June set the foreclosure notice beside the brass dinner bell.

Her hands trembled so badly that the edge of the paper caught beneath a water glass.

She straightened it anyway.

“She threatened to take my house, Adrian.”

Around the dining table, silverware stopped moving.

Twenty guests sat beneath the chandeliers, waiting for someone to turn the moment into a misunderstanding.

Nobody did.

Adrian reached for the notice.

Celeste stood at the other end of the table in an emerald dress that cost more than I earned in three months.

For once, she had nothing ready to say.

“Your mother left me the cottage,” June continued. “I thought I could manage. Then I fell behind on the taxes. I borrowed against it.”

Adrian read the name printed across the top.

Harrington Residential Holdings.

He looked at his fiancée.

“You bought her loan.”

Celeste drew a breath.

“I was going to explain.”

“When?”

“Privately.”

June lowered her eyes.

“She told me that if I contacted you again, I would lose the house.”

I stood near the serving doors with a tray pressed against my ribs.

An hour earlier, Celeste had instructed me not to seat June near the photographers.

“She confuses the guests,” she had said.

I had thought she meant June sometimes spoke as though she still worked in the house.

Now I understood.

June did not confuse anyone.

She reminded them.

She remembered Adrian before the tailored suits, the real-estate companies, and the carefully prepared announcement that he intended to run for city council.

She remembered the boy who waited in the kitchen after his mother died because the rest of the house was too quiet.

And Celeste had decided that woman needed to disappear.

“I offered her a beautiful place in Florida,” Celeste said. “You’re entering public life. We need boundaries.”

Adrian placed the notice on the table.

“You used her home to make sure she stayed away from me.”

“I was protecting your future.”

He removed his jacket and draped it over June’s shoulders.

Then he turned toward the fireplace.

“Marcus. David.”

His security men stepped forward.

“Ms. Harrington will be leaving. Help arrange whatever she needs to collect her belongings.”

Celeste stared.

“The wedding?”

“Is off.”

A guest near the windows made a small, shocked sound.

Celeste’s face hardened.

“You’re abandoning a fifty-million-dollar agreement over a housekeeper?”

Adrian looked at June.

“She is family.”

For one moment, I thought it was over.

Then Celeste smiled.