21. Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Marcy
Things I did not have on today’s To Do List:
Attend a bridal expo
Attend a bridal expo as a campaign event
Plan an actual wedding
I made it to the convention center in record time after reading Patrick’s 911 texts. So much for a day lazying around in bed, contemplating the consequences of making out with my fake fiancé and love of my life.
I couldn’t leave him to the wolves. What was my family doing there in the first place?
Oh, right. Wedding stuff. Next question: what was Patrick doing there?
The place was infested with people, mostly women. Symphony music blasted from a speaker stationed by the ballroom entrance, perhaps with the intent of forcing a classy tone. I found Patrick at a booth stuffed between a caterer and a stationery and paper products boutique. I parted the sea of women clogging the aisle .
“Hey, I’m here.” I felt out of breath and a little panicky, but Patrick needed me.
“Is this her?” an older woman with a deep voice asked. A gentle hand went to my arm. “Are you the fiancée?” She pronounced it: FEE-ahn-say .
I held back a flinch at her unwelcome touch. “Yes, I am,” I answered with a practiced smile.
The woman and another beside her cooed my direction. “She’s the Russo girl.” The other woman inspected me head-to-toe. She herself had floofy, sprayed up hair dyed an unnatural red-orange. Matching orange lipstick and a cheetah-print sweater. “I’m so thrilled about your upcoming nuptials. I can’t wait to see it in person.”
I had no idea who this woman was.
I shot her a polite smile and turned to Patrick. “I brought the stuff you asked for.” I set down a box of campaign stickers and buttons I’d picked up from his house at his request.
Patrick eagerly grabbed the box and began unpacking. “We ran out of campaign buttons in fifteen minutes.” He pointed to a few remaining items on the table. “Most of the stickers went fast too. These people are hungry for anything free.”
“Let’s get a photo!” the cheetah sweater woman exclaimed.
The ladies positioned me in front of the table with Patrick to the right of me, still behind the table. They snapped what I considered an excessive amount of photos.
Finally satisfied, they moved on. Another woman wormed her way through the crowd toward us. “Daphne Jankowski with the Metro Gazette ,” she stated, rapid fire. She thrust her hand at Patrick. “I do human interest. I hear you’re a local politician recently engaged? Nice angle.” She looked around. “Your campaign manager is a genius.”
Patrick shot me a Look. “Yeah. Something like that. ”
The reporter held up a chunky camera. “Photo?” She looked my way. “Are you the fiancée?”
I nodded. She wasted no time positioning us, framing the shot, snap snap snap . “Here’s my card.” And she was off.
Okay, this was a lot. “Patrick, I—”
“Marcy! Oh look, Cheryl, my daughter is here.”
Mamá shuffled toward me with multiple tote bags, along with her long-time friend. From another direction, my grandmother appeared. Surrounded .
“Isn’t this wonderful?” Nonna Russo beamed at Patrick. “He ran out of buttons! And you should see how many photo opps he’s done so far. This is a big opportunity for him.”
Patrick’s cheeks bloomed with heat. My nonna chattered on, but I had to cut in. “Why is any of this happening?”
She looked thrilled I’d asked. “This is where it pays to know people. We already had this expo on our list. When I lunched with the girls at Lombardi’s—you know, Beverly, Martha, and Joan—we heard they only needed one table for the event. See, they’d booked two tables side-by-side, not sure if it was a mistake, but either way, Patrick could squeeze right in.”
I pressed fingers to my forehead, sensing a familiar ache. I highly doubted they’d just heard about that double table situation. How does one even stumble upon that sort of information? “I thought Bea Clark set up all of Patrick’s events?”
“Oh, well of course, dear. I cleared it through Janine Strauss and she connected us with Bea. She slotted this right into Patrick’s calendar once she heard how big this event is and how many fans he could make.”
I took a measured breath. “He’s running for mayor of a small town. Most of these people probably don’t even live there. He’s not a celebrity looking for fans .”
Then again, the way these women gawked at Patrick— my Patrick —he probably was gaining a fandom. He looked quintessentially Patrick at the moment, with shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbow, his tie a little loose, and a flush in his cheeks as he spoke to his captured audience, probably about fair housing practices.
Mamá edged closer to me and rubbed her hand along my back, like she used to when I couldn’t fall asleep. “So much of politics is name recognition. This is good visibility for Patrick.” She shifted her totes higher on her shoulder. “We gave campaign buttons to every vendor here.”
“So you’re the reason he ran out of buttons so fast?” I couldn’t believe this. “Bea Clark really said a wedding expo was a good campaign idea?” I thought back to Patrick’s texts stating he’d been signed up for a business expo with no hint it related to the wedding industry. Did Bea even know, or was this some sort of conspiracy on her part to waste our time while she made deals with that casino owner?
Or, possibly worse, my family was just that meddlesome. Meddling in Patrick’s campaign went too far.
“We need to show you what we found.” Nonna Russo hooked her arm through mine, steering me deeper into the crowd.
I tossed a last, desperate look over my shoulder at Patrick. Women swarmed his booth. He didn’t even see me.
Mamá and Nonna insisted we visit each vendor at the bridal expo while providing a constant stream of commentary. I fended off attacks at every angle. No, we wouldn’t “just sign up” for anything, but collecting business cards was fine. Nobody was getting my personal email address on any sign-up form.
I tried to at least seem open to some of their ideas. After all, they needed to believe this wedding was happening. Being resistant at every turn could ruin my chances at the inheritance money, which was the whole point.
Booth after booth of wedding content made my head spin. Bridal wear, flowers, DJ services, honeymoon destinations, wedding photography, event planning for showers and destination bridal trips. Maybe Robby nailed it that going to the courthouse was the right idea.
The Meddlers, in their prime, drifted ahead, apparently latching on to a floral vendor. We were in the farthest corner from the door, where some of the less flashy exhibitors camped out. A pastel-colored booth with cute illustrated wedding cake images caught my eye. A bakery. The branding was superb— I wanted one of those wedding cakes, and I didn’t even want to get married.
I smiled at the woman behind the table. She looked not much older than me, wearing an apron with the cute bakery logo and a pale pink dress that matched the accents at her booth.
“Hello, I’m Eliza Rodriguez and this is my bakery, Take the Cake. Please feel free to go through my Look Book.”
I flipped the pages of the book that lay open at the table. The designs were simple, and the cakes looked yummy instead of overly complicated like other vendors I’d seen here. In the “A little different” section, images showed cupcake towers, a churro cake made of actual churros somehow stacked in a wedding cake shape, and wedding pies.
“I love how you’re presenting your business,” I told her. “I’m admittedly a little…specific about bakery items, but yours look so lovely. With such a personal touch.”
“Thank you.” She placed a hand on her chest. “That means so much. I aim to offer a variety of options, and especially for couples who might want a little something different.” She nudged a business card toward me. “If you’re interested, I work with all sizes of weddings, including backyard barbecues, and pretty much any confection you want. Other than bread—I’m not great at that. But cakes, pies, and confections—that’s all me.”
“That’s so funny because my thing is bread. I absolutely love baking bread, and even though I do cookies and cakes sometimes, my true love is a hearty loaf.”
“Oh, you’re a baker? Do you own a business?”
I paused. “It’s something I’m looking into.”
Her face lit up. She took out a pen and flipped over the business card. “Here’s my personal email if you want to talk shop. I just opened my bakery a few years ago and there’s so much I wish I’d known.”
A chill of excitement raced through me. “Wow, thank you. Yeah, absolutely I’d like to talk. I even have a place in mind that’s for sale, and I’ve researched the area about supplying local restaurants, so doing commercial orders as well as walk-in business. I don’t know if that’s the right move, but it’s what I’m planning.”
She looked past me for a moment, then back to me. “Well, I wish you all the best. Starting a business is no easy task, but it’s definitely do-able. And we wouldn’t be in direct competition, so even better to help each other out.”
My heart swelled. Something good came out of this bizarre day, after all. I took the business card and slipped it into my jeans back pocket. I thanked her again and turned.
Standing behind me: Nonna Russo.