Chapter 1

The woman across my desk is marrying my husband.

She hired me to plan the wedding.

She doesn't know I'm his wife. She doesn't know we're still married. To her I'm just the best planner in the city. She's half right.

"His ex is a nightmare," she says. "Some little housewife who thought throwing parties was a career. I want this so big she never shows her face in this city again."

I write it down. Little housewife. Cute.

"Chloe." She sticks out her hand. Three-carat ring. I know the jeweler. I know it was bought with money that used to be mine.

"Grace." I shake it.

She doesn't blink. Why would she. I use my maiden surname -- Bennett.

Bennett Weddings. Six-month waitlist. She skipped it because Seb knows people.

Seb knows people, all right.

"Tell me about him."

She melts. "Sebastian Cooper. Self-made. Built everything himself."

He didn't. But she doesn't have time for that flashback.

"He was married before." She drops her voice like it's tragic. "Total disaster. They're divorced now."

We're not.

He handed me the papers a year and a half ago. I never signed them. By accident. The way I find out everything about my husband.

"Divorced," I say. "Good for him."

She talks for forty minutes. Gives me everything. His favorite color -- the tie I bought him. The venue he "always dreamed of" -- I stood in it first, before it was anyone's dream.

She thinks she's buying a wedding.

"The date?"

"Best part." She glows. "Seb picked it himself. September fourteenth."

My pen stops. One second. Stone church. Forty-eight guests. White ranunculus in my hands.

September fourteenth.

He wants to marry her on our anniversary.

"Perfect." I pull out a new notebook -- cream pages, the good one. Write the date at the top. Press a tab onto the first page. Client -- Chloe.

"Deposit's non-refundable. I take all of it

"Whatever it costs." She's already got her card out. "Just make it unforgettable."

I set my phone face-down between us and turned off the recording.

"Every wedding tells the truth about the the marriage underneath it," I say. "Yours is going to be famous."

She laughs. "God, you're good."