had been handwritten by Robert’s niece were in place.
Poor Gina.
Olivia had called every major hotel within the city to see who might be able to host their event. There had been one less than stellar venue with space big enough available. But she’d put them on notice that the room might be needed. She’d also made a backup plan to host a scaled-down version in the distillery tasting rooms, but Gina and Robert would have had to cut fifty guests from their list.
Using her public relations undergrad degree, she had pulled together a crisis management plan for Gina and Robert’s wedding, the distillery, and future brides and grooms.
At six in the morning, she’d called Robert with a plan. It hadn’t helped that the man clearly had a hangover from hell, but it hadn’t gone well.
Olivia scoffed at the turn of phrase.
“Hadn’t gone well” was an understatement of fairly epic proportions. He’d raged. Shown up at the distillery to check the evidence of destruction for himself. Perhaps calling the police wasn’t her father’s smartest move, but it was Robert’s own fault he had gotten arrested instead of leaving like they’d asked. When Robert had gotten so angry and frustrated that he’d lashed out and hit the police officer, they had no choice but to detain him. And that detainment had made him miss his actual wedding service.
That was the day anxiety and fear and depression had taken over her life. It had started small. Reluctance to communicate with the families. Feeling ill at the idea of coming into work. Dreading Sunday evenings. And then, one day it felt impossible to move. While her head had screamed with all the things she needed to do, she couldn’t get off the sofa. Worry turned into negative self-talk, dread had turned into numbness as she closed herself off from the reality of it all.
Her father had staged the intervention, by which point she didn’t have the energy to care about what happened next.
Even though she knew the cause of the poor reviews, it didn’t make it any easier to fix it. But if she could somehow raise those stars, if she could flood the sites with positive ratings and lift the average, she was certain she’d feel better about herself.
She heard laughter and quickly switched tabs on her browser so her sister wouldn’t see what she was looking at.
“Morning, Liv.” Emerson dropped a box of cinnamon rolls on the desk. “I made too many for breakfast, thought you might have skipped it since you said you were coming in early.”
“Thanks. They look great,” Olivia said. Smelled great too. But the twenty pounds she’d gained in the last year were still sitting at her hips and round the tops of her arms that she kept covered. Her efforts to make a dent in them were doing nothing more than keeping her weight exactly the same.
So, no matter how mouthwatering the buns were, she’d practice a little bit of self-control and stick with the yogurt and granola she’d brought from home.
Emerson flicked her pin-straight hair over her shoulder. “You’re welcome. Where are you at with the social media plan for the renovation?”
The renovation would start in the summer. Just a few more months until the distillery could finally step out of its current production constraints. It was a gamble, but they were all on board to extend and rebuild the damaged event venue and turn it into the new distillery. Then, they’d convert the old distillery into the new event venue. It meant production could continue for pretty much the whole renovation.
“I’ve got the project timeline from the architect and blocked out the key phases. I’ve set up time over the next few weeks to get into each area of the distillery to set up shoots for all the before videos and photographs. Jake is taking a bit of persuading to appear in any of them, though. So if you feel like kicking his ass for me, that would be awesome.”
Emerson laughed. “I love him to pieces, but I swear to god, all he cares about is flavor profiles. I’ll talk to him. Will you be in them?”
Olivia shook her head. “I think I’ve appeared in enough media posts in the last twelve months. And I’d hate to draw the trolls back.”
Emerson placed her hand on Olivia’s arm. “It’s over, Liv. And it was a handful of idiots who went out of control trolling us. I know it was life changing for you, I’m not trying