Emma’s attention refocused on her father, more sharply this time.

“I’m sure you fathers here tonight know there’s nothing worse than watching your baby girls grow up,” Winston was saying. “That moment when you first realize they’re wearing makeup. That first homecoming dance when they’re going with a boy you’ve never met. The first car, first boyfriend, first heartbreak…I went through all of that with Daisy, and it damn near killed me.”

Everyone smiled politely.

“But, Emma…” Her father glanced at her only briefly, lifting his glass in her direction. “Emma was my shy little girl. Never boy crazy. Which was great in high school, but by the time she was in college…well, a father starts to worry, you know?”

“What’s he talking about?” Emma asked her sister quietly.

Daisy didn’t respond.

“So imagine my relief when one of my summer interns turned out to be not only a classmate of my daughters’ at university, but also a star soccer player, a top student, and a perfect gentleman. Well, you couldn’t blame a father for interfering, could you? A kid like Alex Cassidy crosses your path, and quickly becomes your indispensable right-hand man at twenty-one, you take action. Or at least Winston Sinclair does.”

Warning bells started going off in Emma’s mind, although she couldn’t quite place her finger on why. True, Cassidy had gone to work for her father the summer after his junior year—an internship he’d gotten through his loose connection with Daisy. And, yes, her father had taken an instant liking to him…but what did he mean he’d taken action?

She glanced at Cassidy in confusion, but he didn’t look back. His eyes were locked on Winston, and the warning bells in Emma’s ears grew louder as she saw the uneasy expression on his face.

Cassidy was the most confident, self-assured person she knew. Even when the doctors told him that he’d have to give up his soccer career or risk permanent damage to his hip flexors, he’d barely flinched. He’d simply shifted gears, pouring all the energy he’d once dumped into soccer into…

Oh my God.

He’d dumped all that energy into Emma’s father’s company.

Emma’s eyes snapped back to her father as he continued his story.

“Now, most of you don’t realize that while Sinclair Media Group has a robust internship program, taking on as many as two dozen interns every summer, only one of those internships ever turns into a job offer. The competition is fierce; the standards impossibly high. And while I value the usual qualities in a candidate—hard work, ambition, quick thinking—I also appreciate an enterprising thinker…a candidate who thinks outside the box, who’s not afraid to be crafty.”

Her father paused long enough to gesture toward the bartender that his glass was near empty.

“Anyway, you’ll pardon an old man for being long-winded, but you can probably see where I’m going with this.”

“Oh God,” Daisy whispered.

“Cassidy was on the short list for the job from the very beginning, but the truth is, the boy owes me for more than his professional life, isn’t that right, son?” Winston said, grinning at Cassidy.

Cassidy didn’t grin back.

“See, I did offer the job to Cassidy. But with one rather unusual request,” Emma’s father continued, finally glancing at Emma. “Emma, sweetie, bet you didn’t know your old man was such a skilled matchmaker.”

What was he talking about?

Daisy was at her father’s side now, and he held out his glass to her for a refill, and Daisy took it, but made absolutely no move to hand it to the restaurant employee who was standing nearby with a bottle of Knob Creek.

Daisy’s smile never slipped as she moved toward their father, whispering something. He either didn’t hear or didn’t listen, because he kept right on talking.

“Cassidy here was only too happy to do an old man a favor by asking his daughter out on a date in exchange for a guaranteed job after graduation, isn’t that right, son?” Winston Sinclair beamed around the room like some sort of benevolent matchmaker, and, incredibly, most everyone beamed back at him.

No doubt they figured Emma was already aware of this “charming” aspect of Cassidy and Emma’s history—the doting, interfering father who set his daughter up for true love.

Only this was the first time Emma was hearing of it. She wasn’t surprised that her father hadn’t told her about his interference. He knew she hated it when he messed with his daughters’ lives.

But Cassidy…how could her fiancé not have mentioned it?

She stared, stunned, at Cassidy, her ears ringing. He’d asked her out because her father had asked him to?

Their encounter in the campus bookstore that summer before her junior year and his senior year…

That had been staged?

Planned?

She shook her head. This couldn’t be right. Her father was wrong. Certainly I would have noticed something was up, right?

This wouldn’t have alarmed her so much if Cassidy would just look at her. But his gaze was still locked on her father.

Emma couldn’t have been this blind. Could she?

At least until he looked at Daisy. Who looked right back at him, her gaze panicked.

Oh my God.

Emma instinctively braced, knowing there was a piece of the puzzle not yet said.

“Thing was, joke was on Cassidy, at least at first,” her father was saying. “Turns out he didn’t know I had two daughters. When he fell all over himself accepting my offer, it was with the expectation that he’d be asking out Daisy.”