My Big Fat Fake Honeymoon

“Yeah but . . . look!” I complain, my hands gesturing to my nakedness and current situation in bed with the wedding’s chef. “Throw me a robe!” I bark, knowing she’s right. I have to answer.

I pull the robe on and wrap a towel Janey smartly tosses my way around my messy bedhead. It’ll have to do because I don’t have time to do anything else. With a sigh, I put a fake smile on my face and hit the answer button. “Good morning, Meredith.”

My phone shows Meredith rearing back, shocked at my unkept appearance. She’s nearly forking the sign of the devil at me, honestly. “Were you asleep, Miss Andrews?” she accuses coldly.

“Just getting ready,” I reply, not apologizing. “What can I help you with?”

“Harrumph.” She huffs. “I looked for you and your assistant flower girl in the workroom and cooler, but I can see now why I wasn’t able to find you. It’s nearly eleven.” She makes eleven a.m. sound like three in the afternoon.

“Eleven-oh-eight, actually,” I correct, looking at the clock on the nightstand.

Her lips press into a thin red slash across her pale face. “There’s a photoshoot in the Azure Ballroom at noon,” Meredith says, all business. “We need you to have flowers ready to go and prepped. Not the whole room, but enough that the photog doesn’t have to crop the shots too much. And definitely more than those single flower arrangements you did the first time.”

What does she have against flowers? I’ve never seen anyone who has such little joy over the beauty of nature before, but Meredith seems to think that flowers are offensive to the very balance of nature.

Or maybe it’s just me she objects to?

“Wait . . . what shoot?” I ask, groaning internally but keeping my voice level and professional. “It wasn’t on the schedule.”

I know this for a fact. Janey and I have spent hours going through the schedule, line by line, to plan out each arrangement with the new shipment of flowers we’ve received. The manager did at least come through on that.

Part of me wonders if this little surprise was actually planned by Meredith as a way to catch Janey and me off guard.

I can almost hear Meredith telling Claire . . .

I know, dear. Sometimes staff just can’t be trusted to do as they’re told.

We’ll have to postpone until Miss Andrews can get out of bed long enough to pull a few flowers together.

Your ‘flower girl’ is a world-class fuckup who gets by on her last name, not talent.

Fuck that. Not on my watch.

“True professionals are ready to adapt and adjust on a moment’s notice,” Meredith says, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. What, does she think I never heard that little nugget growing up? “And Miss Johnson and Mr. Kennedy did book your services for the entire week, including any impromptu needs.” The reminder isn’t needed, but Meredith seems delighted to tell me that she’s got me over a barrel.

“Of course,” I say crisply.

“I sent over the email about today’s shoot at the start of the day, at eight a.m., but would you like me to resend it so it moves to the top of your overfull inbox?” The accusation that I’m not handling my shit the way I should stings even though I know it’s not true.

I’ve worked my ass off to build SweetPea Boutique. And I’ve done it all on my own, taking Dad’s advice and the lessons he’s taught me my whole life but not taking a single penny of his money or trading on my last name. I know what I’m doing, and I won’t let Meredith Wildeman make me feel otherwise.

“That won’t be necessary. Janey is already pulling it up.”

“I see,” Meredith says doubtfully. “I’ll meet you in the ballroom at eleven thirty, then.”

It’s a statement, not a request, and without a goodbye, she disappears from my screen.

“Ahh!” I scream into a pillow. “God, I hate that woman.”

Janey looks at me with trepidation. “Want me to make her disappear? I might know a guy. Or I could slip some arsenic into her coffee?” She shakes her head. “Never mind, she probably drinks it regularly to give her coffee an extra kick and become immune to it.”

“You can’t be immune to poison, can you?” I don’t know why, of everything, that sticks in my head.

“Mithridatism,” Janey says. I have no idea if that’s English or another language, or even something she made up, but I shake my head to focus on the tasks at hand.

“Boss? What’s the plan?”

I look back to the clock. 11:10.

“We have twenty minutes to have arrangements in the ballroom. Clothes first. We’re out the door in three minutes. We’ll have to use some of the smaller arrangements we’ve already done for the shoot and then we can re-do them for the rehearsal dinner. Let’s go!”