Sugar and Spice_ An L.A. Candy Novel - Lauren Conrad [35]
“I think us girls are sharing a room,” Hannah said quickly. “We were thinking of just ordering room service while we prep for our meeting.”
Madison stifled a scream. Room service? Sharing a room—with Hannah and Jane? Was this for real?
“We can meet in Oliver’s room in, like, ten minutes—we can spread out there—and go over our notes,” Jane added.
“I brought my camera so we can get shots of the different banquet spaces,” Oliver piped up, patting his jacket pocket.
Madison took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. She gazed at her three Louis Vuitton bags, which a bellboy was loading onto a luggage cart. Grabbing a club sandwich in Intern Boy’s room was not quite what she had packed for.
“We had a couple of ideas we wanted to run by you,” Jane said.
Madison leaned back in the plush leather chair and checked out the other occupants in the conference room. In addition to herself, Jane (who was leading the meeting—why?), Hannah (who was studiously taking notes like a lowly secretary), and Oliver (who was doing the same, because he clearly had nothing useful to contribute), there was Aja’s publicist, Wanda, Aja’s personal assistant, Anna Luisa, and two guys from the Venetian’s event-services department, Xavier and Hank. Two PopTV camera guys were set up in opposite corners of the room, filming.
“We know Aja wanted ‘big and bold,’ so we came up with a couple themes with that in mind,” Jane went on. “The first one is a Caribbean theme, playing on Carnival in Martinique, which is called Vaval. The second one is—”
“My idea. A Venetian masked-ball theme, which would work soooo well with the setting here at the Venetian,” Madison cut in. She smiled at Xavier and Hank. “We could have the party in St. Mark’s Square, with Aja and Miguel making their entrance on a special gondola. What do you think?”
Jane glared at Madison, her blue eyes shooting daggers. Madison tried not to burst out laughing. Take that, bitch. The Venetian masked ball had been Jane’s idea, not hers. Trevor was going to love this and would no doubt pull together an awesome episode with footage from an earlier meeting at which Jane had suggested the ball . . . followed by footage from today’s meeting, with Madison taking credit.
“We’ll have to run both ideas by Aja, but they seem great,” Wanda the publicist spoke up. “Are they doable, logistically?” She turned to the two guys.
“Absolutely,” Xavier said, pulling something up on his laptop. “Let’s see . . . we’re talking about a sit-down for five hundred guests, right?”
“I believe we’d need to incorporate the restaurant patios in St. Mark’s Square as a private-party buyout,” Hank piped up.
As the group continued discussing details, Madison studied Jane, who was doing her best to maintain her game face and act like . . . well, a professional event planner. Madison had to give her credit. Jane seemed good at her job and was somehow managing to keep her cool despite Madison’s efforts to derail her. If their roles had been reversed, and Jane had stolen Madison’s idea during an important on-camera meeting, Madison would have thrown a full-blown tantrum and stormed out in a fury. Which of course would have made for killer TV.
Was it only a few months ago that she and Jane were BFFs-slash-roomies? Madison flashed back to those nights when the two of them would stay in, wearing sweats and fuzzy slippers and no makeup. They would pig out on junk food and gossip about Trevor and Dana and watch DVDs until 4 a.m. (Jane’s favorite movie was The Notebook, and she always cried at the exact same spots.) It was . . . “real” was the word that came to Madison’s mind. Just two girls hanging out at home, relaxing and having fun. Madison wondered, If things had been different, would she and Jane still be friends? Madison’s personal contact list wasn’t exactly overflowing these days. Gaby, who used to be handy for shopping, clubbing, or spa outings, seemed to be avoiding her lately. (Besides which she had been totally MIA during filmings this past week—Madison heard she was on vacation in Mexico?) And