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The constancy.
CHAPTER NINE
A CRAPPY MOOD DIDN’T SERVE AS AN EXCUSE FOR MISSING A Monday morning breakfast meeting. So Mac took it with her, like a snarling dog on a leash, to the conference room at the main house. Laurel and Parker sat nibbling on cranberry muffins in what had once been the Browns’ library.
The books remained, a kind of frame to the space. The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. The old gleaming library table held the setup for coffee, and she knew the engraved console hid a supply of bottled water.
Her friends sat at the round inlaid table in the center of the room. Bright and beautiful, she thought, both of them. Every damn hair in place at eight-freaking-A.M. Just looking at them made her feel sloppy and gawky and somehow
less in the torn jeans she’d dragged on.
“And when I called him on it?” Laurel lifted her cup of what Mac knew would be perfectly prepared cappuccino. “He said, ‘I never leave the house without my toothbrush.’ ” She let out a snort of derision, then smiled at Mackensie. “You’ve just missed my retelling of The Demise of Martin Boggs. Why the hell did I go out with someone named Martin Boggs anyway? I hope your date was better than mine.”
“It was fine.”
“Mmm, that good, huh?”
“I said it was fine.” Mac dumped her laptop on the conference table and stalked over to the coffee bar. “Can we get started on this? I have a lot to deal with today.”
“Somebody got up on the cranky side of the bed.”
Mac flipped up her middle finger.
“Right back at you, pal.”
“Girls, girls.” Parker let out a long, windy sigh. “Do I have to separate you? Have a muffin, Mac.”
“I don’t want a goddamn muffin. What I want is to get on with this meeting that’s a total waste of time anyway.”
“We have three events this weekend, Mac,” Parker reminded her.
“Which have all been outlined, organized, scheduled, discussed, blueprinted, and microscoped down to the last overblown detail. We know what we’re doing. We don’t have to talk it to death.”
“Drink some coffee,” Parker suggested, but her tone had cooled. “It sounds like you need it.”
“I don’t need coffee, or a stupid muffin.” Mac spun back around. “Let me just sum all this up. People will come. Two of them will get married—most likely. Something will go wrong and be fixed. Someone will get drunk and be dealt with. Food will be eaten, music will be played. People will leave and we’ll get paid. The two who most likely get married will most likely divorce within five years. But that’s not our problem. Meeting over.”
“In that case, there’s the door.” Laurel gestured. “Why don’t you use it?”
Mac slammed her coffee back on the counter. “Good idea.”
“Just a minute. Just a damn minute!” Parker’s voice snapped out, spoiling Mac’s furious exit. “This is business.
Our business. If you don’t like the way it’s run, we’ll schedule a meeting so you can air your grievances. But your bitch-fit isn’t on this morning’s agenda.”
“Right, I forgot we live and die by agenda. If it’s not on the Holy Spreadsheet or keyed into the Magic BlackBerry it isn’t Parker-worthy. Clients are allowed to believe they’re human beings with actual brains and emotions, while you herd them down your preordained path. Everybody falls in line for Parker, or God help them.”
Parker got to her feet, slowly. “If you have a problem with the way I’m managing the business, we’ll discuss it. But I have a group coming in about fifty minutes for a tour. I have an hour free today at two, so we can take this up then. In the meantime, I think Laurel had an excellent idea. There’s the door.”
Flushed from the cold, Emma rushed in. “I wouldn’t be late, but I dropped a whole—” She stared when Mac shoved by her, and kept going. “What’s wrong with Mac? What happened?”
“Mac had her bitch on.” Temper smoldering in her eyes, Laurel picked up her coffee. “We didn’t want to play.”
“Well, did you ask her why?”
“She was too busy slapping us around for that.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going after her.”
“Don’t.” Temper iced in her eyes, Parker shook her head. “Just don’t. She’ll only put her foot up your ass for your trouble. I’ve got potential clients coming this morning, and we have current ones who need attention. We’ll work around her for now.”
“Parker, when one of us has a problem, we all have a problem. Not just in the business.”
“I know that, Emma.” Parker pressed her fingers to her temple. “Even if she’d listen right now, which she wouldn’t, we don’t have time.”
“Besides if we all went ’splody every time one of us had a lousy date, this room would be full of our bloody body parts.”
“Mac and Carter?” Emma shook her head at Laurel. “I don’t see how that could be it. My mother talked to his last night and called me after to try to pump me. As far as I know, everything went fine when they went out.”
“What else?” Laurel demanded. “What makes a woman bitchier than a man? And okay, maybe occasionally each other. But . . .” She trailed off, closed her eyes. “Her mother. God, we’re idiots. Nothing crawls up Mac’s butt like her mother.”
“I thought her mother was in Florida.”
“Do you think distance is any deterrent to the force that is Linda Elliot?” Laurel asked Parker. “Maybe that’s it. That’s probably it, or part of it. But it’s still no reason to rip at us the way she did.”
“We’ll deal with it. We will. But we’ve got three events lined up, and we need to go over the details.”
Emma opened her mouth again, then swallowed the words when she saw Parker flip a Tums off the roll she took out of her pocket. No point, she thought, in having two friends upset. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the urns for Friday.”
“Great.” Parker sat back down. “Let’s get started.”
SHE KNEW WHEN SHE’D ACTED THE BITCH. SHE DIDN’T NEED A diagram, or to be offered muffins like she was a two-year-old who needed a cookie.
And she didn’t need her friends sho
wing her the door. She knew exactly where it was.
She knew how to do her job. She was
doing her job right this minute, wasn’t she? Mac cut the first mat for the photos she hadn’t had the heart or the energy to mount the night before. In a few hours, she’d have a completed custom package and a very satisfied client. Because she knew what the hell she was doing without explaining every damn step of the process to her business partners.
Did she need to know why Emmaline selected eucalyptus over asparagus fern as filler in an arrangement?
No, she did not.
Did she need to know Laurel’s secret ingredient for butter-cream frosting?
Right back with the no.
Did she need to discuss Parker’s latest entry in her Crack-Berry?
Dear God, no.
So why the hell did anyone care what filter she planned to use or which camera bodies she’d decided to strap on?
They did theirs, she did hers, and everybody was happy.
She pulled her weight. She put in the time, the effort, the hours the same as the rest. She . . .
She cut the damn mat wrong.
Disgusted, Mac tossed the ruined board across the room. She grabbed another, checked and rechecked her measurements. But when she lifted her mat knife, her hand shook.
With considerable care, she set it down, then took two steps back.
Yes, she knew when she’d acted the bitch, she thought. And she knew when she had to get a grip on herself. As in right now. She knew, too, she admitted with a sigh, when she owed two of the people she loved most in the world an apology.
Even if they had been snotty—and they damn well had—she’d been snotty first.
She checked the time and sighed. She couldn’t do it now. Couldn’t get this weight off, not when Parker was currently escorting clients through the house.
We’re full service. We can tailor every detail to reflect your needs, and your vision of the day. Here’s our crazy bitch of a photographer who’ll be documenting that day for you in pictures.
Wouldn’t that be perfect?
She stepped into the powder room to splash cold water on her face. They were her friends, she reminded herself. They had to forgive her. That was the rule.
Steadier, she went back into her studio.
She let her machine take her calls and gave her current task all her concentration. When she’d finished she decided the client would never know the package had been created by a bitch in the throes of a massive attack of self-pity. Once everything was loaded in her car, Mac drove to the main house.
True, they had to forgive her, but first she had to ask. That was another rule.
Out of habit, she went in the back. When she stepped into the kitchen, she saw Laurel working at the prep counter. With a hand steady and precise as a surgeon’s, she monogrammed heart-shaped chocolate.
Knowing better than to interrupt, Mac held her silence.
“I can hear you breathing,” Laurel said after a moment. “Go away.”
“I just came in to eat some crow. I’ll be quick.”
“Make that very. I’ve got another five hundred of these to finish.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for acting that way, for saying those things. Things I didn’t mean in the first place. I’m sorry for walking out on the meeting.”
