The shrill ring of my phone sliced through the morning calm like a fire alarm. I didn’t need to look at the caller ID. Only one person called with that kind of apocalyptic urgency.
“Chloe,” I answered, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“It’s gone, Ava. It’s all gone!” Her voice was a high-pitched wail of pure, unadulterated panic.
“What’s gone. Chloe, breathe. ”
“The garden. The pavilion. The news said flash floods—I thought they were exaggerating—but it’s a *lake*. The whole place is a lake!”
My blood ran cold. The Atherton Estate. The meticulously manicured gardens where Chloe Wexler was supposed to marry Marcus Thorne in three weeks. I pulled up the local news on my laptop, my heart hammering. She wasn’t wrong. Drone footage showed a muddy, swirling river where the rose garden used to be.
“Okay,” I said, my voice a mask of calm I didn’t feel. “Okay, this is a setback, but we have contingencies. ”
“A setback. Ava, my wedding is underwater. I need a miracle. I need a new venue. Yesterday!” The line went dead.
I stared at my screen, the gears in my planner’s brain grinding furiously. Contingency plans were for a vendor cancellation, not an act of God turning the state’s most sought-after venue into a water feature.
My phone buzzed again. A text from Chloe.
*There’s a place. A barn. My mother’s friend mentioned it. The Gilded Sparrow. It’s out past Riverbend. Remote. Rustic. I don’t care. Go look. Take Rhys. I need his eye. Fix this. *
*Take Rhys. *
The two words made the back of my neck prickle with a heat that had nothing to do with the stress. After our encounter in his studio—after I had practically *melted* against the darkroom door—the air between us was so thick with unspoken things it was practically a solid object.
The memory of his hands on my waist, the rough scrape of his stubble, the desperate, hungry way he’d kissed me. . . it was a constant, low-level hum beneath my skin. And he was Chloe’s brother. This was a new, terrifying level of “forbidden. “
An hour later, I was standing on the curb in a practical trench coat and boots, a fine mist clinging to my hair, as Rhys’s dark grey Land Rover pulled up.
He leaned across the passenger seat and pushed the door open, the faint scent of coffee and something uniquely him—cedar and storms—wafting out.
“Your chariot awaits, princess,” he drawled, a smirk playing on his lips. “Heard you needed a knight in shining armor to rescue your waterlogged wedding. ”
I slid into the worn leather seat, pulling the door shut against the increasingly heavy drizzle. “I needed a photographer with a four-wheel drive. You just happened to be the only one on the list who checked both boxes. ”
He laughed, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through the seat. “Always a pleasure to be of service. ”
The first hour was a battle of wills set to the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers.
We sniped and sparred, our usual witty armor firmly in place. He criticized my navigation. I
criticized his taste in music—a moody, atmospheric playlist that felt a little too appropriate for the grey, weeping landscape outside.
Every word was a deflection, a carefully constructed wall to keep us from acknowledging the live wire humming between us in the close confines of the cab.
“If you’d just listen to the GPS,” I said, gripping the edge of my seat as he navigated a sharp, muddy turn, “we wouldn’t be on a road that looks like it’s about to be reclaimed by the forest. ”
“The GPS is for people with no sense of adventure, Ava. Besides, it’s a shortcut. ”
“It’s a shortcut to getting us stranded and murdered by a family of banjo-playing cannibals. ”
He shot me a look, his eyes glinting with amusement. “You’ve been holding onto that one, haven’t you?” He turned the music down a notch.
The drumming of the rain on the roof grew louder, filling the sudden space. “You really can’t stand not being in control, can you?”