Around noon, Mitchell left the Match Play booth erected in the center of the Javits Center, a cavernous convention center so large that it was easy to get lost. He wound through the crowded aisles between booths, trying to find somewhere both private and quiet.
This enormous golf convention in New York City was the largest until the PGA Merchandise Show in Las Vegas in early December. Threading between golfers who were craning their necks to peer at booths full of golf equipment or services as they walked was tricky, as everyone was bumping shoulders and apologizing without actually looking at the people they’d slammed into.
Mitchell was having a hard time concentrating on finding a spot. When he passed a massive display with a banner emblazoned Sidewinder Golf Clubs, a hand reached out of the booth and grabbed him. “Mitchell Saltonstall, as I live and breathe!”
He turned. “Kingston Moore? Skins! I didn’t know you were going to be here. You didn’t mention it when I saw you in the office Friday morning.”
Kingston chuckled at him. He was wearing a bright blue shirt with the Sidewinder Golf company logo on his left pec. An embroidered rattlesnake formed the S in Sidewinder. The sleeves stretched to their breaking point around his burly biceps. “Well, we’re not supposed to discuss our golf-related ventures for the bet. You didn’t say anything about attending this show, either.”
Mitchell reread the banner above his head. “You bought Sidewinder Golf? Holy crap, Kingston. I’m not even going to ask how much that cost you. I’ve been on the waiting list for a set of their custom-manufactured clubs for two years. Can you get me moved up?”
Kingston leaned over the table and hissed, “Shut up, man. They don’t know I’m the owner.” He looked around, but it didn’t appear that they’d been overheard. “Yeah, I can ask if it’s possible to get you moved up the waiting list. Funny, I just had the same conversation with two guys who are on the PGA Tour.”
“Are you going to expand manufacturing? Everybody’s trying to get their hands on those clubs.”
Kingston shook his head. “Nope. The scarcity is what gives the clubs their cachet. That, and they’re so good that they’re practically cheating. But that’s not my plan. I have a new product that we’re manufacturing that is going to explode. We’ll debut it at the PGA Merchandise Show in two and a half months.”
“Why aren’t you leaving samples around the office? That sounds like something I need,” Mitchell told him.
Kingston grinned. “If you put in your preorder now, I can ship something really interesting to you in about a month.”
“Put me down for one of whatever it is and bill it to Last Chance. That sounds like a reimbursable research expense if I ever heard one. Hey, do you know whether Morrissey and Jericho are here?”
Kingston laughed. “Everyone is here. Gabriel Fish is probably here.”
“Cool. We should get together afterward. But not The Shark.”
“Because we can’t do that every day at the office?”
“I’ll text you guys.”
A woman trotted out of the curtained-off rear part of the booth and walked straight up to Kingston. “The next tour pro is here. I have him in the back. I need you back there, not out here, chatting.”
“Right.” Kingston hesitated and then turned to Mitchell. “Mitchell, this is my supervisor, Gia Terranova.”
His supervisor? Kingston was taking the undercover-boss thing to a new level.
Gia Terranova was a voluptuous, buxom woman with glossy black hair and enormous dark eyes.
Mitchell stuck out his hand. “Great to meet you. I hope Kingston isn’t giving you too much trouble. It’s too bad the NDA won’t allow me to tell you why we fired him.”
Gia turned and raised her eyebrows at Kingston.
He glared at Mitchell.
Mitchell laughed and walked away from their booth. He finally found a niche with comparative privacy in one of the vendors’ access tunnels leading off the main floor and made his daily phone call to his sister.
The call connected, and the side of Emily’s mouth filled his phone screen. “Hello, powdered sugar sweetie! How is your big golf show today?” Emily asked.
“And hello to you, my scrumpdillyicious little sis. It’s big. It’s really big. There are a lot of people here.”
“I had my first golf date from the Match Play Special Edition app this morning. It was a playing-partner date. Her name is Olivia, and I think she wants to be my friend.”
Emily was everyone’s friend. “How did it go? Did you like how the app worked?”
“It worked great! Mom helped me use it, and she set up my account. And she let me go by myself! Haley drove me over to our country club.”
Haley was Emily’s friend and paid companion. Haley had been part of a social group organized by the high school for neurotypical students to interact with special needs people like Emily. After Emily and Haley had graduated and they were still friends, Mitchell’s mother had set up a professional relationship so Haley could earn extra money for college while she hung out with Emily.
Win-win. Mitchell’s favorite kind of business deal.
Emily continued, “We set it up for our country club, so I knew where everything was. Haley dropped me off, and then I met Olivia there. She has Down Syndrome, too, and we had a great time golfing.”
“That sounds great. What did you shoot?”
“I don’t know, silly. We just walked and hit the ball.”
“That sounds like the best way to play golf.”
“I’m so glad Arielle thought up the special part of Match Play just for us. That was so nice of her.”
Mitchell hesitated before telling Emily about him and Arielle, but he’d told his mother about the reporter, and his mother had flipped out. No more reporters would be getting close to Emily for another one-on-one.
So he said, “I want to prepare you for something, snookie-mookie-cuddleshark. You remember how Arielle and I are just friends, and we’re pretending to be in love, kind of like actors in a movie, right?”
“Sure.”
Her lowball response worried Mitchell, but he plowed ahead. “Some people might tell you that I proposed to Arielle and that we are getting married.”
“You’re going to propose to Arielle?” Emily’s voice rose to an octave only attempted by the highest coloratura sopranos. “You and Arielle are going to get married?” Her last word was a squeak.
“Not really,” he told her. “We are only acting, and there isn’t going to be a wedding ceremony.”
“Can I be the flower girl? Or the maid of honor? Can I be both the flower girl and the maid of honor?”
Telling Emily had been a bad idea. “There isn’t going to be a wedding.”
“I’m so glad Arielle is going to join our family! I’ve wanted a sister all my life, and Mom keeps telling me to talk to you guys because she won’t make me a sister. Arielle is so great, and I can hardly wait to have her around all the time. She has great ideas, and she’s able to be your girlfriend but still do business with you. You won’t let anyone else do that. For everyone else, it’s ‘business, not family,’ but Arielle is both.”
Mitchell tried to repair the damage. “Emily, listen to me. We’re not really getting married. Some other people might think that we are, and you have to agree with them. But we’re not getting married. There will be no wedding.”
“Why not?” Her voice sounded hurt.
Mitchell scooted his feet in as a staff person shoved a huge cart down the corridor, its rumbling wheels echoing off the concrete around him. “Because I screwed it up with her, Emily. I told her it was just business, and now she thinks it’s all just business and not family.”
“Oh.” She sounded sad. “But you love her, right?”
Emily loved everybody. Her heart and soul were bigger than everyone else’s, including Mitchell’s.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, Emily, I love her, but it’s not enough. I didn’t tell her that at the right time, and now it’s too late.”
“It’s not too late,” Emily told him. “It’s never too late to tell someone you love them. That’s why love always wins, because it’s never too late.”
Lord, Mitchell wished he had the beautiful belief that Emily did. “Sometimes, Emily, it can be too late, and it’s too late for me and Arielle. I knew months ago that I was falling for her, even though I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Remember those pictures from San Diego?”
“I thought you’d gotten married, but Mom said that Arielle was just wearing a white dress and it wasn’t a wedding.”
“It wasn’t a wedding, but I should’ve told her then that it wasn’t all business. But I told her the wrong thing. I told her it was nothing but business between us, and I made the business more important than she was. And now it’s too late. I can’t go back and change all these months. There’s no way I can convince her that she’s more important to me than the business unless I did something to burn it all down. If I tried, she wouldn’t believe me.”
“It’s never too late, super-snuggle bunny. Love always wins. That’s what Mom says, and that’s what I believe. Love always wins. It does. You have to believe that, Mitchell.”
Mitchell ran his hand down his face.
On the screen of his phone, one blue eye stared at him. Emily said, “Tell me that you’ll think about it, Mitchell. Tell me that you’ll believe it.”
The Saltonstall family had decided as a group during family counseling years before not to challenge Emily’s optimistic view of the world. They weren’t patronizing her. Her sunny-side-up worldview was one of the things that made her a beautiful soul, and they needed to celebrate it because she was a member of their family, not argue with her.
And that’s why Mitchell sighed and said, “Yes, my beautiful little sylvan elf, I’ll think about it.”
Even though he knew it was impossible.