Save the Date

Chapter 53

53

Poppy seemed good as new by Friday morning. Cara took her out for a brief early-morning stroll at 7:30, taking a cautionary interest in her urine output, as the vet tech had suggested. All was well.

Except that she was running a one-woman show again. Reluctantly concluding that there was no way she could do it all, Cara referred phone and email orders to another downtown florist, and even paid the florist to deliver the few arrangements Ginny Best had finished before her Thursday banishment.

Cara was working on placing the Trapnell order with her California shipper when the office phone rang. She grabbed the receiver.

“Bloom. This is Cara.”

“Hi Cara, it’s Meredith. Have you talked to your bride today?”

“Which bride?”

“Brooke Trapnell. She was supposed to sit for her wedding portrait in my studio today. She’s nearly an hour late.”

Cara squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. “Have you tried to call her?”

“I don’t have her number. I made the arrangements with you, remember?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll call and suggest she get her tiny little heinie over there pronto. Sorry for the hassle.”

She considered her best strategy for contacting Brooke Trapnell. Emails were a waste of time, and phone calls were iffy at best. A text just might get the girl’s attention.

Brooke! Call me ASAP! Very important! Cara

Ten minutes later, when she’d still had no reply, she tried again.

Brooke! Don’t make me call Patricia.

Her phone rang almost as soon as the text sent.

“Very funny,” Brooke said, chuckling. “What’s so important that you had to threaten to bring in the big guns?”

“Do you know what day it is?” Cara asked.

“It’s Friday. Lunchtime. I only know that because everybody else in my office is eating lunch, while I’m still sitting at my desk buried in Georgia code.”

“You’re supposed to be at the photographer’s,” Cara said pointedly.

“Oh hell! I completely forgot. I had a deposition that ran long this morning, and my whole day has been screwed up.”

“You were due there almost an hour ago.”

“I can’t get away now, that’s for sure. Give me her number, and I’ll call and rebook.”

“Do both of us a favor and see that you do, okay? Otherwise your stepmother is going to hound me into an early grave. She wants that wedding portrait as a belated Father’s Day gift for your dad.”

“Why? Gordon’s not her daddy. He’s mine.”

“Take it up with her, not me,” Cara said. “Um, while I have you on the phone, did you and Harris kiss and make up yesterday? Your mom and Libba were pretty upset when you left the way you did.”

“Geez,” Brooke said. “I should have known blabbermouth Patricia would tell you we were fighting about the damned bachelor party. My girlfriends keep saying it’s no biggie—just a bunch of overaged frat guys getting hammered and cruising strip clubs. And Harris insists it’s harmless. They’ve rented a van and a driver to take them to Atlanta and back. ‘Good dirty fun’ he calls it.”

“But you don’t see it that way.”

“No. When I was a first-year associate I had a pro-bono client—a girl who’d worked in one of those clubs. She was barely twenty-one and had a five-year-old son and a string of prostitution and solicitation arrests. And a raging meth habit. She told me what it was like working in a strip club. They treat those girls like… trash. They post rules telling them they’re not allowed to fraternize with the customers, but the only way the girls make tips is by coming on to the guys, offering them, you know, hand jobs or whatever out in the parking lot. My client got busted for meth, and her little boy ended up in foster care. I’ve never forgotten her.”

“Did you tell all that to Harris?”

“I told him I hated the idea, and he said he couldn’t cancel, because all the guys would say he was pussy-whipped.”

Cara could see both points of view. They were both right, but there would be no winner over an issue like this.

“It’s just one night,” she pointed out.

“You sound like my mom. I know, I’m a bitch. I’ll get over it. I guess I’m just really, really tired. This sounds awful but I wish I didn’t have my own bachelorette party tomorrow night.”

“Aww, you don’t want to miss your bachelorette party,” Cara said. “What are you doing?”

“Holly won’t tell me. It’s supposed to be some big surprise. All I know is, there better not be any male strippers involved.”

“I’m sure they’ll have something fun planned for you. Look, Brooke. I know you have a lot on your plate right now with the trial and the wedding. And it probably doesn’t do much good for people to tell you to relax and stop stressing, but I’ve done tons and tons of weddings, and I’m telling you, relax. Your wedding is supposed to be fun, you know?”

“Fun,” Brooke said dully. “Got it.”

“Magical.”

“Right.”

“Never mind,” Cara said, finally. “Please, please, I beg you, call Meredith and get over there and have your wedding portrait taken. And while you’re at it, you might practice smiling.”