The List of His Wrongs (Billionaires Marriage in Crisis #1)

Chapter 1

MALLORY

The florist on channel three is panicking.

I hear it under the music first, a tight breath clipped at the end of her check-in before she says, "Mallory, the west installation is shifting."

My fingers stop over the trackpad.

Around me, the service corridor hums with everything the guests are not supposed to know exists. Catering carts roll over rubber mats. Someone slices foil off another case of champagne. The dishwasher in the prep kitchen breathes out wet heat every time the door swings open.

Beyond the propped service door, the rooftop gala glitters against the city skyline, all glass, music, and people with clean hands holding very thin stems of champagne flutes.

"How much?" I ask into my headset.

"A foot. Maybe less. The wind is catching the lower spray. I can try to pin it, but the base is hidden behind the plinth."

I pull up the camera feed on my laptop. The west floral wall fills one square of the monitor, white roses and trailing greenery arranged in a crescent around the Carmichael Hotels & Resorts mark. The movement is small. A guest would probably think the flowers are only breathing with the night air.

I know better.

"Hold it steady. Don't pull from the top," I say. "Food service, delay the scallop pass by ninety seconds on the west side. AV, keep Rourke's walk-up slate live until I clear you."

A chorus of "copy" comes through the headset.

I stand from the folding table. The lanyard around my neck swings forward and taps my sternum. CARMICHAEL EVENT OPERATIONS, printed in discreet silver on black. My wedding ring catches the corridor light when I grab the emergency kit from beneath the table.

Once, I carried floral wire in the pocket of my apron. Tape, snips, packets of preservative, a small knife I kept sharp enough to do serious damage if someone was careless. Dirt lived under my fingernails no matter how many times I scrubbed.

The shift is instant when I exit the corridor.

Noise becomes music. Heat becomes breeze. The corridor's stainless steel and concrete give way to candles in hurricane glass, linen-draped tables, and women in gowns that cost more than my first delivery van.

The rooftop is beautiful.

It should be. I built the evening down to the inch.

I cross behind a cluster of guests discussing the Singapore property and reach the west installation before the loose spray can slide any farther.

Kayleigh, the junior florist assigned to the installation, looks at me with pale, terrified eyes. "I'm sorry. I secured it. I swear I did."

"It's okay," I say, already crouching behind the plinth. "Wind came up from the river."

The greenery pulls hard when I catch it.

Smilax, Italian ruscus, wired roses tucked in clusters so they look effortless.

Nothing about this is effortless. Effortless costs six vendors, three revisions, and a woman crouched behind a plinth in a black dress, twisting wire around a support bracket while the wind tries to pry the flowers loose.

My fingers know what to do before my mind finishes measuring the angle.

Wrap, cinch, tuck.

Not too tight. Stems bruise. Petals crease. The roses are imported and immaculate. In the past, I would have joked that they were the type of roses that come with an insurance policy.

At my old stall, I liked the flowers that came in crooked. Zinnias with heavy heads. Cosmos that leaned into each other. Dahlias with soil still clinging to the stems. Flowers that looked as if the world had touched them.

"Hand me the green tape," I murmur.

Kayleigh presses it into my palm. I bind the wire, hide the correction beneath a spill of leaves, and stand.

The crescent holds.

On the other side of the plinth, a woman in diamonds turns to admire it.

"Stunning," she says to the man beside her.

He nods without seeing either of us.

I smooth my dress, step backward, and return to the corridor before the camera crew pans this direction.

"West installation secured," I say into my headset. "Scallops may move. AV, Rourke walks in thirty."

The machinery answers me.

I sit at my folding table again. My coffee waits beside the laptop, untouched, the surface filmed over from cooling. My dinner sits in a covered plate someone brought me forty minutes ago. I lift the lid, see the careful arrangement of sea bass and vegetables, and put it back down.

On screen, Rourke's presentation deck waits in preview. A rendering of the Ridgeline expansion he's talked about for months with the intensity other men reserve for religion.

"Mrs. Carmichael?" a server asks from behind me. "Table twelve says they need nonalcoholic champagne for Mrs. Sharpe."

"Already staged in the second cooler," I say. "Gold foil, not silver."

He blinks. "Right. Thank you."

"Take two. Her daughter-in-law will ask for one after she sees it."

He hurries off.

The door opens wider, and the sound from the rooftop swells as Rourke enters with Deacon Sharpe at his side.

My husband fills a space before he speaks. He always has. The tuxedo sits on him with tailored precision, broad shoulders and clean lines, black hair brushed back from his forehead, jaw freshly shaved. He looks rested even though I know he only slept four hours.

He looks good. He always does.

His eyes find the laptop first. "How are we?"

Not how are you. Not tonight. Tonight, there's no you. There's only the event.

"Two minutes behind, but I built in five," I say. "West installation caught wind, fixed. Sharpe's nonalcoholic champagne is going out now. Your opening slide is loaded, and the teleprompter is set to the revised second paragraph."

"Of course it is." Rourke turns to Deacon with a smile. "This is why Mallory handles everything. The rest of us just show up and try not to ruin her work."

Deacon laughs and gives me the polished glance men give employees whose names they don't need to remember. "Impressive operation."

"Thank you," I say.

Rourke's hand lifts, almost touching the back of my chair, then drops.

His phone lights in his hand. He checks it, expression sharpening. "Jocelyn has the Singapore group near the north bar. I'll bring Sharpe through after the toast."

He's already moving.

I watch the line of his back as he disappears through the service door into gold light and applause.

For half a second, I see the man from seven years ago, smiling at me over a ridiculous scavenger hunt list, only smiling harder when I accused him of trying to look like a retired boy band member.

Then Jocelyn King steps into view beside him.

She wears burgundy silk that somehow looks practical on her. Her dark hair is sleek at her nape. No headset mark dents her skin. No coffee goes cold beside her. She touches Rourke's sleeve once, barely there, and points out the Singapore group before he has to look for them.

He bends his head to hear her.

"Lighting cue in ten," AV says in my ear.

I look back at the screen. "Stand by."

The rooftop lights lower by degrees. The city brightens beyond the glass railings. Conversations soften, then settle. Rourke takes the stage with a microphone in one hand and the easy confidence of a man who has never wondered whether the room will listen.

"Good evening," he says, voice rolling warm through the speakers.

I keep one eye on the feed and one on the running order. His presentation unfolds exactly as it should. The opening welcome. The gratitude. The expansion vision. The video renderings waiting in the wings.

When he pauses over the Ridgeline numbers, Jocelyn steps closer from the side. She doesn't interrupt. She only tilts the tablet in her hands enough for him to see the figure he wants.

He smiles without looking away from the crowd.

"One hundred and forty acres of protected frontage," he says smoothly.

Jocelyn steps back.

It's nothing. It's a colleague doing her job.

I hate how reasonable that sounds.

Later, when an investor asks about environmental review, Jocelyn answers the first half before Rourke adds the second.

When someone from Zurich approaches, she greets him by name and reminds Rourke of his daughter's school.

When Rourke makes a dry comment too low for the room, Jocelyn laughs softly, like she was meant to catch it.

And me? I approve the champagne roll-out.

I watch my husband and another woman move through the event I made possible.

They don't touch often. That would be easier to hate.

Jocelyn is too careful for easy. She stands at the exact distance that looks professional in photographs.

She turns when he turns. She knows which guest matters before the guest arrives.

Her hand lands on his forearm once to redirect him from a lingering conversation toward the German investors, and he follows without breaking stride.

They look good together.

It's not a thought I particularly love, but it comes whether I invite it in or not. Him in a black tux. Her in burgundy silk. A proper power couple. They match the skyline, the glass, and the money.

I match the corridor, the emergency kit, the laminated schedule taped to the folding table.

Rourke passes through again twenty minutes later with a guest whose name I know from the seating revisions. He's mid-conversation, smiling, intent.

"Perfect evening, Mal," he says, and squeezes my shoulder as he goes by.

His hand is warm. Heavy. Familiar enough that my body leans toward it before I can stop myself.

Then he's gone.

I sit very still for one breath, feeling the exact press of his fingers through the fabric of my dress. Outside, Jocelyn says something to him. Rourke turns fully toward her, his face focusing in that quick, bright way it does when a problem interests him.

I reach for my coffee and forget to drink it.

He's working. This is why we're here. This is why I kept the west installation from collapsing and moved the scallops and remembered Mrs. Sharpe's champagne. I built the room so he could stand in it and win.

"You're making that face," Beatrice Whitemoor says.

I look up.