“You’re awfully well rested, considering you spent the night at Vince’s,” Rosemary observed when Cami walked into the boardroom for the usual eight o’clock meeting.
“Poor guy. I think I was snoring before my head hit the pillow. The last thing I remember was eating dinner and him leading me up the stairs.” Cami felt her face warm, though she managed to control her expression.
“I could have sworn he had other plans,” Lana teased as Blake sat beside her.
Joel and Sage came in, taking the last chairs between Delphi and Jonquil. The head of engineering crammed in the far corner.
“Sometimes,” Blake said, “looks are deceiving.” Lana’s face tightened. “And sometimes they aren’t.”
“Oh-kay, if we can change the subject back to something relevant.” Cami didn’t want people discussing her private life at the meeting. She glanced at Rosemary, whose eyes darted to Lana and Blake, then back to Cami, and her brows quirked in question. Cami lifted her shoulders to show her confusion.
Lana started the meeting with the day’s company message, before shooting right into what still needed to be accomplished. They would have guests on the premises in three days, after all, and the to-do list barely seemed to have shrunk at all.
~*~
Thursday night Lana sent everyone home and locked up the hotel for the last time. Security did one last sweep to make sure the place was empty and left a couple of guys to patrol the halls overnight.
Cami called a gathering at the house, including Blake and all of the other department heads, the main chefs, head of housekeeping and assistant managers of each department along with their significant others, which meant Vince was by her side.
They ate takeout, hashed over plans for the next day, and mingled for over an hour before people started to leave to get a good night’s sleep.
When the rest of the department heads left the sisters, Joel, Blake, Harrison, Alex, and Vince at the house, Cami sent Vince to her room to get the package that had arrived from Tiffany’s a few days earlier. As he came back down the stairs, she called everyone to order. “I know that at work Lana is the boss, but as I’m now the oldest member of the family—” she pointed at Alex. “You don’t count this time, sorry—I decided it was my job to step up, at least tonight.” She took the box from Vince and clutched it to her. Her mouth was dry from nerves, and she felt more emotional than she cared to admit.
“It’s been a rough summer and we didn’t exactly come together under the most ideal circumstances.” That brought a round of chuckles. “But I have to let you all know how proud I am of you.” She paused as her voice broke. “How proud Dad would have been of all of us. It’s going to take a while for us to adjust, to figure out how we all work together, but I feel like we’re already starting to mesh, despite the inevitable rough spots along the way.”
Jonquil flashed one of her infectious smiles. “And if we don’t mesh, Rosemary will step in and straighten us out.”
“You got that right,” Rosemary put in.
Cami felt the knot in her stomach start to loosen. “Anyway, during my trip to Chicago a couple of weeks ago, I realized despite all of his many, many mistakes, Dad had the right idea putting us together. And I think we make a pretty awesome team. The media has been trying to tear us apart, destroy the family name, but it’s not about them, it’s about us, and what we can accomplish when we stick together.” She saw tears in Lana’s eyes.
“Hear, hear!” This came from Blake.
Vince snaked an arm around Cami’s waist and gave her a squeeze of support.
“So, I wanted to commemorate what we’ve accomplished here and send a message of unity to anyone who sees us. We’re sisters. We stick together, and no one is going to count us out.” She fumbled with the jewelry boxes, setting them onto the counter as she spoke. “I discussed options with the jeweler for a while before we came up with the right thing. I got one for each of us. Don’t open them until everyone has one.”
Cami’s hands shook as she passed the boxes around to her sisters, then returned to her spot beside Vince and picked up her own. “I decided a lapel pin was the most sensible option, considering our various uniforms. Open them.”
There were gasps as the women checked out the gold stylized letter D from the DiCarlo Hotels logo, but on the D the jewelers had inscribed leaves and flowers with the sister’s birth stone inserted in the upper corner of the letter. “It was a delicate balance, trying to find something feminine enough for Sage without being too girly for Rosemary.”
Lana fingered hers. “Wow, you worked with Xavier to design this, didn’t you?” “You know your jewelers,” Cami said, chuckling.
“He’s the best there is.”
“It’s like a little bouquet, but it looks almost like etchings, a nice touch,” Jonquil said, then listed each plant as her finger slid along the letters’ curve.
There was more banter as everyone tried on the pins and talked about getting together for a group picture on the grounds as soon as Jeremy arrived to start snapping photos.
“I think that’s our cue to leave you ladies,” Alex said, grabbing his briefcase. “But first, I have something else for you.” He pulled out a stack of long business envelopes and tapped them in his hand, studying each of their faces. “I know George would be proud of all of you tonight regardless of how tomorrow goes. You’ve all come through.” He passed them around before he, Joel, Blake and Harrison left.
Cami felt many different emotions zooming through her as she held the envelope, unsure whether she wanted to read it. Vince put an arm around her shoulders. “Walk me to my car?”
“Yeah.” She snuggled closer as they exited the house and crossed the yard to where he’d parked his Mustang.
“I think the pins were a hit,” he said, nuzzling her temple and pressing a kiss beside her ear.
“It seems that way. I know we’ve got a long way to go before we become the team Dad wanted—if we ever do. And who knows where we’ll all be in a little over a year. What’s the chance people like us will hang around here once the will has been satisfied?” She hadn’t thought much about leaving since she and Vince had started to grow close. But she’d never really considered staying in Colorado. It wasn’t home to her; it was snowy for most of the year, and cold and windy. She supposed compared to Chicago, those weren’t big considerations. But it was…not Chicago. Not the place where she had grown up and worked most of her adult life. It wasn’t where she planned to be.
And now she had to question what she wanted and where she would end up, because Chicago held much less attraction for her than Juniper Ridge did. Or maybe it was just the man who had his arm around her shoulders. He was always there for her, her support, a listening ear, the one she could lean on when things were rough, and he never asked for more than she could give. When she compared him to Trent—to anyone she had dated before—they just couldn’t compare.
Vince pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her mouth so slow and drugging, she stopped thinking altogether.
When he released her, Cami looked up into his eyes and knew this was love. The strong kind that lasted decades. She kissed him once more, wanting to show him what he meant to her, even if the realization had made her too breathless to speak.
Vince tipped his forehead against hers. “I’d be willing to bet a few of the sisters will fall in love with the area before their time is up here.”
Cami didn’t get a chance to tell him she thought he was right before he kissed her again.