Chapter 9 #2
"I'm not staring." Grant grabbed his driver with more force than necessary. "I just don't trust that guy."
"Duke?" Boozy squinted across the green. "What'd he do to you?"
"He's a player. Would you want him sniffing around your sister?"
"But she's not your sister, man."
Grant didn't have an answer for that. He lined up his shot, jaw tight.
"She's West's sister," he said finally. "I've known her since she was a kid."
"Uh-huh." Boozy watched him settle into his stance. "You gonna tell West you've been watching his sister's legs for the last ten minutes, or should I?"
Grant swung instead of answering—too hard, too tight, all that unnamed frustration channeling straight into the club.
The ball hooked left and disappeared into the trees.
"West's sister," Boozy repeated mildly. "Right."
Grant closed his eyes. Breathed.
This was going to be a long day.
The Elite Connections sponsored hole was on the back nine, near one of those artificial waterfalls that every country club seemed contractually obligated to install.
A crowd had gathered for the "celebrity challenge"—each sponsor got a representative to take a ceremonial shot, photo op, harmless fun.
Grant had done a dozen of these over the years.
Smile, swing, don't hit anyone, collect applause regardless of result.
The bar was literally on the ground. You just had to not commit manslaughter.
He hadn't planned to watch. Had told himself he'd check in with his playing partners, grab a water, keep moving.
But Emmy was standing at the tee, and she looked like she was calculating escape routes with the intensity of someone planning a prison break.
Grant drifted closer. Close enough to hear, not close enough to help.
"I really think Sabine should do this," Emmy was saying to someone from the event staff, her voice pitched in that register of desperate reasonableness. "She's actually coordinated. I'm more of a... strategic advisor. A behind-the-scenes person. I advise. Strategically. From behind the scenes."
The event coordinator—a harried woman in a visor who looked like she'd already handled seventeen crises today and was not in the mood for an eighteenth—shook her head. "Ms. Greer isn't available. You're listed as the Elite Connections representative."
"But—"
"It's just one swing, honey. For the kids."
For the kids. The ultimate rhetorical checkmate. Grant watched Emmy's face cycle through several stages of grief before landing on grim acceptance.
"Nonsense." Tyce appeared at her elbow, all white teeth and easy confidence. "You'll be great."
"Tyce, I'm serious." Emmy's voice dropped, but Grant was close enough to catch every word.
"I haven't held a golf club since Kenzie Peterschmidt's bachelorette party.
I was so hungover I threw up on the windmill and it sprayed everyone on the fourth hole.
They banned me from the premises. There's a photo of my face behind the register. "
Tyce laughed—delighted, like she'd told him a charming anecdote instead of a warning.
"God, that's fantastic. Can you imagine if that happened here?
" He was already steering her toward the tee, hand on her lower back with the easy possessiveness of someone who'd never been told no in his life. "Come on. You're overthinking it."
Emmy's jaw tightened—a half-second, barely visible—and then the social face clicked back on. She glanced around, looking for an ally, an excuse, a way out.
Her eyes found Grant's across the green.
He saw it. The silent plea. Help me.
Grant took a step forward.
Emmy's eyes widened. She gave her head a tiny shake—barely perceptible—and turned back to Tyce with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Fine. One swing. But when this goes viral for all the wrong reasons, I'm blaming you."
Tyce laughed, already positioning himself behind her, hands on her waist, playing to the crowd. "That's the spirit, beautiful."
Grant's hands curled at his sides. He had no reason to intervene. No right to. She'd made that clear with one tiny shake of her head.
What was he going to do—shove Tyce aside? On what grounds? He was West's friend. Emmy's childhood neighbor. He had no claim on her and no excuse except the twist in his gut every time Tyce touched her, and that wasn't something he could say out loud.
So he watched.
A tournament photographer had materialized, camera up. Two women in the gathered crowd had their phones out, recording. The Lululemon influencer from earlier was positioning herself for a reaction shot, angled to catch maximum drama.
Tyce was murmuring something in Emmy's ear—flirtatious, performative. His hands were on her waist instead of correcting her elbow position. The grip was wrong. Her stance was wrong. Grant's whole body went tight.
Emmy's shoulders were rigid. She knew this was going to go badly.
She swung anyway. Because Tyce had made it impossible to back out without looking like a killjoy, and Emmy Woodhouse would rather publicly humiliate herself than be accused of not being fun.
The ball sliced hard right.
Way right.
It hooked like it had a personal vendetta against the service industry, careening off a beverage cart with a spectacular crash—champagne flutes exploding in a spray of crystal and Veuve Clicquot, ice cubes skittering across the manicured grass like fleeing witnesses, a server in a bow tie achieving approximately three feet of vertical clearance with the reflexes of a man who'd seen liability lawsuits and wanted no part of them.
Silence.
Then nervous laughter from the crowd.
Emmy's face went scarlet. Not pink, not flushed—scarlet, the shade of mortification that came from your worst fears being confirmed in front of an audience with camera phones.
Grant could already see the captions writing themselves: When your swing is as bad as your love life with a crying-laughing emoji. POV: You peaked in mini golf.
The influencer was already tapping at her phone. Grant could practically see the hashtags forming.
And Tyce roared with laughter.
Not with her. At her. He pulled Emmy against his side, grinning at the crowd like they were all sharing a delicious joke at her expense. "Isn't she adorable? I told her to stick to matchmaking."
You told her not to be boring, Grant thought. His spine went cold.
A few people chuckled. Polite. Uncomfortable. The kind of laughter that recognized cruelty and chose politeness over confrontation. Emmy's smile was frozen, brittle—the smile of someone who knew she'd been set up and couldn't say so without making everything worse.
Grant took one step forward.
Then stopped.
Because if he shoved through the crowd and threw her over his shoulder, it would do nothing to quell the viral surge. It would feed it. The kindest thing he could do for Emmy right now was stay out of shot.
Because Emmy was already apologizing—to the server, to the event coordinator, to anyone within earshot. "I'm so sorry, let me help—" She was reaching for scattered ice cubes, trying to right an overturned champagne bucket, her voice high and tight with mortification.
The clipboard woman was unmoved. "Please, Ms. Woodhouse. We have staff for this."
Tyce materialized at Emmy's elbow, steering her away from the wreckage with his hand possessive on her lower back. "Come on, let them handle it. These things happen."
They didn't happen. Not to people who belonged here. And the way Emmy's shoulders curved inward—she knew it too.
She didn't look at Grant. Didn't even glance his direction.
But he'd seen her face in that split second before the swing. The silent plea.
She'd looked at him. And he'd done nothing.
He stood there, fists clenched, watching them walk away, and hated himself almost as much as he hated Tyce Duke.
Grant found her two hours later.
The tournament was winding down—final holes being played, sponsors packing up their branded tents, the clubhouse bar filling with people pretending their golf games had gone better than they had.
He'd spotted Sabine near the eighteenth green about an hour ago, gliding toward the Lululemon influencer with the focus of someone used to cleaning up other people's messes. By the time Grant finished his round, the two were chatting like old friends.
Emmy was behind the clubhouse, near the service entrance, away from the crowd. She had her phone pressed to her ear, and as Grant rounded the corner, he caught Cecelia's voice—tinny through the speaker, clipped and cold.
"—handled the optics. Sabine got the video reposted with our tag. But Emmy, this is exactly the kind of amateur hour I warned you about. You're representing Elite Connections, not auditioning for a comedy reel."
"I know. I'm sorry. It won't—"
"It won't happen again. Correct." A silence that lasted long enough to be deliberate. "We'll discuss this Monday."
The line went dead.
Emmy stood there for a moment, phone still raised, shoulders tight. She looked smaller somehow. Younger. Like all the polish had been scraped away and underneath was just a twenty-five-year-old who'd had a very bad day.
"That wasn't your fault."
She startled. Turned. Surprise, wariness, and then—just for a second—hope, before she shuttered it behind the professional face.
"Grant. Hey." She slipped her phone into her pocket with studied casualness. "Enjoying the tournament?"
"He set you up, Em."
"You don't know that."
"Did he fix your grip?" Grant's hands were at his sides. Still. The kind of still that meant he was keeping them there deliberately. "When he was standing behind you. His hands were on your waist. Did he once correct your elbow? Your stance? Anything that would've actually helped you hit the ball?"
Emmy's mouth opened. Closed.
"Did he warn you about the cameras?"
Nothing.
"Did he move you to a different tee when the influencer started recording? Step in front of the lens? Any of the things you'd do for someone you gave a damn about embarrassing in public?"