Chapter Two
Elise Mercier was halfway through her bitter espresso when she decided she might quit television forever. The thought had struck her somewhere between her first and second sip, and honestly, it sounded more delicious than the gleaming round lemons that dotted the lobby of the Hotel Mareluna.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The idea was stupid.
Silly even. Television was her life. The chaos.
The deadlines. The endless juggling of impossible demands that somehow always ended up being her problem.
Not to mention the fact that she’d clawed her way up to where she was.
Not any Sally off the street could become the executive producer of one of the greatest queer dating shows on American television.
So, she gave herself a mental slap and stepped toward the lobby, ready to check out.
Around her, vacationers in linen outfits and straw hats floated past, all bronzed and unbothered.
Meanwhile, Elise swallowed the last bit of her espresso, handed back the keycard to the receptionist who, with her buttery chocolate-colored skin, perfectly lacquered nails, and practiced smile, looked like a Calvin Klein model.
“I hope you enjoyed your stay,” she said, her voice just as silky as her dark hair.
Elise nodded but didn’t smile. It wasn’t that she was impolite, though it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been called that; it was just that her mind was off rewriting half the shooting schedule for Season Eight of The Sapphic Match.
Which, thanks to the last three disastrous seasons, the internet had lovingly renamed The Never Rose Show.
Elise tucked her tablet under one arm, the production binder under the other, and looped her tote bag over her shoulder.
Since she was still deep in the throes of jet lag, she had spent much of this morning and last night triple-checking every detail of today’s setup: transportation, call sheets, lighting tests, villa readiness, contestant arrival times.
Then, because she clearly didn’t trust herself, she had checked everything again.
And yet, there was the unmistakable buzz that something was bound to go wrong. Or maybe it was just the humidity that the hotel’s air conditioning only half-masked. Elise was already fighting sweat between her cleavage. And there was plenty of cleavage.
She pushed through the glass doors and Positano, Italy, hit her all at once.
Scooters whirred past like angry bees. Church bells clanged somewhere nearby.
A group of women, arms linked and carrying shopping bags, nearly swallowed her whole.
Then there was the view. The glittering Tyrrhenian Sea caught the light just so.
“Miss Mercier,” a man called, waving her over.
Her driver was a burly man with a husky voice.
His head was bald and shone in the morning light.
“Where are your bags?” he asked as she approached him.
Elise was just about to gesture back to the double doors where a bellman was carrying her luggage when her phone rang.
One day soon she was going to throw her phone into the sea.
With a sigh, she glanced down at the screen only for her stomach to knot like a pretzel. Stanley. Perfect. Just the man she wanted to strangle with her phone’s charging cable.
Elise wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and held up a finger to the driver, which she hoped he would take as give me a minute.
“I hope you’re calling to ask me how my flight was?
” she asked, hoping she came off as a woman who didn’t want any nonsense today.
Or any day. In fact, she was so desperate for a season of no nonsense that she would give up chocolate for an entire year.
Those who knew her would say it was impossible.
“How was your flight?” Stanley asked happily.
Elise rolled her eyes. Stanley didn’t care about her flight.
He didn’t care about anything other than himself.
This was something that had become more obvious since he had been promoted to executive in charge of production two seasons ago.
It was a role Elise didn’t think he deserved, but then who cared about her opinion anyway?
Certainly not the network executives and their little boys’ club.
“What do you want, Stan?” she asked. It was too early to play games. She’d only ingested one espresso, and it wasn’t nearly enough caffeine to deal with whatever bullshit he was about to unleash. “I’m about to head to the villa.”
“Well, I replaced Cypress,” he drawled.
“What do you mean, replaced?” Elise asked, spinning on the spot from the shock. Though she knew what it meant. In fact, it couldn’t get any clearer.
“We needed new blood. I had to do what was best for the show,” Stanley said.
“So you fired our lead photographer?”
“And Sara.”
“The director?” Elise hissed. She couldn’t believe this. What the actual fuck? “Sara’s been with the show since season one. She’s been here way longer than—”
“And two of the camera operators,” Stanley added, sounding almost too pleased with himself. Elise wished she could reach through the phone screen and strangle him. Not enough to kill because she wouldn’t do well in jail, but enough to scare.
“We need new energy this season,” he said. “New faces. Reinvention. You understand that, right? You know why I did it? Come on, El, tell me you’re on my side.”
Elise opened her mouth, closed it, and decided the only conceivable reply was silence. And no, she wasn’t on his side. She wasn’t on anyone’s side but her own.
“Don’t worry,” Stanley said brightly. “I’ve already hired the replacements. I’ll email you the list.” With that, he ended the call, and Elise was left reeling.
For a full second, she stared at her reflection in the car’s glossy black door.
Blonde curls that refused to behave no matter how many times she twisted them back into place hung to her shoulders.
Blue eyes that were often so dark they were mistaken for brown in the wrong light.
And skin that would tan if she ever gave it a chance.
All in all, she didn’t look bad for the stress she was under.
The driver opened the door. “Please.”
Elise blew out a breath but didn’t keep him a second longer. She climbed in, adjusted the seatbelt over her shoulder, and checked her emails. Nothing from Stanley. Go figure.
The car wound up on a cliff-side road. Elise allowed herself glimpses of the view as they squeezed past scooters and twisted in hairpin turns that left the sea dropping away on one side and pastel stucco walls with flowering terraces on the other.
At one point, the car drifted so close to a truck that Elise dropped her phone onto her lap and gripped the door handle like her life depended on it.
And when she wasn’t concerned about losing her life before the age of forty, she tried to utilize the time to go through her notes on the bachelorette.
Megan Cooper. Thirty-six-year-old pediatric surgeon from Portland.
She had a halo of warm brown curls, hazel eyes that could pass for green in the sunlight.
She owned a nineteen-pound tabby cat named Marmalade, who had an Instagram account with more followers than Elise would ever have.
She volunteered at blood drives, ran half-marathons for kids with heart conditions, and baked sourdough from scratch in her spare time.
She was loved by all. But then again, weren’t all of them?
Elise’s attention snapped back to the view where stacked houses tumbled down cliffs, and the Tyrrhenian Sea glittered far below like someone had tossed a handful of diamonds into the water.
It wasn’t the worst place for this season.
In fact, it might actually be one of her favorites.
A feeling that was reaffirmed when the car rounded a sharp bend, and Elise caught her first glimpse of the villa.
It was an impossibly large building with three main floors, each stepping down the cliff.
The walls were butter-colored stucco, and the roof was layered with sun-bleached terracotta tiles.
The driveway was a curving ribbon of pale limestone slabs, just wide enough for one car and maybe a scooter to pass.
There were century-old olive trees in the garden on the right, leaning toward the cliff, and short stone walls topped with thyme, rosemary, and clusters of tiny white flowers on the left.
The villa itself was wider at the top where the main living spaces were, then narrowed, stepping down in wings to the infinity pool.
Terraces jutted out almost haphazardly, each with wrought-iron railings that had pots spilling over with either bougainvillea or juvenile lemon trees.
Below the main house, smaller crew houses hugged the hillside, connected by narrow stone staircases.
“We’re here,” the driver said, as if it wasn’t obvious.
Elise had read the villa name on the plaque fixed to the wrought-iron gates.
Villa Luminosa. She knew they were here and, for the first time since she’d boarded the plane at LAX, she felt something stir in her chest. Optimism.
Yes, Elise Mercier was entirely optimistic that this season was going to go by without a single complication.
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly sprightly. She opened the door before the driver could get to her and jumped out, feeling ten pounds lighter. “Yes,” she said, adding a smile. “This season is going to be just fine. Great even. I’m feeling—”
“Hi, Elise,” a woman said from the other side of the car. “I’m Monica. The new host.”
Elise spun around and took in the tallest drink of water she’d ever seen. Monica had at least a head on Vivian. Or maybe it only felt that way because Elise was incredibly short. She barely made five feet four inches.
“Hi,” Elise managed. “It’s nice to meet you.” She had a tiny memory lapse—she blamed the gorgeous villa for blanking her mind—and for a second she thought Vivian was going to show up. But then she remembered Vivian was probably halfway across the world on her honeymoon.
Monica stuck out her hand. Elise took it. Her grip was strong. Her fingers long. Elise liked the look of her wedding band. At least Monica wasn’t going to participate in any inappropriate entanglements this season. She only hoped that the woman’s marriage was a happy one.
“This place is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said.
“I was here in Positano probably about five years ago. My best friend got married in Ravello, but the only thing I remember about the wedding was the smell of lemons in the bathroom.” She laughed out loud, and Elise, who didn’t have time for this, smiled as politely as she could.
Her immediate task was to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be.
“Lemons,” she said, her voice tight. “How lovely.”
“Stanley was raving about the location this season. I couldn’t agree more. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I mean, have you been inside the villa yet?”
The obvious answer was no, of course not; she’d just arrived. But Elise was still trying to wrap her head around the very real possibility that Monica and Stanley were friends. “Do you know him well?”
“We go way back,” Monica said, waving a hand vaguely, like their history involved a thousand stories she didn’t have the time to tell.
“I haven’t seen him in years, though. When he called last month and said he needed someone reliable for this season, I said yes so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
My wife thought I was crazy, but even she loves watching The Sapphic Match. I was never going to say no.”
Stanley contacting Monica was news to Elise, who thought they’d do a season without a host like they’d done for one of the seasons previously.
Would it be rude if she simply walked away from Monica? Just turned, nodded, and left? No, Elise thought. She was a better person than that. “It’s very nice to have met you,” Elise said, already shifting her weight toward the villa. “But I really must—”
“Speaking of whiplash,” Monica barreled on. “You will not believe who I bumped into at the infinity pool.” She didn’t give Elise time to guess, which frankly was fine considering Elise hated guessing games. “Harper Angel. I can’t believe she’s—.”
“Wait,” Elise said, cutting her off clean. Had she heard her correctly? Or was that static in her ears? “What did you say?”
“Harper Angel,” Monica repeated. “The photographer. She’s won so many awards.
I saw her earlier at the pool.” She pointed back toward the house with her thumb.
“You know who I’m talking about, right? Her National Geographic series about the abandoned nunneries across the Cyclades was phenomenal.
The way she captured the light shifting through those stone corridors was haunting.
” Then she frowned. “Unless it wasn’t her and I’ve got the wrong person.
” She laughed, waving her hand as if she was saying, silly me.
But there was nothing silly about it. The mere possibility that Harper Angel was standing somewhere in the villa garden nearly gave Elise heart palpitations. It just couldn’t be.
And yet the drop in her stomach told her otherwise as Stanley’s voice echoed in her head. New faces. Reinvention. Had he really replaced Cypress with Harper? Surely not. Surely that would be too much of a coincidence.
A cold rush spread through her chest, like someone had opened her ribcage and poured ice water straight into her body. “I have to go,” she blurted.
And go she did. Except her feet carried her toward the villa and not away from it.