SOCIETY WEDDING SECRETS By Jennifer Hayward

Chapter 1

Tuesday, April 14

If I knew then what I know now...

I would never have taken this wedding on. I would have run as far and as fast as the legs on my unexceptional five-foot-five-inch body would have taken me and sought cover under the fake palm trees at the Bergeron wedding, remaining there until Taylor Dennis, undisputed queen of my class at Columbia, abandoned her beeline for me and flitted on to the next inane bit of chatter.

Alas, it was not to be. Taylor, eldest daughter of the US Senate Majority Leader, tracked me with the persistence of a particularly lethal jungle cat, wrapped a claw around my forearm and announced she wanted me to plan her wedding. No one else would do. I can't say it didn't produce a feeling of glee to finally be acknowledged after the way she'd treated me as a piteous extraneous detail at Columbia, because it did. But then again it wasn't entirely unexpected. I'd just finished coordinating the nuptials of Hollywood's hottest A-list actress who'd paved the road to the big day with a dangerous driving charge and a bout of shoplifting she'd put down to nerves. My name had been plastered across every celebrity gossip site on the planet as Ruby Parker, the magician who had pulled Celia Bryant's reputation from the ashes with a picture perfect Cinderella-like day.

Always wary of working with people I know, I declined Taylor's insistent demands. Although she couldn't be classified as a friend, she was close with some of my best buddies from Columbia. Namely the four delicious, utterly untamable men—nicknamed The Columbia Four—I regularly hung out with, who would undoubtedly be groomsmen in Taylor's wedding. Collectively, Rocco Mondelli, Christian Markos, Stefan Bianco and Zayed Al Afzal had cut a swath through the eligible women of the world on their way to becoming four of the most successful businessmen on the planet. No way was I giving them access to my fragile heart, but I valued their friendship.

And then of course, there was Tate Langfield—my biggest Columbia crush and the final groomsman. A revered real estate scion in Manhattan at just thirty-two, Tate had prestigious bloodlines deeper than the Hudson River. He was also the only man to ever scale the walls of my heart with a New Year's kiss in our final year that blew my mind. The chemistry we'd shared had rivalled the immense social divide between us. What could an east-coast blue blood like Tate want with the daughter of a waitress whose mother got up at five a.m. every morning to serve construction workers their pancakes? A man who had cemented his reputation as a consummate playboy by dating the most beautiful, notable women on campus? I'd walked away from Tate, with some regret I will give you, and went on to make a name for myself with Ruby Inc. Facing him at Taylor's wedding was an untenable proposition, so I declined her offer.

Then came Taylor's second, third and fourth phone calls and with them the realization this wedding could open up a whole other cross section of clientele for my business. I am nothing if not a survivor. Ruby Inc. meant everything to me. So I said yes. But I vowed to keep my attraction to Tate firmly where it belonged—as ancient history never to be repeated.

Thus how I arrived here in France as the cherry and apple blossoms ushered in spring, at a seventeenth-century château built in the style of Louis XIV. The nuptials of Taylor Dennis and Max Cannon were to take place in four days, an event for the east-coast blue bloods to remember. If, that is...it happens.

9 a.m. – Meeting with the bride and groom. Grand salon, Château des Lacs, 50 km southeast of Paris.

An inauspicious start. I met with Taylor and Max to trouble shoot my pile of issues so we could get them out of the way and finish on a bright note. The crayfish for the rehearsal dinner had been delayed due to an outbreak of food poisoning that had ravaged Scandinavia, the forecasters were calling for a forty per cent chance of rain on the big day and pieces of the façade of the historic château had been falling off. And when I say pieces I mean chunks large enough to kill a human.