A Vineyard Thanksgiving (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 4), стр. 23
This meant that everyone from the string quintet to Ursula Pennington herself would arrive without a problem.
Everett lined up his various lenses for the day, making little notes to himself about the celebrities he needed to include in photographs, as promised to his editor at Wedding Today. Before he knew it, he had constructed a whole page full of notes and also eaten one and a half slices of apple pie. Again, he glanced at his phone with the thought that he should call his mother.
Again, he retreated from this idea.
He didn’t want to ruin his good mood.
The rehearsal dinner was set for eight in the evening. According to Charlotte, the day before, Ursula had insisted that she didn’t want to actually “rehearse” the wedding itself. “She made something up about it being bad luck,” Charlotte had said, scrunching that cute nose of hers. “Like, I just know something is going to go wrong on the day-of because she basically insists on this.”
“What’s the point of a rehearsal dinner without the rehearsal itself?” Everett had asked.
“Good question. I guess, in her mind, it’s just more time to hobnob with all these celebrities coming to the island. It’s just another reason to drink champagne at a thousand dollars a pop.” She zipped her lips and resigned to Ursula’s ways. “I just want to make it out of the weekend alive and in one piece.”
“Alive? Maybe. Missing an arm? Also a maybe,” Everett had teased her.
Everett decided to go for a walk through the snow that afternoon, as a means to get his head screwed on correctly before the event that night. He was surprised to find the town bustling, as it had been more-or-less quiet the day before. He grabbed a cup of coffee at a little coffeehouse and watched as a young mother led her two toddlers across the little square, headed toward the antique carousel.
Everett hired a taxi to take him to the mansion near Edgartown, which Charlotte had booked for both the rehearsal dinner and the wedding and reception the following day. The taxi driver filled him with a number of facts about the old mansion, like how only ten or so celebrities had ever been married there, as it was difficult to reserve it. “The owners are pretty specific about who they allow to get married there. My hunch is that it’s because Charlotte Hamner is the wedding planner. They love the Montgomery and Sheridan girls over there. The whole island does.”
“I think I might have met them,” Everett said with a smile.
“Oh? That’s great. Treasure that. They don’t make a lot of ‘em like that anymore,” the driver said.
At the mansion, Everett stood in the snow, wearing that ridiculous hunting coat from the seventies, and took several photos of the exterior. The place echoed “winter wonderland” in almost every single way. It looked as though it had been taken from the top of the French Alps and dropped right there, at the edge of the Sound.
Suddenly, another taxi yanked up behind him.
“Hey, stranger.”
He turned to find Audrey, the pregnant daughter of Lola, drawing herself out slowly from the back of the taxi. The taxi driver hustled around and blared, “Audrey! I told you that I would help you out. For goodness sake, why don’t you ever listen?”
Audrey rolled her eyes. “I’m getting abuse from all sides.” She then removed several bills from her pocket and placed them in the driver’s hand. “Thank you for the ride and for changing the radio station. You know how I feel about disco.” She scrunched up her nose.
Everett had to laugh. The taxi driver shook his head violently and muttered something about, “Women in your condition,” before cutting back into the driver’s seat and rolling back through the snow.
“Sorry about that,” Audrey said and shrugged her shoulders.
“No worries. Always a pleasure to watch you make someone else uncomfortable.”
“What can I say? It’s something of a specialty.”
“Are you helping with the decorations?” Everett asked.
“To be honest with you, I think I might have missed most of it,” Audrey said. “My mother will be mad about it, but she’ll only give me five minutes’ worth of a hard time before she completely forgets.”
Everett laughed good-naturedly. He adjusted his camera strap around his neck. “Shall we?”
“I guess it’s time to join the chaos,” she agreed.
Together, they walked up the stone path toward the entrance of the mansion. When they reached the door, they heard Zach in the midst of what sounded to be a raucous fight with one of his staff members.
“I don’t know why you would ever, ever stir up a sauce like that, Marty! I mean, didn’t I train you well enough? Look at it. It’s already curdled on top. You have to start over...”
Audrey and Everett exchanged panicked glances.
This particular door spit them into a corridor near to the kitchen. When they entered, Christine popped out of the kitchen door and gave them a bug-eyed look.
“There you are,” she said.
“Sorry I’m late,” Audrey said.
“No worries. We’ve had plenty of help. Come on! It looks fantastic so far,” Christine said.
They followed Christine down the corridor, left, then right, until they fell into a glorious old-world ballroom, one with enormous ceilings that featured an elaborate mural. In awe, Everett lifted his camera and took several photos, hardly remembering to line them up. He hadn’t seen anything so beautiful since his last stint in Europe, more than five years before.
The ballroom itself was decorated elaborately, yet tastefully: exactly the way Wedding Today liked. White tablecloths were hung across long tables; chandeliers strung over them, glittering with soft light; and a Christmas tree was dressed to the nines in the center of the room, detailed with what