Sinfully His

The roses were ivory. Amara Quinn stood in the middle of the Grandier Hotel ballroom at six forty seven in the morning, a coffee going cold in her hand, and stared at four hundred ivory roses like they had personally decided to ruin her life. Which, honestly, they kind of had. "I ordered champagne gold," she said into the phone. Her voice was very calm. The kind of calm that had nothing to do with being relaxed and everything to do with having learned, over seven years of this job, that raising your voice at a florist at six in the morning accomplished absolutely nothing. "The order confirmation says champagne gold. The deposit I paid says champagne gold. So I need you to explain to me why I am currently looking at four hundred ivory roses." The florist said something about a mix-up at the warehouse. Amara said, "Mm-hm." The florist said something about doing their best. Amara said, "You have until noon." She hung up before he could say anything else and immediately looked down at her clipboard. Her assistant Monica had already sent four texts — the lighting rig was stuck in traffic on the freeway, two of the catering staff had called in sick, and Mrs. Udie had just emailed to add seventeen names to a guest list that was already at capacity. Seventeen. Amara wrote a note next to the catering line and kept moving. This was always the job. Everyone thought event planning was glamorous — the flowers and the candlelight and the beautiful rooms — and it was, eventually, when everything came together at the end. But before that it was six AM phone calls and wrong roses and a lighting rig somewhere on the I-95 with no ETA. She had been awake since four thirty. She was on her third coffee. She did not have time to panic and so she simply did not. ~ Jade showed up at nine with the backup roses — champagne gold, perfectly correct, slightly over budget, and Amara had never been happier to see anyone in her life. Jade was her best friend and her unofficial second-in-command and the only person Amara knew who could argue with a supplier, carry two boxes, and eat a breakfast sandwich simultaneously. "You owe me," Jade announced, dropping the boxes and taking an enormous bite. "I know," Amara said, already moving toward the florist's team to redirect them. "Like, genuinely owe me. I had to call in a favor from DeShawn and he is going to bring this up forever." "I'll buy you dinner." "You'll buy me dinner somewhere with a dress code." "Fine." Jade grinned and got to work and the ballroom slowly, painstakingly, began to look like something. By noon it was starting to look like a lot. The Grandier's main ballroom was a stunning space even empty — high ceilings, chandeliers like frozen waterfalls, floors that reflected light in ways that made everything look slightly dreamlike. Amara had used it twice before for smaller events. She knew its bones. But tonight it needed to be extraordinary, because the Udie Masquerade Ball was not a small event and Mrs. Celestina Udie was not a small woman, in personality or expectation. She arrived at noon exactly, sweeping through the service entrance in a way that suggested she had never used a service entrance in her life but was willing to tolerate it this once. "Amara," she said, looking around the ballroom with the expression of someone reserving judgment. "Mrs. Udie." Amara fell into step beside her. "The champagne gold roses are confirmed, the lighting rig arrived twenty minutes ago, and the catering team is fully staffed. We're on schedule." Mrs. Udie made a sound that was not quite approval. They walked through the space together and Amara talked — quietly, clearly, covering every detail — while Mrs. Udie asked questions designed to find problems. It was a skill Amara had developed specifically for this client. She called it running ahead of the bullet. "The masks," Mrs. Udie said, stopping near the entrance. "I want it enforced. No exceptions. Every single guest." "We have a mask attendant at the door. Anyone who arrives without one will be offered one from our selection." Mrs. Udie turned and looked at her. Really looked, in that assessing way she had that made most people uncomfortable. Amara looked back and waited. "Good," Mrs. Udie said finally. "The anonymity is the point. People behave differently when no one knows who they are." She said it like she meant something specific by it. Amara filed the comment away and kept walking. ~ By six in the evening the ballroom was ready. Amara knew this was her favorite moment of any event — the finished space, empty and waiting. Before the people came in and lived in it, while it was still just light and arrangement and possibility. She always stole five minutes alone in it, just to look. Jade found her standing in the center of the dance floor, looking up at the chandeliers. "It's really beautiful," Jade said, coming to stand beside her. It was. Champagne gold roses everywhere — low centerpieces, tall arrangements flanking the entrance, a cascading installation above the bar that had taken three people four hours to build. The chandeliers were dimmed to warm gold. The tables were draped in deep burgundy. At the far end, a string quartet was tuning up. It looked like a place where something important might happen. "Thirty seconds," Amara said. "What?" "I allow myself thirty seconds to feel good about it and then I go back to work." Jade looked at her sideways. "You know that's a slightly concerning personality trait." "Twenty seconds." Jade laughed and left her to it. ~ The guests arrived at eight. Amara watched them come in from a position near the entrance — masked, elegant, trailing expensive perfume and the specific confidence of people who had never worried about a catering invoice in their lives. Politicians and CEOs and old money that had been old for so many generations it had stopped thinking of itself as money at all. The masks added something strange and interesting to the room. People moved differently under them. Freer, somehow. She moved through the crowd like she was invisible, which was exactly how she needed to be. Earpiece in, clipboard in hand, checking things off, redirecting, solving the small disasters before they became large ones. The lighting cue that came in half a beat late. A catering server who needed redirecting to the east side. Mrs. Udie's champagne glass that needed replacing before she noticed it was the wrong shape. Invisible. Efficient. Completely in control. She was heading toward the east side when she felt it — a prickle at the back of her neck, the specific awareness of being watched. She turned. Across the room, on the other side of the candlelight and the crowd and the slow movement of masked strangers, a man was looking directly at her. He was in black — jacket, mask, everything. He was tall, broad-shouldered, standing slightly apart from the group nearest to him with a glass of something dark in his hand. The mask covered his eyes and the top half of his face but she could see his jaw, the line of his mouth. He was not looking at the room or the decorations or any of the beautiful people around him. He was looking at her. She looked away. Told herself it was nothing. The ballroom was full of people, some of them were going to look in her direction, it did not mean anything. She kept moving. But her heart was doing something slightly different than it had been thirty seconds ago, and she noticed, and she did not particularly appreciate it. Her earpiece crackled. "Amara, we have a situation with the champagne display in the east wing—" She was already moving, weaving quickly through the crowd, head down, professional. She turned the corner into the corridor. And walked directly into someone. The impact was solid — she bounced back and would have gone down if a hand had not caught her arm. Then another. Strong hands, steady grip. She looked up. The man in the black mask looked down at her. Up close, she could see that his eyes were green — startlingly so — and that his mouth was curved in a way that was either a smile or the beginning of one. "You look like someone who could use a hand," he said. His voice was low, a little rough, unhurried. Amara straightened up and pulled her arm free with the dignity of someone who had absolutely not just walked face-first into a stranger. "I look like someone who needs you to let go of her arms," she said. He let go. Held both hands up briefly, easy and unbothered. He did not walk away.