Three Girls And A Wedding (8 page)

After the yacht club, when we had
all climbed back into the limo, Kiki surprised me yet again.

“Jason, what’s the last site you
have booked for us today?” she asked sweetly.

“We’re going to see a beautiful reception
hall,” he told her, a hint of smugness in his voice. “A lot of celebrities in
Detroit have gotten married there.”

“That sounds just great,” she said,
and I again noticed a different edge to her voice, as if she knew he was being
condescending to her and she didn’t like it very much. “But I was wondering if
we could change things up, just a little bit.”

Jason stared at her, clearly caught
off guard.

“Well, of course, Kiki, whatever
would make you happy,” he replied. “What did you have in mind?”

“I actually wanted to ask Jen what
she
had in mind,” Kiki said, more
sweetly still. “She and I have just been, like, sharing a brain lately. It’s
almost kind of freaky! So I just would love to hear what Jen thinks.”

Shit. I couldn’t believe Kiki was
doing this. Everyone in the limo was looking at me, Jason with an obvious
grimace of anger.

I looked at Kiki, who nodded at me
almost imperceptibly. I didn’t really have any choice, though I was sure Jason
was going to give me shit for this later. Oh, what the hell, it was Kiki’s day,
and Jason had done, in my opinion, a rather poor job choosing venue sites.

“I see you guys getting married at
a place like Meadowbrook,” I said confidently.

“Like, the concert venue?” she
asked, confused.

“No, the mansion.” Meadowbrook was
located on the grounds of a university just north of where the Barkers lived.
As Kiki had said, there was an outdoor concert venue there, but also, tucked
away in the woods, was a gorgeous, stately old mansion. It had been built by
the widow of one of the local auto barons back in the twenties. The grounds and
interior were absolutely perfect for Kiki’s fantasy, fairytale wedding.

I described it to them in detail
and I could tell, immediately, that I had won Kiki over.

“Ooh,” she breathed. “That sounds awesome.
Oh, let’s go look at it, please!”

“We don’t have an appointment
there,” Jason said, smiling broadly, though I detected a definite tone in his
voice. “But if you’d like, I can make some calls tomorrow and set something
up.”

“Um,” I began uncomfortably. “I
actually know someone. If you want, I could give them a call…”

“That sounds great, Jen,” Mr.
Barker said. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

Two hours later the limo was
pulling back into the Barkers’ driveway. Mr. Barker had booked the venue
immediately. I had been right: Kiki loved the mansion. It was different than
any of the other places we had seen and the castle-like atmosphere matched so
perfectly with her fairytale theme.

I was feeling pretty good about
this turn of events, to be honest with you. Though it hadn’t been my intention,
I had clearly scored major points with Mr. and Mrs. Barker. Even Eric seemed
excited about the site—though at first he told me he thought it might be
too froufrou.

“I don’t really think so, Eric,” I
had murmured quietly. “After all, this is where Eminem had his second wedding…”

That won him over.
 

We said goodnight to
everyone—Kiki hugging me no less than three times—and the Barkers
disappeared into their house, while Jason and I made our way over to our cars
in the gathering darkness. As soon as he could be sure we were alone, Jason
rounded on me.

“What the fuck was that, Campbell?”
he hissed.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” I sighed. “But
she asked. What did you want me to do?”

“You should have told her you
wanted to see the next site, the one
I
had picked out.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I
replied, starting to get annoyed, “the sites you had picked out weren’t going
over so well with the bride and groom.”

“Well, her father loved them.”

“Her
father
is not the one getting married. He wants the wedding to be
what Kiki wants.”

“Oh, give me a break,” he snorted.
“Since you clearly don’t understand the way things work, let me explain
something to you. Her father is the guy with all the power, okay? He’s the one
you should want to impress. Not some flighty, ridiculous sorority girl.”

I took a step back. God, I had
known Jason was a smarmy bastard, but this was too much, even for him.

“I don’t know what
your
objective is here, Jason, but my
only priority is to plan the perfect wedding for Kiki and Eric.”

Jason grabbed my arm, his hand like
a vice on me. “If you keep pulling crap like what you did today, you won’t be
planning any more weddings at all,” he snarled. “What you did today was
unprofessional and incredibly stupid.”

“That’s funny,” said a low voice
from the darkness behind us. “It seemed to me that what she did today was her
job.”

I squinted into the gloom trying to
make out the shape there. He stepped out of the shadows and I felt my breath
catch—it was Matt.

Jason immediately dropped my arm.
“Hey, man, I don’t know what you think you heard, but Jen and I were just
having a little chat—”

“I know exactly what I heard,
man
. You were berating her because your
ideas sucked.”

For a moment, I was sure I saw
Jason’s face redden, but then he seemed to recover some of his swagger. “I’m
not very concerned with what
you
think,” he said lightly. “You’re hardly an expert in these matters…what is it
you do again? Aren’t you a construction worker?”

Matt looked at him unflinchingly
for a moment before he laughed. “Yeah, it’s a far cry from wasting other
people’s money on a shallow, superficial party no one else really cares about.”
Matt took a step closer to Jason. “But regardless of my lacking in profession,
I think my brother would be pretty interested in what you had to say about his
fiancée.”

Jason was silent for a moment. I
had a feeling he would desperately have liked to punch Matt in the face, but he
thought better of it and instead turned and walked to his car without a word.

I stood there for a moment,
watching him, before turning to Matt.

“Hey, thanks. I appreciate that.”

Matt shrugged. “No big deal. I
can’t stand that smarmy bastard.”

I smiled. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Know the office nickname for
Jason?”

Matt chuckled softly. “Lucky
guess.”

He was standing very close to
me—in the darkness, I could barely see him, but I could sense his
presence, large and warm. I felt my heartbeat pick up a notch.

“Is that really what you think
about weddings?” I asked, curious.

“What? That they’re superficial and
a waste of money?”

“Yeah, that.”

Matt nodded. “Yup, pretty much. I
mean, no offense or anything.”

I shrugged. “None taken. But you’re
wrong, you know.”

“Am I?” Matt shifted slightly, and
I could see his face more clearly in the moonlight. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I bet I could prove it to you,” I
murmured. Crap. My voice had dropped a fraction and I’m sure my body language
was just screaming for him to take me right there. When had I started flirting
with this guy?

Matt looked at me appraisingly. I
felt my heartbeat quicken even more. But then that look of dismissal crossed
his face, the same one he had given me earlier in the limo.

“Not very likely. Goodnight.”

Before I could say a word, he had
turned and walked toward his truck, his shape almost immediately disappearing
in the darkness.

Chapter Eleven

“This is
boring
,” Annie said for the tenth time that afternoon as she,
Ginny, Josh, Danny, and I tramped around yet another field, another potential
site for the wedding. It was sunny today, hot and humid, and this was the fifth
seemingly identical field we had looked at.

“No, Annie, listening to you whine
like a five-year-old is what’s boring,” I snapped.

Annie and Ginny both looked at me,
surprised at my outburst.

“Sorry,” I sighed.

I was so tired today, had been
tired for weeks now. I was getting more and more overwhelmed with the work
involved in planning Kiki’s event. It wasn’t just the wedding that I had to
worry about; we were also hired to plan the shower, the rehearsal dinner, the
welcome dinner for out of town guests, and the engagement party, which was fast
approaching.

Jason had been a complete ass to me
at the office ever since the venue fiasco, hoisting more and more of the grunt
work off on me. I was determined not to let him break me, determined to impress
everyone with my dedication and ability. I was working late, working weekends,
spending time outside of work with Kiki whenever she wanted to chat. It was
exhausting.

Add to that the work I was doing
for Ginny and Josh, and I was starting to feel pretty ragged. Don’t get me
wrong, I was thrilled to be helping them, and Ginny’s happiness was my top
priority, but it was all starting to get overwhelming.

“She has a point,” Ginny sighed.
“This is pretty boring.”

“And hot,” Josh muttered, shifting
Danny in his arms.

“And hot,” Ginny agreed. “Maybe
this wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

I felt a flash of irritation at
her, and tried to tamp it down. This is what I had been telling her for weeks.
A bohemian, natural, outdoor wedding was fine and good in theory, but in
practice it involved dusty fields, unpredictable weather, no facilities…the
list went on.

“Plus, I have to pee,” Annie said.
“Where exactly were you planning on having your guests do that, Gin?”

“You’d have to rent
porta
-johns,” I said, wiping sweat off my forehead. “You’d
also have to rent a tent, in case it rains—which, you know, isn’t like
completely outside the realm of possibilities for late October.”

I knew I sounded irritated and
short, but I couldn’t help myself.

“You’d also have to rent tables,
chairs, linen, flatware, glasses, lights…” I trailed off, noting that Ginny was
looking uncomfortably at the ground.

“You’re right, Jen, sorry,” she
said softly. “I should have listened to you in the first place when you told me
this was a bad idea.”

I felt slightly guilty. None of
this was Ginny’s fault. If she had a vision of getting married in a dusty old
field, I should have just been supportive of that. I mean, obviously I should
have tried to talk her out of it, but I didn’t need to make her feel
embarrassed either.

“No, I’m sorry, Ginny,” I said.
“I’m being a jerk. I’m just hot and tired.”

“You know what I think would be
great?” Annie asked. “If we could have this conversation back in the car. You
know, where there is air conditioning.”

Once we were settled back in my
Jeep, I decided we needed to re-group.

“Okay, we need to switch tactics,”
I announced. “I know you guys wanted to get married outdoors and not have to
pay for a site, but I think, logistically, that’s just too much work. By the
time you bring everything in that you need, you’ll have spent more money than
if you would have just booked a place that actually, you know, does weddings.”

“So what are you thinking?” Josh
asked.

“We can find a place that still
incorporates the outdoors, but that also has facilities. I know a couple parks
that have clubhouses with kitchens and ballrooms—so you can get married
outside but have an indoor space for the party. There are also some restaurants
that have outdoor spaces.”

“Sounds good to me,” Josh said.
“Take us wherever. The show is now in your hands.”

I sighed with relief, taking out my
iPhone and performing a quick Google search. Within minutes I had set up
appointments at a park-like venue close to Ginny’s bookstore, and two
restaurants downtown.

When I got off the phone, I noticed
Annie was looking at me with raised eyebrows.

“What now, Ann?”

“You’re kind of scary when you’re
determined,” she said, shaking her head.

***

By the end of the day we had
visited all three sites, and I was sure Ginny and Josh would choose one of
them. They had liked the venue at the park, but they would have had to bring in
food. I had a feeling they would end up choosing the second restaurant in
downtown Detroit. It had a funky vibe to it, with local art hanging on all the
walls and a very cute walled garden, just about big enough to have the
ceremony. Best of all, they did food onsite, so we wouldn’t have to worry about
hiring caterers.

Plus, it was available the last
weekend in October, the anniversary of when Ginny and Josh had reunited. That
put the wedding awfully close to the Barker wedding, which was on the
twenty-fourth, but I figured I’d have a full week free to do all the big
stuff—rehearsal dinner, decorating the venue, checking the last-minute
details. I could make it work.

Despite the fact that I was
exhausted, I was feeling pretty excited about the wedding. Having the venue and
the dress made it seem much more real to me. I could picture them getting
married now, picture it down to the last tiny detail—the flowers, the
centerpieces, the cake.

So even though it had been a long
week, and even though I had to wake up early to have brunch with Kiki the next
day, I brought my laptop out to the living room the second we got home so I
could do some research. Before long, I was lost in a world of flowers, ribbon,
lace, and veils.

“Hey, Jen,” Ginny said, joining me
on the couch. “Thanks for today. I really appreciate it.”

“I had fun,” I smiled.

Just then, my computer pinged,
distracting me. I had an email from Kiki.

“Josh just found a really good deal
on a honeymoon package.” Dimly, I could hear Ginny still talking as I scanned
the message, something about the photographer for the engagement party.