Chapter 13
CALLUM
The bib was humiliating. I was sitting in a restaurant wearing what amounted to a tarp around my neck, eating spaghetti like a toddler at his first birthday party, and somehow I was having the best time I’d had in months.
I twirled another forkful of pasta and watched Victoria cut into her chicken. She’d been right about the spaghetti. Delicious and messy.
“So you’re also in the wedding business?” she asked, looking up at me. “How did that start? Was that always the plan?”
“God, no.” I reached for my wine. “My sister Cleo had this idea. She’s been designing wedding gowns. Her best friend Mandy is a well-known wedding planner. I’m more the business guy. We combined our talents and came up with the Blackwell Wedding collection.”
“Sounds classy.”
“It is, actually. I won’t bore you with the whole sales pitch, but we offer everything a couple could need for a wedding.
Like you could just buy a dress, but you can also buy the dress, and a tux that complements it, and themed packages, with a curated selection of flower arrangements, centerpieces, invitations, thank you cards.
All of it meant to synergize and work together.
With a ton of ways to personalize each event.
We also have a staff of wedding planners that work directly with people, if they want.
There’s different tiers—” I stopped myself and laughed.
“Sorry, there’s a lot of moving parts to it.
Long story short, we sell fancy wedding stuff. ”
“I’ll admit, I’m having a hard time visualizing it,” she said.
I sat up and leaned forward. “Funny you mention that. The new Blackwell Couture store is going to have a section showing people what they can expect from our company. They can see our products and they can talk to one of our planners to see if they want a more personalized service.”
“Well, that’s smart.” Victoria nodded. “Everything is digital now. Sometimes it’s nice to see things in person. Feel the fabric with your own hands. Look a person in the eye and see if they’re full of crap.”
“Well, it was my sister, Cleo’s, idea. It was also her idea to partner up with Blackwell Couture in the first place. They had the resources to help make it happen.”
“Just that fast,” she said, one eyebrow arching upward.
“Cleo has a way of making things happen when she really wants it.” I shook my head. “She came to me with this business plan. Said she just wanted my opinion. And now things have taken off.”
Victoria smiled and I found myself staring at those sexy dimples. I’d never been a dimple guy, but on her, they worked for me. A lot. Normally, I didn’t like the whole wining and dining process. Dating sucked. I didn’t mind the end of the dates. That was when the fun started.
“She sounds like my kind of person,” Victoria said.
“She’d love you.” I meant it before I’d finished saying it, which surprised me. “Especially you engineering that sweet revenge.”
She laughed but didn’t apologize.
“So, the charity,” I said, steering the conversation back to her. “You just stumbled into it?”
She sighed. “Yes. Kind of. I was at an event that benefited the charity.” She reached for her wine.
I felt the energy shift. I couldn’t explain it but there was a sadness to her when she’d been so cheery before.
“Betty was the keynote speaker. She talked about this one family—a little girl, maybe six years old, who’d been diagnosed with leukemia.
The parents had to choose between keeping their apartment and staying close to the hospital.
” Victoria turned her glass slowly on the tablecloth.
“Betty’s organization paid three months of their rent so they could stay. The little girl made it.”
“And that got to you.”
“It leveled me.” She looked up. “I was sitting at this table surrounded by people who were more interested in being seen at the event than in anything Betty was actually saying. And I just thought, what are we doing? Anyone at that event could have covered that family’s expenses and never missed the money. ”
That confused me a little bit. Why was she there? Maybe a plus-one.
“You thought it wasn’t fair,” I said.
She shook her head slightly. “I thought, this is what money is supposed to do. This is what it’s for.” She took a sip of wine. “I went up to Betty afterward and told her I wanted to volunteer. She put me to work the next morning.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.” The corner of her mouth curved upward. “My family didn’t exactly celebrate the decision.”
“Your family didn’t approve of you volunteering?”
“No. We were supposed to write checks, not get our hands dirty.”
Again, I was confused. Write checks? I searched my brain but I couldn’t place her name in the social circles my family ran in. I watched her sip her wine. The way she ate her food, held herself.
Well, well, well. Little Miss Victoria came from money.
“Let me guess,” I said, wanting to keep her talking. “They thought it was a phase.”
“Yep. Then it was an embarrassment. Then it was a betrayal.” She sighed and took another sip of wine. “My father cut me off completely about eight months in. Said if I wanted to play charity worker, I could fund it myself.”
I was quiet for a moment. “That’s a hard line to draw.”
“He draws hard lines.” There was no bitterness in her voice, just acceptance that told me she’d made her peace with it long ago. “He’s not a bad man. He just genuinely can’t understand why anyone with access to money would choose not to use it to accumulate more money. The concept doesn’t compute.”
I wanted to ask about what kind of access, but that wasn’t the point of her story.
“My father is not that extreme,” I said slowly. “But I understand the sentiment more than you might think.”
She looked at me with some surprise, like she hadn’t expected that.
“His whole life is Blackwell Studios,” I said.
“He built it. It’s his blood and bones. And he has a lot of children.
Most of us want nothing to do with the entertainment side of things.
My mom and dad thrive in the limelight. They love the movie business, but it’s not our thing.
Cleo wants to design wedding gowns. Drew would rather be out on his boat than sitting in a production meeting.
I’ve got my hands in enough different pots that Dad can’t really complain, but I know it stings.
He pictured us all carrying on the studio legacy and instead he got Cleo the dressmaker, Drew the investor, and me who has a mind for business. ”
“But not show business?” she asked.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
She smiled. “Does he say anything?”
“He doesn’t have to. It’s in the eyes.” I swirled the last of my wine.
“He’s proud of us, I think. In the way that fathers are proud when their kids are successful even if it’s not the success they imagined.
But there’s an undercurrent. Like he’s waiting for one of us to come around and take the wheel at the studio. ”
“And none of you will.”
“And none of us will.” I set my glass down.
“My cousin Adrian runs his father’s business.
Well, they all kind of run it, but whatever.
I think our father thinks we should be doing that as well.
I don’t think any of us could do it the way he does, and I think somewhere underneath all the pressure, he knows that. ”
She was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite figure it out. It wasn’t pity. Something more like understanding.
“It’s different from what happened to me,” she said carefully. “He didn’t cut you off.”
“No. He did not. And I’m not trying to compare it. You took a genuine hit for what you believe in.” I met her eyes. “That’s a tough call, Victoria. Most people wouldn’t be able to make it.”
She smiled. “It was the right call,” she said quietly. “I’d make it again.”
I believed her completely.
We finished dinner in no rush. Contrary to what it felt like when I started the night, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.
At some point the server had cleared our plates and left the check.
I signed it without breaking the conversation, which I was fairly certain was a personal record.
I was usually watching the clock at this point in an evening, mentally calculating escape routes.
Instead, I’d lost track of time entirely.
I removed the bib—finally—and folded it on the table with as much dignity as the act allowed.
Victoria pressed her lips together, clearly fighting a smile.
“Not a word,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
She laughed and I realized I needed to hear it again. I craved that sound. We stood and walked out of the restaurant. I opened the car door for her and she got in. We headed out into the night.
I wasn’t ready for the evening to be over. “Want to get dessert?” I asked.
“The two hours are technically up,” she said.
“They are.”
“So I can go home.”
“You can,” I agreed. I let a few seconds of silence pass. “Or you could come up to my place for a drink. I’m in the hills. The view is worth seeing.”
She turned to look at me. I kept my eyes on the road but I could feel her working through it, weighing the options, having some internal debate.
“One drink,” she said finally.
I grinned.
She turned back to the window. “And you’re not allowed to pull any fire alarms if you want me out of your house. Just order me an Uber. Don’t get me wet.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something really inappropriate. Like really, really bad.
I drove toward my sprawling house that was surrounded by other mansions. Celebrities and tech gurus were my neighbors.
The house looked its best at night. During the day it was impressive, all clean lines and stone and glass.
But at night, with the city spread out below, it became something else entirely.
Something that justified the price tag. It was a ten-million-dollar view and worth every penny.
It was quiet and relatively private despite the concentration of homes in the area.
We all had lots of land, high fences, and higher shrubs.
“Wow,” she said when I pulled to a stop in the driveway. “This is gorgeous.”
I tried to see it from her eyes. I had plenty of soft lighting that highlighted the walkway and trees. The lawn and the water feature were also illuminated.
I watched her face when I opened the front door and she stepped through into the living room, where the far wall was entirely glass. The view was unobstructed all the way to the ocean.
She stopped walking.
“Okay,” she said softly. “I see what you mean.”
I went to the bar near the kitchen and poured two glasses of a Scotch I’d been saving for no particular reason. I carried the drinks out through the glass doors to the terrace. It was a cool night. I considered turning on one of the patio heaters, but the chill felt good.
She was already standing at the railing when I got there, her hands resting on the stone ledge. Her hair was moving slightly in the breeze. She didn’t try to fix it, just let those wild curls swirl around her.
I handed her a glass and stood beside her at the railing. Not close enough to crowd her.
“It truly is beautiful up here,” she said.
“I like it. I thought about a house in Malibu, but then I saw this one and knew it was the one for me.”
“I owe you an apology,” I said eventually.
She looked at me sideways. “For which offense specifically?”
“The sidewalk.” I turned toward her slightly. “I wasn’t watching where I was going and I knocked you down. I didn’t apologize. That was a dick move.”
“It really was,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“I recovered.”
“But not the shoes.”
She laughed. “That’s a different apology.”
“I’ll replace the shoes.”
“I don’t know,” she mused. “Maybe that’s on your brother.”
“Definitely on him.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I felt sparks like this with a woman. I took a small step closer, my shoulder brushing hers.
“Victoria,” I said.
She turned toward me, tipping her chin up slightly. I forgot what I was going to say. It didn’t matter. Nothing I could have said would have been adequate for the moment anyway.
I set my glass down on the railing and took her glass from her hand and set it beside mine. She let me. She was watching me like she was waiting to see what I’d do.
I knew what I wanted to do.
I reached up and tucked that curl behind her ear. My fingers barely grazed her cheek. She didn’t move away, which I took as an invitation. It wasn’t a rejection.
I leaned down and kissed her.
It started soft. Tentative. Testing the distance between us. Her lips were plump and tasted faintly of the Scotch. For a moment she was still, and I thought I’d misread everything. But then she kissed me back, and it stopped being tentative at all.
My hand moved from her cheek to the back of her neck, my fingers brushing across her skin as I gently pressed her lips open. My tongue swept inside her mouth. She moaned and leaned into me. I angled my head to deepen the kiss. She was into it and then suddenly she was pushing me back.
“I, um, where’s the powder room?”
“Second door on the left.”
And then she was gone.