Bobbie paused, checking to make sure every last detail was in place. In exactly three minutes her most troublesome clients were due to arrive and she wanted to make sure every contingency was covered.
They had changed their theme at last count 57 times. The size had ballooned from intimate to gargantuan to middle of the road and back to intimate. Poor Robin had at least 93 cake designs sent her way and every last one had ultimately been decided against for some slightly neurotic reason or another. They had gone through every color of the rainbow and flower ever created twice. Bobbie didn't have an organizational list for this wedding; she had a copy of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary.
Normally this much indecision was the result of a Bridezilla. But Bobbie had to be fair. The groom was just as bad as his fiancée was. Almost every insane idea had originated from him. This wedding planning was enough to drive a sane woman to drink and change careers to something less stressful. Like the getaway driver for the mob, something easy like that.
Bobbie ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. She shouldn't complain. This wedding, whenever it was actually going to happen was going to be the social event of not only Port Charles but the international business set as well. It was going to put her and Robin's businesses on the map. There was a reward at the end of this race. But that didn't mean she couldn't wish to continue the race, instead of starting and stopping constantly.
The powerful knock on her door, broke Bobbie out of her contemplation. It was show time. Time to find out exactly what had changed in the past 48 hours since the last time she had seen them. Opening her door, she smiled warmly, ushering them into her office area.
"Jax. Brenda. Nice to see you again."
The jovial couple matched her smile with one of their own. Ever since announcing the engagement, they had done everything together. Brenda had been the one to suggest working on the wedding together, wanting to have one last project with her fiancée before they were legally named man and wife. Jax hadn't exactly been tickled pink at the idea, but she had brought him around when she threatened to withhold sex if he refused her. Men were so easy.
He had tried his hardest to get out of it over the last week or so and she supposed that was why there had been so much indecision on their part. Bobbie was a saint to put up with it, but Brenda knew better than to read too much into her kindness. She and Robin were being paid extremely well and, in turn, they were to provide Brenda with the wedding of her dreams. Jax had insisted that all he should have to worry about was renting a tuxedo and showing up on time. She had burst into tears, something she so rarely did, and he had finally caved. If sex didn't get them, tears always did.
Jax's first wife, the ever-popular Skye Quartermaine, had been Brenda's polar opposite. Where she was dainty and soft spoken Brenda was tough skinned and had a very bad tendency of raising her voice when people tried to ignore her. She had to be the way she was, the bar required it. During this entire debacle, she had tried to run the bar too, but it had robbed her of the tiniest bit of energy the wedding preparations had been nice enough to leave her with. Jax had all-out refused to let her return to work until they were legally tied. While she had agreed, she had made it abundantly clear that she would take up the reins just as soon as they were married.
"Bobbie, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us in the middle of the week." Jax obliged, reaching for her hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. Bobbie placed her free hand over their interwoven fingers and smiled.
"It's not a problem." she assured them both. "Now shall we sit down and get started?"
Brenda let herself relax when Jax's hand pressed into the small of her back, leading her into the cookie-cutter house she had grown so fond of. She hoped she and Jax would get a house just like this. While children weren't exactly part of the agenda, she couldn't exactly move them into a one-bedroom penthouse, now could she? "I admit it. I'm the reason we called you. You see, I'm afraid the seating arrangements need to be altered."
Bobbie bit back the smile. Robin was going to owe her twenty bucks. The younger woman was sure it was going to be the reception hall changed this time. She flipped through her stack of papers until she found the seating arrangement they had come up with two weeks ago. Thankfully Bobbie had thought to create in pencil.
"Now what exactly needs to be changed?"
"Well, my sister Julia found out that we invited her ex-husband, Bennie, and she threw a fit that we put her next to someone else. Then, she and I got to talking and I happened to mention that Jax's partner, Garrett was to be a late arrival--I sent you the new guest list didn't I?--anyway, now she wants to be seated with him. To do that, we'll have to move Grandma Lewis and Uncle Edgar to another table if we expect to have only immediate family at the table with us." Brenda wasn't sure how she kept it all straight. Her sister was a drama queen and had been a blistering bitch since she'd learned of upcoming nuptials. If she kept this up, she was going to get a plastic fold-out chair expertly placed in the parking lot.
Bobbie's pencil flew across the paper with each dropped name, arrows indicating the movement of each guest from where they were to where they would be. "Something like this?"
"Uncle Edgar can't be that close to the open bar. He's a recovering alcoholic." Jax chimed in.
"So we're supposed to serve him apple juice?" Brenda flared.
Sensing yet another fight in the making Bobbie quickly made some more marks on the paper. "What if we just move the bar instead?"
"I guess that'd be all right. Let's be sure to not make Grandma Lewis' seat too far from the exit. She's got a bad hip." Brenda explained.
Moving the exit was not going to be an option. Grandma Lewis would just have to be seated at the far end of the table. "That can be arranged."
"Do you have anything else you'd like to add?" Brenda asked Jax. He shook his head. They turned to Bobbie. "Well, it looks like that's the last of the changes."
Jax cell chirped. "Please excuse me ladies."
"Why don't you just turn that damn thing off?" Brenda wanted to know.
"It's the office." Jax responded coolly.
"Jax, this is our wedding. Sometimes I wonder if you'll be called away when I'm walking down the aisle." Brenda prattled on.
"You're being ridiculous." Jax insisted.
Brenda's face was the color of Bobbie's beautiful roses on either side of the stone walkway. "Ridiculous?"
Catching on, Jax tried to take it back, "I didn't mean it." He promised, reaching for her hands.
"Don't touch me. Maybe I don't want to marry you at all." Brenda shot back.
The unanswered cell phone was persistent as it hung from Jax's left hand. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me. Why'd I want to marry a man who can talk to a woman that way?" Brenda charged, poking him in the chest when she rose to her feet.
"Bren, we've been planning this wedding forever. You can't call it off now." Jax reminded her.
"So now marrying me is inconvenient?" Brenda gasped.
Bobbie struggled for a way to stop all this. It wasn't the first time the couple had started a fight in her office but it was the first time it had gotten this far. "Now, I think you both need to take a step back here. You are both under high amounts of stress and don't want to do something you regret."
"You know last Christmas when your mother gave us a gravy boat? I never told you, but I switched the gifts. We were actually supposed to get some ugly bronze knickknacks for the kitchen." Brenda admitted, folding her arms over her chest.
"You told me the bronze had gotten lost in the mail. My grandparents gave that to my parents when they first got married." Jax raged.
"They were tacky and I wasn't putting them in my kitchen." Brenda answered without hesitation.
Jax glanced from his fiancée to his wedding planner. How had things gotten so screwed up? He had gotten to the point where fighting with Brenda was absolutely pointless. Agreeing with her was just as bad. He wished he had just kept his mouth shut. Why did she feel the need to pick a fight now, mere weeks from their wedding day? He had to reel in his temper and he knew it. Mentally cursing, he turned to Brenda and lifted her chin with his thumb. "Do you want to marry me?"
Brenda wanted to look away, but she was lost in the intensity of his stare. She had always imagined he would look at her just like this when they were vowing to spent the rest of their lives together. She was going to have to swallow her pride and let him win this one time. In the end, they'd both be winners. She had wanted to be Mrs. Jasper Jacks for as long as she could remember. No way was she going to let some well-intentioned bronze knickknacks stand in her way of a happy and loving marriage. "Of course I want to marry you. I love you." She replied in a wobbly voice.
"I love you too. Work is a pain, but it's paying for this wedding and it allows me to provide you with the kind of life you deserve." Jax told her, drawing his index finger down her face.
"Call them back. Bobbie and I can find something to do to entertain ourselves while you're on the phone." Brenda decided, taking her seat.
Bobbie massaged her forehead as Jax kissed Brenda's cheek and stepped outside to make his call. There had to be an easier way to make a living.
Elizabeth reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled through the offices of L&B, trailing behind Lucky. She wasn't one hundred percent sure why he had insisted on coming here, other than his vague assurances this would explain everything. It wasn't quite clear what he had against actual words being used to explain a point or why he needed visual aids.
They passed a huge poster in the hallway. While Elizabeth had always acknowledged Daphne's beauty, in this picture she was luminous, sexy, the definition of the woman every man should and would want. The sight of it made her stop immediately and drop Lucky's hand. Realizing almost immediately she had stopped, Lucky paused and made his way back to her.
Catching sight of him out of the corner of her eye, she pointed at the picture. "She's beautiful."
Lucky shrugged. "It's a good shot, but wasn't right for the cover. So now it's part of the ad campaign." He gently took her hand in his. "Come on. That wasn't what I was going to show you."
She allowed herself to be pulled by him again, her gaze transfixed at the other woman she had been competing with in her own mind for the past few weeks. It dawned on her that she still sounded completely insane. Competing with a magazine image? An ad picture? Was she 12 again? Hadn't she moved pass all that on the road to health self esteem and all that?
"Here we are." Lucky stopped directly in front of the doorway at the very end of the hall. The etched gold letters proudly announced it was the office of "Lucas Spencer Jr., Vice President."
As he inserted the key in the lock, she couldn't help but laugh. "You can't keep taking me to your office when you want to impress me Lucky."
"Believe me that is not what this is about." He ushered her inside and flipped on the lights.
"Please just wait here two minutes. I'll be right back."
Elizabeth nodded as he retreated out of the doorway, lightly closing it behind him. She wandered around the room, trying to gauge some sort of impression of the owner from the decor. A comfortable overstuffed sage green couch occupied one wall with a matching set of oversized chairs across from it, separated by an oak coffee table. The obvious choice for wall hanging would have been gold and platinum albums sales plaques. Instead framed LP covers of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, The Who, the Clash, Sex Pistols, Billie Holliday and Elvis were distributed among the framed pictures of a spectacular mountain view. Two huge picture windows framed his desk, the same oak color as the coffee table. What she assumed was a state of the art stereo system lined the back wall. Idly, Elizabeth picked up a small picture frame and smiled when she saw a picture of Lulu and Cameron sitting on a horse together. It didn't look like the owner of such a room was seeing someone who looked like a gorgeous barely legal jail bait trap at the same time as her.
She was second-guessing the wisdom of telling him all about Max and her constant sightings of him with Daphne. They had barely gone on two dates, or three or even four if she counted karaoke at Jake's. She still barely knew him and she laid out her entire sorted last relationship at his feet? Plus confessed insecurities over a girl before they had even discussed what exactly they were? She was one couch jump away from being on Oprah was what she was. Elizabeth wouldn't have been able to pick out his favorite color if her life had depended on it and he knew all about Max? Sinking down into the couch, Elizabeth held her head in her hands. "You are in such deep trouble here girl."
The click of the door opening shook her from her thoughts. Looking up, she caught Lucky's eye as he fully opened the door. "Elizabeth, there are some people I want you to meet."
Standing from the couch she stared in shock as Daphne Vega phantom perfect girl came bouncing in. Her brown hair was in tight curls and her brown eyes sparkled. Her smile was even more radiant than her pictures hinted. She wore a red gingham baby doll top over jeans and no shoes. Daphne eagerly reached out and shook Elizabeth's hand.
"Hey sweetie." Her southern drawl made the simple words sound beautiful. "It's so nice to meet you. That tall drink of water over there just talks about you all the time." Daphne turned her head to shoot a grin in Lucky's direction. "Shoot, why you standing back there honey?"
Elizabeth only now noticed the other man standing next to Lucky. He strode out to meet Daphne in the middle of the room, his bald head a cool contrast to Daphne's bouncing curls.
"Elizabeth this is my sugar, Marcus. But everyone calls him Taggert."