Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Five days later
Nessa
Day after day, his clean and empty go-cup had sat on her kitchen counter, mocking her.
The time was rapidly approaching when she was going to have to decide: drop it off with a note, or call for that "refill."
For the last five days, she’d debated what to do. Her bestie Liv lobbied her to ignore the guy. Drop the cup off at his apartment when he was gone. Keep it clean and simple.
And stay away.
Liv had been one of her closest friends–and trusted advisors–for the last year. They'd met when Liv was a bridesmaid in the Cooper-Murphy wedding, and Nessa was assigned to work it. Liv, like the bride, Mia Cooper, was a social worker. Even in a business defined by drama of one kind or another, that night had stood out.
As one near disaster after another had rolled out–a political protest, a power outage, the public revelation of her boss's romance with the father of the bride–Nessa and Liv had bonded through nonverbal communication. Tiny shrugs, eyerolls, a quirked eyebrow, had marked them as kindred spirits.
In certain other ways, though, they were polar opposites.
Let's go shopping , Nessa might text on a Saturday morning. Newbury Street. I want to see what's new. Then Pilates.
T.J.Maxx , Liv would counter. Then ice cream.
Vintage resale and wine. My final offer.
In many ways, it was an ideal friendship. They tempered each other, softened the other's more extreme impulses. But it had been nearly a week now, and Liv wasn't softening on Marcus Bell.
And maybe she's right , Nessa sighed. When she did her due diligence and Googled Marcus Bell, all she came up with was a minister in Chicago who was the director of a youth outreach program. He was about the same age as her Marcus, and he'd gone to college and divinity school in Massachusetts, but they looked nothing alike. She wasn't expecting a TikTok star–and ew, that would be a turnoff if he were–but no online presence at all? That was definitely weird.
If it's too good to be true, it's… too good to be true. Suspicion abounded, and suddenly, she appreciated Liv even more. The guy was lying about something. Following the safest path – leaving him in the past – was her best option here.
The situation was messy, and she was done being a mess.
As Nessa had packed her tote for work that Friday morning (makeup, dress shoes, sliced carrots, string cheese, the week's reading for her class), the go-cup caught her eye. She had reached for it, tucking it into her bag. Relocating it to her desk at work would at least give her the illusion of doing something about it.
Employees at Wedding Protectors, Inc. were allowed to come into the office late on days when they would be required to work into the evening. For Nessa, this was one of those days. There was a rehearsal scheduled tonight for a wedding that would take place tomorrow afternoon, when Emily Barr would be married to Jake Hopper in the garden of her parents' home in Brookline.
As a relatively new concierge coordinator, Nessa was assigned to the lower-intensity events. This particular wedding was not rife with danger; there were no political or cultural issues at stake, no one on the guest list was famous, and the venue obviously did not present any inherent risks. Most of the stress for this one was media-related.
"When your last name is Barr and you are marrying into the Hopper family, you have two choices," Katie had explained when she gave Nessa the assignment. "You can relax and lean into the joke, or you can fight it. Emily is a fighter."
While the Barrs were not famous in the sense of celebrity, Mr. Barr had done very, very well with his hedge fund. The family tried hard to maintain a low profile, but once your name has appeared on a Wealthiest People list, the ship of anonymity has sailed. Plus, the groom’s mother, Laine Hopper, was a famous race car driver who broke the Formula One gender barrier. She now worked as a television commentator.
Thus it had fallen to Nessa to scroll, to Google, to scour the internet basically every waking moment for ten long months, entering variations on the term bar-hopper and seeing what came up. So many billable hours had been sunk into this endeavor, Katie and Kari were considering investing in a software upgrade for managing future noun/verb unions.
Nessa Martini, being a noun herself, had some sympathy for poor Emily. While it was highly unlikely that she would ultimately fall in love with someone named Dry or Vodka, she'd once been introduced to a Will Hendricks, and she couldn't leave that party fast enough.
The gods of love were known for their unpredictable sense of humor.
Tomorrow, though, to everyone's relief, Emily would be simply Emily Elizabeth Hopper and the joke would be over. Needless to say, she would not be using Barr as her middle name.
"Are you ready to go?" Speaking of family connections, Nessa's mom, Ranney, appeared in her cubicle. "We should leave in ten minutes."
This would be the first time that Ranney had assisted Nessa at an event, instead of the other way around. They both tried hard to downplay their relationship, but there was no way to totally ignore it. A mother and daughter, by definition, have history; they know each other exceedingly well, for better and for worse. Thus, Nessa had to check her impulse to snap, "Don't micromanage me!" If another co-worker had said the same thing to her, she would have replied, "Almost. Give me five more."
So she took a breath and said, "Almost. Give me five more."
And Ranney, checking her impulse to come back with, "What on earth have you been doing? You should have been ready an hour ago!" instead said calmly, "Okay. Meet you at the door."
So far, so good.
When Nessa arrived in the reception area, four and a half minutes later, Ranney was sitting on the white sofa next to Nilly, the office manager. Both were bent over Nilly's phone, chuckling, clearly in cahoots over something.
"What is it?" Nessa asked.
"A video–have you seen this guy?" Nilly held up the screen, the sound muted. "Apparently he's a minister and a bodybuilder, and he shows you how to do it, but he also talks about health and wellness, and I think faith? I don't really listen but Octavian tells me about it." Octavian was her twelve-year-old son. "Anyway, I think he's from around here. Too bad he never officiates at any of our weddings, right?"
Nessa just glanced at the phone, seeing a sweaty back on some gym equipment on the screen. Her mind was elsewhere, going over the contents of the two big totes she was carrying.
"Mmmm. I think I heard about him. They call him God's Gift, right? That guy?"
"Too young for me, obviously," Ranney commented, sighing, "but it's like looking at a painting. It might not look right in my living room, but I can still appreciate the artistry."
"Ready?" Nessa asked. "I mean, I hate to interrupt, but…"
"Don't be like that," Ranney said. "I was sitting here waiting for you."
"Hush now, you two," Nilly scolded, and they both shrugged, but they were smiling as they left.
When the Uber arrived at the Barr's, the driver had to pull up a block away, there were so many cars, trucks, and other service vehicles parked in the area. They each took a tote and began trudging toward the house.
The place was big, even by Brookline standards. It was brick, Georgian in style, built around a center courtyard with a pool and a good-sized lawn. Nessa knew that the existing landscaping had all been dug up and replanted for the occasion, recreating August in the French countryside. Gone were the croquet court and Mr. Barr's beloved putting green. Tall cypress now lined the walls, and olive trees in huge terracotta pots were grouped together in miniature groves. Wisteria draped the doorways and oleander bushes grew where rhododendrons had flourished just last week. Ambient scent had not been forgotten: lavender filled the air, of course, as well as aromatic herbs like rosemary and sage. Thyme had been planted in the walkways instead of grass, so that footsteps crushed the leaves and released the fragrance. It was like a wedding in Monet's garden, if Disney had designed Giverny.
At one end of the lawn, one hundred wicker chairs had been set up in rows. Tomorrow, the event designers would arrive at the crack of dawn with a small army of assistants and begin layering handwoven linen tablecloths onto long rectangular tables. One hundred place settings of fa?ence pottery plates would be laid out, with place cards for each guest. One hundred Proven?al-print napkins would be folded and tucked under the silverware.
"Wow," Ranney said quietly. Her eyes were wide, and after seven years at Wedding Protectors, she wasn't easily impressed. "The last time I was here was for the initial site visit last December, and it was all pine trees and holly and little sparkly white lights."
"Amazing what you can do with a spare million dollars." Nessa also kept her voice low.
“I remember what that was like,” her mother said wistfully, mouth twisted in a sour smile. Nearly fifteen years ago, Nessa’s dad, Carmine, left her mother for the next door neighbor’s Russian nanny. A wealthy man who inherited his father’s perfectly respectable but unglamorous cardboard company and turned it into a multi-national powerhouse, he’d astutely recognized that chic and well-designed recyclable packaging was the way of the global future.
And just like he upgraded his company, he decided to "upgrade" wives.
Carmine had run off to London with Natalya, where she spat out Nessa’s four half-sisters (two of them identical twins) in four years.
A tween who could have anything she wanted, Nessa found herself suddenly in a very different place, living with a single mother and a “weekend daddy” who married a stepmother who viewed her as a cute doll to dress up until she had her own daughters.
It got even more complicated from there.
Scanning the space, she spotted the bride and groom and both sets of parents standing at the end of the aisle, where the ceremony would take place. They were talking to a tall man in a dark suit, wearing a multi-colored clergy stole. Members of the bridal party were chatting in small groups, waiting for the rehearsal to get under way.
"Ooh, Nessa, there you are!" Mrs. Barr had spotted them and was waving. She broke away from her conversation, put the little dog she was holding down on the grass, and began trotting in their direction.
"Is that oleander?" Ranney asked, squinting at the new shrubbery.
"Are you kidding? I grew up in a high-rise in Back Bay, remember? How would I know?" Nessa had never before seen her mother take an interest in anything botanical, other than cut flowers.
"Well, I only ask because, if I recall correctly, oleander…"
A sort of wheezing, gacking noise came from under the very same shrubs that Ranney was pointing at. Mrs. Barr halted mid-step and turned toward the sound.
"Pinky?"
"...is poisonous," Ranney finished.
"Pinky!"
If Nessa and Ranney's working relationship was sometimes fraught, you would never know it in this moment of professional crisis. While Nessa knelt in the grass, dragging the retching dog out of the underbrush and clearing its mouth with a manicured finger, Ranney was pulling out her phone and summoning an Uber. That done, she ran to Mrs. Barr.
"What's the name of your vet?"
"Dr. Goldstein," the sobbing woman managed. "But it's after five o'clock, they're closed!"
"I'll take her to an emergency animal hospital myself," Ranney soothed. "The car's on the way. Don't worry, she's going to be fine. Could you get me a blanket for her?"
Mrs. Barr bolted toward the kitchen. Pinky, meanwhile, had stopped gacking and was lying calmly in Nessa's arms, looking up at her with what appeared to be adoration.
"She looks fine to me, but I think she should be examined," Ranney said to Nessa. "This could take a while–sometimes there's a long wait. Do you want me to call the office and try to get someone to fill in here while I'm gone?"
"No, I'll be fine," Nessa told her, carefully handing over the dog, whose eyelids began drooping. "We've already had one emergency, what else could go wrong?"
"Never, never, ever say that."
"I have to ask you something," Nessa said curiously. "How did you know oleander was poisonous?"
Her mom’s face went flat as she whispered, “There were moments during the divorce proceedings, Nessa, when I went up to Salem and consulted some old witchy herbalists...”
“Mom!”
Ranney cracked a smile. “It’s more anodyne than that. Remember Buell? Carolina Pickett’s father from the Pickett-Mikelmas wedding? He loves his little retriever and went on and on about all the poisonous flora lurking in habitats, waiting to kill dogs. Poor Pinky.”
Mrs. Barr came rushing back with a pet carrier and a blanket. The wedding party had by now realized that something was amiss but, evidently reluctant to intrude, stood watching from a distance.
Mr. Barr, Emily, and the minister were conferring a few steps apart from the group, occasionally casting a concerned glance in Pinky's direction. When Ranney and Mrs. Barr began loading the dog into the carrier, they seemed to reach consensus and started over. Emily's white cocktail dress was pristine; even the white feathers stitched in rows around the hem looked like the birds that produced them had never touched the ground. Nessa bent down to brush the imported French topsoil off her knees, then went to meet them.
"Everything's fine," she said in her most reassuring voice. "It looks like Pinky ate something she shouldn't have, so we're just going to take her to be checked out. We can get started with the rehearsal whenever you're ready."
Emily and her father exchanged a look, but it was the minister who spoke up.
"I think we've met," he said with a small smile, holding out his hand. "I'm Matt Draper."
Nonplussed, Nessa looked up at his face, and he did seem vaguely familiar. More than vaguely, in fact, but put on the spot like this, she couldn't think where she might know him from. Glasses with dark frames, sandy blond hair neatly brushed back from his face, styled nicely. A shade of blue in his minister’s stole highlighted striking blue eyes. The suit he wore was tailored in a stylish fit, and the man was built .
She'd been to a lot of weddings and met a lot of ministers in the past two years, but…
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Emily exclaimed. "Reverend Draper, this is Nessa Martini, from Wedding Protectors."
And then it hit her.
OMG. Oh, no. Not possible.
"Actually, I'm pretty sure we had coffee together once," he went on, his smile broadening, the all-too-familiar dimples appearing.
Someone touched her elbow and she jumped.
"I'm heading out," Ranney said to her, then smiled at the group. "We're sure there's no serious problem, but if we get an okay from the vet, then everyone can relax and enjoy themselves. Hello," –this was to Matt or Marcus or whoever he was–"I'm Ranney Martini."
"Ah.” His dimples deepened. “Family business?"
"No, my daughter and I just happen to both work at Wedding Protectors."
"You're Nessa's mom?" He seemed to be enjoying this immensely.
"Yes. And you must be the–oh, gosh–are you –"
"Ranney, the Uber's here!" Mrs. Barr called.
"Nice meeting you," Matt/Marcus told her.
"Oh, I'll be back." She hurried away, Emily and Mr. Barr following in her wake. This left Nessa and Matt/Marcus staring at each other, and only one of them was smiling.
"Were you flirting with my mother? "
"What? Of course not! I'm on duty here!"
"Is this some kind of scam? Are you stalking me? Were you the follower who sent me dick pics last month and PMed me a picture of my car?”
“Excuse me?”
“Was this all some plan, Marc or Matt or MasonDicksOnline?”
“What did you just call me?”
“Your user name. I had to fill out a complex FBI form when you threatened to take me across state lines so you could take me to northern Maine and have me walk barefoot through a wild blueberry forest, then lick the squished ones off my feet.”
He had the audacity to look at her like she was the weird one.
Taking one step back from her, he looked around, then said softly, “You’re seriously freaking me out here.”
“ I’m freaking you out?” Never before had she wished so hard for the head of Wedding Protectors security, Archie MacDougall, to be at a rehearsal. Nothing about this wedding case was flagged for high security, so unfortunately, she was on her own.
“Yes. I’m not a stalker. I don’t send those kinds of pics to anyone. I don’t even sext in committed relationships. A picture may be worth a thousand words but actual touch is a million times better.”
“You could be lying. You could have found my Instagram channel and bought a ticket to that fundraiser. Set me up from the start."
“Instagram channel?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am online. You’ve been following @verynecessary and you planned this all out. We have security here, you know–I can have you removed. Your name's not Matt Draper and you're not a minister! You're Marcus Bell from Somerville, some kind of unemployed volunteer. You can't marry these people! Oh, my God, how am I going to tell them?"
" Shhh! I am, and I can. You have misunderstood literally every single thing about me. I’m not sure how that happened, but your wrongness is... thorough.”
“HEY! I’m not wrong. What kind of minister has a one-night stand?”
“The kind who never intended it to be just one night.” He sounded so… sincere.
“And you look great, by the way,” he added. “Why didn't you call me?"
"Seriously? Because you don't exist! You’re too smooth. I’m not falling for this. Liv was right! I've got to call Kari right now and ask her what to do. Oh," she moaned, "how am I going to explain how I even know about you?"
"Nessa, calm down. Everything is fine. You’re over-reacting.”
"Don't you dare tell me to calm down! You sniped my silent-auction item, you pretended to care about animals, you slept with me under a false name, you sent me dick pics, you’re stalking me at work, you’re pretending to be this poor bride and groom’s minister, and now you're going to get me fired!"
“I’m so glad you’re being chill about this,” he muttered.
"Reverend Draper? Is there a problem? I think we can get started now." Mrs. Barr appeared at his elbow, clutching a tissue, still seeming a little shaken from Pinky's brush with death but ready to carry on bravely. She looked from Nessa to Matt/Marcus expectantly.
"We just need two minutes, Mrs. Barr. There's just a small detail or two that Nessa and I need to iron out and we'll be right with you."
"You're our iron man, so take whatever time you need." Tittering, obviously pleased with her little joke, Mrs. Barr moved off in the direction of her husband.
Bizarre , Nessa thought, but pretty much everything had been bizarre since she stepped out of the Uber, and she had bigger things to figure out right now. Matt/Marcus put his hand on her elbow as if to guide her, but she yanked it out of his grasp.
"Nessa, just listen for a minute. I'm a minister. Unitarian Universalist. Notice how Mrs. Barr just called me Reverend Draper? That’s me. Matt Draper. I told you last week when we were–" the look on her face made him quickly restructure his sentence, "–last week when we were talking that I work in the nonprofit sector. I didn't want to overwhelm you with too much detail."
"Too much detail… you mean, like, your real name?"
"I told you my name when we met. Matthew Draper. I'm guessing you forgot between the fundraiser and–" there was that look again, "–well, morning? And you looked for a clue in my bedroom? You called me Marc before you left. Because Marcus Bell was my roommate at Harvard. Divinity school. And the only way you would know that was if you checked my books. Do I have that right?"
An unpleasant sense that she might be overreacting, or even possibly in the wrong, flickered across Nessa's consciousness. Plus, did he say he went to Harvard? Ranney and Mame would die from happiness if she brought home a Harvard man.
What the hell? she screamed inside her head. What are you thinking?
“Yes,” she admitted. “I couldn’t remember your name, though I knew it started with an M. And I found a book with the name Marcus Bell in it, so I assumed.”
“There we go. The heart of the misunderstanding. See? Easily cleared up.”
“So you’re not Reverend DickPic? Or MasonDicksOnline”
He cleared his throat and said very softly, “You’ve seen the real thing. Why would I need to send a pic?”
"All right," she said, mouth going dry at the memory, pulse migrating between her legs. She tried to remember what dignity sounded like, or even basic professionalism. “We have work to do here. We can talk about this another time."
"You're right. Let's grab a drink after this is over and we'll straighten it all out."
Dignity. Professionalism. She ignored him. Gosh, he was cute. For a minister.
A minister . That was a new one.
She looked up at the sky, half expecting a lightning bolt to smite her instantly.
She wished she could call Liv.