A Vineyard Thanksgiving (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 4), стр. 27
Everett marched away from Ursula after that, past the groom’s friends, who all surrounded him and spoke to him with downturned, stoic faces. They didn’t look like the kind of guys who wanted their friend to get married. Was it because it was the end of an era? Or was there something more sinister at play?
When Everett got to the kitchen, he found himself at the mercy of another Zach fight.
Worried the words he spewed were directed toward Charlotte, he charged through the door to find Zach, Christine, Lola, and some other guy he didn’t recognize, who had been hired to help serve for the night. Lola wavered on her heels, clearly drunk, while Christine kept her arm around Lola, maybe to keep them both upright.
“I don’t think you can just charge in here, help me serve my top-grade dishes all night, and then tell me that I’m morally corrupt because I’m not a vegan,” Zach blared.
“I’ve gone through all the facts with you,” the man returned. “The environmental impact. The morality. Everything. And you still won’t see reason...”
Lola turned toward Everett, grinned broadly, and then rolled her eyes.
“Dude! I don’t know why you think you have an audience here. All I’m going to do is point you toward the door,” Zach returned. His cheeks grew redder and redder.
“Seems like I walked into something I shouldn’t have,” Everett said under his breath toward Lola.
“Oh, yeah. And it’s just now getting good. It all started because Zach wanted him to help him prep for tomorrow. He was like—I won’t touch that! Insane,” Lola said, shaking her head. “I just wish I had some popcorn for the show.”
“Besides. You’ve stood here arguing with me for so long; you forgot your dessert duties!” Zach howled.
“I love when he’s like this,” Christine whispered to Everett. “He’s such a sweetie to me, but I like to see his dark side every now and then.”
Although Everett appreciated the show, he needed to find Charlotte. He asked them if they’d seen her at all.
“Nope,” Lola said. “Maybe she ran away? I might have if I had to deal with that horrible Ursula woman. You know, Rachel told me that Ursula pinned Charlotte in that side parlor earlier and reprimanded her about the decorations?”
“What?” Everett demanded.
“Yep. I’m sure it was just to put Charlotte in her place or something. But still. The nerve of this woman! After all, Charlotte has done to make this night special.”
“And to think. We’re only on night one of two,” Christine said somberly.
Everett thanked them for their help, then shot out into the ballroom again. He nearly staggered directly into Rachel, who seemed in the middle of a hefty flirt session with someone she introduced as Orion’s cousin. Like Orion, the teenager was headed toward seven feet tall.
“He doesn’t play basketball, though. He’s into baseball,” Rachel said proudly.
“That’s great. America’s pastime.” Everett cleared his throat. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; it was just that... he had bigger fish to fry. As if any fish in a party like this would ever go near a fryer.
“Have you seen your mom?”
“Not lately,” Rachel said absently, her eyes turned toward Orion’s cousin’s bored-looking hazel ones. “I’m sure she’s just busy.”
Everett hustled across the ballroom, nearly toppling over a congo line, which resulted in several actresses scream-crying overly dramatically. Probably, they always thought there was an agent nearby, waiting to cast them in some film.
When Everett reached the parlor where Christine and Lola had suggested Charlotte was, he stopped short.
Sure enough, he heard Ursula’s voice on the other side of the thick, ornate door.
“I have never seen a party get so out-of-hand,” Ursula said. Her voice broke a bit. It wavered between crying and screaming. “And you know, the first moment I saw you, Charlotte—I knew that you couldn’t handle something like this. I knew that I had given the job to the wrong woman. I knew that you—”
Everett didn’t know what came over him.
He only knew that—famous woman or not, Charlotte’s client or not, the very woman who had once won two Oscars in back-to-back years, defeating the likes of Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep—nobody would talk to Charlotte that way.
He couldn’t allow it.
He burst through the door, lifted his camera, and, without thinking, snapped a photo of Ursula.
Ursula looked like she had been involved in some kind of accident.
Black ink streaked her cheeks and the area around her eyes. Her lipstick had smeared all the way down her chin and appeared on the backs of her hands. Her hair was all mussed, the curls falling over her cheeks and over her ears, and she actually shook with either rage or sadness or both.
As a contrast, beside her, Charlotte stood pristine as ever. She looked like the famous one, in Everett’s eyes: beautiful, regal, her shoulders back and her chin lifted to look up at the horrendous woman who yelled at her.
After Everett snapped the photo, Ursula turned horrified eyes toward him.
She looked at him like he had just shot her.
“What. Did. You. Just. Do,” Ursula growled at him.
She looked a lot like one of the roles she had gotten an Oscar for, actually—the one where she had played a mother who had been on a drunken rampage, whose young children had been taken away from her. Everett had taken a date to the film during another stint in LA. Neither of them had liked the movie; neither of them had liked the other person, either.
Everett lifted the camera in the silence. Ursula looked on the verge of tearing him apart with her bare hands.
“Listen to me very carefully,” Everett said. He was surprised to find that he sounded articulate and clear-headed. “If you don’t stop berating your wedding planner, I will send this photo to TMZ in five seconds flat. Everyone will know what a crazy bridezilla you are.”
Ursula placed her hands