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Ellen laughed. “You don’t know how close it came to doing exactly that. Anyway.” She swept a hand in front of the screen. “We’re talking about you. Do you want to meet at the hotel this weekend to look at the room?”
“I’ll call the organizers now and see if they’re comfortable with the idea. I’ll text you back. Thanks, Ellen.”
“No problem. It’ll be nice to see you somewhere other than with the family. We should have lunch one day.”
She was right. They worked a few blocks from each other, but Megan never saw her unless there was a family event. “That would be awesome! Give the kids a kiss from their auntie.”
“Will do.”
Megan clicked off and called Etta right away.
♦
Megan sent a car to the community center to pick up Etta and Susie and bring them to The Rosette that Saturday. In the meantime, she posted nothing of her own on social media and heard nothing from Alessandro. On Saturday morning, he and Jaelyn appeared on the local morning shows. So they hadn’t needed Megan’s contacts for that after all. Good. That was good. It wasfine.
Megan also saw the videos he’d recorded over the last couple of days and posted on the Facebook and Instagram accounts she’d cleaned up. He stayed behind the camera and the videos weren’t edited, but no one could mistake that rich, warm voice and that accent as he talked to the students about what the Studio meant to them.
She wished she could get the raw video from him and do a little tweaking to get the message across more quickly. But she texted him once or twice and he never responded.
It didn’t matter. The big picture was, by the time Etta and Susie’s car rolled up to The Rosette that afternoon, they had already texted her that the expanded seating was selling fast.
Megan and Ellen were in the lobby, in navy leather chairs that cushioned them from the crowds around them. The hotel was buzzing on a normal Saturday afternoon, with a line for the receptionists and a good crowd settled in at the restaurant. Megan had never been to Ellen’s workplace, so she looked with interest at the décor, which included clean lines but was much more traditional than most hotels Megan had been into. The Rosette obviously saw itself as a bastion of Boston Blue Blood convention.
A bastion of Boston Blue Blood convention, her brain repeated. Now that would be quite the party.
Megan laughed and covered it with a big grin as she received a hug from Etta and Susie.
“Here’s your knight in shining armor,” she said.
“I can’t even!” Susie gushed, gripping Ellen in a death hug so tight Ellen squeaked. “Thank yousomuch for doing this!”
Etta was a little more composed, but she kept Ellen’s hand after she shook it. “We could never in a million years have expected this. You are literally saving our work.”
Ellen waved her free hand. “Honestly, it’s not that big a deal for the hotel. You’re helpinguswith the publicity.”
That wasn’t entirely true, as The Rosette was a global brand and the Allston Community Center decidedly was not, but Megan loved her sister-in-law for the kindness.
“Come on,” Ellen said. “Let me show you the space, and we can talk about how to set it up.”
She led them to the right, past soft couches and roaring fires and babbling groups of guests, and over to a corridor leading off the elevator hallway.
Behind the elevator bank was a door that led to the emergency stairs. It opened as they passed, and Alessandro Rosselli stepped out.
Megan hadn’t seen or talked to him in three days. “Oh!” she said, then, “Hey! How are you? It’s been a while!”
And Alessandro, for some completely unknown reason, considering he’d all but had her finger in his mouth the other night, frowned at her and then said in the most noncommittal voice known to man or beast, “Yes. I have been busy.”
“’Sandro!” Susie crowed, hugging him. Megan stepped back. What the hell was that? Had it been anything? She was the one who’d said they couldn’t be more than colleagues for this one project. He was probably just reacting to that.
“And this is Ellen Fielding,” Etta said, and Megan realized there’d been a short pause while they waited for Megan to introduce her sister-in-law.
“Oh, yes,” she blurted out too quickly as Ellen shook his hand. “This is Ellen, my sister-in-law. She, um, she’s going to show us the room we’ll be using.”
“Using for what?” Alessandro said, looking at Etta. Not at Megan.
“I told you this, didn’t I?” Susie said.
“I have not seen you,” he said. “I just did the videos and uploaded them. I only saw Charlene and the kids. Using for what?”
