CHAPTER TWO #2
"It smells wonderful, Mrs. Ashford-Wale, thank you," Olivia replied politely, keeping her hands folded neatly in her lap.
The irony of the situation was lost on Olivia.
To her family back in Ohio, Eleanor was a dragon guarding a hoard of gold, a woman who would surely use her wealth to crush the small-town girl dating her son.
But in reality, Eleanor was simply a mother who loved her son and, by extension, was perfectly willing to love the woman who made him happy.
The Ashford-Wales were not schemers. They did not plot the downfall of outsiders.
But Olivia, blinded by the inherited fear of her social circle, could not see Eleanor’s kindness for what it was.
To Olivia, the warm smile was just a mask, a calculated move in a game she didn't know how to play.
Across the table, Kennedy Lockhart took her seat gracefully.
Kennedy looked breathtaking, as she always did, the emerald green of her slip dress contrasting sharply with her glossy hair.
She sat beside her mother, Margaret, and her older brother, Spencer.
As the wine was poured and the first course—a delicate lobster bisque—was served, Kennedy engaged effortlessly in the conversation rolling around the table.
Internally, Kennedy was managing her own quiet exhaustion.
She had spent the last two hours observing Olivia, noting the way the younger woman shrank into Grayson’s side, the way her eyes darted nervously around the room, terrified of committing some invisible faux pas.
In Kennedy’s private estimation, Olivia was spectacularly ill-suited for the life she was stepping into.
Grayson’s world required a spine of steel.
It required the ability to navigate charity galas, aggressive board members, invasive press, and vicious social politics with a smile.
Olivia seemed overwhelmed by a simple Sunday dinner.
But Kennedy kept those thoughts locked firmly behind her teeth.
She wasn't a villain. She had no interest in sabotaging Grayson’s relationship, regardless of her own long-standing, unrequited feelings for him.
She loved Grayson enough to want him to be happy, even if she fundamentally believed his current choice was a mistake.
So, she maintained her distance, offering polite smiles and engaging in neutral conversation, deliberately avoiding anything that could be construed as confrontational.
"So, Olivia," Margaret Lockhart said from down the table, dabbing her mouth elegantly with a linen napkin. "Eleanor mentioned you were working at a gallery in the city. How are you finding it?"
Olivia stiffened. They’re probing, her sister’s voice echoed in her head. They want to know if you're ambitious, or if you're just waiting for a ring.
"It’s… it’s going well," Olivia managed, her voice a little breathless. "I'm mostly assisting the curator right now. It's a lot of cataloging."
"Cataloging is the backbone of any good collection," Arthur Ashford-Wale offered kindly from the head of the table. "You learn more about the art by touching it and documenting it than you do just staring at it on a wall."
"Exactly," Grayson agreed, giving Olivia’s knee a supportive squeeze beneath the table.
Kennedy, seeking to contribute normally to the flow of conversation without addressing the gallery topic—knowing nothing about art herself—reached for her wine glass. She looked across the table, her hazel eyes meeting Olivia’s.
"I imagine it must be quite a change of pace from your hometown," Kennedy observed smoothly. Her tone was conversational, polite, and devoid of malice. "The city can be a bit chaotic in the summer. Have you found any good quiet spots to read? I know Grayson mentioned you're quite the bookworm."
It was an olive branch. A simple, harmless question meant to make Olivia feel included in a conversation that didn't revolve around high finance or society gossip.
But Olivia didn't hear an olive branch.
Filtered through the paranoid lens her family had carefully constructed for her, Kennedy’s question morphed into a trap. She’s pointing out that I don't belong here. She's reminding everyone that I'm from a small town. She's trying to make me look unsophisticated. She’s the enemy.
The advice roared in Olivia's ears: Frame her as a threat. Make Grayson remove her.
Olivia’s breathing hitched. She looked at Kennedy, her blue eyes wide and suddenly swimming with a manufactured, yet deeply felt, panic.
She didn't answer the question. Instead, she let her gaze drop to her plate, her shoulders hunching inward, a perfect picture of a woman who had just been bullied into silence.
"I… um," Olivia stammered, her voice trembling just enough to be noticeable. She shifted her body away from Kennedy and closer to Grayson, her hand reaching out to clutch at his sleeve. "I don't really… I mean, the city is fine."
The atmosphere at the table shifted instantly. The easy warmth evaporated, replaced by a sudden, jarring tension.
Grayson’s head snapped up. He felt the tremor in Olivia’s hand on his arm, saw the way she was shrinking away from Kennedy, and his protective instincts flared into immediate, blinding action.
He didn't parse the words Kennedy had spoken; he only saw the result.
His girlfriend looked terrified, and Kennedy was the one looking at her.
"Kennedy, enough," Grayson’s voice cut through the room like a whip crack. It wasn't loud, but it was laced with a chilling, authoritative finality that made the crystal glasses on the table seem to ring with it.
Kennedy froze, her wine glass halfway to her lips. She blinked, genuine shock rippling across her elegant features. "I’m sorry? I just asked if she’d found a place to read."
"I know exactly what you’re doing, and I’m telling you to stop," Grayson replied, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on his childhood friend with cold reproach. "She doesn't need to be analyzed by you every time she speaks. Leave her alone."
A suffocating silence descended over the dining room.
At the head of the table, Eleanor looked between her son and Kennedy, her brow furrowing in confusion. Beside her, Margaret’s lips thinned into a tight, unhappy line. Spencer sat rigidly, his jaw clenching as he watched his sister publicly reprimanded for a crime she hadn't committed.
Kennedy sat perfectly still. The injustice of it burned in her throat like acid. She had done nothing. She had literally asked about books. But looking at Grayson, seeing the protective fury in his eyes as he shielded the small, trembling blonde beside him, Kennedy realized the horrifying truth.
It didn't matter what she said. It didn't matter how careful she was, or how polite she tried to be. In the narrative Olivia had constructed—or rather, the narrative that had been constructed for her—Kennedy was already the villain.
Kennedy slowly lowered her wine glass back to the table, her hand remarkably steady despite the chaotic hammering of her heart. She refused to flush. She refused to look away. She drew on decades of Lockhart breeding, wrapping her wounded pride in a cloak of freezing detachment.
"My apologies, Olivia," Kennedy said, her voice smooth as glass and just as cold. She didn't look at Grayson. "I’ll refrain from asking you about your hobbies in the future."
"Kennedy," Spencer warned softly, putting a hand on his sister’s arm, knowing how close she was to breaking.
"It’s fine, Spencer," Kennedy murmured, picking up her fork and turning her attention back to her plate, shutting the rest of the table out.
Beside Grayson, Olivia exhaled a shaky breath, letting her head rest for a fleeting second against his shoulder.
Her heart was racing, but beneath the anxiety, a twisted, reassuring sense of safety began to take root.
Her family had been right. It was a simple equation.
Kennedy had made her feel unsafe—even if that lack of safety was in Olivia’s head—and Grayson had neutralized the threat.
He had chosen her. He had protected her.
"Are you okay?" Grayson whispered, leaning down so only she could hear, his large hand warmly covering hers on the table.
"Yes," Olivia whispered back, looking up at him with wide, adoring eyes. "Thank you."
The dinner conversation slowly, awkwardly, sputtered back to life, steered aggressively by Arthur and Spencer toward neutral topics of real estate and offshore investments. But the damage was done. The lines had been firmly, irrevocably drawn.
Olivia sat quietly through the rest of the meal, eating her lobster bisque with the correct silver spoon, feeling as though she had survived her first battle in a war she was only just beginning to understand.
She didn't look across the table at Kennedy Lockhart again. She didn't need to. In Olivia’s mind, and by extension in Grayson’s, the glamorous woman in the emerald dress had been thoroughly defeated.
And Kennedy, sitting quietly in the ruins of a friendship she didn't know how to save, simply ate her dinner, wondering how long it would be before the narrative Olivia was spinning finally tore them all apart.