The CEO's Bride

A florist smuggles dried lavender into a hotel lobby arrangement in March because the old-school city crowd does not do lavender in March. Two guests notice within the hour. So does the man who owns the building. A rusty staple pricks through her thumb pad and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from swearing loudly enough for the front desk to hear. She shakes her hand, sucks the bead of blood clean, and goes back to wiring the peonies into place. The centrepiece sits on the marble console: ivory garden roses, blushing peonies, eucalyptus, and the lavender she carried in her apron pocket. *Now that's interesting. Who's the florist?* She straightens, wipes her palms on her jeans, and says her own company's name out loud like it is a real business, which it is, barely. Then a throat clears behind her, a sound like a file dragged across concrete, and Gianna Moretti steps around the console with her platinum bob swinging like a helmet, and the two men melt back toward the dining room. Declan Ward does not look at the manager who materialises at his elbow with revised floor plans. He looks at Natalie, and says her full name, and it hits her like cold water, because she has never met him. She has seen his face in the business pages and once in a photograph at a gala, standing beside a woman who looked carved from ice. What follows: a cornerstone sworn by, a lie she can afford, the first of a great many dinners, the gravity of need, the art of the whisper, scars neither of them show, a charity circuit that eats people, and a boundary she did not want to draw and draws anyway. *Then promise the actions.* He picks up the pen and writes a single line below hers, and signs it with the same signature he uses on checks and contracts. The one she forged in her grandmother's kitchen. *Now you.* She stole from him. She broke into his office. She lied to his face, and he is helping her anyway, and the only remaining question is whether she will let herself believe the reason.