Chapter Four
Elise couldn’t breathe. At least not in the conventional sense.
The air that did somehow manage to go into her lungs didn’t feel like it was reaching anywhere important, barely enough to fuel her brain or keep her organs functioning properly.
In fact, her lungs felt tight and fragile, as if someone had swapped them for two collapsed paper bags.
A light dizziness flickered behind her eyes.
She glanced up at her reflection but quickly looked away.
The wallpapered walls seemed to close in on her.
Soon she’d be a pancake. At least pancakes didn’t have emotions.
The thought made her feel a tiny bit better.
Not enough for her breathing to return to normal, though.
Nope. There was still the risk she’d end up blacking out face-first on the coral Calcutta tiles.
“Get a fucking grip,” Elise muttered, pressing both hands to the cool marble of the bathroom sink. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. The only thing expected of you right now is to breathe. So, just breathe.”
But how was she supposed to breathe when Harper fricken Angel was somewhere outside?
Of all the people Stanley could hire to replace Cypress…
why her? Why the woman whom Elise had spent ten years meticulously trying not to think about?
The woman she’d sworn she didn’t have those kinds of feelings for.
The woman who had kissed her under the stars one night while they sat beside those floppy camping chairs and the fire burned down to glowing coals.
Harper had leaned in first. She’d looked at her with eyes so lost Elise had felt a pang in her chest, and then she’d closed the gap between them.
Their lips had brushed, and for one impossible second the entire desert had gone silent.
And yes, Elise had freaked out for a moment, but then she’d kissed Harper again and suddenly the stars had exploded around them and the world had felt like it was tipping on its axis.
The next morning Harper had left back to London and Elise, well, she’d come to a very sensible conclusion: the exploding stars, the tilting world, the heart-in-throat nonsense had all been nothing more than the side effects of drinking too much beer.
She’d been drunk. Obviously. Which is why the kiss had felt bigger than it was.
Why it had felt like something it absolutely, definitely was not.
Besides, Elise wasn’t gay. She was as straight as a damn arrow. She liked men, loved everything about them: their big hands, their baritone voices, the way they could lift furniture like it was nothing. She had proof that she liked men. A decade’s worth of proof in two ex-husbands.
So why had seeing Angel standing by the infinity pool, her reflection rippling in the water, sent Elise’s stomach into a gymnastics routine?
It hadn’t; she decided. She was just jet-lagged.
And hungry. Very hungry, in fact. Her stomach rumbled in response, and Elise forced in a deep breath, her shoulders dropping as her lungs finally cooperated.
See? She was fine. Completely fine. Hunger always had a way of making everything feel catastrophic.
All she needed was a chicken mayo on sourdough toast. As soon as she peeled herself away from the sink, she’d get one of the PAs to source her one.
“You’re perfectly fine,” she said to her reflection. “And it doesn’t mean this season is off to a bad—”
A knock on the door cut her off.
Elise flicked her head toward it and held her breath. The villa was monstrous. There were at least ten more bathrooms scattered across the three floors. Surely whoever was knocking on her door could go and find one of the others to do their business.
But then Monica’s voice called out. “Elise. Are you in there? I thought I saw you slip in here earlier. I promise I don’t usually have chats through closed doors, but the bachelorette is here. She’s in quite a state. The airline lost her bags.”
Elise groaned inwardly and then cleared the earlier, unnecessary panic from her throat. “I’ll be right there,” she called. “Give me one minute.”
“Alright,” Monica said. “I’ll tell her.” Then her footsteps sounded and softened, and by the time they were completely gone, Elise was ready to face the world… and Harper Angel.
Or maybe it was best she avoided Harper for an indefinite amount of time, hopefully the entirety of the show.
She decided she would try her utmost best as she grabbed her blazer from the hook on the back of the door.
Her hair was a little windswept. Her makeup could’ve been better.
And her cheeks were a little flushed. None of which could be sorted out in the next few minutes. Besides, she had a fire to put out.
She reached the grand foyer, a sun-drenched expanse of travertine floors, twin sweeping staircases, and an oversized chandelier dripping with hand-blown Murano glass.
Beyond it, the space opened toward the driveway.
From there, she could already hear Megan’s voice—high, flustered, and peppered with half-sentences about not having a dress to wear to the introductions. Her panic was entirely understandable.
“Megan,” Elise said, sticking out her hand way before she even reached the bachelorette. “Hi. I’m Elise, the executive producer. I heard your bags didn’t make it on the flight?”
Megan fanned her face. Her cheeks were bright pink. “Yes,” she said, her voice shrill. “Apparently, they’re on their way to Milan.”
“Don’t worry,” Elise said, her voice a little too businesslike for her liking.
If she was going to get Megan to trust her enough to tell her deeply personal things––like whether she was sleeping with one of the contestants or the host, or whoever else she shouldn’t be sleeping with––she had to let up a little.
Her best bet would be to be approachable, especially since Elise refused to let this season fall into the same trap as the previous three seasons.
This wasn’t The Never Rose Show; this was The Sapphic Match, and she would rather lose her pinkie toe than let it implode before the final ceremony again.
“We’ll get your bags,” she promised. “In the meantime, our stylists have pulled together a few looks for you.” They hadn’t yet, of course not, but Megan didn’t have to know that. She needed reassurance. To be coddled.
Megan looked nearly faint with gratitude. She smiled, and Elise could easily see why she’d been chosen as this season’s bachelorette. She was gorgeous. A young Cindy Crawford, but with the nose of Sarah Gadon.
“I usually have my assistant producer help out with these kinds of things,” Elise said, wondering if she should go a touch further and pat Megan on the back.
Elise had been told on more than one occasion that she came off a little icy.
She didn’t want that this season. She wanted to be as warm as a Christmas morning.
She just didn’t know how to go about that.
“But this season, I’ve decided to take a more personal approach. So, how about I show you around?”
“I’d love that.”
Elise led Megan up the four steps and then in through the doors to the foyer.
She let Megan ooh and aah at the round pedestal table in the center holding a towering arrangement of Amalfi lemons still on their glossy branches, white bougainvillea, and pale blush ranunculus threaded with sprigs of rosemary, and then guided her toward a hallway to their left.
Considering Elise hadn’t yet had time to take a proper tour herself, they were both essentially wandering blind. Elise only pretended she knew exactly where she was going because she was the executive producer of the show.
“Have you been to the Amalfi Coast before?” she asked as they stepped into an expansive room with two yellow serpentine sofas scattered with throw pillows.
Along the far wall stretched a ten-foot cocktail bar with glossy turquoise shelves holding every spirit imaginable.
Elise prayed half of them were for show.
Flanking the bar were a pair of opal dome sconces glowing like moons.
“I haven’t,” Megan said, walking around in a circle, taking it all in. It was a lot to take in. Elise sure as hell hadn’t expected this room at all. A little less old-money Italy and a little more new-money gaudiness.
“Honestly, I haven’t traveled that much out of the country. This is only my second time overseas, and the first time I was like five, so all I can remember is zipping around the airport on my wheelie bag while my dad pushed it,” Megan went on.
Elise wasn’t sure why that was surprising, but it was. “Really?” she asked before she could help herself. She really should eat. “I just meant you seem like someone who’s been around the globe.”
Megan laughed. “Well, thank you. But no, I’m more of a homebody. And school pretty much took most of my savings and time. Med school doesn’t exactly leave space for relaxing on a beach in Bali.”
“I can’t imagine doing what you do,” Elise said, and that was the truth.
Operating on little kids was the stuff of nightmares.
Their tiny, sick bodies. Their frightened parents.
The pressure of holding something so fragile in your hands without breaking it.
Elise could barely keep a succulent alive.
She also didn’t like kids. Never wanted them.
Her nieces were adorable, but thank goodness she could give them back after a visit.
“It’s not easy,” Megan said, and Elise could glimpse the exhaustion beneath the thin layer of bronzer.
“But it’s rewarding. I love what I do, which is why I haven’t had any time to date.
I know most people make a Tinder profile, and I promise this wasn’t my first choice.
But when my colleagues wrote me in for the show, I didn’t think I would get it. ”
“But you did, and you decided to seize the moment.”
“Exactly.”
Elise led Megan into what looked like the main living room, which, just like the last room, was aggressively bright.
The walls were covered in hand-painted lemon-grove wallpaper, and a sprawling cream boucle sectional sat angled toward the terrace doors.
The lacquered olive-green coffee table held a stack of photography books, and above the console table pushed against one wall was another arrangement of lemons, with a trio of vintage Amalfi travel posters hanging above.
Once they’d seen all they needed to see, and Megan had oohed her way through the dining room with its massive marble twelve-seater, Elise led her toward the kitchen.
“You’ll be staying in the villa with the ten contestants,” she said. “We really enjoyed that dynamic in the previous season.”
The double sliding glass doors that opened to the citrus garden suddenly swished apart, and Harper walked in.
She moved the pair of Oakleys up to her head, and Elise could see her eyes.
Her warm, honey-brown eyes that had once upon a time stared so intently into Elise’s soul she’d gotten the shivers.
Elise was just about to ignore Harper completely and say something about the U-Haul compatibility test they’d cooked up for mid-season, when Harper walked past her and stuck out her hand to Megan.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Harper Angel. I’ll be taking all your photos this season.
Glamor, confessionals, date shoots, the works. ”
Megan smiled. Her eyes did a quick flick up and down, the kind of once-over you gave when someone was extremely attractive, and Elise felt her stomach drop like a large stone tossed in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
“It’s nice to meet you, Harper Angel,” she said. Wait, were those stars in her eyes? Elise sure as hell hoped not. She did not need her bachelorette to develop a crush on the photographer. Especially not the photographer named Harper Angel.
“Is that your real name?” Megan asked. “I always find it so interesting when people have names that sound like they either belong in a book or a song.”
Elise knew the answer to this. Harper’s real name was actually Diana Harper Llewelyn-Abbott.
Double-barreled, aggressively British and impossibly posh.
Harper had only started calling herself Harper Angel after that near-fatal fall during a climbing trip in her early twenties.
She’d told Elise all about it sitting against one of those petrified trees on a plot of white clay at Deadvlei with a dreamy look in her eye: ‘It felt like I was caught by something that logically shouldn’t have been there.
’ Elise had felt euphoric when Harper had confided in her about something so personal.
But then again, she’d felt euphoric about most things Harper had said or done.
“What do you think?” Harper asked Megan now. Her head tilted just a touch to the right, and her left incisor caught the light just as she grazed it lightly against her bottom lip.
Great. She was flirting. Which Elise found infuriating and confusing. And who gave a shit if Harper was flirting. As long as she didn’t sleep with the bachelorette. Not that she would, because not only was Harper supposedly straight, she was also married. Wait. Wasn’t she married?
Elise’s gaze snapped down to Harper’s hand. To her very empty ring finger. And then suddenly, Elise’s entire world felt like it came crashing down. Harper Angel was divorced.