“Thank you for your hard work today, everyone,” she announced to the decorators, her family, her friends. “It means the world to me, especially given the last-minute nature of this whole affair. But our first guests have already begun to arrive, which means I need you to take all your coats to the coatroom; I need Audrey and Amanda in the coatroom itself to take guests’ things; I need all busboys and servers to report to Zach, and I need—you—” She pointed toward Everett and beckoned. “To come with me.”
Everett could have pinched himself.
He stepped toward Charlotte and fell into stride with her as they marched back toward the proper entrance, where limousines hummed, filled with celebrities and rich folk, all in designer dresses and snapping selfies. The only thing celebrities liked more than professional photos taken of them was photos they took of themselves.
At least, this was what Everett had noticed over the years.
“You okay?” he asked Charlotte as she cut through the door to greet the first approaching guests.
“Better than ever,” Charlotte said brightly.
“Really?” Everett asked as he lifted the camera.
Charlotte’s eyes glittered. “No, you idiot. I’m barely treading water.”
With that, she winked at him, then shot out the door with her arms outstretched. “Ursula! Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard. You look more beautiful than ever.”
She did. Everett stepped out into the chilly air and lifted his camera to capture the first snaps of this blonde, leggy bombshell on the eve of her wedding to one of the most famous basketball stars in the world. Ursula bent down and kissed Charlotte’s cheeks—something she had probably picked up during her stint in Sicily.
Following after her was a wide variety of her entourage: women Everett recognized from both high-caliber and low-caliber TV shows, musicians who had some acclaim in the pop and R&B world, men who made indie films, that sort of thing. Everyone was dressed immaculately and commenting on the snow, as though it in and of itself was a prop.
“It’s gorgeous. Have you ever seen it so thick before?” one girl asked, her voice bright as she snapped several photos of herself with the snowy backdrop.
“And this mansion! I mean, so chic, right?” another guy said.
Everett caught Charlotte’s eye as she led Ursula into the mansion. Just before she disappeared, he mouthed, “Good luck.”
She was going to need it.
Chapter Thirteen
Charlotte hadn’t slept a wink.
She now found herself running on coffee and Diet Coke fumes, buzzing alongside the world-famous Ursula Pennington as they cut toward the ballroom. Ursula’s topics of conversation ranged from, “I really had a lot of ideas for the wedding while in Sicily. It’s too bad we have so much of it nailed down already,” to, “I really wish you would have told me this mansion was so small. It really puts a wrench in our plans,” to, “Do you think the snow is too much? Some people say it’s too elaborate,” to, “I didn’t realize you were so pretty, Charlotte. I mean, for how old you are.”
Charlotte already wanted to pull every single hair out of her head.
When they appeared in the ballroom, Charlotte was grateful that everyone had gone to their designated positions for the evening. Even the string quintet had set up near the Christmas tree and begun to play. They were certainly just as good as they’d advertised themselves to be. As Harvard grads, they better be.
Ursula walked slowly through the tables, analyzing the expensive china, the flowers, the Christmas tree itself, the fountain and the sculpture toward the far end of the ballroom. She smirked, but her smile didn’t extend past her face. Slowly, her friends and entourage began to stream into the ballroom after her. Servers cut out from the side doors, armed with trays filled with drinks—a fancy cocktail that Charlotte had invented for Ursula and Orion’s rehearsal dinner.
“Charlotte. May I speak with you for a moment? In private,” Ursula said, loud enough for several of her friends to hear.
Here we go.
“Right this way,” Charlotte said brightly. She led Ursula through a double-wide set of doors toward the east, which led into a little arena she’d set aside for women with wardrobe malfunctions and sore feet. The place was parlor-like, with antique furniture, old-world paintings, and a gorgeous golden statue of a peacock.
Ursula collapsed in a heap on an antique fainting couch, which seemed fitting.
Charlotte remained standing.
“Charlotte, Charlotte, darling,” Ursula said. She puckered her overly bright red lips together and made a little, horrible noise. “I don’t know what I was thinking, assuming you could put together exactly what I wanted in only a few weeks.”
Neither do I.
“In any case, I mean, it’s absolutely fine...” Ursula said, furrowing her brow. “Only that, I noticed you didn’t take my flower specifications to heart? What do you mean by this?”
Charlotte remembered a number of “recommendations” from Ursula regarding flowers. The girl had changed her mind so many times that Charlotte had grown dizzy.
“My sister is the florist involved in the wedding,” Charlotte said. She kept her voice up, chipper. “Would you like me to get her so that we can discuss this in better detail?”
“I don’t see that that’s necessary. In my mind, you’re the wedding planner. Everything should have gone through you first,” Ursula said. She lifted her perfectly manicured nails and tapped them against her thumb. “I suppose when my friends ask me why everything isn’t absolutely stellar, I’ll have to report this to them.”
You mean, when they finish taking selfies of themselves and gossiping? When they notice that everything isn’t precisely to your liking? When will that happen? When could they ever look outside themselves?
“Perhaps I can fix this before the reception tomorrow,” Charlotte said instead. She had to. This was the client, for goodness sake. “It’s going to be held in the other ballroom, on the opposite side of the mansion. It’s the fancier of the two, the one the original owners had built for their wedding back in the 1800s.”
“How quaint,” Ursula said.
If you don’t like history, why did you choose to have your wedding on Martha’s Vineyard?
“As long as you understand what I feel, I suppose we must move forward,” Ursula said, again heaving a sigh. She glanced down at her shoes in those impossibly-high six-inch heels.
You just wanted to yell at someone while you rested your feet.
“I guess I should go greet my guests. I do hope Orion gets here soon. It will be difficult to marry him if he never arrives,” Ursula said with an ironic laugh.
“Did you not travel together?”
“No. I was in Sicily, as you know, and he was in LA with his teammates celebrating the last of his bachelor days.”
“Right.”
“Do you think he did anything really bad? Something I wouldn’t approve of?” Ursula asked suddenly. Her face clenched up. “I mean, did you read anything in the tabloids or...”
Charlotte furrowed her brow. She certainly hadn’t expected this—Ursula showing just how low her self-esteem could go.
“No. Nothing like that has been reported. Just that he had a good time out west,” she said.
Like I’ve had time to read a tabloid magazine while putting together this wedding.
“Oh, good. That’s fantastic news. I wouldn’t want that kind of gossip to follow me around at the rehearsal dinner,” Ursula said. She then prepared a vibrant smile and popped up from the fainting couch. When she reached the doorway, she said, “I suppose the ballroom looks fine. A bit lackluster, but nothing outrageously out of line.”
Charlotte lifted her hand, preparing to demand Ursula stay. She had to go through a number of things for the next hours, including the schedule of events, just to make sure Ursula knew when to head where, and what happened next. As a wedding planner, she had outlined when toasts were meant to happen, when the dancing would begin, a
nd when they had to clear the ballroom for the night.
Clearly, Ursula didn’t care about that sort of thing. She bolted through the door and left Charlotte swimming in doubt and annoyance.
Rachel appeared in the crack of the doorway only a second later.
“Mom!” she called.
“Oh, God. What happened now?” Charlotte asked.
But Rachel came forward and wrapped her arms around her in answer. Charlotte placed her chin on her daughter’s shoulder, suddenly overwhelmed. She could have lived in that hug forever.
“What’s up?” Charlotte finally asked, unable to recognize her own voice.
Rachel drew back. She gripped her mother with hard fingers. “I heard what she said to you. I’m so mad for you. You worked so hard on this.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. “I figured something like this would happen, Pumpkin. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s not my first rodeo.”
“But she’s evil. Why couldn’t she just say thank you? I mean, you pulled off this incredible night. All the celebrities out there are in awe of the entire setting. I’ve already seen the event featured on Instagram Live like, twelve times,” Rachel said.
Charlotte sniffed just once, the only proof she was willing to give her daughter that she felt down in the dumps. “Then, we’ve done exactly what we were set out to do. Ursula won’t remember belittling me tonight. She’ll only remember the photos that are taken, what’s written about the event, that sort of thing. So it’s up to us to keep going. Keep fighting—no matter what happens next.”
That moment, the speaker system was turned on. Ursula’s voice barreled out of every speaker in the ballroom.
“No!” Charlotte cried. “It’s too soon. The quintet is supposed to play for another hour during cocktails...”
She hustled back toward the ballroom, very nearly tripping on her dress. When she reached it, she found almost every table already filled. Every shade of pink, purple, dark green and dark yellow and burgundy blared back at her; diamond earrings glittered from nearly every ear. The perfume seemed like a kind of cloud over everything, mixing and shoving itself through Charlotte’s nostrils.
Ursula stood near the Christmas tree with her beloved groom, Orion. Just as everyone had said, Orion towered over Ursula, standing with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed out. His face was either stoic or bored-looking, depending on what you thought of him.
That man does not look like he wants to get married tomorrow.
“Good evening, everyone,” Ursula said brightly.
And the toasts weren’t meant to begin for another hour or more.
Why the heck did I put together such an elaborate schedule if Ursula planned to come in and stomp all over it?
“Thank you for traveling all the way here, to the beautiful Martha’s Vineyard,” Ursula continued.
Okay. She hasn’t said anything off the wall so far. Maybe it’s okay?
“All my life, I’ve wanted to get married here,” Ursula continued. “My mother herself got married here when she was just a little nobody. Age twenty. Didn’t you, Mom?”
Ursula’s mother stood and waved her hand, which glittered with four jeweled rings.
Ursula then turned her eyes toward Orion. They, too, glittered, like the rings and the earrings and the delicate detail on the Christmas tree.
“Orion, my love,” she said. “I want to tell you that I love you with my whole heart. No matter what’s happened in our pasts, I know that we’ll be together forever. Thank you for your love and your companionship. And thank you for standing here before me today and tomorrow, in front of—four hundred of our nearest and dearest friends and family—and pledging your honor to me.”
It was all a little overly dramatic. After a long pause, a few of Ursula’s girlfriends smacked their hands together. Someone else wolf-whistled. Charlotte made the mistake of catching Everett’s eye across the ballroom. He had been busy taking endless photographs of the celebrities, of Ursula, of Orion. He made a face, like, Boy, that was awkward, which nearly made Charlotte double-over with laughter.
Be chill. You have a job to do. No laughing until long after Ursula and Orion fly away in their private jet on their way to their honeymoon.
Charlotte grimaced toward Everett, which seemed to translate everything he wanted to know. He laughed privately for her, then straightened his face and took more photos.
It was going to be a long night. Charlotte could feel it in her bones.
The bride was unruly. The groom looked like he wanted to get the hell out of dodge. And Charlotte, herself, was on the verge of either a nervous breakdown—or falling for someone new?
No. That wasn’t right.
That wasn’t anything she could trust.
Chapter Fourteen
When asked about it later, Everett wasn’t able to recall exactly when the rehearsal dinner party got so wildly out of control.
Dinner, for one, seemed to go off without a hitch, or almost without a hitch. He watched as these illustrious Instagram-famous ladies, and actresses, and musicians, ate heartily and commented on Zach’s cooking in a way that made Everett almost proud. He hadn’t known the guy that long, of course—only a day!—but he’d still been able to feast on his Thanksgiving dinner beforehand.
Now, some of the richest people in the world regarded it a high-end cuisine.
That was pretty cool.
The food itself was fancy and, incredibly, mostly local—with cheeses and butter taken from the local dairy farm, salmon and crab and octopus taken from the Sound itself, bread from both Christine and the local bakery, and veal and raw beef taken from a local farm. After Everett snuck around, snapping as many photos as possible, he sat with the meal for a good ten minutes; his eyes closed as he ate as slowly as he could—focusing on every possible flavor that hit his taste buds.
“You look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
His eyes popped open to find Susan: her hands on her hips and her short hair styled beautifully.
“You caught me,” he said. “I really love this food. Zach’s a magician.”
“Something like that,” Susan agreed. “Have you seen Charlotte? I can’t find her, and I’m worried. The last time I saw her, I thought she was going to fall on the floor. I have doubts she got any sleep last night.”
“I imagine she didn’t,” he said.
“What are we going to do with her?” Susan asked. “We’re going to have to carry her out of here due to exhaustion in like ten minutes flat.”
Everett chuckled. “She’s a professional. She’s probably riding high on adrenaline right now. She’ll crash the minute it’s over late Saturday, but not a moment before.”
“I can’t find my other sisters, either,” Susan said. “Scott and I are tired. Charlotte probably told you, but I just finished up some treatment that knocks me out early. Will you tell Charlotte that we headed out?”
“Of course.” Everett waved a hand toward Scott, who waited for Susan near the exit. “You’ll be around tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Susan said.
Susan’s words had a way of working through Everett’s brain over the next few minutes, so much so that he finished up his meal early and set out on a hunt for Charlotte. Around this time, everyone finished up their food, shoved their plates aside, and focused on the alcohol-portion of the evening. Wine, cocktails, straight hard liquor—it all flowed like water itself. Everett wondered if rich people even bothered to drink water. Maybe it was beneath them?
An actress named Zelda swept toward the front of the room and wiggled her hips, then cast her arms toward the ceiling and said, “Let’s burn this thing to the ground!” At that moment, the DJ began to blare wild beats at the turntable toward the far end of the room.
Again, Everett searched for Charlotte. This was something he at least wanted to joke with her about. At worst, he wanted to find her, just in case Susan was right, and she’d collapsed somewhere due to exhaustion.
Ursula shimmied against Zelda, then turned around and hugged her friend as hard as she could. Everett wasn’t one to forget his duties. He hurriedly snapped a photo of the celebrity friends, checked it, and then snapped a second for good measure. “Get as much of the chaos as you can,” his editor at Wedding Today had said. “Just in case we can extend our ‘fancy wedding spread’ to the ‘party’ section.”
Everett marched away from Ursula after that, past the groom’s friends, who all surrounded him and spoke to him with downturned, stoic faces. They didn’t look like the kind of guys who wanted their friend to get married. Was it because it was the end of an era? Or was there something more sinister at play?
When Everett got to the kitchen, he found himself at the mercy of another Zach fight.
Worried the words he spewed were directed toward Charlotte, he charged through the door to find Zach, Christine, Lola, and some other guy he didn’t recognize, who had been hired to help serve for the night. Lola wavered on her heels, clearly drunk, while Christine kept her arm around Lola, maybe to keep them both upright.
“I don’t think you can just charge in here, help me serve my top-grade dishes all night, and then tell me that I’m morally corrupt because I’m not a vegan,” Zach blared.
“I’ve gone through all the facts with you,” the man returned. “The environmental impact. The morality. Everything. And you still won’t see reason...”
Lola turned toward Everett, grinned broadly, and then rolled her eyes.
“Dude! I don’t know why you think you have an audience here. All I’m going to do is point you toward the door,” Zach returned. His cheeks grew redder and redder.
“Seems like I walked into something I shouldn’t have,” Everett said under his breath toward Lola.
“Oh, yeah. And it’s just now getting good. It all started because Zach wanted him to help him prep for tomorrow. He was like—I won’t touch that! Insane,” Lola said, shaking her head. “I just wish I had some popcorn for the show.”
A Vineyard Thanksgiving (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 4) Page 9
