LITMIR.BIZ

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started Elegance and Lace several years ago, snagging jobs where we could. Violet’s always been an event planner and was working for a woman who can only be kindly referred to as a bitch.”

      “Ow.”

      “Exactly.” Cassidy nodded, remembering more than one round of after-work martinis that involved as many tears as anger-fueled words. “And Lilah did some time in a restaurant before going to work for a bakery and then doing her own stuff on the side where she could.”

      “And you?”

      “I’ve always designed but never thought I could make a career of it.”

      “Why not?” Half his burger had vanished and she hadn’t even started on her own. Her uneaten dinner gave her a chance to hesitate for a moment as she figured out how best to answer his probing question.

      Even as she worked through what she wanted to say, long-ago fights sprang up as fresh memories.

       You’re meant to wear a wedding dress, not design them for spoiled socialites.

       If you want a career so damn bad, the least you could do is invest in something worth your time. Law or banking instead of fripperies and lace.

       My sister, down on her knees before Dallas’s brides, hemming their skirts.

      “Cassidy?” The dim lighting inside the pub had turned Tucker’s eyes such a dark brown they were almost black. The color was rich and inviting, as were the small crinkles that bracketed his mouth in a smile. “You in there?”

      “Yes. Sorry.” She fiddled with a fry before taking a deep breath. “Designing dresses was seen as a frivolous thing to do. In my family’s estimation.”

      “Frivolous?”

      “In the extreme. While waiting to marry well a woman should make herself useful by doing some staid, corporate thing like working at a bank. Then you’ll be sure to make enough money to squander it properly on a variety of items no one really needs.”

      The words were out before she could pull them back. And where the hell had they come from?

      She did okay for herself and had the benefit of pursuing something she loved at the same time. And she’d stopped worrying long ago about other people’s choices, even if they were her family.

      So she had no small measure of surprise when Tucker bypassed the money comment completely.

      “You would look cute in a button-down blouse and pencil skirt.” His gaze roamed over her face, and she felt the heat rising at the careful perusal. “But it doesn’t suit you.”

      Surprise at his quick assessment banished the storm clouds that thoughts of her family always brought. “Most don’t agree.”

      “Then they don’t see what I do.”

      The urge to ask him what he meant rose up on the swiftest of feet, but before she could ask what he saw, he pressed on.

      “So how’d you break free?”

      “I designed on the side and got lucky.”

      “Nothing wrong with a little luck. Especially when you’ve done all the prep work in advance.”

      Flashes of silk and seed pearls drifted through her thoughts as she popped another fry in her mouth. Cassidy still wasn’t sure Violet hadn’t had a hand in things, despite her friend’s denials to this day, but Tucker was right about one thing.

      She had been prepared.

      “A girl I went to school with had to stop by my apartment to pick something up. My father had made a donation to a Junior League function and I had an envelope for her.”

      “What exactly is Junior League? And do you graduate to senior varsity or something?”

      “I keep forgetting you’re not from the South.”

      “No, ma’am.” His grin was broad and she saw the mischief that had replaced concern in his gaze. “Which is why I walk around in a perpetual state of confusion every time I attempt polite conversation with a client.”

      “Junior League is a charity organization, not a sporting event.”

      “And here I pictured sweet, refined young women mud wrestling.”

      She laughed at that, images of the women she’d grown up with rolling around in mud and ruining their perfectly manicured hair and nails.

      “We only sling mud of the verbal kind, and even then, it’s rare. Most of the women I know are dedicated to the cause.”

      “Be that as it may, I still don’t understand how that ties to a wedding dress.”

      “It was a silly coincidence, nothing more. But Suzy had come for a check my father had made out for a table at an upcoming function and I said I’d get it to her. I had a dress I was making laid out on the dining-room table. I hadn’t even expected her to come in, but we’d started talking and she was excited about having gotten engaged the weekend before.”

      “Decibel levels too high to keep the conversation in the hallway?”

      His smile was broad, and she couldn’t quite fault him for the tease. In fact, she realized, back to her earlier thought, most men wouldn’t have even given the story another moment of their time, yet he seemed genuinely interested.

      “Pretty much. So she comes in and sees the dress I was making and that was it. She demanded I design her wedding dress for her on the spot.”

      “Off to the races, then.”

      “Off to the races. It didn’t hurt that her spring wedding was one of the most covered in Dallas. Nor did it hurt that Violet was her wedding planner. It gave me a bit of street cred to get some interest in dresses from other brides, and gave us the experience to pitch for a small-business loan.”

      “Funny that your father making a donation took you on a path away from a ‘proper’ life, especially if he didn’t support what you were doing.”

      Tucker’s words were casual, his gaze focused on his last few fries, before he glanced back up at her. But way down deep in those dark depths, she saw just how serious he was.

      They’d spent all day in each other’s company—a day full of any number of intense experiences, from danger to attraction—yet this moment seemed the most significant somehow. Because in that moment she knew, without a doubt, that Tucker Buchanan wasn’t casual. Or simple. Nor did he miss much.

      And he fully understood the irony of seeing her success come out of the simple action of an unsupportive parent.

      “He’s gotten over it.”

      “Parents usually do. The bigger question is, have you?”

      * * *

      Josephine Beauregard came awake to dim lighting and the dull scent of antiseptic. She became aware of a steady beeping somewhere behind her head and tried to figure out where she was. Recognition hovered just out of her reach—like she should know where she was but was too happy floating in a sea of blissful ignorance.

      Should she open her eyes? Wait...they were already open.

      With a series of rapid blinks she tried to pull the room into focus but her pupils hadn’t adjusted fully to the darkened room.

      She wanted to panic. Should she panic? But the blanket around her was warm and she felt an odd sense of safety surrounding her.

       Blanket?

      The question hit her, tunneling through her disorientation and the fierce edges of a headache she was slowly coming to realize she had.

      Why did she have a blanket? It was Dallas in summertime and she hadn’t had a blanket wrapped around her since the freak ice storm they’d battled the previous March.

      So

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