
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jaclyn said drily. Even though she was the one handling Carrie Edwards’s wedding, no detail was unshared. Madelyn and Peach knew everything about the problems with Carrie.
