"She told me. In the parking lot. Twenty minutes ago." His arms uncrossed. He took a step toward her. "You showed up at a hospital at seven in the morning to convince a woman to take me back."
"I thought—" Emmy's throat tightened. "I thought I'd broken it. You and her. I thought the leak destroyed your chance at something real and I needed to?—"
"You fought for a relationship that would have meant losing me."
The kitchen was quiet except for the kettle's insistent whine. Emmy reached behind her and turned off the burner. Her hand was still shaking.
"Yeah," she said. "I did." Her voice was quiet. "You deserve to be happy, Grant."
He was right in front of her now. She could see the nick on his jaw where he'd shaved too fast. The way his chest moved when he breathed.
"Cecelia called me," Emmy said. "Twenty minutes ago. She was furious about the article—not my interview, your statement. Your lawyers. Your—" She stopped. "You've been protecting me. This whole time. Since November. Cease-and-desists and PR redirects and—Grant, why didn't youtellme?"
"Would you have let me?"
Emmy opened her mouth. Closed it.
"No," she admitted. "I would have told you to stop. I would have said I deserved it."
"Yeah." His hand found her hip. Just resting there—warm, unhurried. "That's why I didn't tell you."
"But you—you sent the termination contract. No words. Just the signature."
"I was on the road. Reporters crawling up my back, lawyers on hold, the whole circus." His thumb moved against her hip bone. "I needed to legally sever ties with Elite Connections. So I could get busy protecting us. Protecting you." He paused. "I didn't think you'd want to talk to me. I never thought—" His jaw worked. "I never hoped you'd see me this way. It felt wrong, at first. And then it felt so right, so much better than anything hadever felt. And I didn't know what to do with that." He exhaled. "I've been in love with you since before I had a word for it, Em. And I couldn't figure out how to say that without saying everything, and I didn't want to put that on you when your whole life was?—"
"Falling apart?"
"Rearranging." The corner of his mouth lifted. Almost a smile. "I was going to say rearranging."
Emmy's eyes burned. Her hand came up to his chest—not pushing, just resting against the solid warmth of him through his shirt. She could feel his heartbeat. Faster than she'd expected from a man who looked this calm.
"Since before you had a word for it?" she whispered.
"Things changed. Between us. And once they did—" He paused. "It was like it had always been that way. Like I'd just been too blind to see it." He said it simply. "I didn't have a word for it until the terrace."
Emmy's throat ached. She wanted to say something worthy of that. Something that matched the weight of what he'd just given her. Instead what came out was: "I'm an idiot."
"You're not an idiot."
"I am. I had you right in front of me the whole time and I was—I was makingspreadsheets, Grant, I was running compatibility algorithms on other women while you were—" She swallowed. "Bailey is perfect for you. She's smart and she's kind and she doesn't play games and she?—"
"Em." His hand slid from her hip to the small of her back. "Bailey's great. She's just not you."
Emmy set her mug down too hard. "West doesn't know. My parents don't know. Well, my mom might know—she said something last week about you always seeming happy to let me follow you around, and she had thistone—but my dad is goingto have an actual cardiac event, Grant, he tracks your stats like a stockbroker and if he finds out we're?—"
Grant moved her coffee cup to the side.
"—and West, oh God, West is going to?—"
She spun away from him. Three steps toward the window, pivot, three steps back. She could hear herself spiraling and couldn't stop, the words coming faster, her hands cutting through the air like she could organize the chaos into something manageable if she just talked fast enough?—
Grant caught her wrist on the next pass. Not hard—just enough to stop the pacing, to turn her toward him. He was sitting in her kitchen chair, looking up at her with an expression that had nothing to do with patience.
He pulled her into his lap.
Emmy made a sound—surprise, mostly, and something lower, something that started in her stomach and climbed. His hands settled on her thighs. She was straddling him on her own kitchen chair, which was not structurally designed for this, and she didn't care, because his face was right there, inches from hers, and his eyes were intent and certain and any laziness was gone, replaced by something that looked like hunger wearing patience as a very thin disguise.
"They'll get used to it," he said.
