Chapter 3

Half the people at this party had met me as Sebastian's wife.

Tonight I was here as the help.

The engagement party was on the rooftop. His penthouse. Mine, technically -- but not tonight. Two hundred guests, black dress, tablet in hand. Just the planner. No white ranunculus. I'd made sure.

I kept to the edges. Checked the light, the flow. Opened my book against the wall and marked one more thing done. The pages were almost full now. Almost ready.

For an hour, it worked. I was furniture again, and for once I wanted to be.

Then a voice cut across the terrace.

"Grace? Grace Bennett?"

Marion. Gallery owner. Loud. We'd done her daughter's wedding years ago.

Heads turned. Ten. Then twenty.

My stomach dropped. Instinctively, I touched my face to confirm the mask was still there.

Because Marion didn't know me as the planner. None of these people did. They knew me as the woman who used to stand next to the groom. His mother was twenty feet away. One wrong word -- isn't that Sebastian's wife? -- and it was over. Tonight. A month early. Before the wedding. Before the only room that mattered.

Then Seb was there. He'd heard it. He always moves fast.

"Marion! You know Grace?" Arm around Chloe, easy smile. "She's the planner we hired. Does beautiful work." He looked at me. The smile stopped at his eyes. "Grace. You don't mind, right?"

He wanted me to say it. Out loud. In front of the whole room I used to belong to. Staff. Not his wife.

I closed the book.

"Of course," I said. "I don't mind at all."

For a second it held. Marion's face eased. The terrace started to turn back to its champagne.

Then it didn't.

Her smile faltered. Her head tilted. Something surfacing behind her eyes -- the same thing I'd watched surface behind Seb's, two days ago. A body remembering before the brain lets it.

"Wait." Slower now. Louder. The people around her going quiet. "The planner?"

She looked at me. Really looked.

"You're not the planner." The whole terrace heard it. "You're--"

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