6. Summer Chaos
SUMMER CHAOS
LUCA
The first sign of trouble was the florist crying beside a six-foot champagne tower.
Both hands pressed to her mouth, mascara threatening. Three banquet servers were frozen around her as if one wrong breath might send the whole thing crashing down.
"What happened?" I asked.
Nobody answered fast enough.
A headset crackled near the service doors. Someone cursed. The ballroom smelled like roses, polished marble, and expensive disaster.
Bianca Rhodes turned from the sample table, her pale blazer immaculate, her expression not. As the contracted event manager overseeing multiple high-end venues—including ours—she was used to control. Right now, she didn't have it. "The floral arch is missing."
I looked to the empty stretch of floor where a ten-thousand-dollar arrangement should have framed tomorrow's mock ceremony space.
The bride's family had flown in from New York.
The board wanted this preview perfect because luxury weddings photographed well, and investors liked anything that looked effortless.
Effortless was usually a lie.
"It was on the truck," the florist said.
"The truck went to the north loading entrance," a coordinator said.
"No, catering went north," another snapped. "Florals were told to use the west entrance."
Too many voices. Too much movement.
A small hand slipped into mine.
I glanced down. Ava stood at my side, her fingers curled around mine, her eyes wide as she took in the chaos. She'd insisted on coming to see me, and Riley had offered to bring her. I didn't argue, not when Ava had looked excited for the first time all week.
"Is something wrong?" she whispered.
"Nothing we can't fix," I said quietly.
Riley hovered just behind her, one hand resting lightly on Ava's shoulder—steady, grounding. She wasn't part of the event team, but I knew this was her world. Her passion. The future she wanted.
She should have stayed out of it.
She didn't.
"If the arch is delayed, we can frame the ceremony space with sailcloth, hurricane glass, and orchids from the cocktail tables. It'll look intentional, not improvised."
The room shifted. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough.
A sharp sob came from the entrance.
The bride stood there in white linen, trembling, her mother behind her like a storm cloud in pearls. "My arch is gone?"
Riley moved before anyone else could—not rushing, but not hesitating either. She gave Ava's shoulder a gentle squeeze as she stepped forward, a silent promise she'd be right back.
"Not gone. Probably misrouted." Her voice softened, careful but steady. "And either way, you're not walking into an empty room tomorrow. We'll make sure of that."
The bride swallowed. "This is a bad sign."
Riley gave a small, reassuring smile. "Or just a story you'll tell later, after everyone sees how beautiful it turned out."
For a second, even I believed her.
The headset crackled. "Found it. Truck's at the marina entrance."
Riley exhaled, tension easing just slightly. "Okay. Maybe send a couple of bell carts? No rush—just keep it smooth. And someone should get the bride some sparkling water."
One of the servers let out a quiet breath. "Good call," he muttered, already moving.
Bianca heard it. She watched Riley with a look I recognized—measured, curious, already recalculating.
Riley Brooks hadn't taken over. She'd simply offered a solution, and somehow, the entire room had followed.
This was exactly the kind of mess I'd hired a nanny to keep Ava away from.
The relaunch had turned every day into investor calls, contractor problems, staff emergencies, and decisions apparently no other adult could make without me. Building the house on the resort grounds kept work close and Ava closer. After losing Zoe, she needed to know I was never far.
But close wasn't the same as available. I couldn't drag her through every crisis disguised as polished hotel business. Riley was supposed to give Ava one person whose attention never had to split.
Ava spent some afternoons with my mother at her senior community in town.
Ma had early dementia, though she preferred to describe it as "my sons being dramatic because I forgot one dentist appointment.
" Ava adored her anyway. Maybe because Ma never rushed her.
Never demanded smiles, hugs, or eye contact.
They did puzzles, ate cookies Ma wasn't supposed to keep in her room, and sat together in the kind of silence most people ruined by trying to fix it.
I allowed the visits because they mattered to both of them. I worried through every minute because I was me.
Which was why hiring Riley was supposed to make sense.
Riley seemed to understand that without me explaining it. She gave Ava her full attention when I couldn't, then somehow stepped into this chaos and made adults twice her age listen.
Ava leaned closer to me. "She's really good," she murmured, almost in awe.
"Yeah," I said, my gaze still on Riley.
That should have relieved me. Instead, it made me want to step between her and everyone who had noticed it too.
I moved behind the wall of ballroom glass before anyone saw my face.
Old habit. Distance first. Observation second. Control always.
From the corridor, the room spread out in front of me like a lit stage.
Crystal chandeliers caught on the polished floor.
White linen rippled as servers reset tables.
The missing arch rolled in on two bell carts, enormous and dripping with ivory orchids, while Riley stood at the center of the movement with a clipboard she had somehow acquired and a calm I had no business wanting to touch.
She pointed once toward the ceremony space. "Angle it left. No, not that left. Bride-facing left."
One of the bellmen shifted it two inches.
"Perfect. Lock the wheels."
No hesitation. No apology. No shrinking because the room was expensive and everyone in it knew how to make a person feel temporary.
A server passed close to the glass with another beside him, their voices low, but not low enough.
"That's the nanny, right?"
"New one. The one with Santoro's kid."
"She talks like she runs events."
"Maybe she should."
My jaw tightened before I could stop it.
I didn't like them talking about her. Not because they were wrong, but because they were finally seeing what she could do. And once Riley saw it too, no narrow little job title I gave her was going to contain her.
Nanny. Temporary. Employee.
Each word had felt solid when I hired her. Useful. Protective. Now they sounded like sandbags stacked against a tide.
Riley laughed at something the bride said, and the sound hit me through the glass, softer than it should have. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, still focused, still working, still completely unaware of the way half my staff had started to orbit her.
And I hated how proud I felt. Hated how relief warmed under my ribs because she hadn't folded under pressure. Hated the sharper thing beneath it, the possessive edge that wanted everyone to look away.
Bianca appeared beside me without warning.
I didn't turn. "You walk too quietly."
"You hire fighters, former military, and security specialists. I adapt."
Inside the ballroom, Riley crouched to adjust a fallen ribbon near the aisle. The bride's mother touched her shoulder in gratitude.
Bianca followed my stare. Of course she did.
"She's good," she said.
"She handled a logistics problem."
"She handled a luxury bride, three panicking vendors, and your staff without making anyone feel stupid. That's not logistics. That's talent."
I looked at her then. "She's Ava's nanny."
"She's also trying to get into event planning."
"That doesn't make her resort staff."
"No," Bianca said. "But it makes her useful in a way we'd be stupid to ignore."
My stare hardened. "Watch it."
"I'm not exploiting her, Luca. I'm saying there's a relaunch happening whether you like the pressure or not.
Weddings, private buyouts, programming, investor previews—that is what keeps this place solvent.
That is what keeps your future intact." Her voice softened by half a degree. "And Ava's, indirectly."
She'd found the soft place and pressed, and we both knew it.
Bianca glanced back through the glass, where Riley was kneeling beside the bride now, showing her something on a tablet.
"Let me involve her where her nanny schedule allows.
Nothing that pulls her from Ava. Nothing without Riley agreeing.
But proposals, mock timelines, client walk-through notes?
She could learn from it, and I could use another sharp set of eyes. "
I didn't answer, because the practical part of me knew Bianca was right.
The father in me counted hours, routines, risks. And the man in me hated the idea of giving Riley one more reason to belong somewhere that wasn't safely out of reach.
I looked at her then.
Bianca's expression gave away nothing, but her eyes were too sharp. She wasn't only evaluating Riley anymore.
She was evaluating me.
"Careful, Luca," she said quietly.
My voice dropped. "With what?"
"With whatever that look is."
I faced the ballroom again before she could read more than she already had.
Riley glanced up then. Through the glass. Straight at me. For one second, everything in the room blurred behind her. Then she smiled like she hadn't just exposed every weak place I still had. I didn't smile back.
I couldn't afford to.
By the time I got upstairs, Ava had already rejected three pajamas, two bedtime songs, and me. She sat cross-legged in the center of her rug wearing her blue sleep shirt, hair damp from her bath, face turned away from the door like refusal had a direction.
"No octopus song," she said before I spoke.
I paused with one hand on the frame. "I didn't offer the octopus song."
"You were going to."
She wasn't wrong.
Riley sat near the bookshelf with her knees tucked beneath her, still in the black dress from the preview, shoes off, expression careful. Not nervous. Respectful of the minefield.