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I sighed and told her the story, starting with the Gustavson family.
Normally my job didn’t require me to have much contact with the guests, but for the past month, I’d been filling in for the event planner, Ashley, who was out on maternity leave. Kevin Perrin had originally hired a temp for the six-week duration, but since that train wreck was caught snorting something powdery in the wine cellar, the event planning duties were temporarily handed to me. Although I didn’t especially enjoy stressing over things like cucumber sandwiches for the Red Hat Society’s quarterly cotillion, I’d been doing an adequate job.
Until yesterday.
The Gustavsons were not to blame. They were just a cheerful extended family visiting from Minnesota who floated down the resort’s lazy river, acquired “I Love Arizona” T-shirts from the gift shop, and photographed every single palm tree, saguaro cactus, and skittish gecko on the landscaped grounds.
The chain of events in question began yesterday afternoon when I was standing in the lobby, trying not to chew my fingernails as I observed the delicate transport of an eight-foot-tall cowboy boot ice sculpture. That was when Helen Gustavson tugged on my arm and introduced herself.
“Is it really a celebrity wedding?” the woman asked, gawking at the cameras, the lights, the entourages, and the massive red rose centerpieces that were being carried in by a line of uniformed resort staff.
“In a way,” I said, and then sneezed for the fortieth time. I’d forgotten to take my allergy meds in the morning, and the flower arrangements now erupting from every crevice of the main building created a pollinated hell. “The bride happens to be the daughter of a Hollywood actor.”
The bride in question was also a nightmare of demands, tears, and tantrums, none of which I had gotten used to dealing with. Usually my workday entailed a lot of meetings, a lot of numbers, and a lot of reports for the corporate office to glance at and disregard. After graduating from college with a bachelor of science in finance, I’d taken a job as an accounts payable specialist at a local golf club, working my way up to a managerial role. When my ex-husband was hired to head the marketing department, I felt inspired to move on. We’d been divorced for a while, and it wasn’t particularly acrimonious, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be reminded of my own poor judgment every day. When I applied for the director of finance position at the brand-new Desert Princess Resort in Scottsdale, I was shocked to even receive a call back, let alone get hired. But I was good at my job.
In fact I was so good that when management urgently needed to plug a staffing hole, they turned to me. I knew almost nothing about event planning—I could have said no. In fact I should have said no. But I was dead set on proving that I was some kind of superwoman.
It was true that when it came to soothing volatile bridezillas like Kaylie Tidewater, my talents seemed to fall a little short. Still, I was proud of my ability to wear many hats, and my event planning tenure was almost finished. Other than a ghost hunter convention the following week, the Tidewater wedding was the only major affair remaining before Ashley’s return. And I hadn’t asked for help once—hadn’t even accepted it when it was offered.
“Oh, wow,” marveled Helen Gustavson, her watery, blue eyes bugging out of her head as she gaped at the passing cowboy boot ice sculpture. While the bride was the offspring of silver screen royalty, the groom was only a moderately known country singer. Thus the wedding theme was stuck somewhere between glitzy excess and rustic barnyard.
Helen clutched my arm. “Do you think they’d mind if we just kind of stood out of the way and watched? I’m just crazy about weddings, and everything is so beautiful. The girls are dying to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom.”
I flinched when the cowboy boot sculpture nearly toppled onto a table of crystal champagne glasses, but with a few curses and grunts, its caretakers managed to set it right.
I turned my attention back to Mrs.Gustavson. “I’m so sorry, but the wedding party has requested privacy. So the patio will be closed to resort guests until the reception is over.”
Privacy seemed like a funny word to attach to the circus of sleazy paparazzi who were already swarming the perimeter, but everyone has their own ideas. The wedding wasn’t exactly an A-list gathering, but it attracted a lot more attention than the resort was used to accommodating.
Helen’s face fell, and she glanced over at her tribe of listening children and grandchildren. When she shook her head, their hopeful faces dropped, and I felt like I’d just kicked a litter of puppies.
What I should have done at that point was offer the Gustavson crew a round of free desserts at Kokopelli’s, the five-star resort restaurant, but it had been an exhausting week, and something in my irritable heart rebelled. Or maybe I just had a soft spot for anyone who still respected the idea of love.
So Mrs.Gustavson listened as I pointed to and explained about the small grotto beyond the extensive patio. The grotto contained a roomy little alcove, and vines shaded the view inside so that a dozen or more Gustavsons could easily huddle in there and observe the festivities. All they had to do was navigate the roped-off edge of the patio and sneak in through the back door right before the ceremony started. There was a ton of security surrounding the resort’s boundaries, but nobody seemed too worried about the guests who were already here. After all, this wasn’t even the busy season.
As I talked, Helen Gustavson bobbed her white head with so much gusto I was afraid she’d hurt herself. She hugged me, then scurried off to spread the news to her family. I smiled. There would be over four hundred guests plus assorted gutter-licking media types. No one would care about a sunburned, starstruck family watching from the shadows.
After that all thoughts of the Gustavsons fled my mind as one minor crisis after another exploded.
The mother of the bride demanded a last-minute change to the wine menu.
The bride’s elaborate bouquet was rejected when it was compared to those carried by the bridesmaids and determined to be insufficiently superior.
A distant cousin of the groom arrived two hours early in dirty blue jeans and a tall cowboy hat. He parked himself in the front row and refused to move even when tempted by a tray of barbecue chicken wings.
As the minutes ticked down, I tried to calm my pulse, wondering if I was all worked up because this wedding was such a big deal or whether it was more personal. After all, I’d walked down an aisle in a white dress once upon a time. I just didn’t like to be reminded of it.
I watched Kaylie Tidewater scowling as her attendants arranged her veil. The offending bridal bouquet had been hastily replaced by a more flamboyant one. It was now being used to swat away the maid of honor when she tried to fan out the satin dress train.
“You’re fucking drunk,” the bride hissed at her sister.
“Eat shit,” the maid of honor hiccuped in return.
Luckily—or not—the ceremony was about to start. The bride’s father, a perpetually yawning gray-haired fellow named Allen Tidewater, who’d headlined a handful of films two decades earlier, took his daughter’s arm. Then he looked over and winked at me, a move which was unpleasantly reminiscent of his covert grab of my ass outside the dressing room fifteen minutes earlier. Since I was already suffering from a blossoming migraine, my sinuses were exploding, my bladder was painfully full, and there was a wedding ceremony to coordinate, I chose to pretend his horny hand was just a figment of my imagination.
The orchestra began playing, and I started ushering the wedding party toward the aisle to walk its length in stiff, smiling pairs. An instrumental version of one of the groom’s country songs played overhead. I could see the groom at the other end of the aisle. He was staring expectantly our way just as the tipsy maid of honor was about to take a step on the arm of the heavily bearded best man.
Then a series of terrible things happened.
