She clicked to a slide. "I've priced three comparable packages from Elevate's regional rate sheet, which their sales rep was kind enough to leave at Maddigan's hotel last month. We can match them on price. We can't match them on everything else, but we don't have to. Because everything else is what people actually remember."
"The food your grandmother would have made," Skye said, almost to herself.
"The dress that actually fits," Cherie said. "Especially for curvy girls." She shook her head in a way that told me she'd seen some atrocities in her time.
"The first dance choreographed to suit their abilities," Angie said with feeling. "Not something pulled from social media where the bride and groom are professionals."
Then Bea asked, "What's our launch timeline?" and a chorus of voices backed her up.
Which was how I knew we had them.
NINETEEN
NADIA
We spent the next hour of the planning meeting on the structural work, which had sent Cole and Daemon back upstairs to watch more sport with Josh.
Coordination protocols. Revenue splits. A tiered package system that gave clients options without overwhelming them.
Matthew had questions about licensing for the bundled photography rights that turned into a twenty-minute sidebar with Angie, who'd dealt with similar contracts before.
Bea wanted to know about equipment liability across bundled events. Cherie asked about lead times for custom gowns when clients booked through the collective rather than directly.
I moved through it the way I moved through any event. One dependency at a time. The room had the feel of people who'd been anxious and were now channeling it somewhere useful.
Then Angie flagged something I hadn't considered. "What about clients who are mid-process with one of us? If I've already started teaching someone their first dance, do they have to re-book through the collective, or does their existing booking grandfather in?"
"Existing bookings stay exactly as they are," I said. "The collective is for new business. Nobody loses what they've already built."
That mattered to people. I watched a small shift move around the circle.
"One more thing," I said, as the structural work wound down. "Elevate will respond to this. They won't like it, and when they figure out what we're up to, they'll escalate. We need to be ready."
"Let them try," Kelly said. "We've got documentation. We've got each other. And we've got someone in this room who used to prosecute exactly this sort of thing." She nodded toward Angie, who smiled in a way I suspected had put the fear of God into those she'd faced in court.
Bea was busy writing something in her folder. Matthew had pulled out his phone to photograph the timeline on Kelly's laptop screen. Cherie was exchanging numbers with Skye.
The meeting ended with people who were no longer uncertain and whose minds were made up. Not reckless. Not naively optimistic. They filtered out through the hallway and across the shop floor in ones and twos, until only Daisy, Skye, Kelly, and I remained in the kitchen.
Skye was the next to leave. I joined her just inside the corner doors of The Daisy Chain while she waited for Seth, who'd texted to say he was on his way. She'd pulled on her jacket but hadn't done it up, the way people didn't when they were still in the middle of something and the outside world hadn't quite reclaimed them yet.
"Can I say something?" she asked.
"Of course."
"When Gail left," she said, "I told myself it was fine. That I'd figure it out, hire someone else, keep going. The army of one thing." She looked back through the shop to the kitchen. "I think I'd been doing that since before Elevate showed up."
She said it without self-pity, as an observation she'd arrived at sometime in the last hour and hadn't quite processed yet.
"Me too," I said.
She nodded once, then did up her jacket as Seth pulled up outside. "See you soon."
After she left, I returned to the kitchen where Daisy was loading cups into the dishwasher. Kelly was breaking down her setup at the workbench, sliding papers into a folder with productive economy.
"You did well tonight," Kelly said without looking up.
"We all did."
