Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 188

Chapter 183: Keeping Watch

DANTE

“She’s better than good,” I said. “She’s been off the game for twelve years and she’s coming back at a level that-“I stopped, because I needed to say this accurately. “She needs time. She needs tournament experience to build ranking points. But the quality underneath is there. It was always there. The junior career she had was the beginning of something significant that got interrupted.”

“And now?” Cameron said.

“I’ve been talking to my manager,” I said. “Maria. She scouts talent, she develops careers, she’s been in the sport for twenty years and she can identify what’s there versus what isn’t.” I paused. “I told her I’d been working with a returning player and I gave her enough information to be interested without saying who it was. She wants to come to Seattle and see her play.”

Cameron was quiet.

“I want to talk to Sedona about it first,” I said. “Before I do anything else. She needs to know what the conversation is and she needs to decide if she wants it.” I paused. “I can introduce her to Maria. I can show her the door. What happens after that is Sedona’s talent, not anything I do.”

“She’d be-” Cameron started, and then stopped.

“What?” I said.

“She’d be thrilled,” he said. “And terrified. In equal measure.” Another pause. “She’s been protecting it. Not telling people. Even Nick-she hasn’t told Nick she’s playing again, which I found out from something she said in passing and which means she’s being very careful about who knows.” He paused. “Why hasn’t she told Nick?”

“Logan,” I said. “If Nick knows and tells Logan, Logan has time to use his connections in the sport to make her return difficult. She’s not ranked, she doesn’t have the protection of an active career yet. She’s building from nothing.”

Cameron was quiet.

“That’s-” He stopped. “That’s the kind of thinking that requires you to hold two things at once. Wanting something and protecting it from being damaged before it’s strong enough to survive.” He paused. “She’s been doing that her whole life.”

“I know,” I said.

“Talk to her,” Cameron said. “Today if you can. Don’t-” He stopped. “Don’t make it bigger than it needs to be. Just tell her about Maria and let her decide.”

“That’s what I was planning,” I said.

“Good.” A pause. “And Dante-”

“Yes.”

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“My parents,” he said. “When this becomes something-if Sedona talks to Maria and it goes forward-my parents are going to want to celebrate. My mother specifically is going to want to throw something.”

“I know,” I said.

“She’ll want to do it immediately,” he said. “The moment there’s any positive news.”

“I’ll manage expectations,” I said. “Maria coming to watch is not a contract. It’s an audition for an audition. There are multiple steps between Maria agreeing to come and Sedona entering a tournament.” I paused. “Your mother needs to understand that we’re not there yet.

“You tell her that,” Cameron said. “You clearly have more faith in your ability to manage her expectations than I do.”

“I’ve sat across from Jennifer Preston at enough dinners to understand how she operates,” I said.

“And?”

“And she’ll throw the party when there’s actually something to celebrate,” I said. “Not before. I’ll hold the line on that.”

Cameron made a sound. “Let me know how that goes,” he said.

“I will,” I said.

We ended the call.

I put the phone on the desk and sat for a moment in the small office at the facility, looking at the court visible through the glass wall-empty at this hour, the clean lines of it, the specific geometry that I’d spent my whole life inside.

Sedona had been on that court three times a week for over a month.

I’d been watching her come back.

Not sentimentally-not in the way of someone who was watching something because it was personally significant to them, though it was. In the professional way, the way I watched all tennis, the way Maria would watch when she came. The technical watching.

And what I’d seen was this: the quality was real.

It had always been real. I’d known it at seventeen, which was why the junior match had stayed with me, why I’d thought about it across the years. You played enough players at that level to develop the ability to distinguish between someone who was very good and someone who had something else, the quality that wasn’t reducible to technique or physical ability or tactical intelligence, though it included all of those things.

It was the quality of someone who thought on the court.

Sedona thought on the court the way she thought everywhere-clearly, without waste, ahead of the obvious moment. The inside-out forehand with the adjusted swing path she’d been developing for the shoulder, the way she’d taken the technical correction and made it hers rather than copying the demonstration I’d shown her. The way she tracked the ball differently when she was tired than when she was fresh, adjusting the contact point earlier without being told to.

213

Koring Water

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