Chapter 5
Rose
The following week Rose sat in the driveway of the Connors estate, her hands gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white against the worn leather.
The silence of the canyon was oppressive, broken only by the rhythmic tick-tick-tick of her engine cooling.
She’d spent the last week living in a state of high-functioning paranoia, moving through her life like a double agent behind enemy lines.
She had been thorough. A lie this big couldn’t just be told; it had to be inhabited.
She hadn’t just made the registry; she’d spent half a night “harassing” her few trusted friends into leaving comments that felt lived-in and slightly annoying, the way real wedding guests were.
She’d seeded Facebook groups for the Catskill Mountains with casual inquiries about December weather at the Glasshouse, ensuring that if Pat Seahorn’s team went digging, they’d find a trail of digital breadcrumbs.
She had built a Pinterest board so detailed it looked like a full-time obsession rather than a week-long fabrication.
“Be the architect,” she whispered to herself, adjusting her rearview mirror and checking her lipstick. “Architects don’t sweat. They design. They control.”
She stepped out into the heat, clutched her iPad to her chest like a shield, and walked toward the pale stone house. The house felt oddly still, the air-conditioning humming a low, expensive chord. Only Lizanne was there, standing by a wall-to-wall window that looked out at the rolling green below.
“Thank you again for the opportunity, Lizanne. I truly—”
“I didn’t hire you for ‘nice,’ Rose,” Lizanne interrupted, turning around.
She was dressed in a sleek, cream-colored trousers-and-vest set that screamed authority.
“I hired you for planning. We have less than five weeks now. My dresser is arriving in an hour for alterations, and Prime Esque is sending a tech scout on Monday. Every second we spend on pleasantries is a second we aren’t solving problems.”
Rose snapped into professional mode instantly, the adrenaline overriding her fatigue. “Understood. The timeline is tight, but manageable.”
“The show starts filming the moment you start the processional. There are no second takes in reality TV, Rose. This isn’t a movie set where we can reset the lighting if a flower wilts or a chair is out of place.
Three million people will see it in 4K minimum, and I don’t intend to be a meme for disorganized brides. ”
“I’ve handled live events with higher stakes,” Rose lied smoothly. “Now, let’s talk venues.”
“St. Helena Vineyard,” Lizanne said, her finger tapping a spot on a map. “The North Grove.”
Rose’s heart did a slow, painful roll in her chest. St. Helena was the crown jewel of the valley.
It wasn’t just a venue; it was a fortress of exclusivity.
They didn’t just book months in advance; they booked years.
They had a waiting list for the waiting list, and the boss was notorious for being a snob who only took calls from the Forbes 400.
“It’s a beautiful choice,” Rose said, her voice a masterclass in calm. Inside, she was already calculating which favors she could call in or which alternatives there were.
“Good. And the cake. It has to be Jerry Ruger’s.”
Another hit. Ruger was a celebrity baker who treated his cakes like commissioned sculptures for the Louvre. He was notorious for turning down A-listers if he didn’t vibe with their aesthetic, and he never, ever did last-minute bookings.
“Jerry is... selective,” Rose began, trying to find a diplomatic way to say the man is a nightmare.
“If I wanted a planner who told me things were difficult, I would have hired one of the big-box firms,” Lizanne said, her voice dropping into that lower register, the one that made Rose’s skin prickle.
“Can you do it, or should we reconsider the contract before the ink is dry? I need a fixer, Rose. Not a commentator.”
“I’ll have a tasting scheduled for you by next week,” Rose said, her chin lifting. She could feel the fire of a challenge lighting up in her gut. “I’ll handle Jerry.”
Lizanne studied her for a long moment, the tension in the room crackling like a live wire.
Then, she began to move through her vision.
She wanted hundreds of white roses and rare orchids that looked like they’d been plucked from a conservatory.
She wanted every chair draped in heavy, raw silk that caught the light just so.
“And a wedding canopy,” Lizanne added, her eyes brightening with a sudden, childlike intensity.
“I want one of those traditional wedding canopies. But I want the cover to be deep, midnight-blue velvet. Hand-stitched with golden stars and moons. I want it to look like we’re standing under a piece of the night sky. ”
Rose blinked, her pen hovering over her iPad. “Wait. You like celestial themes?”
“Astronomy,” Lizanne corrected, a small, genuine smile touching her lips—the first one Rose had seen that didn’t feel like it was for the cameras.
“I’ve always loved the stars. No matter how much of a mess life is down here, you can always look at the stars and know they don’t care. They just stay.”
Rose felt a genuine smile break through her professional mask. “I love the stars, too. I actually just took my daughter to the planetarium last weekend. We saw the Origins of the Cosmos show. She spent three hours trying to find Andromeda afterward.”
For a second, the Event that was Lizanne Connors softened.
The ice queen melted, revealing a woman who looked almost human.
“The one at the Griffith? I love that show. Sometimes I sneak in there with a baseball cap and my hair tucked up just so I can sit in the dark and watch the sky move. It’s the only place I can breathe where no one is looking at me. ”
“Does Trina go with you?” The question was out of Rose’s mouth before she could stop it.
Lizanne’s expression flickered—a brief, haunting shadow of something lonely passed over her face. “She used to. Lately... she’s been so busy with her own projects. The new label, the scouting. She says once you’ve seen one star, you’ve seen them all. She prefers the neon ones.”
The vulnerability lasted exactly four seconds before Lizanne straightened her vest, her shoulders squaring. The mask snapped back into place. “Anyway. Back to the business. Can you find someone to embroider the velvet? It needs to be intricate. Not a craft-store job.”
“I have a contact who does theatrical costumes for the opera,” Rose said, her mind already dialing the number. “I’ll get her started on a sample.”
As they worked through the rest of the list, Rose found it harder and harder to ignore how captivating Lizanne was.
It wasn’t just the movie-star looks; it was the poise, the razor-sharp intelligence, and the way she could pivot from talking about cosmology to demanding a specific thread count for napkins.
She had an ice queen quality that Rose found dangerously attractive.
She has a fiancée. You have a fake one, Rose, she reminded herself, the image of Quinn in the Derek photo flashing in her mind like a warning light.
Rose made it all the way to her car before she let out a breath so long and harsh it sounded like a deflating tire. She sank into the driver’s seat, her head hitting the headrest with a dull thud.
“Okay,” she whispered to the empty car. “Just a two-year-booked vineyard, a baker who hates everyone, a thousand orchids, and a hand-stitched velvet galaxy. All of that by October 27th. That’s all.”
The fee for this wedding would pay off the Meridian debt in one fell swoop. The prestige would fix her career for the rest of her life. All she had to do was pull off five different miracles by showtime.