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Love’s Hiding
Love’s Fun
Love’s Hot
Time for Love Box Set (AllLove’sbooks in one set)
Chapter One
MATILDA
Today has disaster written all over it.
Five fifty-seven am and already I have three emails that have the potential to derail tonight’s function. Why do people insist on being so disorganized? Truly, it’s not that hard.
Have a diary, use your phone, write it down, order the stock – whatever it takes. Either way, don’t fuck my order up! I shouldn’t have to use my grown-up words before six am on a weekday. Seriously!
I’m standing in the shower with hot water streaming down my body. I feel like I’m about to draw blood with how hard I’m scrubbing my scalp, while I’m thinking about solutions for my problems. It’s what I’m good at. Not the hair-pulling but the problem-solving in a crisis. A professional event planner has many sneaky tricks up her sleeve. I just happen to have them up my sleeve, in my pockets, and hiding in my shoes. As a last resort, I pull them out of my ass.
I need to get into the office to find a new supplier that can have nine hundred mint-green cloth serviettes delivered to the hotel by lunchtime today. You would think this is trivial in the world. However, if tonight’s event is not perfect, it could be the difference between my dream penthouse apartment or the shoebox I’m living in now. I’ll be damned if mint napkins are the deciding factor. Why can’t Lucia just settle for white? Oh, that’s right, because she is about as easy to please as a child waiting for food. No matter what you say, they complain until they get what they want. Lucia is a nice lady, I’m sure, when she’s not being my client from hell.
Standing in the bathroom, foot on the side of the bath, stretching my stockings on, I sneak a glance in the mirror. I hate looking at myself. Who wants to look at their fat rolls and butt dimples. Not me! I should get rid of the mirror and then I wouldn’t have to cringe every time I see it. Maybe in that penthouse I’m seeing in my future, there will be a personal trainer and chef included.
Yes! Let’s put that in the picture. Need to add that to my vision board. I already have the personal driver posted up on my board—of course, he’s sizzling hot. The trains and taxis got old about seven years ago. Well, maybe six years and eleven months. The first month I moved to Chicago I loved it. The hustle and bustle, such a change from the country town I grew up in. Trains running on raised platforms instead of the ground, the amount of taxis that seemed to be in the thousands compared to three that were run by the McKinnon family. Now all the extra time you lose in traffic every day is so frustrating, it’s hard to make up in a busy schedule.
I slip my pencil skirt up over my hips, zip up and turn side to side. Happy with my outfit, I slide my suit jacket on, and then I do the last thing, putting on lipstick. Time to take on the world for another day. As stressful as it is and how often I will complain about things going wrong, I love my life. With a passion. Working with my best friend in our own business is the best leap of faith we took together. Leaving our childhood hometown of Williamsport, we were seeking adventure. The new beginning we both needed. It didn’t quite start how I thought. Those first few months were tough. I really struggled, but I just didn’t feel like I could go home anymore because the feeling of being happy there had changed thanks to my ex-boyfriend. Lucky I had Fleur to get me through that time.
Fleur and I met in preschool. She was busy setting up her toy kitchen in the classroom when I walked in. I say hers, because one of the boys tried to tell her how to arrange it and her look stopped him in his tracks. I remember thinking, he has no idea. I would set it up just how she did. It made perfect sense. I knew we were right. Well, that was what we agreed on and bonded over our PB&J sandwich. That and our OCD behavior, of being painfully pedantic. Sometimes it meant we butted heads being so similar, but not often. We have been inseparable ever since that first day.
We used to lay in the hammock in my parents’ backyard while growing up. Dreaming of the adventures we were going to have together. We may as well have been sisters. Our moms always said we were joined at the hip. Which was fine until boys came into the picture. They didn’t understand us wanting to spend so much time together. Of course, that changed when our hormones kicked in. Boys became important in our lives, but we never lost our closeness. We have each other’s backs no matter what. Still today, she is that one person I will trust with my life is my partner in crime, my bestie.
Leaning my head on the back wall of the elevator as it descends, my mind is already running through my checklist of things I need to tackle the moment I walk into the office. That pre-event anxiety is starting to surface. It’s not bad anxiety. It’s the kick of adrenaline I use to get me moving. It focuses me and blocks out the rest of the world. The only thing that exists is the job I’m working on. From the moment we started up our business of planning high-end events, we have been working so hard, day and night. It feels like we haven’t had time to breathe yet. The point we have been aiming for is so close we can feel it. Being shortlisted for a major contract is such a huge achievement and acknowledgement of our business. Tapping my head, I say to myself, “touch wood”. So far, we’ve never had any disaster functions that we haven’t been able to turn around to a success on the day. I put it down to the way Fleur and I work together. We have this mental connection. Not even having to talk, we know what the other is thinking and do it before the other person asks. It’s just a perfect combination.
Let’s hope that connection is working today.
Walking through the foyer, phone in hand, it chimes. I was in the middle of checking how close my Uber is, but the words in front of my eyes stop me dead in my tracks.
Fleur:Tonight’s guest speaker woke up vomiting – CANCELLED!!!
“Fuck!” There is no other word needed.
I hear from behind me, “Pardon me, young lady.” Shit, it’s Mrs. Johnson. My old-fashioned conscience. I have no idea how she seems to pop up at the most random times. I don’t even need to turn around and look at her. What confuses me is why she is in the foyer at six forty-five in the morning. When I’m eighty-two years of age, there is no way I’ll be up this early.
“Sorry, Mrs. Johnson. I will drop in my dollar for the swear jar tomorrow,” I mumble as I’m madly typing back to Fleur.
“See that you do, missy. Otherwise I will chase you down, and you know I’m not joking.” I hear her laughing as she shuffles on her way towards the front doors. I’m sure everyone in this building is paying for her nursing home when they finally get her to move there. I don’t swear that often—well, I tell myself that in my head, anyway. It just seems Mrs. Johnson manages to be around, every time I curse.
“Got to run, Mrs. Johnson. I will pop in tomorrow,” I call out, heading out the front doors. Part of me feels for her. I think the swear jar is more about getting people to call in to visit her apartment. Her husband passed away six months after I moved in. He was a beautiful old man. She misses him terribly and gets quite lonely. She’s been adopted by everyone in the building as our stand-in Nana whether we like it or not. Although she is still stuck in the previous century, she has a big heart and just wants to feel like she has a reason to get up every day and live her life.
My ride into work allows me to get a few emails sorted, at the same time I’m thinking on how I’m going to solve the guest speaker problem. Fleur is on the food organization for this one, and I am on everything else. It’s the way we work it. Whoever is on food is rostered on for the actual event. If I can get through today, then tonight I get to relax. As much as you can relax when you are a control freak and you aren’t there. We need to split the work this way, otherwise we’d never get a day or night off.
The event is for the ‘End of the Cycle’ program. It’s a great organization that helps stop the cycle of poverty and poor education in families. Trying to help the parents learn to budget and get the kids in school and learning. A joint effort to give the next generation a fighting chance of living the life they dream about.
Maybe if I call the CEO, they’ll have someone who has been through the program or somehow associated with the mentoring that can give a firsthand account of what it means to the families. Next email on my list. Another skill I have learned: Delegation makes things happen. I can’t do it all, and even with Fleur, we need to coordinate with others to make things proceed quickly.
As usual, Thursday morning traffic is slow even at this time of the day. We are crawling at a snail’s pace. I could get out and walk faster than this. I contemplate it, but with the summer heat, I know even at this time of the morning, I’d end up a sweaty mess. That is not the look I need when I’m trying to present like the woman in charge. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing, you need people to believe you do. Smoke and mirrors, the illusion is part of the performance.
My phone is pinging constantly as I approach the front of the office building. We chose the location in the beginning because it was central to all the big function spaces in the city. Being new to the city, we didn’t factor in how busy it is here. Yet the convenience of being so close far outweighs the traffic hassles.
