The line hangs there for half a beat.
Ethan says nothing, which tells me he’s smart enough to know he should not.
I look at Camille and let the silence stretch just long enough to make her feel it.
“If you have concerns about staffing,” I say, “you may bring them to me. If not, I suggest you let her do the work you hired her to do.”
Camille’s smile tightens. “I was only trying to be considerate.”
“No,” I say. “You were trying to be clever. Don’t confuse the two.”
Beside me, I can feel Sienna go very still.
Ethan shifts his weight. “Father, it’s not that serious.”
I turn my head and look at him. He stops.
Camille recovers first, because she is practiced at recovery. “Of course,” she says, smooth again now. “I’m sure everything is under control.”
Sienna, to her credit, says nothing. She doesn’t look at me either. She just adjusts the garment bags on her shoulder and holds herself in that careful, contained way that tells me she hates being defended almost as much as she hates being insulted.
I hand the box to one of the passing staff before she can argue further and say, “Take these to the bridal suite.”
The staff member nods and hurries off.
Sienna looks at me then. Briefly. Her eyes are unreadable.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
She looks at me as if she can’t decide whether to be grateful or furious.
Before she can say anything else, another woman appears from the terrace with a clipboard in hand and the expression of a woman who has already solved six problems and expects to solve six more before noon.
“Sienna,” she says, “the florist wants final confirmation on the arch arrangements, and the photographer is asking where the family should gather after breakfast.”
Sienna is grateful for the interruption. I can see it.
“I’m coming, Nadine,” she says. She turns to go, then stops and looks back at me. “Thank you for the help.”
The words are formal. Careful. Meant to put a line back where one had started to blur.
I incline my head. “Anytime.”
That earns me the smallest look from her, a flicker of exasperation that disappears almost as soon as it comes. Then she’s walking away with Nadine, back straight, pace steady, every inch of her trying to say she is untouched by any of this.
I hear footsteps behind me and know before I turn that it’s Ethan. He stops a few feet away. Not close enough to mistake this for warmth.
“She’s just the planner,” he says.
I turn slowly. “Is she?”
His jaw hardens. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He waits, perhaps expecting me to save him the effort of saying the rest. When I don’t, he goes on. “You embarrassed me last night.”