Chapter 1

Aysheia

There are three hundred and forty-seven items on my checklist for today. Item 214, Confirm Grand Ballroom Floral Condition at 16:00 Hours, is currently flashing red. Red is the color of failure. I don’t do failure.

The scent is the first indicator of the problem. It’s the delicate, funereal perfume of Casablanca lilies beginning to turn under a spotlight that is five degrees too hot and aimed three feet to the left of its designated mark. It’s a subtle scent of disaster that has no place at the Vance-Knight wedding, which is scheduled to be my masterpiece in exactly three weeks, on Christmas Day.

“Is there a problem, Ms. Grant?”

I don’t look up from my tablet. I can feel Javier, the resort’s banquet manager, vibrating with nervous energy beside me. He’s a good man, but he sweats when a timeline is threatened.

“The lilies in the northwest alcove arrangement are browning at the edges,” I say, my tone perfectly even. Inside, my brain is a frantic rush of calculations—cross-referencing the florist’s contract, re-routing a staff member for the fix, and adjusting the lighting tech’s schedule by a seven-minute increment. On the outside, I am a placid lake. “The initial walkthrough with the wedding party is in less than an hour. This needs to be perfect.”

I tap my stylus twice on the tablet’s screen, a sharp click-click in the hushed, cavernous ballroom. The sound is my anchor. Control. “I need them replaced. Not in ten minutes. Now.”

“But our on-site florist, she’s preparing for the rehearsal dinner tasting—”

“She is excellent,” I cut in, finally lifting my gaze to meet his. I give him my copyrighted ‘I’m in charge, don’t panic, but for the love of God do exactly what I say’ smile. “And her contract, Section C, subsection 4, specifies ‘contingency botanicals for all hero arrangements.’ Find her. And tell lighting to kill gaffer tape number 12. Immediately.”

Javier blinks, then nods, a soldier receiving his orders. He scurries away, and I allow myself one, slow exhale. This is my domain for the next few weeks. A world of contracts and contingencies, of timelines and checklists where every variable is accounted for. It’s the only world where I feel safe. My ex-fiancé, Michael, had called it my ‘fortress of fussiness.’ He said it right before he walked out, leaving me with a mountain of debt and a visceral, soul-deep hatred of surprises.

I glance back at my tablet, the cool, blue light a balm. The timeline for the next twenty-one days is a work of art, a symphony of logistics from now until the last guest departs on Boxing Day. Every minute is accounted for. Every contingency, planned. The structure of it, the sheer, unyielding order, is the only thing that quiets the low-level hum of anxiety that is the soundtrack to my life.

That’s when the chaos arrives.

He doesn’t walk into the ballroom; he materializes, a disruption in the carefully curated feng shui of the space. He’s all long limbs and easy confidence, poured into an expensive-looking ski jacket and dark jeans that have no place in my ballroom. A gust of cold, pine-scented air follows him in, a reminder of the untamed wilderness outside these obsessively controlled walls. His hair is a mess of black curls that look like he just ran his hands through them, and a single, devastating dimple punctuates one cheek.

Quinn Sullivan. Best man. Professional charmer. And, I can tell already, the single greatest threat to my peace of mind for the next several weeks.

He’s late. Thirty minutes late for the initial walkthrough. I make a note on my timeline with a sharp, definitive stroke of my stylus. He doesn’t even glance my way, his focus entirely on Zoren, who claps him on the back with a relieved grin. I watch him, my eyes narrowing. He’s the human equivalent of a wildcard—a variable I can’t quantify or control. His smile is a high-yield investment in charm, paying out dividends of forgiveness for his tardiness. He moves through the room not like a guest, but like he owns the place, his energy a large, disruptive force that ripples through my calm, orderly atmosphere. He’s a walking, talking, spontaneous event. A risk.

After a few minutes of back-slapping and inside jokes with the groom’s party, he finally drifts in my direction. He moves with a lazy grace that grates on my every nerve. I am efficiency. I am purpose. He is… a stroll.

“You must be the famous Aysheia,” he says in a low, smooth baritone that seems to absorb the ambient sound. He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell the faint, clean scent of expensive cologne layered over the crispness of the mountain air.

“And you must be the late Mr. Sullivan,” I reply, my tone clipped. My fingers find the smooth, cool metal of my stylus. My armor.

A slow smirk spreads across his face, transforming him from merely handsome into something far more dangerous. It’s a lopsided, knowing grin that says he’s in on a joke the rest of the world hasn’t heard yet. “Guilty. Had to close a deal on the chairlift. You know how it is. Last-minute market volatility.”

I don’t know how it is. My last-minute issues involve dying flowers and rogue spotlights, not market fluctuations. “The call time for the initial walkthrough was sixteen hundred hours. We’re now running behind schedule.”

“An acceptable loss,” he says with a breezy wave of his hand. He takes a step closer, his eyes, the color of dark-roast coffee, scanning the opulent ballroom. The room is my masterpiece—a winter wonderland of shimmering silver, deep evergreen, and thousands of twinkling lights. “Impressive setup. The initial capital outlay must have been significant.”

My back straightens. “It’s a wedding, Mr. Sullivan. Not a startup.”

“Everything’s a startup, Ms. Grant. A high-risk venture with a questionable long-term ROI.” He gestures toward the bar, where rows of crystal glasses stand in perfect, gleaming formation. “Speaking of which, I was looking at the preliminary bar tab. The markup on this Macallan 25 is astronomical. You could improve profit margins by at least twelve percent if you switched to a comparable, lesser-known Speyside.”

The stylus in my hand feels suddenly, intensely fragile, as if I might snap it in two. The audacity. The sheer, unmitigated gall. He’s critiquing my bar selection like he’s analyzing a balance sheet. He’s looking at this… this sacred, beautiful cathedral to love that I have poured my heart and soul into creating, and he’s seeing profit margins.

“The Vances are not concerned with profit margins,” I say, my voice dangerously quiet. “They are concerned with providing their guests with the best.”

“The best is subjective. ‘Value’ is quantifiable.” His gaze sweeps past me, landing on the bride’s parents, who are engaged in a tense, whispered conversation near the gift table. “This whole event, really… it’s a brilliant piece of business. A merger of two significant family assets, solidified with a public declaration. The optics are fantastic.”

A hot, sharp anger, utterly unprofessional and entirely unwelcome, pricks at the base of my skull. A merger of assets. He talks about Teresa and Zoren’s love story as if it’s a corporate acquisition. He’s stripped away all the magic, all the romance, all the soft-focus, fairy-tale nonsense that is the very foundation of my career, and boiled it down to a transaction. It’s cynical. It’s clinical. And it reminds me, just for a gut-wrenching second, of Michael, who had calmly explained that our breakup was a ‘re-evaluation of his personal and professional five-year plan.’

I need to regain control. Of the conversation. Of the pulsing vein in my temple. Of the room itself. I turn my full attention to him, my expression unreadable.

“Mr. Sullivan, your only role for three weeks is to show up on time and not lose the rings. I have everything else under control.” I give him a tight, dismissive smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a timeline to maintain.”

I make to turn away, a clear signal that this interaction is terminated. But he just chuckles, a low, infuriatingly pleasant sound.

He leans in slightly, his voice dropping. The air between us crackles, thick with the scent of pine and his cologne and something else, something I refuse to name. It feels like ozone before a lightning strike.

He winks, a quick, conspiratorial flash of an eye. “Relax, spreadsheet. It’s a party, not a corporate takeover.”