9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Parker
T he list of hobbies Katie gave me laid on my desk for an entire week before I decided to take a look at it and give something a try. I had been examining it for half an hour and still couldn’t make myself pick something when my phone rang.
I glanced at the screen. Matthew Scott. The last time he called me, he demanded to be checked into The Emerald villa, something the receptionist had informed him was impossible, because it was already occupied. It was a long phone call.
“Hey, Matt,” I pretended I was glad to hear from him. “How is it going?”
“Good. Great. You?”
“Same old. Can I help you with anything? ”
“There’s a rumor about Annie Foster getting married at The Gem. Is it true?”
“It is,” I said, while a knot formed in my stomach.
“I thought you didn’t do weddings.”
“We didn’t. But we hired a wedding planner. Why are you asking? Need a venue?”
I meant that as a joke, so I laughed. He didn’t.
“I do, actually. I’m getting married.”
So that would be marriage number four for the fifty-year-old movie director.
My laugh died in my throat. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks, man.”
I knew that there would be more weddings to come, but I still hadn’t completely come to terms with Annie’s.
“So,” Matthew cleared his throat. “Future Mrs. Scott heard about Annie getting married at The Gem and guess where she wants us to wed. Can you make it happen?”
Could I? Yes. Did I want to? Not at all.
“Yes. Of course. We’ll be happy to have your wedding here.”
“Great. When can we meet this wedding planner of yours? Sheila wants us to get married before Annie.”
Of course she did. Sheila was a twenty-something, not-that-successful actress that would probably sell her firstborn if it would guarantee her Annie Foster’s place in Hollywood.
“Let me check with her and I’ll get back to you.”
I ended the call and stared at my phone for a few minutes, then I dialed Madison.
We hadn’t seen or talked to each other since the shoe box shenanigans, and that was three days ago. I didn’t know what she was up to and until that moment, I hadn’t really thought about it, which was stupid. The entire point of hiring her was to keep her in line, and I didn’t know shit.
“Hey, boss.”
“Matthew Scott called.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Of course it didn’t. She’d been my employee for all of five seconds.
“He’s a movie director and a regular guest. He got engaged and his fiancée wants them to get married at The Gem.”
“That’s great.” Madison sounded genuinely happy about it. Did she love her job that much, or had she been using it to distract herself? Like I had been using mine for years? “When can I meet them?”
“That’s what he wanted to know.”
“Okay. When are you available?”
“You want me to attend?” I asked, suspicious of her intentions.
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“I’m here for five weddings, remember? If I were you, I would want to learn as much as I could. It would be hard for you to find someone on my level to work for a salary. You’ll have to train them. And in order to train them, you’ll have to know what you’re doing.”
“Focus on yourself, Madison. Don’t worry about my business.”
“I am focused on myself. I don’t want to be associated with a failed project. It would mess up my perfect resume.”
“Speaking of your perfect resume…What happened in New York?”
She hung up on me. I wondered what made it so hard for me to maintain my professionalism with her. True, she was irritating, but I had met irritating people before and I hadn’t wanted to provoke them until they exploded. But there was something about her spark, her confidence, that made it hard to keep the distance I usually valued .
I didn’t see Madison until the next day. She was standing in the gardens with Matthew and Sheila, her back to me, unaware that I was approaching. I didn’t understand why, but my pulse skyrocketed. It was probably my anxiety about the weddings. My mind associated the image of Madison with something bad happening, and my body tried to warn me.
“Parker,” Matthew noticed me first, and Madison looked over her shoulder, her face blank. She always controlled her face, body language, the tone of her voice. I hadn’t once heard her swear.
“Matthew,” I shook his hand. Then I congratulated his fiancée. At the end, I turned to my event planner. “Madison.”
“Mr. Wilson,” she nodded at me like an aristocrat. Had she adopted her mother’s behavior? It seemed like it. I had seen Sylvia Hartley a few times, but I had a lot of information about her from her son, and Madison seemed to be a lot like her mother.
“We were just talking about the date,” Matthew said. “We want to get married sooner rather than later.”
“I’m sure we could make that happen.” I glanced at Madison.
“Of course,” she confirmed. The calm smile on her face reassured me that at least one of us was in the right state of mind to make these weddings happen. She could do this. Just like Ryan said. I should let her do her thing and focus on my own.
Sheila twisted a lock of her hair around her finger and said. “I want to get married before Annie Foster.”
Madison tilted her head to the side. “Our calendar is wide open.” Her eyes slid to mine, and she held my gaze for a few beats, then she looked at Sheila again. “How about a Christmas wedding?”
** *
I never understood the appeal of fishing, and yet that is what I chose from my list of hobbies. And by I chose, I mean Ryan chose for me, after I spent an entire hour complaining about the Christmas wedding Madison had proposed to Matthew Scott and Sheila whatever.
The water glimmered in the mid-morning light, and there was a serene beauty to the scene that I vaguely appreciated. As I stood on the edge of a lake on a private ranch with Ryan and Tyler, I felt out of place. I fumbled with the fishing rod, feeling the weight of it in my hands, and tried to remember the steps the rancher had shown me earlier. Cast the line, let it sit, wait. It sounded simple enough, but as I attempted to cast, the line tangled around the tip of the rod.
“How long until we leave?” I asked. I wasn’t usually this impatient, but this fishing trip was tedious.
Ryan untangled the mess I had created. My line was in the water. “Now we wait,” he ignored my question, settling back into his own spot.
Waiting. I very much preferred going back to The Gem to obsess over Madison and her five weddings.
The minutes dragged on. Ryan was in his element, looking perfectly content as he watched his line, but I was growing more restless by the second. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, glanced around the lake, and sighed for the hundredth time.
“Don’t you want to leave?” I asked Tyler, who seemed as bored as I was.
“Shouldn’t we catch something first?” He answered with a question. “I mean, we drove a ways to come here.”
“What if we catch nothing?”
Ryan chuckled. “That’s part of the experience, man. It’s not about the catch; it’s about the process.”
Fuck the process. This shit was boring .
Tyler took his phone out of his pocket, no doubt texting his fiancée.
“Has your sister said anything about working at The Gem?”
Tyler’s eyes traveled from me to Ryan and back to me. “I’m not allowed to talk about my sister on this fishing trip.”
“This fishing trip is a colossal waste of time.”
Ryan chuckled again, but no one said anything more. The minutes ticked by until I felt a slight tug on my line.
“Looks like you got something,” Ryan said.
Whatever was on the other end wasn’t giving much of a fight. I pulled and pulled until I saw the catch—a small, pathetic-looking fish.
“I caught one. Mission accomplished. I’ll wait in the car.”
I passed the rod to Ryan, who shook his head with a smile, and walked away.
“Fair enough,” he said. “At least you gave it a shot. That’s progress.”
“Can I wait in the car, too?” Tyler asked. “I don’t need a hobby to keep me sane.”
We packed up our gear and headed back to the car. As we drove away from the lake, relief washed over me. Standing around all day waiting for a dumb fish to bite a fly wasn’t my thing, but at least I got up and did something different that day. Ryan said it himself. Progress. Maybe I could handle change. Maybe I could even enjoy it. It just had to be something more fascinating than fishing.