Chapter 32
Thirty-two
The next morning when she woke up, Ewan was in bed beside her. She immediately kicked him out.
‘I thought we agreed to give this thing a chance?’
‘I draw the line at Poppy coming in here and seeing us in bed together. That’s just too soon.’
He let out a long, drawn-out breath before throwing back the covers and gathering up his clothes from the floor.
‘Okay. I get it and I agree, but I draw the line at pretending we’re not attracted to each other when it comes to everyone and everything else.
We have limited time together and I’m not going to waste it hiding how we feel just because of everyone else around us. ’
‘Fair enough. Just keep it G-rated around Poppy.’
‘I wasn’t planning on bending you over the kitchen table during lunch,’ he said.
‘Good to know you can practise such restraint, Mr Campbell,’ she murmured.
‘Sneaking down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, however, is a whole different story,’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
Later, as Kenzie was getting dressed, her phone rang. ‘Michelle, hi. How are you?’ She’d been planning on calling her to check in about the launch set for the next day and make sure everything was on track.
‘Oh, not too bad,’ Michelle said cheerfully … a little too cheerfully. Kenzie immediately went on guard and stopped pulling on her shoes.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I didn’t want to worry you while you’re away, but Tara’s out at the McAllister’s, and I can’t reach her because there’s no reception out there.’
‘That’s okay. What’s the issue?’
She heard Michelle draw in a long breath and immediately prepared herself …
this was going to be something big. ‘The venue just called to say they’ve had a small fire overnight, which set off the sprinkler system.
Everything’s drenched. There’s no way we’ll be able to use it for the EnoVision launch tomorrow morning. ’
Shit, shit, shititty, shit. This was a major client they’d been hoping to get repeat business from, with this launch being the showcase event.
Don’t panic … focus. Kenzie closed her eyes and took a calming breath.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s think through our options.
We need to find an alternative venue as close as possible to the original.
Try The Harriot, Garden Keys and The Palms Resort first. I’ll get my contact list and go through it for anything else I can find, but you make a start.
Explain what happened and see if there’s any spaces available that will fit the criteria. ’
‘Okay. Do I contact the client?’
‘I can do that. They’ll need to know what’s going on as soon as possible,’ Kenzie said.
‘I’ve actually developed quite a good relationship with Harvey and Jason. I could call them and explain,’ Michelle said, her words coming out in a rush.
Kenzie’s immediate instinct was to overrule her and handle it herself—these were potentially big clients, if they somehow managed to salvage their first event with them after this crisis—but something about the nervous, yet assertive suggestion gave her pause.
Michelle had been working extremely hard on this event and Kenzie had been wanting her to take on more responsibility … but this was a big call.
‘Okay,’ she finally said. ‘Reassure them that we’re trying to find a new venue and we can arrange the relocation and handle the notifications once we find somewhere.
Make sure you let them know we’ll be keeping them firmly in the loop, but we have every confidence we can still make this work with little to no impact on the event. ’
‘Okay. Got it. I’ll make the call now. Thank you, Kenzie. I won’t let you down.’
Kenzie smiled a little at the steely determination in her colleague’s tone. ‘Stay in touch. I’ll forward you an email with some other contacts shortly.’
Yesterday, they’d planned on heading into town to take a look around, but Kenzie needed to get on top of this crisis before she went anywhere, so she headed downstairs to find Ewan and let him know about the change of plans.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said after explaining the situation.
‘No drama, maybe Poppy and I could still go? There’s a great little ice-cream shop in town.’
‘Sure,’ she said after only the slightest hesitation.
‘I’d like to spend some time with her.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Kenzie said, nodding. ‘She’d love it. This thing with work has just thrown me off-kilter a bit.’
‘Well, we’ll get out of your hair, and you can just focus on what you need to do.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, smiling gratefully. It was a great solution—and Poppy would genuinely love having Ewan all to herself.
Maybe she was feeling a little excluded, which was silly because she had a situation to sort out.
Still … she would have loved to have spent the day with just the three of them together, exploring the town and eating ice cream.
However, that would not get this problem sorted, so instead she made a strong cup of coffee and headed back upstairs.
The morning flashed by in a blur of calls, but eventually, they managed to secure a new venue and reassure the clients that everything was back on track.
‘So, we’ve hired a shuttle bus to transport everyone to the new venue, and we’ve notified catering, double-checked there’s enough seating and that the new conference room is big enough and sent out the email from the master list to all attendees regarding the change of venue,’ Kenzie said as she and Michelle went over the last of the items on their list.
‘Check.’
‘And I just got off the phone with Harvey, who called to let me know how amazing you’ve been during this whole thing,’ Kenzie said.
‘I’m just so glad we managed to get it sorted out.’
‘Me too. I’ve assured him that there won’t be any out-of-pocket expenses, since we took out the event insurance that covers exactly this kind of situation, and I’ve made a note in the file to follow this up, if you can do that for me?’
‘Absolutely. Thank you, Kenzie.’
‘Thank you,’ Kenzie said. ‘You handled all this like a seasoned pro.’
‘Well, I was feeling pretty unseasoned when I was calling you this morning! I thought I might lose my promotion.’
‘Why would you think that? Fire and water damage is hardly something you had any control over. This is what event organising is about—something always comes up. You conducted yourself perfectly—put the client at ease and dealt with the stress. That’s why they pay us to do this, so they don’t have to worry about any of these things. ’
‘Well, when I wanted to panic, I just thought to myself, “What would Kenzie do?”’
Kenzie chuckled on the other end of the line. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret: sometimes, it’s okay to panic a little bit. The trick is to make sure it doesn’t take over. I panic all the time.’ ‘Well, I feel a bit better now that I know that.’
Kenzie stretched her arms above her head. ‘Okay, I’m going to finish up with some emails and let you get back to it. Call me if you have any issues. I’ll check in first thing tomorrow.’
Kenzie hung up and sank back on the bed in her room. Thank goodness that was all done. The remaining tension left her body as she gave a long, satisfied sigh.
Crisis averted.