She'd told him she didn't need protecting. He'd apologized for trying.
And now she was standing in her apartment, replaying the look on her brother's face when she'd accidentally suggested that she and Grant could be seen as?—
As what?
Emmy turned away from the flowers and went to take a shower. She stood under the hot water until it ran cold, and she didn't think about Grant Knight at all.
She was very deliberate about that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The October chill had sharpened into November, bringing a cold that found its way under your collar and stayed there, a whispered warning of the winter to come.
Emmy walked from the T station with her hands shoved deep in her coat pockets and her chin tucked against the wind. She was trying not to think about anything at all—not the flowers wilting on her kitchen counter, not the text exchange she'd replayed so many times the words had lost their shape, not Grant's voice behind the clubhouse, quiet and certain: He set you up. The cold helped. It was hard to spiral when your face was going numb.
She'd spent forty minutes on her hair that morning, wrestling each strand into a sleek chignon that said I have my life together. Another twenty on her face—cold spoons under her eyes, three layers of the expensive moisturizer she saved for emergencies, careful dabs of concealer on the dark circles that had taken up permanent residence—until she looked like someone who'd slept. Someone whose career wasn't hanging by a thread. Someone who hadn't spent the weekend refreshing aviral video and searching for one face in the crowd at timestamp 0:47.
The lie was becoming its own art form.
Ryan held the door as she approached Elite Connections, and his eyes met hers with a flicker of something that might have been sympathy before he looked away.
"Morning, Ryan."
"Ms. Woodhouse." Two words, careful and kind, like she was something fragile.
The lobby swallowed her whole—cream marble floors so polished they reflected her like an accusation, the Success Wall gleaming with all those perfect couples in their perfect frames. None of them had ever done anything as gauche as hitting a champagne cart at a charity event. None of them had been memed, NFT'd, and auto-tuned into a house track.
Beckanne looked up from reception, and Emmy caught it—the smallest flicker of satisfaction in those perfectly lined eyes, there and gone before it could be called unprofessional. "She's ready for you."
The walk down the hallway felt endless. Two junior associates she didn't recognize stood by the coffee station, their conversation dying mid-sentence as she passed. One of them whispered something to the other. Emmy kept her chin up, her shoulders back, her expression pleasant and unbothered—and felt her cheeks burn anyway.
She'd been working on an apology since Saturday morning. Three versions, actually, each one revised and re-revised until the words stopped looking like words.I take full responsibility. It won't happen again. I understand if you've lost confidence in me, but I hope you'll give me the chance to prove?—
Cecelia's door was open. Emmy stopped in the doorway, her rehearsed words evaporating.
Cecelia sat behind her desk with the stillness of someone who had never once been caught off guard, her posture perfect, her expression revealing nothing. The corner office stretched behind her—all that glass, all that view, all that hard-won authority.
Like always, she didn't stand when Emmy entered. Didn't gesture to a chair. Just watched, with those sharp eyes that missed nothing, as Emmy closed the door behind her and stood there like a defendant awaiting sentencing.
Emmy recognized the tactic—silence as a weapon, forcing the other person to fill the void, to incriminate themselves with nervous chatter. Knowing someone was holding a knife didn't make it less sharp when they pressed it to your throat.
"Sit."
Emmy sat.
The silence stretched. Cecelia's gaze was clinical, assessing—the same look she probably gave disappointing quarterly reports before feeding them through a shredder.
"Let's talk about your clients," Cecelia said finally. "Grant Knight. Two dates. Two failures. Where are we?"
Emmy's prepared apology died in her throat. She'd expected to grovel about the video first, to explain herself, to beg for another chance. Instead, Cecelia was skipping straight to the professional audit.
"I have a potential third date lined up," Emmy said, forcing her voice steady. "Madeline Talbott. PR consultant, runs her own firm, works with nonprofits. She's warm, grounded, has her own life. I'm vetting her personally this week."
"Vetting her personally." Cecelia's tone was flat. "After two failed matches in a row." She pulled a folder from her desk—Grant's file, Emmy realized with a lurch—and flipped it open. "I reviewed his intake questionnaire this morning. Thorough, for the most part. But page six is blank."
Emmy's stomach dropped. Page six. The sexual preferences section.
She'd filled out Grant's questionnaire herself, that first week, pulling from years of observation and a few pointed questions disguised as casual conversation. But page six had stopped her cold. The idea of sitting across from Grant and asking him about his preferences in the bedroom made her want to crawl under her desk and never emerge.
