Bailey glanced at Grant, a small smile playing at her lips. "This is what, our third date?"
Third. Not a first date. Not even a second. Three dates, and Bailey already knew about West, already had stories she kept getting charmingly wrong. Emmy had assumed this was new. It wasn’t.
"We should get coffee sometime," Bailey said. "I'd love to hear more about what Grant was like before he became—" She gestured vaguely at him. "All of this."
"Oh, I have stories," Emmy said on autopilot. "I have stories that would ruin him. Years and years of ammunition, and I've just been sitting on it like a responsible adult." Her smile felt like holding a door shut against a flood.
"Babe." Tyce was at her side, his hand finding her back again. "There's someone I want you to meet."
Babe.
Emmy looked at him. Really looked. The flush of alcohol sat high on his cheekbones, and his gaze wasn't on her at all—it was fixed on Grant, steady and bright with a challenge that had nothing to do with introductions. He hadn't come over to give something to Emmy. He'd come to take something from Grant.
He didn't introduce himself to Bailey. Didn't even glance at her.
“Apologies. Duty calls,” Emmy told Grant and Bailey. "It was really nice meeting you."
"You too." Bailey's smile was warm. Genuine. "Coffee soon?"
“Sure.”
Emmy let Tyce steer her away, and she kept her eyes forward the whole time.
The woman in the red dress found Emmy near the silent auction, where she'd been pretending to consider a weekend in Nantucket while actually considering how many more champagnes constituted a problem.
"That's the one I'd bid on." The woman nodded at the Nantucket listing. "Though last time I went, the fog rolled in for three straight days. Very atmospheric. Very damp."
Emmy laughed—a real laugh, the first one all evening that wasn't performing. "I'd settle for anywhere that isn't this room right now."
"Rough night?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"Only to someone who's been watching you hold that champagne glass like it personally wronged you." The woman smiled. Warm. Easy. Dark hair, sharp features, a red dress that fit like she'd been sewn into it. "I'm Petra."
"Emmy." She shook Petra's hand and felt, for the first time since arriving, a little less alone.
"So what do you do, Emmy? When you're not hate-drinking at charity auctions?"
"I'm a matchmaker." The words came out with the little lift she always gave them—part confession, part dare. "At Elite Connections."
"Oh, that's fascinating." Petra leaned in, genuinely interested—or at least with the appearance of genuine interest, which at this point in the evening was close enough. "What's that like? Does that really work for people?”
"You'd be surprised." Emmy took a sip of champagne. The warmth of being asked, of being seen as someone withsomething interesting to say, was spreading through her chest like a contact high. After Sabine's evisceration, after the Bailey gut-punch, after an entire evening of feeling like a fraud at a party she'd been invited to as decoration—someone wanted to hear her talk. Emmy could feel the pull of it, the familiar rush of being the most interesting person in a conversation. "Most of my clients are incredibly successful people who are terrible at the one thing that matters most. They can run companies, negotiate deals, perform under insane pressure—but put them across from someone at dinner and they freeze."
"That's kind of heartbreaking."
"It is." Emmy heard herself warming to the subject, the champagne loosening the screws on her professional discretion. "I have this one client—I can't say who, obviously—but he's someone you'd never expect to need help. Like, objectively one of the most impressive people I've ever met. Private. Guarded. Could have anyone he wanted, but the fame makes it impossible for him to trust that someone wantshimand not the—you know. The version of him that exists in public."
She was talking too much. She knew she was talking too much. But the champagne had sanded down the part of her brain that usually caught these things, and Petra was listening—not the way Sabine listened, looking for ammunition, or the way Tyce listened, waiting for his turn to talk. Petra was doing the thing Emmy herself did: making someone feel fascinating.
"He sounds special," Petra said. "This mystery client."
"He is." Emmy stared into her champagne. "I've known him my whole life, actually. Since we were kids. He's—god, he's the best. So smart and kind and funny. And private. And he trustedmewith this, which is—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Which is a lot of trust to carry."
"Known him your whole life," Petra repeated, something sharpening behind her eyes. "That's unusual for a clientrelationship. How does that even work—matching someone you grew up with?"
"It's—" Emmy caught herself. Almost stopped. But Petra's face was so open, so interested, and the question was a good one, and Emmy had always been helpless in front of a good question. "It's harder than you'd think. Because you know them too well. You know what they need but you also know all the ways they'll sabotage themselves. And you can't just—you can't be objective. Not really. Not when you've watched someone build their walls since they were fifteen. And Grant, he?—“
