8. Wedding Season
WEDDING SEASON
LUCA
The ballroom doors hadn't even finished opening before somebody shouted my name.
Not a guest. Not a bride. Worse.
"Luca!"
Bianca Rhodes charged through the ballroom's service entrance with a clipboard under one arm, her phone pinned between shoulder and ear, and the expression of a woman one inconvenience away from committing a felony.
Behind her, servers hurried past with glassware, a florist wrestled an armful of roses, and Donny leaned against the bar, enjoying the chaos.
Triple-wedding weekend had begun.
I checked the time. "Tell me it's not fire, flood, or felony."
"Short-staffed," Bianca said, ending her call. "Two coordinators out. One with food poisoning, one with a dramatic boyfriend."
"So only one preventable disaster."
"Correct." Her gaze slid past me. "And I've found the solution."
I knew who she was looking at before I turned.
Riley had taken Ava to her first morning at Ocean Camp, staying through check-in until they'd reviewed the picture schedule and Ava knew exactly when Riley would return.
Camp ran into the afternoon, but whether Ava stayed that long—or managed camp every day—would depend on her sensory load, her mood, and how exhausted she became from holding herself together around everyone else.
Some days, Riley might get several uninterrupted hours.
Others, the counselor could call before lunch.
That was the point of having a nanny who could change course at a moment's notice.
Today, though, Ava had gone in calmly, and Riley had come to the resort with her phone close and a few cautiously available hours.
"No," I said.
Riley's eyes snapped to mine. "You don't even know what she's asking."
"I know Bianca."
Bianca smiled without warmth. "Smart man."
Riley shifted the bags higher. "What do you need?"
"An on-site coordinator," Bianca said. "Headset, badge, radio, authority to redirect vendors, calm guests, and keep three brides from discovering that their timelines are already lying to them."
Riley blinked once. I watched the possibility land—the opportunity, the risk, the spark she tried to hide before it reached her mouth.
"She's here for Ava." The objection left my mouth before Riley had a chance to answer.
A muscle in Riley's jaw tightened.
Bianca arched a brow. "Ava is at camp, correct?"
Correct. I hated that she knew.
"This isn't a favor," Bianca said, turning to Riley. "It's a test. You freeze, I pull you. You overstep, I pull you. You make me regret handing you a headset, I will haunt your career before it starts."
Riley's smile came slow, steady, and too brave. "Fair."
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. "Riley."
She looked up at me, and for one second the corridor noise thinned. The glassware. Bianca's pen. The pulse hard under my ribs.
"I can do this," she said quietly.
I believed her. That was the problem.
Her gaze flicked toward the time displayed on her phone. "But Ava's camp pickup?—"
"I'll get her."
The answer came before I could reconsider it.
Riley searched my face. "You have investor calls."
"They can survive without me for an hour."
A faint line appeared between her brows. "Luca, I'm supposed to?—"
"Take the opportunity." I lowered my voice. "I've got Ava."
Something shifted in her expression: surprise first, then gratitude she tried to disguise as caution.
"You're sure?"
No. Not about any of this.
"Yes."
Bianca clipped a black badge to Riley's dress and settled a headset over her ear. It looked official, natural, like it had been waiting for her.
"Ballroom B," Bianca said. "Rehearsal starts in six minutes. Make them think we meant that."
Riley drew one breath, nodded, and walked into the storm.
I stayed there, watching people move out of her way.
Ballroom B looked like somebody had taken a glossy wedding magazine, shaken it hard, and dumped the pieces across my floor.
A florist argued with a lighting tech under a canopy of half-hung wisteria.
One bride's mother was telling a violinist where love songs ranked "morally.
" A groom kept checking his watch like he might bolt if time gave him permission.
At the center aisle, a flower girl in pale pink tulle had planted herself on the carpet and sobbed into both hands.
Riley stopped at the edge of it all. For half a second, she only looked. Then she touched the button on her headset. "Bianca, I'm in Ballroom B."
Bianca's voice crackled through from where she stood near the rear doors, arms folded. "Condolences."
Riley didn't smile. "I need the rehearsal party in two lines, the florist off the ladder until lighting finishes, and someone to move the champagne tower six inches back from the aisle."
The lighting tech glanced over. "Who are you?"
Riley lifted her badge just enough. "The person trying to keep that wisteria from becoming a lawsuit."
He stared, then lowered his drill. Pride struck hot and immediate. Mine, some reckless part of me thought. I shut that down fast.
Riley crossed to the flower girl and crouched, careful not to crowd her. "Hey. I'm Riley."
The little girl hiccupped. "My shoes hurt."
"They look beautiful and evil," Riley said solemnly.
The girl peeked through her fingers. Riley reached into one of the welcome bags, pulled out a pack of tissues, then looked at the bride's mother. "Do we have backup shoes?"
"She has to wear those for pictures."
"She has to walk for pictures," Riley said, soft but immovable. "Barefoot flower girls photograph better than crying ones."
Silence.
Then the bride, pale and overwhelmed near the altar, whispered, "Let her wear the sandals."
Riley gave the girl a conspiratorial nod. "Emergency fashion decision approved."
The room shifted after that. Not magically. Not cleanly. But people started listening.
She sent the groomsmen two steps left, corrected the aisle order without embarrassing anyone, and caught the florist's assistant by the elbow just as he backed into the champagne tower. Glass chimed, the whole thing swayed, and my heart kicked once, sharp.
Riley steadied the base with one hand. "Nobody breathe."
Nobody did. The tower settled.
Donny muttered beside me, "Damn."
Bianca said nothing, but her gaze narrowed with interest instead of doubt.
Riley straightened, flushed and focused. "Great. Now let's do that again like we didn't almost baptize the carpet in champagne."
A laugh broke through the room. And I knew, watching vendors look to her for the next instruction, that luck had nothing to do with it.
I should have walked away after the champagne tower. There were contracts waiting upstairs. Security briefs. A phone call from an investor I already knew would annoy me. Any one of them would have been a reasonable excuse to leave Ballroom B before Riley became something I could not unsee.
Instead, I stayed near the side wall with Donny and pretended I was studying the room.
Riley stood beneath the half-hung wisteria with the headset tucked against her cheek, one hand lifted as she redirected a photographer, the other holding a timeline she had already marked in pen. Her voice carried just enough to cut through the noise.
"Ceremony Two gets the South Terrace for first-look photos. Ceremony One keeps the bridal suite until 2:15. If anyone needs to argue, argue with me, not the brides."
The photographer looked twice at her badge. "Bianca approved that?"
"Bianca approved the result," Riley said. "I'm saving her the migraine."
Across the room, Bianca's mouth curved almost imperceptibly.
Donny leaned closer. "She's good."
"I can see that."
"No, I mean actually good. Not nanny-with-a-clipboard good."
I shot him a look.
He lifted both hands. "Relax. I'm complimenting your girl."
"She's not my girl."
The words came out flat, automatic, and useless. Donny's expression told me he knew it too.
Riley laughed at something one of the caterers said, quick and bright, then turned serious in the same breath when a bridesmaid approached with watery eyes.
She listened. Not half-listened the way most people did when they were already preparing their own answer.
She gave the woman all of her attention, then guided her toward a chair, a glass of water, and a solution.
Pride moved through me first. Clean. Fierce. The kind I felt watching Ava solve a puzzle no one had helped her with. Then fear followed.
Because this was not a girl playing dress-up in my resort. This was Riley stepping into the life she had come to Miami to chase. She fit here. In the polished chaos, the pressure, the impossible demands dressed in silk and money. She didn't shrink from it. She lit up.
And I had put her in my house. Near my daughter. Near me.
I had brought her here to help Ava, and I would never regret that. But somewhere along the way, I had started treating the nanny job like a fence—breakfast choices, pool towels, bedtime routines. A safe little world where I could keep Riley close without admitting how much I wanted her there.
Meanwhile, every new problem Bianca handed her proved Riley was built for more than orbiting my house and my daughter's needs. She was coming alive in front of me, and I had been standing too close to the light.
She looked up then and caught me watching. For once, I didn't look away fast enough.
Color touched her cheeks, but she held my gaze, the marked-up timeline in one hand and her pen poised over another adjustment. She looked bright with ideas she was no longer afraid to say out loud.
Something in me shifted.
I wanted her here—for Ava, for the way my daughter softened when Riley walked into a room, for how everything felt steadier in her hands. But this worked for Riley too.
Not just the nannying. This. The planning, the building, the chance to want something for herself. She was good at it—I could see it in the notes, in the way her whole face changed when she forgot to hold back.
I'd hired her because Ava needed someone. But Riley needed room.
And if I had any decency left, I'd find a way to give her both.