Given that the population of Hartsville was just a little over five thousand citizens, any wedding that happened in town usually was the event of the season.
“Some champagne?”
Eleanor turned at the sound of the voice behind her. Daniel, her date for the evening, held up two flutes. She gladly accepted one.
“Thank you. You may need to keep this coming.”
“You seem to be getting along with your mother,” he said in a lowered voice. “From everything you had told me on the drive here, I was expecting something a little more dramatic between you two.”
“I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid the drama. Mom and I are fine as long as I’m agreeing with her. It’s when I don’t that things become difficult. Take this party, for example. Completely unnecessary. We’re going to be seeing all these same people at the wedding. What’s the point of doing it twice?”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “What’s the point of any party? To have fun.”
Eleanor looked at Allie and Mike again. They were still smiling, still chatting with the people around them. They looked like what they were. A couple in love. A couple who was excited about their future.
And Eleanor was happy for them.
All this wedding paraphernalia didn’t bother her. Not in the least. That’s what she was telling herself anyway, and she could be very convincing when she needed to be.
Still, she knew everything on the surface wasn’t always as it appeared.
“I know my sister. It’s going to be hard enough for her to be the center of attention for a day. To keep this up for the next year will be laborious. A wedding shouldn’t be that much work.”
“Speaking of weddings...do you like big ones or small ones? Just so I can get an idea.”
“Daniel,” she said with a soft sigh.
“I hate that sigh, you know. I was only teasing.”
Was he? It was hard to know with Daniel. He liked to call himself a man of action, and that was true. He was always very persistent in getting what he wanted. Much like her mother.
Like convincing her to go out with him when she’d refused him for months.
“This is only our second date. I think it’s a little too soon to talk about weddings, don’t you?”
He gripped his chest in mock pain. “What? You’re not counting all those lunches?”
“They were business lunches,” she reminded him.
“One woman’s business lunch, another man’s date.”
“So you’re saying you have no real interest in investing in Head to Toe?”
He sipped his champagne. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. No.”
“That’s what I thought,” Eleanor said smugly. “Daniel, I agreed to go out with you. I agreed to bring you here so you could meet my family. But you know where my head is right now. Head to Toe is getting bigger every day, and it has to be my number-one priority. I’ve told you my plans.”
“You have. Or you could turn those plans over to me and let them be my number-one priority. Then you could go back to focusing on...other areas of your life.”
Again, she thought he was teasing, but it was hard to tell. Their relationship had started when Daniel, an investment banker, had shown interest in the growth rate of her company located in Denver. He’d asked her out to lunch to discuss the idea of what a large cash infusion could mean. She’d rejected the idea at first, but then the idea to get ahead of the game by growing her company at an accelerated rate seemed compelling.
Which led to another lunch.
Which led to her thinking Daniel himself was rather attractive. It might have been the first time in years she had even registered a man’s appearance. That had to be a good thing, she told herself.
In the end, Daniel hadn’t swayed her with his pitch. Head to Toe was her baby, and a cash investment from someone else meant giving part of it away. Whereas, if she took a loan out for the money to expand, it would still be hers. One was riskier, but the other was tantamount to giving over part control of the business. She didn’t know if she was willing to do that.
Daniel, however, had not been willing to walk away, either.
She would have thought his interest was solely in the company until he surprised her on lunch number two by asking her out on a date. Of course, she said no, for any number of reasons. But he persisted until she got to that point where she realized there was absolutely no reason for her not to go out on a date with him.
He was an intelligent, handsome, sometimes funny man. She liked him. A date made sense. A date might make her normal again. Two years was a long time to grieve a marriage that she had chosen to end.
They’d had an elegant dinner. They had agreed not to talk about work.
It had been...nice.
So she’d asked him to come to this party with her. Only now, he was suggesting there was something missing in her life.
“And what areas would those be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe thinking about other things than your company. Other things you want in life. You were married once. Don’t you think about getting married again?”
Eleanor flinched. “I don’t like to talk about my marriage.”
Because it was hers. Her marriage. Her memories. And talking about Max...thinking about him hurt too much.
“I can see why this would be painful to discuss...”
“We are at a party,” Eleanor said, raising her glass to her lips trying to change the subject. “Didn’t you say something about it being fun?”
This time it was Daniel who sighed.
“Eleanor, you have to see that I care about you.”
Did she? Did she have to see that? After a bunch of lunches and two dates—the second one not even finished yet. They hadn’t even had sex yet. She didn’t want to think about how even the idea of sex with him made her feel.
Disloyal was the best word she could come up with.
“I only want what is best for you. I feel sometimes like I’m battling this ghost.”
“You’re not.”
“We haven’t talked about this. I’m not sure I know how you feel about children—”
Eleanor pierced him with a look that stopped that sentence. If she wasn’t comfortable talking about her marriage, then she certainly wasn’t comfortable discussing the subject of children with Daniel. Definitely not on a second date.
“There you are!” Marilyn proclaimed as she approached them. “You’re not mingling. Everyone is asking about you, but it seems no one is getting a chance to talk with you.”
For the first time in her life, Eleanor was happy to be admonished by her mother. Anything to get Daniel to stop talking about Max and babies.
“Sorry, Mom. Daniel and I were just having a conversation.”
Marilyn smiled and patted his arm. “Yes, yes. I’m very happy with your new young man, but you two can talk all you want when you’re back in the big city. For now, I would like my daughter to be available for her family.”
“Yes, of course,” Daniel said graciously. “We’ll make our way