And Emmy understood. Not for matching. For content. For theGood Morning Americaproducer waiting on the other end of a phone call in thirty-eight minutes.Grant Knight's matchmaker reveals what the quarterback is really looking for. The intimate details of a man who'd trusted Emmy with his privacy, repackaged as talking points.
Emmy went cold. Not angry-cold. Clear-cold. The kind of clarity that arrived when you finally stopped trying to make something make sense and just saw it for what it was.
"That's confidential client information."
"He's no longer a client. You said so yourself."
"The NDA?—"
"Covers his disclosure obligations. Not ours." Cecelia's eyes were steady. Patient. The patience of someone who'd had this conversation a hundred times before, with people more formidable than Emmy, and won every time. "We have internal records of services rendered. Those belong to Elite Connections. Tome."
Emmy's weight shifted to her back foot. She hadn't meant to move. But the desk between them had stopped being a desk and become a negotiating table, and she was on the wrong side of it.
"And Bailey's contact information," Cecelia added. "If you have it."
"I don't."
"But you could get it. Through Grant."
"Grant isn't speaking to me."
The words scraped on the way out. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.
Cecelia absorbed this without interest. "That's fine. I have my own channels." She turned back toward her desk, already moving past Emmy's usefulness, and picked up a pen. "Tom Adler sits on Mass General's board. His ex-wife is a client—she controls visitation with the children." She said it like she was thinking aloud, like Emmy was already gone. "I can have Bailey's information first thing Monday."
Emmy thought about the news segment playing on mute in the reception area. Bailey's staff photo. Grant's face under a baseball cap, trying to ruin the shot.
She thought about her father, who had been refreshing Boston After Dark all morning. About the text from her mother she still hadn't answered. About the email sitting in her inbox—Grant's signature on a termination contract, no words attached. Just the signature. Just the end.
She thought about Christmas, two weeks away. The Woodhouse kitchen. Serle's roast. The empty seat where Grant should be.
Because of her.
"No," Emmy said.
Cecelia's mouth closed. Opened again.
"No?"
"I won't give you Grant's confidential information. I won't help you recruit Bailey. And I'mnotgoing on camera to sell a story we both know is a lie."
Neither of them spoke. Beyond the glass, the office hummed. Someone laughed at something—a bright, corporate sound that belonged to a different afternoon than this one.
Cecelia narrowed her eyes. The same skeptical, assessing look from the first interview—running the math on whether this person was worth the investment. Except now the math was different, and they both knew the answer.
"Emmy." Cecelia's voice dropped half a register. Warmer. Intimate. The voice she used with clients when she wanted them to feel held. "I understand you're upset. This weekend has been difficult for everyone. But what I'm asking you to do isn't unethical. It's business. The story is already out there. All I'm suggesting is that we shape it, rather than let it shape us."
"You're suggesting we use people. Again. The same way I used Grant."
"I'm suggesting we leverage an opportunity that exists whether we act on it or not."
"That's the same sentence with better marketing."
Cecelia's jaw tightened—just barely, just for a second. Then she was smooth again.
"Let me be direct," Cecelia said. She stood and moved to the window. A power position. Below them, the city was settling into its early December dark, streetlights and storefronts and the distant glow of the Common's holiday lights bleeding warm against the gray sky. The view reminded you what Cecelia had built. The empire. The brand. The machine.
"You came to me three months ago with nothing. A communications degree, an advice column, and a lie about a quarterback. I gave you a desk, a title, and access to the most exclusive client network in New England. Everything you have in this industry—every connection, every skill, every line on your résumé—came through this firm."
