The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

on his part? Either way, we couldn’t mess around our suppliers by chopping and changing orders. They’d soon tire of us, no matter how much future business we promised them.

      “Email it now, Tim. And if we can’t return what we’ve already ordered, Vinnie will have to cover it. We’ll try and swap what we’ve sourced but I can’t promise anything.”

      “I know, and that’s fine. I’ll email the new menu and call you this afternoon.”

      “OK, thanks, Tim.”

      I hung up feeling wired and frazzled. I hadn’t met Vinnie in person, and going through a middleman always created conflict. As Vinnie was out of town it made sense for Tim to be the go-between, but not if Vinnie was going to change his mind all the time. My phone pinged with an email.

      “Go on, read it,” Amory said. “I bet he’s got something ridiculous written there and that’s why he wouldn’t say it on the phone.”

      I shook my head. “If it says Beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea, I’m quadrupling the price. We don’t have time for this.”

      “Do you think Vinnie’s a flake?” Amory asked, wrinkling her brow. What she meant was, someone who’d pull out of the party last-minute, with nothing paid, nothing promised, a time waster of the worst kind.

      “Maybe we should send a pre-party invoice?”

      “Let’s,” Amory agreed. “Just in case.” We’d been stung before at the agency in New York. I’d learned pretty quickly that, just because people had recognizable names, didn’t mean they were on the level. After a few mishaps where we’d been left sans client, we’d changed our practices and got a deposit upfront if they were a little skittish. No one liked paying ahead, celebs hated parting with their money (go figure), but it was insurance, not only for the agency but also for us keeping our jobs. Here at Cedarwood we definitely couldn’t afford to be left in the lurch.

      “Perhaps we make that a stipulation going forward, Amory?” I said. “While our clients so far haven’t been celebs, we also don’t want to foot the total bill if they’re a no-show.”

      I wasn’t used to worrying about the money side of things – in New York someone else had always done the tallying – but here I had to be in charge of it all, and we were learning on the run. Thank God Amory was here.

      “I’ll email Tim an invoice and all our terms now,” she said as her fingers flew over her iPad. A few minutes later she said, “Done. Right, so come on, read his email…”

      Cruz waggled his eyebrows, “Yeah, the suspense is killing me. Let me guess, black and gold finger food?”

      I read the email and laughed. “Oh my God, yes. He wants everything black and gold, including gold-covered strawberries. ‘Think edible glitter, think edible gold… the more glam the better!’” I quoted, rolling my eyes. “Golly, how on earth are we going to get this done?”

      “Allow me one second to face palm,” Amory said. “Right, that’s done. Now, this sounds like an Aunt Bessie job to me. A gold-plated dessert table sounds right up her alley.”

      I nodded at Amory. She was right. Aunt Bessie would love this challenge… and considering how involved Mom was with Puft, perhaps she could help out too?

      “Micah and I have to meet Ned from the council this morning. He’s inspected the chapel and hopefully he’s going to sign off on it today. So we can drive you into town to see Aunt Bessie,” Kai said.

      “I have to get these suppliers sorted out first,” I said, hoping they’d swap the elaborate candelabra we’d ordered for something Gatsby-ish instead… If they couldn’t, at least they were gold. Perhaps they’d do in a pinch.

      “I’ll go,” Isla offered, and I smiled at her, so grateful to have such a brilliant team around me. “I’ll explain to Aunt Bessie, and help her hunt online if she needs to find edible glitters… While I’m there I can look in the giftshop in town. I’m sure I saw some Gatsby-esque photo booth props, and some vintage posters that might work.”

      “What’s our motto, team? Always say yes!” I joked, the pressure fading a little as we divvied up the rest of the jobs.

      Cruz read the rest of the email about the menu updates and said, “So, do I cancel the seafood? It’s not exactly black or gold is it?” He wrinkled his brow like the new menu was insane. He’d learn. This was nothing compared to some things we’d catered for. We’d had lots of odd requests over the years, including a yellow-themed party – you haven’t catered for odd until every single morsel is yellow. Thank God for saffron! We’d managed to dye a lot of the food to suit.

      “You could do nori rolls? Seaweed is black, or you could encrust them in black sesame seeds…” The more I thought about it the more ideas sprang to mind. “We’ll wow them with the gold, glittery stuff. Trust me, they’ll love your menu.”

      He smirked. “I’ll go see what I can dig up, and get back to you with some ideas before I order any more stock in.”

      “Thanks, Cruz.” I liked how amenable he was to any spanner in the works. A lot of chefs I’d dealt with would have clutched their spatulas and spit out a torrent of abuse about indecisive clients, which only hindered the process. But not Cruz. After a quick moan he rolled with the punches and found their curiosities just that: curious. I hoped he’d never change.

      As everyone rushed off to do their jobs, Amory and I faced our laptops, ready to do battle with suppliers. I turned the coffee machine on again, thinking that if nothing else we could get through this with coffee – we always had in the past! And of course champagne to celebrate our successes…

      “Right, waiters, bar staff and kitchen hands – we can hire a crew from a skill-hire place which guarantees a certain number on the night, but we won’t get to meet them ahead of time, and we won’t know their level of expertise. At this late stage, though, we might have to go with it, and then see about getting some local staff to agree to ad-hoc work?” Amory said as we rifled through our to-do lists.

      I bit down on my lip, contemplating. Staff were always hard to find, especially in such a small town. “Yes, we don’t have time to ask around town for this party. But let’s advertise afterwards and find some reliable locals.”

      Amory made a note on her calendar. “Done. I’ll call Sylvia from the skill-hire place and let her know. Next on the list – party prep.”

      “OK, we’ve done a few Gatsby parties in the past so let’s roll with the same ideas… everything glittery, sparkly, we have to hire musicians, drape the chairs with clusters of pearls, we need feathers for vases, and signs that say, Prohibition stops here, dollface, that sort of thing.”

      “You’re actually getting excited, aren’t you?” Amory asked, and I recognized the same look in her eyes.

      “Gatsby parties are the best! Obviously we’ll have to order flapper dresses.”

      “And flapper headpieces.”

      “Clearly! It’s part of the job to look the part.” We grinned at each other. “OK, let’s get everything ticked off our list. First things first… I’ll see if we can exchange the things we’ve already ordered. Once that’s done our reward will be dress hunting online over lunch?”

      She threw her head back and laughed. “Deal. Gone are the days when we wandered arm in arm down Fifth Avenue…”

      The change in our lives was so great it had the ability to take my breath away at times. “Are you happy here, Amory?” I asked, suddenly nervous that my crazy dream to run back to Cedarwood and start a new life had also pulled Amory from her high-flying corporate existence.

      Her eyes twinkled. “You know, never in a million years would I have thought I’d end up in a small town in New Hampshire by choice. But it’s the best thing I’ve done, I can feel it in my bones.” She stretched out and I noticed her slippers, jeans