Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Commonwealth Club looked like someone had taxidermied the nineteenth century and hung it on the walls—but tonight, the old money had invited the new chaos in.
Dark wood paneling absorbed what little light the brass sconces provided.
Leather armchairs clustered in corners like conspirators.
The photographs lining the hallways still showed men in hunting gear, men with cigars, men shaking hands over deals that probably violated several modern regulations.
But weaving through the inherited wealth and overapplication of potpourri was something sharper: the chemical flash of cameras, the circling of journalists in cocktail attire, the particular electricity of people who made their living turning private moments into public consumption.
Someone had been tipped off.
Emmy spotted three photographers in the first thirty seconds.
One near the bar, lens aimed at the VIP section.
One by the silent auction, pretending to examine a hand-thrown vase painted with what looked like a liberal interpretation of Charlie Chaplin.
One near the entrance, capturing flashy-looking arrivals with the efficiency of a machine.
This wasn't just a charity auction. This was a hunting ground.
"Stop fidgeting," Tyce said, his hand warm on the small of her back. "You look incredible."
She'd dressed very carefully, visions of both clients dancing in her head like cross-dressing behemoth sugar-plum fairies.
Black sheath dress, structured shoulders, modest neckline.
The kind of thing you wore when you wanted to be taken seriously, not ogled.
Except for the shoes, which were neither modest nor businesslike—strappy black heels with tiny silky bows at each ankle she'd pulled from the back of her closet.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, which she'd told herself was because the chignon she'd tried made her look like an assistant principal.
"I'm not fidgeting."
"You're holding that champagne like you want to show it a good time." He winked at her. "I don't mind a bit of choking myself."
Any ease she'd managed to achieve wilted like the week-old spinach in her fridge. "Mr. Duke," she finally managed in her most censorious tone.
"Oh, I like that too. Don't stop now." His dimples were working overtime. But underneath the merriment, there was a certain flatness to his gaze, almost... boredom.
She almost didn't see it. Such a small thing—a flicker behind the performance, like a projector skipping a frame.
But now that she had, it was all she could see.
Is this what Grant had noticed? The thing he'd tried to warn her about, that day at Antonio's?
A cat playing with the mouse he planned to eat for dinner.
Strangely, she felt no real danger. Just a mild, detached interest.
"Do you ever get tired of it?" she said.
"Flirting with you? Never."
She stared him down. "Performing. Being who everyone expects you to be."
The hand on her back tightened, but his face stayed pleasantly puzzled. He moued his lips, a petulant little boy whose charm offensive had been lobbied back for a fault. "Fine. I'll stop teasing you. Jesus, I didn't think you'd end up so uptight." He raked a tanned hand through his hair.
Emmy felt as though someone had casually snipped the string to a weight she'd been dragging behind her heart.
For the first time, she saw him with complete clarity—the veneer of charm, the impatience, the underlying restlessness of him.
He was an athlete of the highest level who'd suddenly found himself retired, and, in his mind, reduced.
His need for relevance, his constant attention seeking. ..
It was fear, she realized. The mind went to outrageous lengths to protect the heart. It would take a special person indeed for him to allow them in, to share space with that fear, to overcome his need to impress and provoke and just... be.
Emmy raised her chin. "I'm going to find you someone you don't have to pretend with," she said. "I swear it."
Tyce shook her off like she was a wet stain. "I'm going to the bar."
He disappeared into the crowd, immediately swallowed by a group of women in cocktail dresses who looked at him like he was the last mimosa at brunch.
The spot on her back where his hand had been cooled instantly, and she was aware, suddenly, of how alone she was.
A room full of old money and camera flashes and not a single safe harbor.
Across the room, a velvet rope sectioned off the VIP area. Emmy caught a glimpse of broad shoulders in a charcoal suit, a woman with a sleek ponytail laughing at something by his side, a photographer being waved away by security.
Grant. Protected. Untouchable.
She was on the wrong side of the rope.
Fine. She'd been alone before. She was good alone.
Emmy checked her teeth in the back of her phone, smoothed the front of her dress, and got back to work.
She worked the room the way she worked vintage racks—running her hands along everything until she found the right texture.
A venture capitalist who needed to hear about the psychology of dating apps ("The paradox of choice, but make it romantic").
A senator's wife who needed permission to hate her daughter's fiancé ("Have you considered that your disapproval is what makes him attractive?
"). A gallery owner who wanted to set up his recently divorced brother with "someone who doesn't remind him of his mother. "
She was good at this. The patter, the observation, the way she could find the thread that made anyone unspool.
She'd been honing it since childhood—sitting under her mother's faculty dinner table, cataloging which questions made people lean forward and which made them reach for their wine.
Three conversations, and she'd already read the room to its corners.
The venture capitalist was lonely—she saw the blitz coming before he did.
The senator's wife was furious. The gallery owner was running a play-action fake on himself, pretending his brother's divorce wasn't about his own.
Solved, solved, solved—her brain filing them away with the efficiency of a machine that was already hungry for the next input.
She was also watching Grant.
She couldn't help it. Every circuit of the room brought her past a sightline to the VIP section, and every sightline delivered a fresh little knife.
Grant, listening to the woman with the ponytail—this had to be Bailey—with his full attention, the kind he used to give Emmy when she'd corner him in her parents' kitchen to explain her latest theory about why so-and-so was wrong for so-and-so, minus the annoyed look on his face.
Grant, his hand at the small of her back.
Grant, laughing at something she said, his head tipping back, his whole body relaxing into the sound.
In a room full of men performing wealth and influence, Grant Knight looked like the only person who'd forgotten to try. It made everyone else look like they were in costume.
Emmy looked away. Finished her champagne. Took another from a passing tray.
"Drowning your sorrows?"
Sabine was beside her, a sleek shadow in a charcoal mermaid dress. Emmy hadn't seen her approach—just suddenly, there she was, a martini held like a microphone she was about to drop.
"Networking," Emmy said. “There are so many people here who could really use our help. You should work the room.”
"Oh, I have." Sabine's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I just don't need to work as hard at it. Some of us have actual clients."
Emmy felt her spine straighten. "I have clients."
"Do you?" Sabine took a sip of her martini, watching Emmy over the rim.
"Tyce Duke isn't ever going to consent to being matched.
You know that, right? He's not interested in finding someone.
He's interested in the attention. The chase.
The game." Her eyes flicked toward the dance floor, where Tyce was already holding court with a circle of admirers.
"He'll string you along until Cecelia gets tired of waiting, and then he'll move on to the next shiny thing. "
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I?" Sabine stepped closer, her voice dropping. "And Grant Knight. Your big secret client. Your proof of concept." She laughed, a sound like ice cracking. "It's a sham, Emmy. Everyone knows it. You're not his matchmaker—you're a little girl playing real life with her Barbies."
Emmy's smile held. Her fingernails didn't. She felt them pressing half-moons into her palms.
"I don't know what your problem is with me—"
"My problem?" Sabine's composure cracked, just for a second.
Her lipstick had feathered at the corners.
The composure she wore like couture was coming off the rack.
"Six years." She held up her martini like a toast to no one.
"Six years, and I never got a VIP client.
But you—" She laughed, sharp and wet. "You walked in and Cecelia just handed you the keys. Because you’re West Woodhouse’s sister.
Because you sold out Grant Knight. Because you're twenty-five and beautiful and the world just—" She stopped. Drank. "Forget it."
Emmy's cheeks burned. "That's not—"
"Save it." Sabine's mask slid back into place, smooth and cold. "I'm not threatened by you. I just wanted you to know that I see you. And so does everyone else."
She turned and walked toward the bar, heels clicking a sharp rhythm on the hardwood, where Tyce was now laughing with a redhead in a sequined dress.
Emmy stood frozen, her second champagne going warm in her hand.