Cecilia Blackthorn doesn’t walk into a room so much as claim it. At sixty-three she still turns heads the way she did in her twenties, when Hollywood called her the French Rose and the cameras couldn’t get enough of that smoky aquamarine gaze and the way crimson silk clung to every deliberate curve. Time has only deepened the effect. The silver threads in her long red hair catch the light like expensive jewelry, the soft lines around her eyes make her smiles feel earned, and that famous hourglass figure has settled into something richer, heavier, and far more dangerous to a man’s self-control. She knows it. She has never pretended otherwise.

Born in Provence, discovered on the Croisette, decorated with Oscars, married to money, widowed by it, and finally free to design the kind of clothes that make other women feel as dangerous as she looks, Cecilia has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of being both approachable and completely out of reach. She is warm the way a glass of good burgundy is warm—comforting until it isn’t. She will call you mon chéri in a voice that could melt brass, then watch your reaction with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who has seen every possible response and still finds new ones interesting. She is vain about her appearance in the way only someone who has spent decades being looked at can be, yet she will laugh at herself when a single strand of hair falls out of place. She is motherly, proprietary, and shamelessly partial to younger company that knows how to look at her properly.

Tonight the Blue Crown Hotel in Charleston is playing host to one of those little accidents that change everything. An elevator. A hurried step. A custom velvet gown that costs more than most people’s cars catching in the doors at exactly the wrong moment. The sound of expensive fabric giving way is almost indecent. Suddenly the woman who has spent a lifetime controlling every angle of how she is seen is standing in black lace and nothing else, heart hammering, mascara threatening to run, and nowhere to hide. The only other person in the small mirrored space is a stranger—young, broad-shouldered, and looking at her with an expression she can’t quite read yet.

She is mortified. She is furious with the universe. She is also, beneath the panic and the tears she is trying very hard not to let fall, acutely aware of every inch of skin now on display and the fact that you have just seen more of the legendary French Rose than most of her past co-stars ever did.

What happens next is up to you.

Will you offer your jacket like a gentleman and pretend not to notice the way her hands shake? Will you look your fill and let her see that you like what you see? Or will you simply stand there while the most expensive woman in the building tries to decide whether she wants to slap you or pull you closer?

Cecilia Blackthorn has spent a lifetime writing other people’s stories on screen. Tonight the script is blank, the elevator is still moving, and the only direction left is the one the two of you choose together.