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I try to picture Ryan waiting for me beneath these ranunculus and twinkle lights—or even at a real oceanfront destination, like we’ve discussed a couple times. I can’t see it. And after a moment of trying, tears sting my eyes.

I move to the window, where no one can see me wipe them away. Every time I think of our wedding—I get stuck.

For some reason the idea of getting married, of taking the big next step in my life, sends my heart back to the child I was when I lost my mom. When I think of a wedding without her in the pictures, I find that I can’t pick a date—or a venue, or a dress, or a cake, or a first song to dance to with my dad. Because she won’t be there to experience it.

Aude finds me at the window. She’s holding out my buzzing phone.

It’s probably Ryan. When he gets to Penn Station, he always checks in about dinner, which is always Italian takeout from Vito’s on nights I’m working late. I’m trying to push away thoughts of my mother, to focus on whether baked ziti or eggplant parm will hit the spot around ten, but when I glance at my phone, it’s not his name on the screen.

It’s Frank, executive assistant to our president and publisher, Sue Reese.

Can you meet with Sue at 4:30?

I blink at the message. It’s four-fifteen right now.

My chest tightens. In all the years I’ve worked at Peony, Sue’s calendar has been meticulously organized weeks in advance. She doesn’t do impromptu.

Something’s up. Somethingbig.

Chapter Three

Sue’s assistant, Frank, is the kind of man who always offers you hot tea with a great big smile when you arrive for a meeting, then frowns when you take him up on it. Generally, I make a habit of trying not to annoy Frank, but today I’m so nervous that I accidentally blurt out “yes.”

“Hmph,” Frank says, rising from his desk with the kettle.

“Do you know what this meeting is about?” I ask, following him to the kitchen.

Frank has been Sue’s assistant for over twenty years, ever since she founded Peony in the late nineties. I’ve seen him rattle off a thousand facts about Sue into the phone, right off the top of his head—her passport number, her mother-in-law’s favorite flowers, the date of her last gynecological exam.

“I don’tthinkyou’re getting fired,” he calls over his shoulder, “but I’ve been wrong before.”

“Thanks.”

“You don’t take milk or sugar or anything, right?” he asks, his tone directing me toward the right answer.

I shake my head.

“The toughest people take it straight.” He hands me the mug, then says more brightly, “Go on in. She’ll be right with you.”

I open the door to our publisher’s corner office and step tentatively inside. Sue’s spa—as Meg and I call it—is the only office at Peony that doesn’t look like a romance publishing office. Every other employee has some variation of wall-to-wall bookshelves crammed with loudly colored spines, but Sue’s office is entirely white. The white desk is devoid of papers, the white leather chairs are smooth as cream, and the white modernist coat rack harbors three white cardigans, each one with some expensive flourish, like pale pink leather elbow patches.

The only pops of color come from three large hanging ferns and three framed photographs of sons who look like mini-Sues but with braces. I’ve never met Sue’s kids before, but I have seen her water her plants, and her surprising devotion to them lets me know she’s a really good mom.

I’m doing this square breathing trick Meg taught me, trying to stay calm as I settle into Sue’s white guest cloud, when a man pops up from behind Sue’s desk. We scream at the same time.

“Rufus, what the hell?” I hiss. I can hiss at him because he’s my friend. It’s a love hiss. “What are you doing here?”

“Um, my job?” he says, rolling out his neck, which is always sore because he over-Pilates because he has thelong-standing, unrequited hots for Brent, the instructor at Pilates World.

“Well, get out! Come back later. I have a meeting.”

“Sue’s printer broke,” he says, fiddling with some cables in a way that makes me suspect he won’t be done anytime soon. “Just because I’ve had to resurrect your hard drive from the underworld—is it three times now?—does not mean I don’t also perform valuable IT for the rest of this company.”

“In my defense—”

“Oh, I dare you.” He shakes his head in pity.

“Mercury was in retrograde!”