Chapter 3
SIENNA
“Well,” Ethan says, looking me over with open amusement, “this is unexpected.”
For a moment, I just stare at him.
He hasn’t changed as much as I would’ve liked.
He’s still infuriatingly handsome in that effortless, expensive way men like him always are. Perfect hair. Perfect suit. Perfect, polished smile that never reaches his eyes. He still carries himself like the world was built with him in mind, like every room should tilt to accommodate him.
And I hate how quickly being near him drags old feelings to the surface.
Not longing. Not regret. Just that awful tightening in my chest. The old instinct to brace myself before he can say something that leaves a bruise no one else can see.
I close the binder and hold it against my chest. “Funny,” I say. “I was thinking the same thing.”
His gaze moves over me slowly, taking in my coat, my dress, my face.
There’s something almost lazy in it, and that makes it worse.
Ethan never needed to raise his voice to be cruel.
He preferred it dressed up in charm, delivered with a smile, as if he were doing you a favor by saying the ugliest thing in the softest possible tone.
“I didn’t know Talia’s emergency replacement would be you,” he says.
“She had to leave town. I’m stepping in for the weekend.”
His mouth curves. “That’s generous of her. I wouldn’t have thought this was your level.”
I smile back because anything else would be surrender. “Good thing I’m not here to impress you.”
He gives a quiet laugh. “No? That would be a first.”
The words slide under my skin with practiced ease, and all at once I’m somewhere else.
Spain. Heat clinging to my body like another layer of skin. A rooftop restaurant washed gold by sunset. A table set with white linen and too many forks. I remember smoothing my dress over my hips before I sat down, already aware of myself in ways I never was before him.
I remember how lovely the city looked from up there. How foolish I felt by the end of the night.
He looked at me with that same expression then. Mildly detached. Barely patient.
“You really could be beautiful,” he’d said, swirling his wine, “if you made more of an effort.”
I’d laughed at first, because surely no one says something like that and means it the way it sounds. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His eyes moved over me in a way that made my skin crawl. “It means you’ve got a pretty face. You know that. But the rest…” He gave a little shrug, as if he were commenting on weather or service. “You’ve let yourself become more than most men want to deal with.”
I can still remember the silence after that.
The restaurant around us kept moving. Glasses clinked. Someone laughed at another table. A waiter passed with a tray balanced over one shoulder.
And there I sat, trying to pretend my whole body hadn’t just gone hot with humiliation.
He broke up with me later that night in the hotel. Neatly. Calmly. Almost kindly, if you weren’t listening too closely.
He said we wanted different things. He said attraction wasn’t enough. He said I wasn’t the kind of woman who fit the future he had in mind.
Then he left me there.
Two days still left in Spain. A return ticket already booked. No apology worth remembering. Just a message from the front desk telling me he’d checked out, and a text saying my flight home hadn’t changed.
I blink, and the estate snaps back into focus.
Ethan is still in front of me, waiting, maybe hoping I’ll look wounded enough to satisfy him.
Instead, I say, “I’m here to do my job. That’s all.”
He slips a hand into his pocket. “You always were good at pretending things didn’t bother you.”
Before I can answer, a woman’s voice cuts in behind him.
“Ethan.”
He turns immediately.
Camille Laurent crosses the room toward us in a whisper of pale silk and expensive perfume.
She’s beautiful in the way magazines like best. Tall, immaculate, blonde to the point of perfection, every detail so polished it almost stops looking natural.
She belongs here in a way I never will, and she knows it.
Her eyes land on me only briefly. “Your mother is asking why the escort cards are still in serif,” she says to Ethan. “And someone has moved the candles.”
He glances back at me, but his attention is already gone. “I was talking to the replacement planner.”
Camille gives me a smile that isn’t one. “Then I hope she knows what she’s doing.”
“I do,” I say.
“Wonderful.” She reaches for Ethan’s arm as if this conversation is already over. “Come with me.”
He lets himself be pulled along, though not before giving me one last look that makes my stomach knot.
Then they’re gone.
The second they disappear into the next room, I let out the breath I’ve been holding.
I turn before anyone can stop me and head for the corridor, my pulse far too fast, the binder clutched tight against my chest. By the time I slip outside under the covered stone portico, I’m breathing hard enough to feel lightheaded.
Rain drifts across the lawns in a silver haze. Somewhere on the grounds, staff hurry between tents with their heads down, trying to stay ahead of the weather and the people paying them to control it.
I put a hand on one of the columns and shut my eyes for a moment.
Ethan.
Of course.
Of course the groom would be my ex. Of course the universe would choose now, of all times, to drag him back in front of me. My free hand drops to my middle, hidden beneath the folds of my coat.
Thank God for the coat. The cut is loose enough to disguise what it needs to. On me, most people won’t look twice unless they already suspect something. They’ll see a plus-size woman in a well-draped wrap coat and stop there. They won’t study the shape underneath. They won’t ask questions.
At least Ethan didn’t.
The thought loosens something in me. Barely.
The baby moves, slow and heavy, and I press my palm there for a second, grounding myself.
He cannot know. Not now.
I open my eyes and stare out at the estate, at the glowing windows and the blur of motion inside. Somewhere in that house is the rest of the Sokolov family. Somewhere in that house is the rest of this disaster waiting to happen.
I straighten, adjust my grip on the binder, and force my breathing back under control.
Whatever this weekend becomes, I am not falling apart on the front steps.
Of course the room is in the staff wing.
Not a real staff wing, not downstairs beside industrial laundry machines or tucked behind swinging kitchen doors, but the polished, expensive version of one.
A corridor on the far end of the estate with smaller bedrooms, simpler furnishings, and none of the breathtaking views reserved for family and honored guests.
Still, it’s a room. Which is more than I was expecting when Nadine leads me upstairs and says, almost apologetically, “You’ll be staying on the property tonight. Mrs. Sokolov prefers key vendors remain available through the evening in case adjustments need to be made.”
I stop in the doorway, overnight bag hanging from my shoulder. “Tonight?”
Nadine nods. “And tomorrow night as well, if needed.”
I stare at her for a beat.
I’d assumed I’d drive back into town after the rehearsal dinner. Collapse in my own bed. Wake up groggy and sore and return in the morning. Not ideal, but manageable.
Apparently not.
I smile because there’s nothing else to do. “Of course.”
The room itself is neat and tasteful in the way everything here is.
Cream walls. Dark wood furniture. Crisp white bedding.
A vase of garden roses on the dresser that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget.
There’s even a private bath, marble-tiled and immaculate, with folded towels stacked like art.
I shut the door, set my bag down on the chair by the window, and let myself stand there for one long breath in the sudden quiet.
Then I move.
I change into the backup dress I packed, a dark wrap dress soft enough to breathe in and structured enough to look intentional.
I touch up my makeup. Re-pin my hair. Sit on the edge of the bed and take my prenatal vitamins and the anti-nausea pill my doctor told me not to skip when stress makes everything worse.
For a second, with the pill bottle cool in my hand, I think about the absurdity of it.
Rehearsal dinner downstairs. Baby kicking under my ribs. Ex-boyfriend in the house. And somewhere in the back of my mind, the old phantom of a man I haven’t let myself think about too closely in months.
I swallow the thought with the water and stand.
No room for ghosts tonight.
By the time I head downstairs, I’ve put myself back together enough to pass for calm.
The dining room is glowing when I step into it.
Someone has lowered the lights just enough to make the candlelit tables shimmer.
Long arrangements of ivory roses, pale ranunculus, trailing greenery, and white taper candles run down the center of the room in deliberate, expensive abundance.
Crystal catches the light overhead. Place cards sit in perfect rows.
Gold-edged china gleams against linen so smooth it almost looks unreal.
Outside the tall windows, dusk settles over the grounds in a wet blue haze. Inside, everything is warmth and polish and money.
It’s beautiful.
I hate that it’s beautiful.
Staff move in well-practiced silence, making final adjustments. A server straightens a wineglass by half an inch. Another replaces a fork. Somewhere in the next room, I hear the muted clink of trays being staged for cocktail service.
I walk the room with my binder open, checking table numbers, confirming family placement, making sure the last-minute revision to the seating chart actually made it onto paper.
Nadine updates me on arrivals. The florist is finished.
The quartet is in place. The bride’s cousins are already drinking in one of the sitting rooms. Which, frankly, feels like exactly the kind of detail I should know.