Hotel Vendome

Two weeks later, with four February weddings scheduled, Sally Biend, the catering manager, fell off a ladder in the ballroom and broke her leg. She had been taking a closer look at the chandelier to see if it needed to be cleaned before the wedding the following week. Everyone was enormously relieved that it was only her leg.

Heloise visited her in the hospital. She was one of Heloise’s favorite people and always let her sneak into the weddings. Her assistant was out on maternity leave, and they had to call an agency to find someone to take her place immediately. None of the candidates they sent over looked right for the Vendome, until the final one, who came in looking like an angel, with excellent references from a hotel in Boston. She was a godsend. They hired her on a temporary basis for three months, until Sally could come back, hopefully in time for June, because they had so many weddings booked.

Hilary Cartwright had been catering manager at several hotels even before the one in Boston and seemed to know her stuff. And she looked more like a model than their usual hotel employees, with straight blond hair, long legs, and enormous blue eyes. And her references were excellent. She was attractive, well spoken, interviewed very well, and she said she was fully capable of handling the weddings they had on their books. She even mentioned to the head of human resources that she hoped to get a permanent job out of it in the long run. They had no openings now, but competent people were hard to find.

Heloise got a look at her the day before the first wedding she’d be handling, and announced to the florist that she thought Hilary was very pretty. Jan made no comment whatsoever, which was unlike her. Heloise was watching her and was startled when Jan, who was usually mellow, turned around with a tense expression.

“Little Miss Innocent Angel Face is a raving bitch.”

Heloise had never heard her say anything like that. “She is?” Heloise looked stunned.

“She won’t let me set up till tomorrow. She sent everything back down here and locked the ballroom. She told me the arrangements look pathetic, and she intimated to your father that I’m overcharging, padding the bill, and possibly cheating him and the client, and she can get better flowers and a better deal from a friend. Your father called me about it,” Jan said with tears in her eyes. She had never had a single problem in her eight years at the Vendome. Till now. Thanks to Hilary Cartwright. She started to cry then and blew her nose.

Heloise hugged her and tried to console her. “Papa is probably just in a bad mood. I saw him with a ton of bills on his desk. He’s always crabby when that happens.”

“No, he believed her,” Jan said, crying again, although she was one of the most respected florists in New York, and had won several awards for her work in the hotel.

Things got worse the next day. Hilary got in a full-scale battle with Jan before the wedding. She shouted at the waiters and had them reset the tables. She ran the ballroom with an iron fist. She got good results, but she had an aggressive confrontational style no one used at the Vendome. Sally was always kind to everyone and got great work out of them. Hilary was hell on wheels and had people running and crying no matter how sweet she looked. Nothing she did or said was sweet.

But when Hugues came to check on things, she turned into a lamb and turned innocent eyes toward him, while the people she’d been brutalizing stood and stared at her in disbelief. Heloise couldn’t imagine it of her father, but he fell for it like a ton of bricks and melted in a puddle at her feet. Heloise had never seen anyone do that to him, and she was shocked. He looked bewitched when he left the room.

“Did you see that?” Heloise whispered to Jan. “He was completely gaga. He believes all that stuff she says to him.” Heloise was horrified.

“It’s going to be a long three months till Sally comes back,” Jan said sadly. Her boss seemed to be falling for the woman with the blond, blue-eyed looks of an angel and the behavior of a storm trooper.

Hilary turned her attention to Heloise then, after her father left the ballroom, and asked what she was doing there.

“Just visiting,” Heloise said politely. This was her fiefdom, not Hilary’s, and she wasn’t going to be chased off, no matter how tough she was.

“We don’t want uninvited guests at a wedding, do we?” she said pointedly to Heloise, who was wearing a new dress for the occasion. It was a dark green velvet skirt with a velvet top, with a white lace collar and shiny flat black pumps and white tights. She looked like an ad for what girls her age should look like, but Hilary clearly didn’t find it endearing. She told her to leave the ballroom before the wedding. Heloise flatly said she wouldn’t, and that she had attended all the weddings at the hotel since she was six. There was a long pause between the two, and Hilary nodded.