“It was my assistant,” Imogen whined.
Brandy glared at Imogen. “What is wrong with you? You can’t just dictate the guests’ wedding outfits!”
“I want to have nice pictures,” Imogen insisted. “Everyone has to run their wedding attire by me. I’m the bride. Bride’s day, bride’s way.”
“Then I’m on the way out,” Brandy said. “This is insanity. And I’m sending you a bill for the dress I had to buy,” she told Mika. “Your brother better be paying for it.”
“No!” Imogen wailed. “Now I don’t have any pretty bridesmaids left, just Mika.”
I hoped Mika would just throw down the mike and quit right there and then, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry Immie,” she said.
“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be there stuffing your face.”
Mika set down the cheese she was eating and nervously picked at her nails.
Imogen’s nostrils flared as she sucked in breaths.
“I don’t have a venue. I don’t have a wedding party. This is a disaster.” She glared at me. “You have to fix it.”
“I’m working on a new venue,” I promised. “I hope to have one by tomorrow.”Dear God, please let Evan come up with something.
“That’s not good enough. You have to be a bridesmaid.”
“Uh—”
“You’re not bad looking. You could pass as one of my bridesmaids.”
“I don’t think the wedding planner should be a bridesmaid,” I said. “It’s not done.”
“This is a crisis situation, Ivy,” my mother admonished. “You need to step up and take some responsibility for what’s happened here.”
Imogen nodded along as she spoke.
“It can’t just be Mika and Evan up there on the bride’s side,” my mother continued. “She has to have bridesmaids, plural.”
“You can fit in Daisy’s dress,” Imogen said.
Mika smiled at me hopefully. I couldn’t leave the poor girl hanging out to dry.
“Sure,” I said faintly. “Sure, I’ll be in your wedding party.”
41
Evan
“Holy shit,” Archer Svensson said when I met with him in his office to explain my wedding venue situation. “You know, I was thinking we should do more weddings at Greyson Hotels. I figured it was easy money, but wowza, was I wrong!”
“I know my half sister is a little…”
“Nuts? Deranged? Cracked?” Archer listed.
“Stressed,” I said finally. “But if you could please find somewhere for us to have this wedding, even if it’s in the basement of one of your hotels, I’d owe you big time.”
“You need to do the ceremony and the reception?” Archer’s COO and half brother, Mike, asked, looking through their booking software.
“If possible.”
“I guess you could do it in the Brookview. It’s not booked.”
