Chapter 9
SIENNA
I knew this was coming. The question has been sitting between us ever since his hand found my belly last night.
But hearing it now, while I’m still flushed and wet and trying to recover from the fact that I just let him put his mouth on me like I had no say in my own common sense, makes it feel worse. More intimate. More brutal.
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
His hand lifts, slow enough to give me time to pull away if I want. I don’t. His fingers touch my jaw, then slide down to my throat, not gripping, just resting there, warm and steady.
“You panic every time I get close to the truth,” he says. “That tells me more than you think.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate that he notices everything.
“I already answered you.”
“No,” he says. “You lied to me.”
The words are calm. Certain. Not cruel, which somehow makes them harder to fight.
“You don’t know that.”
His thumb brushes once under my chin. “I do.”
I want to tell him to leave. I want to shove him away and lock the door and pretend this room never happened. I want to stop feeling so exposed every time he looks at me. Instead, I just stand there with my pulse beating everywhere and my body still aching from what he just did to me.
He takes one step closer. Not enough to trap me. Enough to make it harder to think.
“Was it before the flight?” he asks.
I say nothing.
“After?”
Still nothing.
His eyes search mine, dark and unhurried.
I force myself to hold his gaze. “I don’t owe you an answer,” I say.
My voice is steadier than I feel. That’s something.
For a second he says nothing. His hand is still resting lightly against my throat, not holding, not forcing, just there, and I hate how much I can still feel it after everything.
I hate the way he looks at me like he already knows too much.
I hate that some part of me wants to give in just because he asked quietly.
I pull in a breath. “Let me go,” I say. “I don’t want to cause a scene.”
Something shifts in his face at that. Not anger. Not surprise. More like he’s hearing all the things underneath it.
The wedding outside. The guests. The fact that if anyone finds us in here right now, this whole day turns into something much worse.
His hand drops away, and he takes a step back.
The loss of his heat is immediate, and I hate that too.
I smooth my skirt down with shaking hands and reach for my phone on the side table, needing something ordinary to do, something to remind me I still belong to myself. My fingers close around it, but I don’t move toward the door yet. I don’t trust my legs enough for that.
When I finally look up, he’s still watching me.
“You’re frightened,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “That tends to happen when my ex tries to force his way into my room, a woman nearly dies at breakfast, and the father of the groom corners me in a side room and asks questions I’m not going to answer.”
His mouth tightens, but there’s no offense in it. If anything, I think he hears the exhaustion more than the accusation.
“I’m not trying to frighten you.”
“I know.” I swallow. “That’s part of the problem.”
Something unreadable passes over his face.
For one second, I think he might push again. Ask anyway. Press until I crack. Instead, he just looks at me with that same impossible focus, and somehow restraint from him feels more dangerous than pressure would.
“You should stay near people for the rest of the morning,” he says.
I almost laugh. “That sounds like advice from someone who’s spent his entire life avoiding exactly that.”
“Still.”
I slip the phone into my pocket. “I can manage myself.”
“I’m aware.”
I move toward the door. This time he gets out of my way.
I stop with my hand on the knob and glance back at him.
He’s standing where I left him, broad shoulders, calm face, too much presence for the size of the room.
If I looked at him long enough, I know exactly what would happen.
I’d remember his mouth on me. His hand on my skin.
The way I came with his name in my throat five minutes ago as if I’d learned nothing at all.
So I don’t look long.
“We never had this conversation,” I say.
His gaze stays on me. “That won’t be possible.”
I should leave it there.
Instead, I say, “Try.”
I open the door and step into the hallway before he can answer.
The hallway outside is full of staff.
They’re gathered in small, uneasy clusters near the service entrance and the side station, speaking in low voices that keep breaking off whenever someone new steps into view.
A few of them look pale. One of the younger servers has clearly been crying.
Another keeps wiping his hands on his apron as if he still feels something on them.
I understand that feeling.
The whole house feels wrong now. Like the morning has slipped sideways and nobody knows how to stand in it anymore.
As soon as I step out, Nadine turns toward me. “Are you all right?”
I nod. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing yet. Everyone’s waiting.” She lowers her voice. “The guests are being kept on the lawn for now.”
One of the catering staff says, “They’re going to blame us.”
Another answers, “Of course they are.”
“No,” I say, before either of them can spiral any further. “Not yet.”
A few faces turn toward me.
I keep my voice calm because panic is contagious and these people are already halfway there. “No one knows what happened. Not really. So nobody starts apologizing, nobody starts guessing, and nobody starts saying something was your fault just because you’re scared.”
The younger server blurts, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Her voice cracks on the last word.
I turn to her. “I know.”
“She took the tray from Marc,” another server says. “Then I thought maybe I should’ve checked where it had come from, but everything was moving so fast and—”
“Stop,” I say gently.
They all look at me.
“What did I just say? We don’t know what happened yet. So nobody is blaming themselves for something we don’t understand.”
The others look at me before nodding in understanding.
“Mrs. Laurent’s mother wants to know whether breakfast can still be reset for the bridal party in an hour,” Nadine says.
I stare at her.
She stares back.
Then, because apparently this morning has not yet exhausted its ability to shock me, we both laugh once. Just once. Brief and humorless.
“No,” I say. “Breakfast cannot be reset. A woman nearly died.”
“That was my position too.”
“Good.”
The moment lightens.
At least until Camille appears.
She comes down the corridor like fury in a silk dress, Ethan right behind her, his face tight and unreadable. Camille’s eyes land on the staff first, then on me, and whatever she sees there seems to offend her even more.
“So this is where everyone’s hiding.”
No one answers.
Camille folds her arms. “I want the name of every person who handled the drinks.”
Nadine steps forward. “Ms. Laurent, we don’t yet know that the drinks were—”
“I don’t care what you know yet,” Camille snaps. “Someone served something bad at my wedding event.” Her voice carries down the corridor. One of the servers visibly flinches.
I step in before Nadine has to take the blow for all of us. “No one is hiding,” I say.
Camille turns to me. “You don’t know that.”
“No,” I say. “Neither do you.”
For a second the only sound is the distant murmur of guests still gathered near the front of the house.
I keep my voice level. “Let it be investigated before you start deciding which member of the staff you’d like to destroy over it.”
Ethan is watching me now, saying nothing. That somehow makes it worse.
Camille gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “Amazing. You really do think you get to speak to me that way in my own wedding house.”
“This isn’t about your wedding house,” I say. “It’s about the fact that someone is in critical condition.”
Her face hardens. “And I’m supposed to just stand here while your people pretend this has nothing to do with them?”
“My people?” I ask quietly.
The words slip out before I can stop them, and I see Ethan react to them first. A small tightening around the mouth. A warning not to push further.
Too late now.
Camille takes a step closer. “Don’t start.”
I should back off. I know I should. But one of the girls behind me is still trembling, and Camille is standing here acting as if the greatest tragedy of the morning is that the bridal breakfast was interrupted.
So I say, “No one here is pretending anything. I’m telling you not to decide the answer before there’s been an investigation.”
Her eyes flash. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“No,” I say. “But I am telling you that if you start blaming the staff before anyone knows what happened, you’re doing it because you need someone smaller to punish.”
Silence.
Ethan’s gaze snaps to mine.
Camille goes very still. I see the exact second she decides that I’ve crossed whatever line she needed left uncrossed.
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and shoves me.
It happens so quickly I barely have time to understand it. One second she’s standing in front of me, flushed and furious, and the next both her hands are on my shoulders, pushing hard enough to send me backward.
I lose my footing at once. But the hallway is carpeted, thick and soft underfoot, and before I can really fall, someone catches me.
One of the house staff, a young man from service, lunges forward and grabs me under the arms. Another hand catches my elbow. My body still drops, but only partway, enough for my knees to buckle and my weight to pull against them before they steady me again.
The whole thing lasts maybe two seconds.
It feels much longer.
A frightened sound leaves me before I can stop it, and my first instinct is immediate and blind. My hand goes low over my stomach, protective, urgent, checking, as if I can somehow reassure myself with touch alone.
I stay there for a second, half-crouched, breath knocked out of me, one of the staff still holding my arm while the other steadies my shoulder. The carpet presses into my knees. My heart is pounding so hard it makes everything feel thin and far away.
Then I look up.
Ethan is staring at me.
Not at my face. At my hand.
At my belly under it.
His expression changes right in front of me. Shock first. Then confusion.
I lift my hand too late.
“Madam,” Nadine says to Camille, and I have never heard that word sound so cold, “that was not acceptable.”
Camille blinks at her. “I barely touched her.”
“You pushed her,” Nadine says.
Camille’s chin lifts. “She was provoking me.”
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.
The silence in the hallway stretches, strange and tight, and for one awful second I know exactly what Ethan is thinking. Not the full truth, not yet, but enough. Enough to start pulling at threads I’ve been keeping knotted for months.
And then a voice crashes through the silence.
“What the fuck is going on here?”