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than mine. Perpetually tan from his hours spent on the course. A handsome man in excellent physical shape for his forty-seven years, with the exception of the crushed rotator cuff that had been operated on twice, along with a semi-detached bicep muscle. The very reason he’d gotten so close to a championship but hadn’t been able to pull it off. Something we never talked about, though I knew it was a lost dream never far from his mind.
    â€œCircle of love?” I asked of my wayward ball, calling on the sympathy factor that would put me out of my misery without adding more strokes.
    I’d tried all morning to keep my focus on my game—mostly for my dad’s sake. But in the back of my mind were thoughts of Dane Bax and 10,000 Lux. I tried to play it off, to myself, that all I was really interested in was a call from the HR department about my application. Another internal lie, of course. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to know if that magnetic force had been a fluke. Though that sort of curiosity wasn’t exactly sane.
    â€œLet’s move along,” my dad said. He glanced toward the fairway and the foursome who had been breathing down our necks—my fault—since we’d started earlier in the morning. “They didn’t want to play through, but let’s not needlessly hold them up. Especially when there’s a storm moving in.”
    He was so golf-PC. I grabbed my ball and clubs and we headed to the cart. He drove us up to the clubhouse and we found a table on the patio overlooking the eighteenth hole—the one that had just slaughtered my confidence. Making the gloomy weather quite suitable.
    While the server brought our usual round of drinks without us even placing the order, since my dad was well known on just about every course in the Southwest, he finished tallying his score, three under par. His shoulder must be hurting him. He’d left the limelight years ago and was now the GM and occasional instructor for a private golf club.
    Tossing aside his pencil, he asked, “How was yesterday’s big soiree?”
    I gave him a knowing smile before taking a sip of iced tea. “You don’t really want to talk about that. You hate weddings.”
    And I didn’t like torturing him with details of starry-eyed couples. Nor was I inclined to mention my chance meeting with Dane Bax. It already felt too obsessive that, as exhausted as I’d been the previous evening, when I’d closed my eyes it was the gorgeous man with the hypnotic green gaze that flashed in my mind.
    â€œEverything else okay?” my dad asked.
    â€œSure.” I didn’t worry him with the mini–rescue scene that had played out at Grace’s bar. Though that wasn’t far from my thoughts, either. Particularly Dane’s role in the whole thing.
    Changing the subject to a safer one, I chatted my dad up on news of The Open Championship while we ate lunch. Then we parted ways outside and I loaded my clubs into the SUV and drove to my townhome.
    I spent the first part of the week reorganizing myself following the rushed preparations for the Delfino-Aldridge affair. I had papers strewn all over my kitchen counters and table. Meghan’s mishmash of ideas for flowers and decorations were plastered across the corkboard that hung above my desk in the spare bedroom, mostly pages from magazines that we’d torn out or images from the Web she’d given me so that I could get a full visualization and come up with more definitive suggestions for her.
    I was long overdue for actual office space, but since I always met clients at their venue of choice or in their home I chose not to waste the money. Not that I could really afford the extra expense at the moment without making serious sacrifices to my budget.
    I wanted an office, though. Dreamed of someday having a large, elegant one that would bedazzle my brides and their parents. A little more hustle and bustle would be