The Chesapeake Diaries Series (158 page)

Chapter 3

Lucy opened her eyes and glanced at her watch as she stretched as much as one could within the confines of an airplane seat. Disappointed to find she was still three hours from L.A., she sat up, opened her bag, and pulled out the paperback novel she’d picked up at BWI, a thriller by one of her favorite authors. She’d had trouble concentrating on the first few pages and gave up and tossed it back into her handbag and traded it for the folder containing notes she’d made regarding upcoming events.

The sheer number of holiday parties was enough to give her a headache, but toss in the six weddings they’d booked between now and New Year’s Day and she could feel a migraine closing in. What in the name of all that’s holy were they thinking when they booked not one, but two weddings for Christmas Eve, one on Christmas night, two on New Year’s Eve, and one on New Year’s Day, which pretty much guaranteed that neither Lucy nor her partner, Bonnie Shaefer, would have much of a holiday this year. Since Bonnie had been left to deal with the business over the past ten days on her own, Lucy figured it was only fair that
she take the New Year’s Day wedding and give Bonnie at least one day off.

She sighed and checked her calendar for potential dates to meet Robert Magellan and his fiancée, Susanna Jones. The second week in January looked good, weather permitting a trip back east. The last really big deal they had booked was a Twelfth Night party on January 6. After that, they were clear for almost two full weeks. What to do with all that free time? she wondered wryly. Of course, there’d
be
no free time. There were two weddings at the end of January, a wedding and a sweet sixteen on Valentine’s Day, and full bookings almost every weekend beginning in March.

Might be time to bring in another pair of hands, Lucy thought as she closed her date book. Her assistant, Ava, would be the logical person to promote, if they could only get her to organize her time better …

Lucy closed her eyes for what she thought would be a moment while she visualized each of the upcoming events, starting with the Christmas party the following Saturday. In her mind’s eye, she saw the venue ready to receive guests, everything from place cards to flowers to the table linens, the food, the band, the photographer. By the time she was midway through the January events, the plane was landing.

It was almost seven
P.M
. when Lucy turned into the parking lot at the small pink stucco building that served as the office of Shaefer & Sinclair. Noting that Bonnie’s car was still in its assigned spot, she grabbed her bag and got out of the car, locked it, and went in through the back door.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called out.

“Luce?” Ava called from the small conference room.

“Yup.” Lucy opened her office door, dropped her bag on the floor near her desk, and walked the short hall to the conference room.

“Hey, you sure caused a stir.” Ava met her in the doorway. “Did you see all the press coverage for your big gig?”

“I saw the Internet coverage, which was awesome.” Lucy followed Ava into the conference room, where Ava tossed a handful of tabloid newspapers across the table, all of which had coverage of Dallas MacGregor’s wedding on their front pages.

“Well, I’m not surprised. The security at the inn on Saturday was ridiculous. As in practically nonexistent. Dallas said she didn’t want her guests to feel as if they were in an armed camp, so she just told the few guards she did hire to look for people who looked like they didn’t belong there.” Lucy skimmed the photos, noting that the photographers had managed to get shots of not only the famous bride and her groom, but plenty of the decor as well. “This is like good news and bad news. The bad news, of course, is that there are too many photos floating around out there. The good news, however, is that the shots that were taken certainly do justice to the old inn.”

“It all looks glorious.” Bonnie breezed into the room. “Either the inn is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, or you’re a genius.”

Lucy grinned. “Perhaps a bit of both.”

Ava sorted through the stack of papers until she found what she was looking for. She folded the tabloid in half and held up a photo. “This one of the
ballroom before anyone arrived? We’ve had seven calls today from brides who want this look for their wedding.
Seven
,” she repeated for emphasis.

“Including Marlena Missoni.” Bonnie made a face.

“Marlena Misso—oh.” Lucy frowned. “You mean my Christmas Eve bride?”

Bonnie nodded and pulled a chair out from the table. “Yes, that Marlena Missoni. She left voice mail for me three times yesterday—that would be Sunday—wanting to know why you didn’t suggest those pretty trees with the twinkling white lights for her reception. Now, of course, she wants them. Must have them. Daddy says money is no object.”

Daddy, as Lucy knew, was Enrico Missoni, the Italian director.

“So she wants, what, the decor changed at the last minute? Is she crazy?” Lucy sat on the edge of the table.

“No. She’s spoiled and she’s jealous that someone else had something beautiful that she doesn’t have, so she wants it.” Ava sighed. “Any chance you could line up some of those trees …?”

“I’ll call around in the morning and see what I can find.” Lucy thought for a moment. Leafless trees weren’t all that easy to come by in Southern California in December. Especially on short notice. “I’ll call Olivia—she’s the florist back in St. Dennis—and ask her who her supplier was for the trees we got for the inn.”

“I hope the supplier has lots of them,” Bonnie told her, “because Marlena wasn’t the only bride who called about them. I think we’re going to have to buy the trees and rent them out.”

“That many?”

“Every one who saw those photos loved those tiny white sparkly lights,” Bonnie said.

“And all the white flowers,” Ava added. “One of the New Year’s Eve brides wanted to know if she could change her flower order to all white.”

“You told her no, I hope.”

Ava nodded. “I told her the order was already in with the florist and she’d have to pay for the ones she ordered as well as the new order. She said she’d get back to us.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “I knew that doing Dallas MacGregor’s wedding was going to be good for business, but I didn’t think it would be this good.”

“As bad as the phones were this morning, this afternoon was worse.” Bonnie slipped off her shoes and rested her feet on the chair next to the one she was sitting in. “Angela stopped answering the phone by three o’clock and just let all the calls go to voice mail. She said she’d come in early tomorrow and listen to them.”

“It’s not like we’ve never done a celebrity wedding before,” Lucy said.

“Ah, but this is Dallas MacGregor, and she’s always news. Especially after all the scandal her ex-husband caused last year with that stupid sex tape of his,” Bonnie reminded her.

“At which time she went back to her old summer haunt and reunited with her childhood love.” Ava smiled. “Who doesn’t love a story like that?”

“Dallas is really a very nice woman,” Lucy told them, “and she deserves her happy ending. And as
you can see from the photos, she was a beautiful bride.”

“Well, she’s helped to move Shaefer and Sinclair up a few notches in the event planning hierarchy.” Bonnie straightened up, slipped her shoes back on, and stood. “We do need to thank her for that.”

“Thank my mother,” Lucy told her. “It was her idea.”

“The same mother who also arranged for you to meet with Robert Magellan. We should all be so lucky.” Bonnie waved from the doorway. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“How does your mom know all these famous people?” Ava asked. “Is she, like, famous or something, too?”

“No, she just knows a lot of people who know people. Mom’s lived in St. Dennis forever and knows everyone, including Dallas and her great-aunt, Berry Eberle.”

“And Robert Magellan? Does he live in St. Dennis, too?”

“No. His … I guess you’d call her his surrogate grandmother, for lack of something better … is one of my mom’s oldest friends. Trula has a lot of influence where Robert is concerned. She wants him to have his wedding at my family’s inn, so unless I propose something totally unsuitable, or if he or his fiancée hates me on sight, we could very well land that wedding.”

“And we move up another notch. Not bad for a few months’ work.”

“Well, first we have to get through the holidays,” Lucy reminded her. “With all the parties and the weddings
we booked, we’re going to be near crazy come January. I’ll need a trip back home just to unwind.”

“Don’t count on relaxing for too long. Beverly Tolliver called about her daughter’s sweet sixteen party.”

“The one we booked for Valentine’s Day?”

Ava nodded. “She’s had what she called a ‘flash of brilliance.’ ”

Lucy covered her face with her hands. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

Ava laughed. “Since it’s in February, she thinks it would be fun to have an old-fashioned skating party.”

“Roller skating?”

“Ah, that it would be too simple.” Ava paused. “Ice skating.”

“Okay, well, I’m sure there are rinks—”

“No, no, not inside. She wants it outside. Like on a pond.”

“There are no frozen ponds in Los Angeles in February.” Lucy stated the obvious.

“I pointed that out. But she has faith in you. She wants the pond built on their estate grounds. She’s sure you can arrange for that.”

“Possibly. But not tonight.” Lucy gathered the newspapers into a neat stack and left them in the middle of the conference table. “I’ll think about the Tollivers tomorrow.”

“A little jet-lagged, are we?”

“A little.” Lucy walked to the door. “You coming?”

“In a few. I just want to finish up the checklist for the Saturday morning wedding. I’ll email it to you when it’s finished.”

“No hurry. Tomorrow is soon enough.” Lucy stifled a yawn. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’ll be here.”

Lucy stopped in her office long enough to pick up the printout of phone messages that Angela had left for her, took one long look at it, then put it back on her desk. There was no way she was going to return calls tonight. She grabbed her handbag and turned off the light. She would check the emails she’d received while she was on the plane once she got home, assuming she could stay awake long enough to read them. If not, well, there was always tomorrow.

Lucy’s condo was dark when she arrived home, the air still and slightly stale from the place having been closed up for over a week. She turned on the unit’s air conditioner and a few lights as she passed through the living room, where one end served as a dining area; the kitchen, where she checked the wall phone for the blinking light that announced she had messages, and left the bag containing her takeout dinner on the counter; the small spare bedroom that served as a home office, where she left her briefcase; and her bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes and changed from her skirt and shirt to shorts and an oversize tee.

Back in the kitchen, she opened the bag from Giatta’s and took a whiff of the lasagna, which caused her mouth to water. Using the plastic fork that the server had tossed into the bag, Lucy ate from the container, leaning against the counter. It had been hours since she’d eaten, and until she’d walked into Giatta’s, she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She ate half the lasagna before opening the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle of water, which she carried,
along with the rest of her dinner, out onto the balcony that looked out over the valley.

Watching the sun set over the hills was the best part of her apartment, as far as Lucy was concerned, though being back in St. Dennis for more than a long weekend had reminded her of just how much she loved the views of the water and the change of seasons. When she first met with the brides, Dallas and Steffie, it had been autumn, and the Maryland countryside had been in full glorious color. The trees lining the drive that led to the inn were decked out in golds and reds and oranges, the colors reflected in the Bay. There was nothing in Southern California, she’d had to admit, that could compare with that show of color and light. This past weekend, those same trees, now stripped of their leaves, stood silhouetted against the late afternoon sky like perfectly sketched charcoal drawings. Even in winter, with the Bay a gunmetal gray, there was a beauty to the landscape of the Eastern Shore that had never been equaled anywhere in Lucy’s eyes.

Not that she didn’t love her adopted state, and in all fairness, she reminded herself, California could boast considerable geographic diversity. She just didn’t have time for the traveling it would take to experience it all.

She finished her dinner and set the empty container on the small table to her left, then rested her bare feet atop the balcony railing, closed her eyes, and breathed in the gentle evening air. For a few moments, she permitted herself to relax, but it wasn’t long before lists of things to do began to march through her brain. There were a dozen phone calls to answer, emails to
read and respond to, and last-minute details to go over before her Saturday-afternoon affair, a small wedding at the home of the bride’s mother. Meetings to set up. And, oh yes, she needed to figure out how quickly she could have a pond installed, and how to keep it frozen for a four- or five-hour party in Glendale, where the temperatures in February ranged from the high sixties to the low fifties—definitely not skating weather where Lucy came from. Perhaps, Lucy thought, they would settle for an outside skating rink instead of a pond. Maybe there was some way to have it made with cooling pipes under the surface that could keep the ice frozen. Surely there was someone who knew how to make that happen.

For the second time that day, her mind drifted back to the Madisons’ pond and the many afternoons and evenings she’d spent there. In winter, most of the cattails had turned brown and lost their fuzzy tips, and Canada geese had taken up residency along the shore. She smiled in spite of her fatigue, wondering how the Tollivers would react if thirty noisy, aggressive geese accompanied her when she arrived to set up for the skating party. Surely they wanted authenticity …