8. Wedding Season #2
By the time I brought Ava back from camp that afternoon, the resort had changed shape around us.
The lobby smelled like lilies, floor polish, and sugar from pastry trays being rushed toward the ballroom. Guests moved in bright clusters, laughing too loudly, blocking pathways, and turning every transition into a traffic jam.
Ava made it six steps inside.
Then a catering cart rattled across the tile, a burst of applause rose from the ballroom, and three women in sequined dresses swept past us in a cloud of perfume.
Ava stopped beside one of the marble columns with both hands pressed over her ears, chin tucked down and eyes fixed on the patterned floor.
For her, it was a nightmare dressed in satin.
I crouched beside her. "We can go around back."
She didn't answer. Her fingers pressed tighter.
I was already reaching for her headphones when Riley appeared through the ballroom doors. She took one look at Ava and changed direction. She lowered herself to a crouch a few feet away, giving Ava space. Her headset still hugged one ear, but she slid it off and let it hang around her neck.
"Hey you," Riley said softly. "Too many surprise noises?"
Ava didn't answer. Her fingers pressed tighter. My chest closed the old way. The helpless way. The way it had when she was smaller and I thought love meant removing every hard thing before it could touch her.
Riley glanced up at me. Not asking permission. Asking me to trust her.
I stopped.
She pulled a pen from her badge lanyard and took the back of a folded timeline from her pocket. In quick, neat boxes, she drew a plate, a flower, two stick figures walking, a small chair, and a star.
Ava's eyes shifted.
"New schedule," Riley said. "First, quiet room and snack. Then we look at flowers from the quiet side. Then headphones. Then star prize."
Ava lowered one hand just enough to point. "What star prize?"
"Five minutes watching the fountain lights with no one talking."
Ava considered that seriously. "Seven minutes."
Riley nodded once. "Strong negotiation. Six."
Ava's mouth twitched.
Behind Riley, a server started to push a rattling cart over the tile seam.
Riley lifted one finger without turning.
The server froze. She looked back and spoke gently.
"Can you take that through the carpeted hall, please?
And when you pass her, no loud cart, no big hello.
Just a little wave if she looks at you."
The server softened. "Of course."
Riley handed the paper to Ava. "You hold the map."
Ava accepted it, still wary, but her shoulders dropped a fraction.
I watched my daughter take Riley's hand. Then I watched my staff learn, quietly and without shame, how to make room for her. It should have eased something in me. Instead, it made wanting Riley feel less like weakness and more like danger.
Once Ava had eaten her snack and watched the fountain lights for the negotiated six minutes, Donny found us near the green room.
He crouched beside her. "Hey, little lady. Want to go see Nonna for a while? She claims she needs help judging the residence's dessert cart."
Ava studied him. "Does she have chocolate pudding?"
"Almost definitely. But she'll pretend it's for you."
Ava looked at me.
"Uncle Donny will take you," I said. "I'll come get you after the last ceremony."
"And Riley?"
Riley's hand stilled on the schedule she was holding.
"She has work," I said.
Ava considered that, then nodded. "Wedding work."
"Important wedding work," Donny agreed solemnly.
Riley smiled, but something vulnerable moved behind it.
Ava slipped her hand into Donny's. "Tell Nonna no raisins."
"Finally," he said as they headed toward the private entrance. "Someone brave enough to confront her."
I watched until they disappeared down the corridor.
Ava was safe. Riley was exactly where she needed to be. That should have made the rest of the evening easier.
It didn't.
The first ceremony went off with only one late groomsman, one missing boutonniere, and a ring bearer who loudly announced he had to pee halfway down the aisle.
By wedding standards, that counted as a victory.
When the guests moved toward cocktail hour, Bianca claimed a small service office behind the ballroom for the debrief. I stood near the doorway with a bottle of water, pretending I had come to discuss staffing when really I had followed the sound of Riley's laugh like an idiot.
Riley leaned against the counter, headset pushed back, cheeks flushed, eyes bright in a way that made the cramped office feel warmer than it should have. She had a smear of pen ink on her thumb and a folded schedule sticking out of her badge holder.
Bianca shut the door with her hip. "You didn't drown."
Riley laughed once. "High praise."
"For me? It is." Bianca flipped through her notes.
"You caught three timeline conflicts, rerouted the champagne service, calmed a child without making her parents defensive, and got Marco from lighting to apologize to a florist. I've known him six years.
I thought he was born without that function. "
Riley's face opened. Not smug. Not relieved, exactly. More like someone had handed her proof that a private hope had weight.
"So I passed?" she asked.
Bianca studied her for a beat too long. "You earned more responsibility."
The words hit Riley visibly. Her fingers curled around the edge of the counter, and she looked down fast, but not before I saw the glow. Pure. Hungry. The kind of ambition that had nothing to do with status and everything to do with finally being useful in the way she wanted.
I should have been glad. I was. I also felt the floor shift under me.
Bianca's gaze cut briefly to me, then back to Riley. "But I'm going to say this plainly because I don't do soft landings. Talent and proximity to Luca Santoro are a dangerous mix in this industry."
Riley's smile faded.
My hand tightened around the water bottle. "Bianca."
"No," she said, without looking at me. "She needs to hear it." Her voice stayed even. "People talk. Vendors talk faster. If you want this, make sure they know you earned it. Make sure you know it too."
Riley swallowed. "I don't want anyone thinking I'm using him."
"Good." Bianca softened by half an inch. "Then don't give them easy ammunition."
Riley nodded, but worry had already slipped beneath the shine. And I hated that Bianca was right almost as much as I hated myself for being the risk attached to Riley's name.
The terrace was supposed to be empty by then. It wasn't.
Staff lingered beneath the strings of twinkle lights, half out of uniform, plates balanced in their hands as they stole bites from the vendor meal.
Beyond the glass railing, the ocean moved in black folds, catching pieces of moonlight.
Music from the ballroom came muffled through the doors, all bass and applause and expensive celebration.
Riley stood near the far planter with two servers and Marco from lighting, the same man who apparently did possess the ability to apologize. Someone said something I couldn't hear. Riley tipped her head back and laughed.
The sound went straight under my ribs.
Not the careful laugh she used when she thought she was too much in my house.
Not the soft one she gave Ava when she wanted her to feel safe.
This was loose. Tired. Happy. Her headset hung around her neck like she had earned the weight of it, and the authority badge caught the light against her dress.
She looked like she belonged. At my resort. With my people. In my life.
The thought came too easily, filling in spaces I had no right to fill.
Riley at morning staff meetings with coffee in one hand and ink on her fingers.
Riley teaching Ava the order of wedding flowers because Ava would want to categorize them.
Riley crossing the lobby toward me at the end of a long day, smiling like she had chosen this place and, somehow, chosen us too.
My hand flexed at my side.
That was how men lost control. Not all at once.
Not with one bad decision in a club or one night that should have stayed nameless.
It happened in small permissions. Watching too long.
Wanting too quietly. Letting a woman become part of the machinery of your day until removing her would tear out wires you needed to keep breathing.
My phone held one unread message from Donny—a picture of Ava and Nonna solemnly ranking pudding cups—but I barely registered it before Riley laughed again.
Riley glanced over. Our eyes met across the terrace. Her laughter softened, but the smile stayed. Smaller now. For me. I felt myself take one step before I ordered my body still.
Behind her, Bianca appeared in the doorway and said something that made Riley turn back. The staff closed around her again, easy and warm.
I should have gone to her. Said congratulations. Said she had been extraordinary. Instead, I reached for the door to the private corridor.
"You're really leaving?" Bianca called behind me.
I kept my hand on the door. "Make sure Riley gets back okay."
Silence followed.
Then Bianca said, "She lives with you, Luca."
It was a clean hit. She'd meant it to be.
Because Riley lived with me. Because home was my house. And because I was beginning to want it to be hers.
That was exactly why I walked away.