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The spa’s enormous golden tree was no less impressive on second viewing, the vibrant yellow leaves rippling overhead as they were ferried up to the main lodge. The silvery slate square foyer was flanked by two longer wings that flexed back toward the mountains. The building seemed to serve as an all-purpose hub for the spa’s services—front desk, administrative offices, and Sated, the on-site dining room. Jess wasn’t sure how “sated” she could be by a menu focused on wellness, but she was too hungry to argue about branding. Diana was already focused enough on that particular subject.

A porter helped Jess dismount from the back of the golf cart. She smoothed the long-sleeved ocher knit dress that had only made it through Aubrey’s outfit inspection before they’d left the villa because Kiki had lent her a pair of cute black half boots that looked nice with it. Kiki had cemented Jess’s loyalty, offering up her much more stylish footwear when Aubrey found fault with Jess’s “lumberjack shoes”—comfortable, utilitarian, unlikely to leave her toes smashed while moving a giant resin clamshell. Aubrey, annoyed that her weirdly unprovoked criticisms of Jess were curtailed, turned her laser gaze on the necklace Jess was wearing. “Nice pearls.”

Jess’s eyes narrowed. She worked to keep her voice civil but cold as she said, “Thank you. They were my great-grandmother’s.”

Diana’s head seemed to whip toward her at that. Jess recognized a series of expressions she’d seen quite frequently on the faces of Wren Hill girls—envy, avarice, a silent complaint that an unfair universe was denying them. Heirloom pearls were significant, especially to families like Diana’s. A treasured cameo was one thing, but a good string of pearls was a standard-issue signal of gentility—a traditional graduation gift that the Wren Hill girls wore with their caps and gowns. Jess’s grandparents hadn’t known about the tradition, and it became yet another small, incomplete ritual that separated her from her classmates. Jess had received her great-grandmother’s necklace the morning of her college graduation, an attempt on Nana Blanche’s part to right the “wrong.”

Aubrey must have recognized the look on Diana’s face, too—the pure want of it—because she simply turned on her (expensive designer stiletto) heel and walked out of the villa, grumbling thanks that Kiki’s feet were just as “oversized” as Jess’s.

Diana, of course, had required no outfit inspection, resplendent in a fitted teal dress that wouldn’t have been out of place at a country-club dance. After the accessory stare-down, she’d simply walked out and waited for her entourage to join her and for the “princess carriage” to whisk them away to dinner—if a princess carriage could be powered by a marine battery.

Now the porters ushered their group through the heavy oak doors on a cloud of warm, herb-scented air. The dining room matched the villas’ upscale rustic aesthetic, balancing sumptuous ivory table linens with floor-to-ceiling windows and rough wooden beams spanning the high ceilings. As they trooped past the gift shop—tucked away behind frosted glass, as if the Osbournes didn’t want to be so crass as to ask for money—Kiki glanced around the dining room with a disappointed expression on her face.

“Everything OK?” Jess asked her as they waited while the seating hostess tapped several tablet screens to register their party in the dining room’s reservation system. Diana looked distinctly annoyed at being expected to wait for anything , though they’d only stood in front of the hostess’s rough stone “podium” for a few seconds . Jess’s stomach rumbled at the scents of rosemary and basil sauteed in…some form of cooking fat they probably weren’t supposed to have. She was surprised the growling noise didn’t echo off the high ceilings.

Kiki waved her hand at a room that felt almost abandoned. Most of the tables, given the illusion of privacy through some strategically placed banks of tall potted plants, were empty. It only added to the “shutting down” pall that hung over the Golden Ash. It made Jess feel a little guilty, like they were keeping the staff in a restaurant past closing time.

“I believe I was promised that the rich and moderately famous regularly checked in to the Golden Ash,” Kiki said, chin-pointing to the handful of occupied seats. “Diana might be the most famous person in this room, even if it’s in her own head. And that’s sort of sad.”

“I didn’t know you cared about that sort of thing,” Jess retorted.

“Everybody cares a little about that sort of thing,” Kiki muttered.

“Think of it as Diana enjoying the spa at its most exclusive,” Jess replied. “Which is only going to make her happier.”

Kiki grumbled and gave Jess a sidelong glance.

“Expect Diana to be weird about you wearing those,” she said, nodding to her necklace. “The Helston family pearls were pawned back in the nineties—by Diana’s mother, by the way. She needed to pay for her first boob job. Left a bit of a wound, that we haven’t been able to afford a replacement.”

Jess’s mouth dropped open. Had Diana been wearing pearls at their graduation ceremony? She couldn’t remember. Jess had focused on walking across the stage without tripping.

“It was part of the reason it was such a big deal that Diana got the family cameo,” Kiki told her. “Some of the bolder cousins argued she shouldn’t have it when her mother sold off one of the few remaining family pieces. But as Aunt Birdie pointed out, Neely was no different than previous Helstons who sold off the family signet ring, family engagement ring, family silver—including the baby spoons.”

Jess suppressed a shudder. Kiki and Diana’s great-aunt, Virginia “Birdie” Helston, was the self-appointed matriarch of the family. From what Jess had observed during Birdie’s occasional visits to Wren Hill, the eldest Helston ran the family with her primary weapons: “guilt trips” and “subtle insults about your intelligence and/or face.”

“Wait, your family had actual silver spoons?” Jess asked.

“They were the first things to go,” Kiki replied. “Along with the silver baby rattle. In the end, Diana is Aunt Birdie’s favorite, and she made sure Diana got the cameo.”

“I would think, with the family history, that, as her cousin, Diana would insist that you bunk with her.”

Kiki shrugged, shifting the square neckline of her pewter-gray A-line dress. “It’s OK, I’m used to it. I’m sort of the add-on cousin. Added on to Diana’s birthday parties, added on to Diana’s travel plans, added on to the wedding party, because otherwise the tenuously balanced family political system would collapse under its own weight. Plus, my mama would pitch a hissy fit. My expectations are carefully managed.”

Jess had always pined for a larger family—aunts, uncles, cousins, who might have helped when things went so sideways with her mom, helped Jess support Nana Blanche, or just helped make their holidays a little livelier. Jess was starting to rethink her regrets.

The seating hostess, a short, compact woman whose name tag read “Carol Lee,” asked their group to follow her. Aubrey shot both of them an arch look, which kept Kiki and Jess a few paces behind her and Diana.

Kiki cleared her throat, lowering her voice even further to whisper, “So, Aubrey is pretty intense. Why does she hate you? Did you shave her head in her sleep at summer camp or something?”

“I don’t know ,” Jess whispered back, attempting to keep her boot heels from clicking too loudly across the mirror-shiny floors. “We’ve never even worked together that I know of. She works for Joyous Occasions. I used to work for Elegance by Ellis.” Jess paused to wait to see if Aubrey had overheard, but she was too busy chatting with Diana as if they were the best of friends. Kiki also didn’t show any recognition of either company name, which wasn’t surprising given that she had a job in the real world that didn’t involve mail-ordered butterflies.

“Are you sure?” Kiki asked. “Her comments seem awfully personal.”

“Maybe she’s friends with my former coworkers,” Jess said, shrugging. “I wasn’t super popular at the office. The owner put a lot of pressure on us to book events. I put my Wren Hill connections to good use. Every time one of the girls I knew from school got engaged, I would see it on social media, contact them to congratulate them, and…next thing you knew, I’d hand my boss a signed contract for their high-profile, expensive wedding.”

Of course, Jess hadn’t been allowed to handle weddings for those contacts. Without fail, Angenette Ellis immediately took them over. But it did mean that Angenette bragged about Jess’s connections to anyone who would listen, which didn’t exactly endear Jess to the other planners at her level. It had resulted in talk behind Jess’s back, exclusion from drinks after work, being conveniently left out of the office Secret Santa. She supposed she couldn’t put it past her former coworkers to bad-mouth her to whoever would listen, including Aubrey. Wedding planning was a fairly close-knit community. Viciously competitive and gossipy as all hell, but still, close-knit.

“Honestly, I’m glad I’m rooming with you,” Jess told her. “You seem to be the least exasperating option available.”

“Thank you. Likewise,” Kiki said primly, her lips twitching into a smile as they passed the residents of DisHarmony Villa. They’d apparently carried their disagreement over to their dining table. While Susan was ignoring her carefully plated salmon, Jeremy was devouring a large helping of pasta.

Susan, stylishly coiffed and still vibrating with anger, was pointing her fork so emphatically at Jeremy that her long chestnut bob bounced with every syllable. “You cannot keep acting this way and then treating me like I’m hysterical for saying something about it, Jeremy. Honestly, this is exactly the sort of thing Dr. Petersen and I try to talk to you about every session.”

“Susan, please, it’s just a little harmless fun. Networking is what I do ,” Jeremy told her. “It’s your reactions that are the real problem here, not my behavior.”

“Networking isn’t ‘what you do,’?” Susan shot back, slapping her hand on the table between them. “We never should have come here. I should have known you didn’t give a damn about ‘reconnecting’ with me. You promised me you were going to let this restaurant thing go . You’re not an up-and-coming restaurateur. You’re a glorified bank teller . ”

Jeremy slammed his hand on the table with a clang of rattling silverware. Jess kept her gaze trained on Kiki as they walked to their own table. She was determined not to make awkward eye contact with Susan again. She could only be glared at as proxy so many times in one day. Jess couldn’t even blame Susan for being unhappy. Jeremy seemed like a willfully oblivious creep. She made a mental note to avoid him at all costs.

“Ever since my promotion, your behavior has spiraled out of control. I swear, I could just kill you ,” Susan seethed. Their party moved away before Jess could hear anything else, and she was sort of grateful for it.

“I could deal with seeing them a little less,” Kiki admitted, making Jess hum in agreement.

The Helston party was escorted to a table close to the panoramic window, directly across from the open kitchen door. A partition kept them from seeing the inner workings at the stove but allowed them to hear the clank of pans and utensils. In fact, that seemed to be the only noise in the dining room, aside from the bickering from the DisHarmony table. The other guests, limited as they were, seemed to respect the food too much to talk over it.

It struck Jess as odd that she and Kiki had instinctively chosen the side of the table facing away from the view—as if they were falling into their “ranks.” Jess tried not to think too hard about that. A server approached their table with a friendly smile. Before he could even speak, Aubrey handed him the breadbasket she’d swiped off the table. “We’re not going to need this.”

The poor server, whose name tag read “Max,” raised his eyebrows and carried the basket away from the table without a word.

“Wasn’t that the guy we saw carrying boxes into the kitchen before?” Diana turned and craned her neck to get a better look at the kitchen door. Jess’s seat might not have had a view of the landscape, but thanks to the kitchen view, she did have a pretty good eyeline toward the Strawberry Guy. He was standing in the kitchen pass-through, wearing a chef’s jacket and polishing a knife with a dishcloth. When Jess dared to make eye contact, he was staring at her intensely—well, OK, the guy seemed to do everything intensely. But damn, being indoors didn’t make him look any less compelling.

A large middle-aged man appeared behind the chef in the kitchen door. He had extensive food-related images covering his golden-brown skin from wrists to elbows. Jess had never seen so many fork tattoos. Or any fork tattoos, really. Maybe Jess had lived a sheltered life.

Unlike his surly coworker, the older man smiled warmly and waved at the table. Oddly charmed, Jess lifted a hand to wave back, but Diana caught her wrist and pressed it to the table firmly. “We don’t make friends with the help, Jess, not even when they look like the knife-wielding chef there.”

“Exactly. I don’t care how cute he is, he is not going to be making pasta, potatoes, or any sort of complex carbohydrate for anyone at this table,” Aubrey said. “And Kiki, forget the fruit and cheese course. We agreed you were off dairy until after the wedding.”

Kiki frowned. “When did we agree to that?”

“Diana had your aunt Birdie talk to your mama,” Aubrey insisted.

“It’s no big deal,” Diana assured her airily. “It’s just that the bridesmaid dresses are very body conscious.”

Jess watched Kiki’s shoulders go round, as if she were trying to shrink into something less…Kiki. Jess pretended to scan the narrow menu sheet, evaluating the merits of herb-roasted chicken and couscous with red pepper coulis spheres. She noted the name “Dean Osbourne, Executive Chef” printed at the bottom of the menu. Under the table, Jess touched Kiki’s arm, which seemed to bring her back to herself. Kiki’s shoulders rolled into a less defeated posture.

“In my experience, bridal shops will alter bridesmaids’ dresses to make them as flattering as possible,” Jess told Aubrey. “I’m sure Kiki will look lovely in whatever dress you choose.”

“Well, your experience really isn’t that applicable anymore, is it?” Aubrey snarked back. Jess wondered if Max the server had alerted Poppy to the rebuffed breadbasket, because she appeared at their table within seconds, dressed in an elegant black cocktail dress.

“Oh, good, you’re here.” Aubrey turned to Poppy. “Why would your staff put a breadbasket on this table? Ms. Helston only chose this facility because she thought you encouraged a gluten-free, paleo-friendly diet plan.”

Even Jess knew that was a blatant lie. Diana chose this facility because she wanted to prove that Tillard money could pry open doors thought to be sealed shut for “regular people.” She wanted to be able to brag about Trenton loving her so much that he sent her to the Golden Ash and paid an exorbitant last-minute booking fee to make it happen. She wanted to experience life as the future Mrs. Tillard.

Poppy shook her head but kept her shopkeeper’s smile. “I’m not sure where you got that impression. If you have a goal of becoming healthier, we can help with the education aspect of that. But really, the point of visiting the Golden Ash is to find peace, relaxation, healing. We don’t serve alcohol because, in general, we’ve found that hot tubs, winding trails, and inebriation don’t mix well. But this isn’t a lockdown facility. Your choices are your own and you know your bodies.”

“If I promise not to go into town and get a bottle of chardonnay, can I have access to a Wi-Fi network?” Diana asked. “I’d rather have Wi-Fi than bread or cheese.”

Just then, Sis appeared near their table. Her only concession to evening attire was black pants as opposed to barn jeans and boots. Was it a bad sign that their table was getting attention from two Osbournes? Were they the “problem table”? Even with the disharmonious Jeremy and Susan in full force next door?

Poppy said, “I consider our society’s inability to function without digital stimulation to be far more dangerous than enjoying a good goat cheese. Which you should try because it’s made in-house by our very own Sis. When she’s not leading yoga sessions, she’s running our on-site farm.”

“Goats are nicer than people,” Sis noted, giving Diana a pointed look.

“The phone rules are meant to prevent you negatively impacting your own safety and the experiences of other guests,” Poppy noted. “In the same vein, if you somehow obtain alcohol and your behavior negatively impacts the experiences of other guests, the same rules apply.”

Sis’s smile was razor thin as she said, “You and your entire party will be asked to leave the spa, and you will be charged for the full length of your planned stay.”

“Wow, you guys really know that one by heart,” Jess murmured. She wondered what Sis’s role here was exactly, other than yoga-instructor-slash-goat-cheese-monger. Was she Poppy’s enforcer? Could goat-cheese-monger be a real job?

“Is that ‘digital stimulation’ quote available on a throw pillow at the gift shop?” Kiki asked, making Jess snicker. Diana shot both of them an exasperated look, making Jess bite her lip. Kiki nudged Jess with her elbow and smirked. Jess covered the ensuing giggle with a cough.

They probably were the problem table.

Poppy winked at Kiki and made her exit, dragging Sis along with her. Diana nodded to Aubrey, then said, “This week is about detoxing, but not from our phones. Because this week is only the start of making you a single-file line of happy, smiling, glowing bridesmaids. Years from now, when I look at my wedding photos, that’s what I deserve to see.”

Jess glanced at Aubrey, wondering why Diana was using the word “bridesmaids,” plural, when, as far as she knew, Kiki was the only bridesmaid present. Diana was giving Jess a look that gave her a panicked feeling that seemed to be dragging her stomach through to her feet.

Like Jess, Aubrey looked completely confused for a moment, but then notched up her smile and replied, “Well, of course you do, Diana.”

That seemed to satisfy Diana and order was restored, however briefly. Jess looked to Kiki, wondering if she could explain what the hell was happening here exactly. Jess didn’t have to wear a body-conscious dress. Was she expected to adhere to some Draconian cheese-free diet out of solidarity? Why didn’t Jess just bail out of this increasingly weird situation?

Oh, right. Money. She needed money to buy the TonyCakes building. She needed to put up with Diana and her weird diet demands so she could keep her home. Hell, with the kind of loan Jess was considering, she might even expand into the bakery floor, renovate the whole building. Hire more people. She could make Bricker Consultants into something special .

That was why.

“OK, so obviously there’s a little bit more pressure on Jessie than Aubrey this week, since Jessie’s part of the job comes first,” Diana said. “If we could spend at least the first two days cementing what you see as the ideal proposal mood palette, we can use that to lay out a vision board for the wedding.”

Jess had been doing this job for years, and she had never heard of a mood palette. What in the Pinterest hell was that?

“Oh, Diana, I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to put extra pressure on Jessie,” Aubrey said, smirking at her. Something about the tone of Aubrey’s voice made Jess’s hackles rise. This was a trap. “Everybody knows what happens when she reaches her stress limit.”

“What is she talking about?” Diana asked.

Jess turned to Aubrey. “What are you talking about?”

Aubrey poked out her bottom lip and shot her a pitying look. “Honey, the entire Nashville event planning community talks about the Pepperfield-Cooper wedding debacle.”

Jess’s jaw dropped and she was overwhelmed with the simultaneous urges to cry and slap the taste out of Aubrey’s mouth. Fortunately, her sense of financial self-preservation kept her from doing either. She simply stared stone-faced as Aubrey laughed. “Is it true the bride’s family sued you personally for the entire cost of the wedding?”

“Why would the bride’s family sue you?” Diana demanded. “Is there something I should know, Jess?”

Kiki’s focus ping-ponged between them. “What is happening?”

“Jess was fired because a bride caught her doing the groom a little favor in the rectory right before the ceremony,” Aubrey said, shaking her head.

Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Fuck it. Mavis has bail money in petty cash.

“What?” Diana cried.

Jess stared at Aubrey in horror. “What? Is that what people are saying?”

“Yes, every time I go to lunch,” Aubrey told her. “Isn’t that why you had to start your little business? Because you couldn’t get a job at any decent wedding planning firm in town?”

The urge to slap Aubrey was replaced by the urge to spill the entire correct story, so Jess supposed that was progress.

“Jess, is that true?” Diana demanded.

Stop.

Breathe.

Plan.

Jess took a deep breath in through her nose. She would not lose her composure. She didn’t have to be friends with anyone in this group to do her job. Feelings didn’t matter right now, results did—even in a profession that was mostly based on feelings.

Jeremy chose that moment to amble up to their table and loom over them with a predatory grin on his face.

“What a lovely collection of treats,” he said in what Jess was sure he thought was a smooth tone. “I could just eat you all up.”

The way his voice rolled over “eat you,” all oily and rasping, made Jess’s skin crawl.

“Please move along,” Diana huffed. “I would hate to report you to the management for harassing us. Do you even realize who you’re talking to?”

For the first time in her memory, Jess was in total agreement with Diana, even if it was a tragically cliché “I’m going to speak to the manager” moment.

“I happen to know the chef,” Jeremy continued as if Diana hadn’t spoken. “If you’d like me to put in a good word, I could negotiate a few extras for you.”

“We’d like you to leave,” Aubrey said, her own voice flat and final. “Before your wife catches up with you.”

As much as Jess would have liked to join Aubrey in ejecting this rude man from their space, she was too busy managing her anger, her embarrassment. Aubrey didn’t have a personal stake in Jess’s arrangement with Diana, so could this be an effort to undermine Jess’s standing with Diana and get her fired? Maybe Aubrey thought that she could do both jobs? What was her angle?

“Oh, I guess you heard our discussion earlier,” Jeremy began, his cheeks flushing. “It was just a little misunderstanding. You know how some women are. We have an arrangement.”

“I’m familiar with your discussion style and we’d like you to leave before it ruins our evening,” Aubrey told him, her tone as clipped as a newly shorn poodle.

“Your loss,” he replied, wiping at droplets of upper-lip sweat with the back of his hand, then strolling away. Jess noticed that Susan was not at his side.

The disruption had, however, brought Jess back to a more calculating frame of mind. Jess knew herself. If she tried to explain, it would sound like a string of excuses, punctuating the world’s least likely wedding story. So she wouldn’t bother.

New plan.

Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Walk out and resist the urge to strangle Aubrey with her own hair.

P.S. Don’t write these plans down where anyone might see them. Avoid prosecution.

“Excuse me,” Jess said, standing up and moving away from the table, then carefully sliding her chair back into place. She would not storm off.

“Jess, are you OK?” Kiki called after her.

Jess continued walking, her frustration propelling her out the door, past other tables.

“Oh, Jess, come back!” Aubrey called as Jess turned on her heel and walked down the hall. “All that Pepperfield-Cooper stuff was just a joke. ”

As much as she wanted to be a professional and not react like a second-grader bailing out of a sleepover, Jess wanted to go home. She wanted to run back to the TonyCakes building and pull the covers over her head. Did people really think she was caught in flagrante with a groom right before a wedding? Her jobs brought her into contact with wedding industry types regularly—musicians, caterers, photographers. And none of them thought to call her and tell her.

She knew she couldn’t expect that sort of grace from her former coworkers because they didn’t like her. They were probably the ones who’d spun a fairly harmless incident involving a reluctant groom into this awful rumor in the first place. And somehow, Jess was going to be stuck dealing with their gossip echo all damn week.

Jess was trapped. Trapped in this situation. Trapped in this…very, very opulent cage, depending on Diana’s goodwill to keep a roof over her head. Now Jess was left wondering what mean girl trick Aubrey would spring on her next. Why did Diana look slightly more gossip hungry than appalled at the idea of Jess having a not-quite-sketchy past?

Yeah, if she wanted to, Jess could move back in with Nana Blanche, but the woman deserved some peace and privacy. When Jess’s teenage mother had abandoned her, Nana Blanche and Papa Burt hadn’t been able to spend their retirement years traveling or puttering around their adorable little house. They’d had to keep working just to keep up with Jess’s expenses.

Nana Blanche had tried so hard to make up for the lack of a mother. It was part of the reason she’d pushed so hard for Jess to attend Wren Hill. While Papa Burt’s construction bid on Wren Hill’s pool house project wasn’t the lowest, Headmistress Dawson took a liking to the scrupulously polite, well-read girl waiting for him out in the hall. She’d invited Jess to interview for a spot on Wren Hill’s venerated roster. Papa Burt thought it was a hilarious joke, the idea of a Bricker attending a private hoity-toity girls’ school, but Nana Blanche had practically tackled him to grab Headmistress Dawson’s phone number and schedule the interview. What followed were years of scrimping, improvising, and switching to generic tuna to afford the exorbitant costs of a luxury education—and that was with several stipends granted by the alumni committee.

Now Burt was gone, the retirement mobility sweet spot had passed Blanche by, and her grandmother’s most exciting-slash-affordable travel option was a heavily senior-discounted riverboat bridge cruise with her friends. Jess wasn’t going to take that from her.

Jess stopped, suddenly realizing that she was outside, in the dark. At some point, she had made it out of the lodge building toward a little garden area off the path, a trellis with a pool of herbs planted around it.

It had gotten darker faster than Jess had expected, the shadows stretching into the trees with a will of their own. In the distance, beyond the lodge building, she swore she could see a light moving between the trees, like some too-bright, oversized firefly dipping up and down in the distance.

What the…?

She drifted closer to the bobbing light, her head tilted, following it toward the woods. After a few seconds, it blinked out of existence and Jess wasn’t entirely sure that she’d really seen it. She took an instinctive step back toward the lodge building, as if the people under that roof would protect her from a rabid squirrel, much less a paranormal threat.

Jess saw a gray shape moving in the trees, slipping noiselessly like a shadow over fog. She couldn’t tell whether the shape was male or female, but it certainly looked human, as opposed to, say, a bear…or a ghost bear.

“Ms. Bricker? Are you all right?” a voice behind her asked.

Jess didn’t scream, but that was only because she inhaled sharply and nearly choked on her own spit. Great, on top of tonight’s other humiliations, she was going to die because she couldn’t operate her own esophagus.

“I’m fine,” Jess wheezed. “Just needed a little air.”

The fact that the air couldn’t make it to her lungs due to her deficient esophagus use was nobody’s business.

“I got the impression things were getting a little tense at your table,” Poppy said, stepping closer. Jess could barely make out her lovely features in the shadows. “Is there anything I can do to make your experience at the Golden Ash more comfortable?”

Jess took a deep breath—without choking—and changed the subject to something she could handle. “I mentioned before that I’m going to need the use of your phone and an office computer linked to the outside world.”

“Oh, well, that’s work stuff. When I said the office landlines are available to you, I meant it,” Poppy assured her, waving toward a little stone bench nearby. “Even if I don’t fully understand your job. I think it will be fascinating to watch.”

Jess sighed and sank onto the bench, despite the discomfort of turning her back to the woods at night. The stone was freezing cold against her thighs. “It should be—this is an unorthodox situation for me, staying with the potential bride for any amount of time, the potential bride knowing that the proposal is coming. I can usually rely on a little bit more ‘cloak and dagger.’ Honestly, I could use a little space from her…and it’s been less than a day.”

“I’m happy to provide that. In fact, if you need anything, we’re always on-site. We have an honest-to-God compound here. Behind that tree line, there’s a whole row of houses that belong to our family. So, if you need anything at all, just call the front desk and I can be at your door within minutes,” Poppy told her, smiling gently. “And sometimes people go a little wild in the wedding planning stage. Trust me, I’ve seen it, running this place. Your friend probably doesn’t mean half of what she’s saying, and when she comes out of the bridal fog, she’ll fall over herself to apologize.”

“Well, for the record, she’s a client, not my friend.”

Poppy pursed her lips. “During our preregistration calls, Diana described you as an old high school friend. She said that the two of you used to be really close and had only recently gotten back in touch.”

Jess was gobsmacked. In her years of wedding planning, Jess had never been caught bad-mouthing a bride, and she wasn’t about to start now. She didn’t know how much she could trust Poppy just yet, and she didn’t want her opinions repeated, or her recollections of how, much like everybody else at Wren Hill, Diana had treated her family’s paycheck-to-paycheck status like it was contagious. At the same time, she definitely didn’t want to be painted with the Diana brush.

“High school? Yes. Friend? No,” Jess replied. “She’s using me to get social media clout, and I’m using her to get, well, money. I like money. It pays for things. Speaking of which, is it ethical for spas to let clients pay extra to book at the last minute? Isn’t that kind of…well, I’m thinking of the word ‘shady,’ but that seems rude.”

Poppy gave her what probably wasn’t meant to be a patronizing smile. “Umm, Ms. Bricker? It’s a spa, not a waiting list for a kidney.”

“I accept your point,” Jess said. “And you can just call me ‘Jess.’?”

Poppy smiled brightly. “Jess, then. Please call me or any other Osbourne by our first names. Sis, in particular, bristles at being called ‘Ms. Osbourne.’?”

Jess nodded. “But she also bristles at being called ‘Narcissus.’?”

“My aunt Iris was…” Poppy paused and frowned. “An interesting woman.”

“?‘Interesting’ as in ‘unique’ or ‘interesting’ as in ‘avoid her social media posts at all costs’?”

“Both.” Poppy breathed deeply through her nose. “It’s both.”