Bridesmaid For Hire

Tiffany looked at her daughter. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted the little girl to hear. “Addie, why don’t you go find your cousins? I want to talk to your aunt Gina for a minute.”

Addie leaned in and told her aunt in a stage whisper, “Don’t let her get you stressed, Aunt Gina.”

Tiffany looked after her departing daughter, dumbfounded. “Where did that come from?” she asked her younger sister.

“I’d say she was just extrapolating on what I told her I did as a professional bridesmaid.” Tiffany looked at her quizzically. “I told her that I made sure the bride didn’t get stressed. I also might have told her that you were stressed on your wedding day—you were, you know,” Gina reminded her sister before Tiffany could deny the fact or get annoyed with her.

Gina grinned as she thought about her niece. “I can’t wait to hear how this is going to play itself out by the time Addie gets to tell her father about it.” She flashed Tiffany a sympathetic smile.

“Terrific.” Tiffany looked momentarily worried. “You know how Eddie jumps to conclusions.”

“But you know how to get him to jump back and that’s all that counts,” Gina reminded her older sister. Her brother-in-law had a short fuse, but his outbursts never lasted too long.

Tiffany smiled to herself. “That I do. Can’t wait until you get married so that I can pass along that wisdom and knowledge to you, little sister.”

“About that, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” Gina advised. She saw the doubtful expression on Tiffany’s face. “I’m perfectly happy with my life just the way it is.”

Tiffany looked at her skeptically. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“That, dear Tiffany, is your prerogative. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare to hold a bride’s hand and get her through what she’ll remember as ‘the happiest day of her life,’ otherwise known as tomorrow.”

“Do you have any more weddings lined up after that?” Tiffany asked her innocently.

“Not yet,” Gina replied honestly. “But I will,” she added with the confidence that she had managed to build up with this new career of hers.

Tiffany began to ease herself out of the bedroom. “By the way,” she added, nodding at the dress on the bed, “you performed a miracle with that bridesmaid dress.” She had seen the dress before its transformation. It had been absolutely ugly in her opinion.

“I know.” There was no conceit in Gina’s answer. There was just sheer pleasure in the knowledge that she was good at her chosen vocation.

Tiffany left the room, walking quickly. She waited until there was a room between her sister and her before she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Making sure that she was alone, she pressed auto-dial 8.

The line on the other end was picked up almost immediately.

“Mom?” Tiffany asked just to be sure she’d gotten the right person. When her mother answered in the affirmative, Tiffany declared, “All systems are ‘go.’ Gina’s got nothing scheduled after she’s done with this wedding.”

“Perfect.” The line went instantly dead.

Anna Bongino wasn’t about to lose any time in calling her friend with the news.

“Gina has nothing immediately scheduled,” Anna breathlessly told Maizie the moment the other woman answered her phone. “Whatever you’re going to do, now would be the right time.”

“I’ll get back to you on this as soon as I can,” Maizie promised.

Maizie had already gathered her best friends and comrades-in-arms together to tell them about Anna’s daughter and her dissatisfaction that Gina was a perpetual professional bridesmaid. Intrigued, Celia Parnell and Theresa Manetti had gotten to work on the so-called “problem.”

Maizie wasn’t surprised that they already had a plan ready to go when she called Theresa with the news. A widow like Maizie and Celia, Theresa had built up a thriving catering service and she had found the perfect solution using that service.

“As luck would have it, the young bride whose reception I’m catering in three weeks is about to have a nervous breakdown,” Theresa announced, sounding far happier than the news should have warranted.

“Why?” Maizie asked.

“It seems that her photographer somehow accidentally double-booked two ceremonies at the same time, one of them being my bride’s. In addition, her cousin dropped out of the wedding at the last minute because her cousin’s boyfriend of five years just broke up with her,” Theresa explained.

“And we have just the young woman who can handle that for her and smooth out all the bumps,” Maizie replied happily.

“Yes, we do,” Theresa agreed.

“I admit that this does give us a reason to call Gina so she feels that her particular ‘talents’ are being utilized, but as far as I know, we still don’t have any suitable candidates to play the potential groom to her potential bride-to-be—or do we?” Maizie asked when Theresa didn’t immediately respond to her question.

“Hold on to your hat, Maizie. This is about to get even better,” Theresa promised.

“All right, consider my hat held. How does this get even better?” Maizie asked.

She could almost hear Theresa smiling from ear to ear as she asked, “You know that young man Anna felt was so perfect for her daughter?”

“I remember. Shane Callaghan,” Maizie recalled. “What about him?”

Theresa paused dramatically, then said, “Well, I found him.”

“What do you mean you ‘found’ him?” Maizie asked suspiciously.

“Well, actually Celia did,” Theresa amended. “He’s a client of hers,” she explained. “The fact is, ‘Shane’ has been using another name for his line of work.”

This was all very mysterious to Maizie. “The point, Theresa. Get to the point,” she told her friend impatiently.

That was when Theresa dropped her little bombshell. “It turns out that Shane Callaghan has a vocation that ties right into our little scenario. The man designs cakes—including wedding cakes—for a living—and he’s very much in demand.”

“Wouldn’t Gina know this, seeing that she’s in the business of placating jittery brides-to-be?” Maizie asked.

“That’s where the pseudonym comes in. Shane is an ‘artiste’ known as Cassidy. His bakery is called Cakes Created by Cassidy.”

She’d heard of it, Maizie realized. One of her clients had remarked that their son had ordered a cake from this “Cassidy.” At the time she’d thought nothing of it.

“Really?” Maizie asked.

“Guess who I’m going to suggest to our bride to ‘create’ her wedding cake for her reception?” Theresa posed the rhetorical question almost gleefully.

This was playing it close, Maizie thought. “You said the wedding was in three weeks. Are you sure you can get him?”

“Absolutely,” Theresa answered confidently. “It turns out that my son’s law firm did some legal work for Cassidy a few months ago. It pays to have lunch with your offspring occasionally,” she added, although she knew that none of them needed an excuse to get together with their children. Family had always been what this was all about for them, Theresa thought. “That’s how I found out who Cassidy really is. It actually is a small world, Maizie,” she declared happily. “Now all we need is to get Gina on the scene.”

“Well, like I said,” Maizie reminded her friend, “her mother just called me and said that Gina has nothing scheduled after this weekend’s wedding.”

“She does now,” Theresa said happily. “I’d better get on the phone and talk to Sylvie—that’s the bride-to-be—while she’s still coherent. Her maid of honor said she was afraid that Sylvie was going to wind up calling the whole thing off.”

“Something that she’ll wind up regretting,” Maizie predicted. “By all means, Theresa, call her. Tell her about Gina, that she can step in at the last minute and put out any fires that might arise. And then,” she concluded, “you’re going to have to call Gina.”

“All right,” Theresa agreed a bit uncertainly. “But why can’t you call her?” she asked. After all Maizie was the one with a connection to the girl via Gina’s mother.