The Billion-Dollar Bride Hunt by Melanie Milburne

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HARRIETHADONLYjust left Emmie’s office when Paisley poked her head round the door. ‘Your father is here.’

Emmie rapid-blinked. ‘My father?’ Disappointment trickled through her. It was silly of her to have hoped it might be Matteo instead.

Paisley nodded and added sotto voce, ‘Maybe he wants you to help him find a partner.’

‘He needs no help from me,’ Emmie said sourly. ‘He’s had numerous since Mum.’

‘Will I send him in?’

‘Yes. But tell him I only have five minutes.’

Emmie stayed behind her desk when her father came in. She couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged or shown any affection. It wasn’t how their relationship worked these days. Gone were the days of hugs and kisses and playful tickles and words of affection. Her cancer diagnosis had changed her father overnight as well as her.

‘Dad, what brings you to my neck of the woods?’

He gave her a sheepish look and placed a hand on the back of the chair on which Matteo had once sat. ‘Do you mind if I take a seat?’

‘Go ahead.’ She leaned her elbows on the desk and steepled her fingers together. ‘So, have you visited Natty yet, or has that been a little too uncomfortable for you?’

A dull flush appeared like two flags high on his cheekbones. ‘Actually, I was there yesterday and again today.’ His throat moved up and down and he continued, ‘She seems to be getting a little better.’

‘Yes, but it’s too early to hope it’s permanent.’

‘Not much in life is...’

‘Parental love is supposed to be,’ Emmie tossed back with a speaking look.

Her father seemed to slump in the chair as if an invisible weight he was carrying had suddenly become too heavy. ‘You think I don’t love you and Natty?’ His mouth twisted. ‘I think the problem has been I loved you too much. That’s why the prospect of losing you hit me so hard.’

‘Your timing is way off.’

His mouth twisted again. ‘Yeah, I know this is eight years too late, but I still need to get this off my chest.’

‘So you can feel better about yourself?’

‘So we can be a family again.’

Emmie pushed back her chair and stood with her arms crossed across her middle, glaring at him. ‘Are you for real? How can we be a family again when you and Mum can’t be in the same room as each other without it turning into World War Three?’

‘Your mum and I have been talking over the last couple of weeks and—’

‘What?’ Emmie stared at him in shock. ‘Over the phone? In person?’

‘Both.’

‘And?’

He took a deep breath and released it in a stuttering stream. ‘I told her some stuff I should have told her when we first met. Important stuff about my childhood.’

‘You said you had a happy childhood.’

‘It was mostly happy.’ He swallowed again and scrubbed at his face with his hand. ‘My parents, your grandparents, were busy running a business together but they did their best to be there for me when they could. I was close to my grandmother because she took care of me most of the time. She was everything a grandmother should be. That’s why I gave you her writing desk. She was a very special person to me. But one day she became ill and was rushed to hospital, and I went with her in the ambulance.’

He blinked back tears and continued, ‘I was with her when she died. I was nine years old. I’ve hated hospitals ever since. I missed her so much. Life was never the same without her. I had to go to boarding school after that, but that’s another story.’

Emmie stared at her father as if seeing him for the first time. Seeing the frightened little boy behind the distant and overly critical father he had become. The loving little boy who had lost the person he loved most in the world. ‘Oh, Dad, I wish I’d known...’

‘It was terrifying when you got diagnosed with cancer. I could see it all playing out again in my mind. I’d be sitting there one day holding your hand, just like I held Gran’s, and then you’d be gone...’ He lowered his head into his hands and gave a muffled sob. ‘And then there’s Natty...’

Emmie came over to him and knelt beside his chair, taking one of his hands in hers. ‘But I’m still here and Natty is getting the best help possible. We have to keep hoping she’ll make it.’

He raised his bloodshot gaze to hers. ‘Can you forgive me for not being there when you needed me? For not keeping us all together? I’m doing all I can to make it up to your mother. She’s been marvellous about it. But then, she always was the most amazing person, which was why I married her in the first place.’

‘Of course I can forgive you, but why hasn’t Mum said anything to me?’ It was hard not to feel a little miffed her mother hadn’t given her the heads up.

‘We’re taking it a day at a time, that’s why.’

‘You mean...you’re seeing each other?’

Her father gave a wobbly smile. ‘I can highly recommend falling in love with the same person twice. I’ve made some terrible mistakes in my time but the best thing I ever did was fall in love with your mum. And this time, I am not ashamed to tell her every day how much she means to me.’

‘But what brought you to this point? I mean, something or someone must have helped you see...’

‘I took a good hard look at myself about a month ago. I didn’t like what I saw. I’m not sure what triggered it—maybe Natty’s relapse. I knew I had to face my demons before they destroyed me.’

‘Dad...’ Emmie reached for him in a hug at the same time he reached for her. ‘I’m glad you’re back. I missed you.’

‘I missed you too, sweetie.’

It took Emmie a good half-hour to repair her make-up after her father left. She no sooner put on more mascara when she would start crying again. Bittersweet tears for the lost years and the lost opportunities. But she was hopeful her father was on the right track now, learning to embrace vulnerability and show the love he felt but had denied for so long. Emmie glanced at her reflection in the mirror and dabbed at a speck of smeared mascara below her left eye. Maybe she had to do the same thing—stop denying her feelings and embrace them instead.

Paisley tapped on the door and poked her head round again. ‘You have another visitor.’

‘Let me guess. My mum?’ She might as well give up on her make-up repairs.

Paisley’s eyes sparkled like twirling tinsel. ‘It’s him.’

Emmie’s heart almost leapt out of her chest and landed on her desk. She pushed herself out of her chair on unsteady legs. ‘Okay...’ She didn’t dare harbour any fledging hopes that this visit was anything but a client visit. Not that Matteo had contacted any of the women she had selected as potential partners. She had tried not to read too much into his reluctance to engage with any of the women. She had tried not to think that he might well have found his own potential partner since they had ended their fling. It had happened to other clients of hers. A chance meeting had turned into something else. Had Matteo’s problem been solved? Had he found someone who could give him the thing he most wanted?

Matteo came striding in and Emmie had to stop herself running to him and throwing herself in his arms. Her body reacted to his presence the way it always did—flickers of awareness racing across her skin, her heartbeat accelerating, her pulse racing. She hadn’t seen him in a month and it looked as if time hadn’t been all that kind to him. He looked as though he had lost weight and his eyes had dark circles beneath them, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. Not that she could talk. It wasn’t only smeared mascara that had left panda circles around her eyes.

‘Emmie.’

His voice was a caress that sent a frisson through her body. Em-meee. Oh, how she had missed the sound of his voice! How she had missed seeing him in the flesh.

‘Hello.’ Emmie adopted her best business-like tone. ‘You haven’t contacted any of the women I selected for you.’

He came over to her and took her hands in his. ‘That’s because I only want one woman and that is you.’

Emmie stared up at him, not daring to take another breath in case she was getting ahead of herself. ‘But I can’t give you a child. And you don’t love me.’

His hands gently squeezed hers, his eyes soft with tenderness. ‘I do love you. I’m ashamed to admit it took me this long to realise it. You have taught me so much about myself, about identifying my feelings, helping me talk about them. But the one step I missed was allowing myself to actually feel them. But I know what I feel for you is the real deal.’

He drew her closer to his body. ‘I know we can be happy together. We can’t have the perfect family you dreamed of but we can be together. And that’s all I want.’

Emmie flung her arms around his waist, squeezing him so tightly he gasped. ‘Oh, Matteo, I can’t believe you’re prepared to sacrifice so much for me. I love you too. I think I fell in love with you the first time I set eyes on you.’ She looked up at him again with a growing frown. ‘But your family’s estate? Won’t you lose it without an heir?’

Matteo stroked her cheek with a gentle finger. ‘I would rather lose the estate than lose you. You are enough for me, more than enough.’

Emmie was trying not to cry but failing miserably. ‘Oh, my darling, maybe we can have a family. We can adopt or foster. There are so many children out there who need loving homes. We could provide a wonderful home for our children. And they would be ours, wouldn’t they? Because we would commit to them the same way we commit to each other—for ever.’

‘You’d be open to that?’ Hope shone in his gaze. ‘Really?’

Emmie smiled and hugged him again. ‘I made the mistake of thinking, if I couldn’t be a biological mother, then I couldn’t be a mother. But I realise now being a mother is primarily about love, not just sharing some DNA. And I can’t think of a person I would rather be a parent with than you.’

‘You’ll be a wonderful mother.’ Matteo kissed her lingeringly, leaving her breathless and boneless in his arms. He lifted his mouth from hers to gaze down at her. ‘I can’t wait to marry you. Don’t make me wait. This last month has been torture, not seeing you, not touching you. Every day felt like a lifetime.’

‘I won’t make you wait,’ Emmie said, linking her arms around his neck. ‘I feel like such a hypocrite telling you to be open about your feelings when I’d locked my own away. I told you to be vulnerable but I didn’t want to be vulnerable myself.’

Matteo cradled her face in his hands. ‘I took a gamble that you loved me but were hiding it. I can’t say it was easy allowing myself to feel so vulnerable, but I figured losing you would be so much worse.’

‘Loving someone is all about facing the prospect of losing them one day,’ Emmie said. ‘That’s why it’s so frightening to open your heart. I just had my father here half an hour ago. He explained why he became so distant when I got sick. He was so terrified of losing me that he pulled away. It was a self-preservation move, an unconscious coping mechanism to prevent further pain. He’s seeing my mum again. Can you believe that? After eight years of bickering and all-out war, they’re actually seeing each other.’

‘I’m glad you understand him better. And it just goes to show you should never lose hope.’

Emmie gazed up at him dreamily. ‘I didn’t realise I could be this happy. I thought I would be alone for the rest of my life. I had even convinced myself I would be happy that way. I had starved myself of intimacy, just like my sister has starved herself of food. It disordered my thinking for so long but meeting you changed everything. You made me realise how much I wanted to love and be loved, no matter what.’

Matteo stroked her cheek again. ‘I was the same. Telling myself I was satisfied by casual hook-ups and only finding fulfilment in my work. But we will fulfil each other now. We’ll be an awesome team. And we’ll need to be, because we’ll have a lot on our plate travelling back and forth to Devon and London and Umbria.’

Emmie frowned in puzzlement. ‘But why will we be travelling to Devon?’

Matteo’s eyes twinkled and he slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and handed her a folded piece of paper. ‘For you, cara mia, with all my love.’

Emmie took the paper and unfolded it, her eyes rounding to the size of dinner plates, her heart swelling in her chest. ‘Oh, Matteo... You bought my childhood home?’ Tears sprouted in her eyes. ‘I can’t believe it, it’s like a dream come true. It’s just so generous of you.’

He smiled and wrapped his arms around her. ‘You are my dream come true. I love you. And I will shower you with gifts for the rest of our days.’

‘I love you so much, it’s impossible to put into words.’

Matteo lowered his mouth to hers. ‘Then let’s put it into action instead, si...?’