Lizanne stepped back. Her fingers slipped free and the loss of it made Rose’s breath catch all over again. The room was too small for Lizanne to go far, but she went and stopped. She stood there with her hair wrecked, where Rose had pulled it, and her lipstick smeared, and her chest rising and falling a little fasterthan usual, which was the only concession she made to what had just happened. She wore the expression of someone who had done exactly what she’d intended to do and felt no particular need to explain it.
Rose stared back. Her legs were still shaking. She could still feel Lizanne’s hands on her, in her…
“Is this part of the story?”
“No,” Lizanne said.
Just the word. Nothing else. She held Rose’s gaze and let it hang there between them.
“You should go,” Rose said.
Lizanne looked at her for a long moment—a look Rose felt in her sternum. Then she reached down, picked the wedding dress up from the floor, and hung it carefully on the hook beside the mirror.
She pulled the curtain back and stepped out without a word. Rose heard her footsteps cross the floor, heard the attendant’s bright, professional chirp start up somewhere in the main room, and then the sounds of the salon rushed back in as if nothing had happened at all.
Rose stood with her back against the wall, her pulse thudding in her ears. She looked at herself in the small mirror—flushed, undone, a total disaster—and reached for her jeans.
Her hands were shaking. She noted it, refused to acknowledge it, and got dressed.
Chapter 17
Rose
The script was three pages long. Rose had read it four times, and it managed to get worse with every pass.
She dropped it onto the kitchen table in the pool house, sliding it toward Quinn. He picked it up with the grim enthusiasm of a man who’d been waiting his whole life for a soap opera to break out in his kitchen.
“Star-crossed lovers,” he murmured after a moment.
“Keep reading.”
He did. Kayla was on the sofa, legs tucked under her, alternating between a handful of crackers and her own copy of the script. She’d gone quiet halfway through page one.
“Okay,” Quinn said, setting the pages down. “So the official lore is that you met Lizanne while you were planning her wedding to Trina. You fell for each other, but she was committed, so nothing happened. Then the breakup, she called to cancel the wedding, then you had a meeting, and—” He looked up. “Instant love.”
“Instant,” Rose flatly confirmed.
“Mutual?”
“Deeply.”
Quinn looked at the script. “Rose, honestly? It’s a great story.”
“It’s fiction, Quinn.”
“All the best stories are fiction. That’s why people pay for them.” He leaned back, the chair creaking. “Think about the optics. You’re the wedding planner who fell for the bride. That’s a movie. At least a prestige limited series.”
“Itisa limited series. That’s the problem. And I’m the lead.”
Kayla set her crackers aside. “Walk me through the part where you supposedly realized you were in love with her.”
Rose glanced at the page. “The vineyard. According to this, we were doing the venue walkthrough and something clicked.”
“Something clicked,” Kayla repeated, her voice deadpan.
“Their word, not mine.”
Kayla and Quinn traded a look that Rose pointedly ignored. She picked up her script and folded it until the paper groaned.
