She snapped her fingers around her clutched pen. “Focus,” she muttered to herself.
“I’ll need you to contact the hospital-community newspaper and give them this announcement,” she said, sliding a typed piece of paper across the table toward him. “I’ll need a list of family members and friends you want to invite to the engagement party, and a separate one for the wedding…”
She continued briskly with her ideas and instructions, Eric occasionally nodding somberly like he wanted her to believe everything she said was sacred dogma. She wasn’t buying it for a second.
“…so we’ve decided on a date. If you have time after lunch, we ought to be able to run over to Scrivener’s to pick out some invitations for the engagement party,” Colleen concluded a few minutes later, still writing rapidly in her notebook.
She tossed down her pen and took a big bite of her salad.
“Don’t you think we ought to get Liam’s and Natalie’s opinions on the invitations?”
“No. When I spoke with them last night, they told me this engagement party is pretty much just our deal. Mari and Marc will come in to help with all the last-minute details next Thursday, and of course my mom will help out. I’m thinking of a sophisticated party, but intimate and comfortable, as well…warm fall colors, candlelight, champagne and hors d’oeuvres that really stick to your ribs versus the dainty variety. So, now that we’ve decided on the date and time, we just need to decide on the location.”
Eric blinked and sat back in the booth.
“What?” Colleen asked, pausing in the action of stabbing her fork into a piece of shrimp.
“You’re amazing.”
She laughed and pointed her shrimp at him. “That’s not what you were thinking.”
“Oh, yeah? What was I thinking?”
“That I’m a steamroller.”
His low, rough laughter caused the back of her neck to prickle in awareness.
“You’re pretty good at that,” he said.
“Steamrolling?”
He pushed his plate back and placed his elbows on the table, leaning toward her. “No. Reading my mind. So what am I thinking now?”
Her eyes widened slightly when they met his. She saw humor in their depths…and heat.
She looked away.
“We should hurry. Brendan will be getting back to his room soon, and we still have to pick out invitations,” she said before she took a large gulp of ice water.
“I was actually thinking—among other things—about where we should have this little soiree,” he stated, ignoring her attempt at changing the subject.
Heat flooded her cheeks. His small smile told her he knew precisely what she’d thought he’d been thinking.
“What about having the party at my place? There’s plenty of space, and I have that large deck and a half-dozen heat lamps to keep it warm,” Eric suggested.
“No.”
His expression hardened. One second, all easy playboy-doctor charm; the next, as arrogant as a prince.
“Why not?” he demanded.
Colleen thought of how to respond while she chewed. She couldn’t just tell him point-blank that something about his luxurious Buena Vista home on Sunset Beach put her on edge. It seemed a constant reminder of the past, the crash, the drastic change in both the Kavanaughs’ and Reyeses’ circumstances.
She couldn’t tell him that her cursed Kavanaugh pride was responsible.
“It’s large, all right. Maybe too large,” Colleen said. “The party should be a little more intimate.”
“We could rent out a room at the Captain and Crew, or Bistro Campagne, I guess,” Eric mumbled, even though the scowl that shadowed his mouth said he still wasn’t thrilled with the way she’d shot down his first suggestion.