“Just make me look pretty again,” she howled into her palms.
Charlotte and Everett again shared a moment. Charlotte looked on the verge of either tears or endless laughter. Everett felt on the verge of wrapping her in a big hug, dotting a kiss on her forehead, and...
No. He couldn’t think about that. Not now.
“Just let me put this woman back together,” Charlotte said softly.
“This woman?” Ursula cried. “Did she really just call me that? I’m beloved—” She hiccupped, then, only adding insult to it all.
“Just do what Charlotte tells you to do, and the world won’t see this photo,” Everett said.
God, he had never felt so much power in all his life.
Charlotte shooed him toward the door. He shrugged and mouthed, Let me know if you need anything else? And she nodded and rolled her eyes.
When he returned to the hallway, he clipped the door closed and listened for a moment as Ursula howled with tears.
“I’m so sorry!” she cried.
You had to feel a bit bad for her, he guessed. All that pressure. All that fame.
Sure—the money would have been nice.
By the time he reached the ballroom again, the party had reached more dramatic heights. A musician he recognized reared a beer bottle back, then smashed it across the ground and said, “Monica! I told you to stop CALLING me that!”
Everett caught sight of Lola, Tommy, Christine, and Zach on the other side of the ballroom. Rachel appeared beside Lola, her eyes buggy. How had they lost such control? Lola beckoned for Everett to join them. He did and huddled beside them, at a complete loss of what to do.
“It’s barely midnight,” Lola breathed.
“Maybe Charlotte will know,” Everett said.
“Where is she?”
“Almost ready, I think. There was a little snag in the parlor with Ursula.”
“Did she yell at her again?” Rachel demanded.
Luckily, the few security staff members they had hired for the event hustled toward the man who had thrown the beer bottle and gave him a stern talking to. Another member of staff rushed toward the glass, made a perimeter, and began to sweep it up. Still, everyone seemed oddly manic; the air shivered with tension.
At that moment, Charlotte and Ursula appeared on the other side of the ballroom. Ursula looked very-nearly cleaned up, but still a little ragged. Charlotte sliced a finger across her neck and shook her head.
“Nothing good happens in this crowd after midnight,” Tommy affirmed. “Let’s get them out of here.”
Chapter Fifteen
Charlotte couldn’t believe what Everett had done for her.
He had risked his own career and the wedding itself.
And miraculously, the plan had worked.
Now, Ursula stood beside her a broken woman: no longer the demanding “famous actress” she had been moments before. It had been oddly sweet when Ursula had allowed Charlotte to put together the pieces of her beautiful face: mopping up the eyeliner and drawing fresh lines, cleaning up the lipstick and added it to her unique, large lips.
“They’re fake,” Ursula informed her as she hiccupped again.
“That’s okay,” Charlotte had said, furrowing her brow in concentration.
“I just. I never wanted my face to be made of plastic. But there’s so much pressure on you in this industry,” Ursula continued. Another tear streaked down through the eyeliner Charlotte had only just drawn.
Now, out in the ballroom itself, Charlotte watched as Everett walked across the ballroom, lifted the microphone that was attached to the speaker system, and announced, “Good evening, everyone. It looks to me like tonight got us off to a fabulous start for the marriage between Ursula and Orion. Congratulations!”
Some of the guests clapped and howled with laughter. Specifically, the guy who security had off toward the side: he yelped with excitement, having apparently created some kind of chaos. What had he done? Charlotte had only gotten the security guards as a precaution. She hadn’t actually thought they would be necessary.
“I believe many of you are staying in this very mansion tonight,” Everett said. “Although I’ll leave that up to you. The rest of you, with hotels and BnBs, booked in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, call your limo drivers up and head out. It’s a beautiful night out there—one rife for whatever madness you want to get into in the comfort of your own hotel rooms. Good night, everyone. And we’ll see you in the other ballroom tomorrow!”
Everett’s eyes connected with Charlotte’s over the sea of grumbling partygoers. He gave a light shrug, as she mouthed, Thank you. Again. Already, it felt like they could communicate without words, even across hundreds of people.
Orion himself appeared beside Charlotte, wrapped his arm around Ursula, and said, “Let’s get you to bed.”
This was the first act of any sort of love Charlotte had seen out of the weekend’s groom, which half-way warmed her heart (but only half-way). She watched for a moment, as Orion and Ursula kind of limped toward the corridor, which led toward the staircase that wrapped up and up, grandly, in a circle, toward the separate suites Charlotte had booked for them. She hadn’t had time to show Ursula where they were, but she had instructed Rachel to show them to Orion. She was grateful to see that had actually happened.
As a wedding planner, it was essential that all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place at the right time.
Right now, however, she felt as though most of the pieces of the puzzle remained on the floor, covered in mud.
It wasn’t going to be easy to get all these intoxicated people out of the ballroom. Nobody seemed keen on going out into the cold. Those who had rooms at the mansion hardly understood where they were any longer. Charlotte made another announcement over the speaker system to say that keys were located at the front desk in the foyer for those who
