Page 72 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

That is the moment the door opens.

"Sorry — Paloma said six, I'm devastatingly early."

The man in the doorway is built on a scale the small east room was not designed for. Six-four, easy. Warm brown skin, dark hair curling loose over his forehead, a cream linen suit that has no business surviving a day of travel and has survived it anyway. He smiles like a man who has never once had to chase a room's attention because it has always, reliably, come to him.

His scent arrives a beat behind him. Magnolia, cracked black pepper, aged bourbon. Rich. Unhurried. Not one bit apologetic.

Wonderful. Paloma sent a handler.

"You must be the celebrity logistics." My politeness goes cool at the edges. "I wasn't told I was being supervised."

"You're not." He says it easily, no flinch. "Sawyer Devereaux. Charleston. I produce large private events, and Paloma pulled me in for overflow, not oversight." He crosses to the table and offers his hand to me first, only me, before anyone else in the room. "To be clear before I sit down: you're the principal. This is your wedding to run. I've signed the NDA. I don't join your working team unless you, Sloane, and Nolan all say yes. If any of you would rather I go back to Charleston, I'll go back to Charleston. I brought my pack up for the season, so if you get buried, we can put more hands on transport, production, guest management. Your call. Only ever your call."

He looks at me the whole time he says it. Not past me to the Alphas. Not to the screen. At me, the planner, like I'm the only person whose yes exists.

It disarms me more than charm would have.

"Sit," I allow. "We'll see."

He sits. He listens. He asks two questions about the transition from ceremony to reception, both sharp, both aimed at me. He is, irritatingly, good.

"For what it's worth," Sawyer says, halfway through, "Paloma warned me about you. She said your run-of-show reads like a military operation with prettier napkins."

It catches me sideways. I laugh — a real one, startled out of me, nothing like the smooth sound I keep for clients. It's over in a second. It's too late.

Across the table, Beckett stops pretending to read the floor plan. August's pencil stalls in the air over his notebook. Cade, who had no logistical reason to move, has somehow relocated four feet up the table.

I clear my throat. "Do you have any early read on the plan, Mr. Devereaux?"

He doesn't answer. He looks past my shoulder with a slow, delighted smirk, and holds it, until I turn to see what's so funny.

The three of them are standing behind me.

I don't know when they got up. They've arranged themselves into roughly one large disapproving architectural feature, close enough to share my chair, openly eavesdropping while pretending they all independently needed this exact patch of floor.

"Can I help the three of you?"

"No," says Cade.

"We're fine," says Beckett.

August says nothing. August just looks at Sawyer with the specific serenity of a man cataloguing an enemy's flowers.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Then I decide to end it the fastest way I know, which is the truth, delivered without mercy.

"Sawyer Devereaux. Beckett Shaw, August Bellamy, Cade Mercer. Venue, flowers, guest experience." I gesture at them like exhibits. "And, so you get the real version before the town hands you a worse one by dinner — my exes. Yes, all three. No, I won't be taking follow-up questions."

Sawyer's brows lift. "I hadn't heard, actually."

"You will."

"No, I mean it — I came in blind." He studies the three of them with frank, unbothered interest. "I have to say, it's fascinating. A whole pack of exes, standing this close, this possessive, over the one who got away. You don't see that often. Usually the ones who leave have the grace to stay gone."

"We didn't leave her," Beckett says, low. "And I'd lose the word possessive."

"I'd lose the word ex," Cade says.

"You can't dispute a legally accurate noun, Cade," August murmurs, "simply because you dislike it."