“I sent Dom Perignon to all the people who complained. Bruce spent about an hour with the Morettis. Apparently he had made insulting comments about her mother, and Bruce sat with them until they were so tired and so drunk that Mr. Moretti went to bed, and we gave Mrs. Moretti a complimentary room on another floor. I didn’t know what else to do. And I got a doctor for six-nineteen at two A.M. Her kid had strep, and an ear infection.”
“You did all the right things,” her father praised her. She had learned more than ever in the past two years that hotelry was as much about diplomacy and ingenuity as about service, and you had to think on your feet. She was good at it and had the correct instincts.
“The Morettis need a shrink,” she said with a grin, as she took off her uniform jacket and threw it on a chair. She had kicked off her shoes at the front door. She glanced at Natalie then. The wedding was in less than four weeks and her own party in a few days. “How’s the wedding coming?”
Natalie grinned and then sighed. “My sister-in-law broke her ankle Rollerblading last week. Both my nieces have mono and may not be able to come. There’s a threatened air strike in Holland so we’re not sure about the flowers. We haven’t set the menu yet, and your father doesn’t want a wedding cake. And three of my clients want their installations that week while they’re away. Other than that, it’s fine.” Heloise couldn’t help laughing at what she’d said. She seemed a little mellower now that she had her degree and had spent three days alone with her father in Lausanne. Natalie was glad she hadn’t gone, and with all she had to do, she couldn’t have anyway. And she knew that Heloise would have viewed her as an intruder if she had.
“That sounds about right for three weeks to D-day. Most of that stuff usually happens a few days before. You’re ahead of the game,” Heloise said, as she spoke to her more pleasantly than she had in months, and her father smiled. Their time together at the graduation in Lausanne had done her good.
“I’m not sure that reassures me.” Natalie looked nervous and as though she had lost weight, but she seemed happy when she gazed at Hugues. Her future stepdaughter still scared her, but she was being friendlier than she had all year. Maybe she was just tired from a long night and the flight the day before and didn’t have the energy to be nasty to her. Natalie wasn’t sure. She didn’t trust her yet after her fury of the previous months.
“Sally will help you work it all out. She’s great. She can pull anything off!” Heloise said easily. “She found a rabbi once in half an hour when the one they had didn’t show up. He was on his honeymoon in the hotel, and she got him out of bed to do the wedding, and she called a cantor that she knew. It went off perfectly. And why don’t you want a cake?” she asked, looking at her father disapprovingly.
“I feel silly. Maybe I’ve seen too many weddings. Besides I never like them. I want a decent dessert,” he complained.
“You have to have a wedding cake. You can order dessert from room service, but you should have a cake,” she scolded him as she grabbed a muffin off their breakfast table and ate it as she headed to her bedroom. She was so tired, she could hardly think. “I have to be back on duty at three o’clock. The front desk schedule sucks,” she said over her shoulder as she walked into her room and closed the door, but at least she didn’t slam it this time. Natalie looked at Hugues with a surprised expression once the door was closed.
“Better?” she asked him. It certainly looked that way.
“Maybe,” he said softly, so Heloise didn’t hear him. He was wondering if she was going to move to her new apartment after the wedding. He would have liked more time alone with Natalie, especially if Heloise was going to be difficult about her, but so far she showed no sign of moving out, maybe just to annoy her. “I think she’s afraid to lose me,” he whispered. “I told her that couldn’t happen. You can’t steal me from her, and I know you don’t want to. Thanks to her mother, I’m all she has, for now anyway, and for the past seventeen years. It makes you a much bigger threat than you would be otherwise.” Natalie nodded. They had talked about it before, and she understood better than Heloise realized, which was why she had tried to be understanding, although Heloise’s behavior had been beyond the pale for six months. She hoped she was calming down and was happy that it looked that way now. She had lost hope of their ever being friends.
“Her mother wasn’t at the graduation?”
“Of course not. She was on vacation with Greg in Vietnam, although she had a year’s notice of the date. She would have missed it for a hair appointment or a new tattoo,” he said angrily.
“That’s hard for Heloise. You can’t explain to yourself why your parents aren’t there when they could be. If they’re dead, at least you can understand. If they’re alive and don’t show up, all it tells you is that they don’t give a damn. It’s hard to feel loved by anyone after that. Your parents can really do a job on you,” she said with a knowing look.
“I tried to make up for it for all these years, and I was always there for her. But Miriam never has been. Sometimes I think the absentee parent does more harm than the present parent can do good.” Natalie nodded, and then she mentioned the wedding cake again and reminded him of what his daughter had said.
“All right, all right. Wedding cake. You pick it. I’ll order something else. I think they’re tacky and embarrassing. And I won’t do that ridiculous thing where you shove it in my mouth and smear it all over my face.” He was too European for that, and it was a custom he detested and had never understood. “You can feed it to me with a fork.”
“I promise.” she said, looking pleased. She wanted all the customs and traditions and little superstitions. Something borrowed, something blue. She had a garter trimmed in blue lace, and even a penny for her shoe. She had waited forty-one years for this and given up all hope of getting married and had stopped caring until he came along. Now she was going to enjoy it to the hilt. He knew that and was touched, and had humored her in all of it except the cake.
“Just don’t ask me to sample fourteen of them in the kitchen like every other bride. You order what you want.” She already knew she wanted a chocolate mousse interior with ivory-colored buttercream icing, marzipan ribbons decorating it, and fresh flowers. She had shown the baker a photograph of exactly what she wanted. This was her dream wedding, and she planned to have only one in her lifetime, so she was going all out. And she loved her dress. It didn’t look ridiculous for someone her age. It was simple and elegant, and she wanted Hugues to be swept off his feet. She knew he had seen a lot of weddings and brides at the hotel. She wanted to be the most beautiful one he had ever seen.
An hour later they both left for their day. Natalie was seeing new clients. She had promised to look at one of the hotel rooms that had had a leak, which was a good opportunity to redo it. And Hugues had a dozen meetings back to back, and a meeting of the Hotel Association to attend. He had been the chairperson several times over the years. And it was always a useful way to maintain good relations with the owners and managers of other hotels. Heloise was back at the front desk at three and had promised to cover for one of the concierges for two hours.
The days afterward were equally insane. Heloise barely had time to get ready for her party, and Sally handled all the details, although Heloise had gone over everything with her again the day before. It was going to be a grand celebration of her birthday and graduation. The room was all decorated in white and gold with white flowers on every table and gold balloons hanging from the ceiling. And her father had hired a fantastic band, and let her friends stay till four A.M. After that they served breakfast in a smaller room. Heloise said it was the best party she’d ever been to, and she had a ball. Her father wanted to reward her for her work at the Ecole Hoteliere, and he had also wanted her to feel special and not pushed out of place by their wedding.
Hugues and Natalie disappeared discreetly around eleven and left the young people to have their fun. As it turned out, it was a happy prelude to their wedding, Natalie enjoyed it, and Heloise had definitely been nicer to her since they came back from her graduation. She was being more mature about it and was clearly less angry at her father and even his future wife. It was as though she had finally understood that she wouldn’t lose him. She wasn’t happy about his marriage to Natalie, but she was no longer on a mission to make her life a living hell. And she was a little embarrassed now by how angry she had been. She had admitted it to Jennifer when she got back from Lausanne.
Natalie was spending the weeks before the wedding struggling with the seating at the reception, and in spite of the holiday weekend, they were expecting just over two hundred guests. But so far everything was going according to plan, although Natalie was visibly nervous about it and had never organized such a major event in her life. She found it much harder to keep track of than designing an apartment or a house, or keeping all the orders straight. This wasn’t her thing at all, and she was relying on the hotel staff to guide her and give her advice, and trying not to disturb Hugues about it. He had enough to do running the hotel, and she wanted him to be surprised.
They were having a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, for family and people from out of town. The only family she had were her brother, his wife, and their children, and Hugues had none at all except Heloise. But
