The Perfect Wedding. Arlene JamesЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Chapter One

      Her business was weddings. Though she did a seasonal business in prom dresses and the occasional evening gown, bridal costumes and the myriad attendant details that occasioned the wearing of them were her stock in trade. And a very good trade it was, too; for in Duncan, Oklahoma, a community of some twenty-five thousand souls or thereabouts, Layne Harington was the one-and-only full-service wedding consultant. Her skills as a seamstress and designer of exclusive gowns made her stiff competition for any other like-minded businessperson in the whole of Stephens County. She was it, as far as professional wedding consultation went. Still and all, it was a rare day when a man set foot in her shop, especially a man such as the one who stood before her that September morning.

      He was dressed for work in soft, faded jeans, scuffed boots with rounded toes and a white button-down shirt worn thin by washings and bleachings. He held a battered straw cowboy hat in his hands and bowed his head to look at it. Layne saw tiny streaks of gold and silver in his thick sandy brown hair; the former was proof that he often worked in the sun without his hat, and the latter was a testament to his age. He wouldn’t see thirty again, that was certain, but when he lifted his head to look at her with smoky, gray-blue eyes bearing only a few shallow lines at the outer corners, she couldn’t think him too near forty, either. She smiled and inclined her head.

      “Hello, I’m Layne Harington. How can I help you?”

      “Ma’am,” he said. “I’m told you do weddings—and fine ones at that.”

      “Weddings are our specialty,” she confirmed. “We make all the necessary arrangements and offer a wide variety of choices on everything from invitations to receptions, but it’s the customer who makes the decisions.”

      He nodded and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well,” he said, “I’m the customer. Now where do we start?”

      Layne tried and evidently failed to control the shock she felt. Men simply did not plan weddings, at least not in her experience. At the most they sat in on the early discussions, grew bored with the seemingly irrelevant details, then simply left it to the women, reserving only the right to complain about the cost, and contest the bills. This man, however, was frowning in a most determined manner.

      The frown wrinkled his brow and narrowed his eyes, deepening the lines that fanned out from their corners. His mouth thinned, and his jaw set like concrete. It was surprising, given the intensity of that scowl, that his face remained exceptionally attractive, even handsome. Like the rest of him, his features were large but lean, the skin drawn tautly over prominent cheekbones and a squared chin. His nose was long and straight, his brows golden slashes above deeply set eyes, his mouth wide and finely sculpted with sharp peaks in the center of his upper lip. A lock of sandy brown hair fell over his forehead, golden at the very tip, a single strand of silver shot through it. Yes, a decidedly handsome man. Layne wondered what sort of woman would send a man like this into a shop like hers. Obviously he could not know what he was letting himself in for. She extended a hand, ushering him toward the gracious sitting area, where she preferred to stage her consultations.