Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
They were the sound of a door opening that had been closed for thirty-one years.
"And I always will."
Epilogue
ONE MONTH LATER
His hand was on her waist.
Just resting there, warm and sure through the fabric of her dress, while his voice carried on with whatever the call was about. Something involving quarterly projections and a property in Yorkville and numbers that Chelsea's brain had long since stopped trying to follow, because his hand was on her waist and the city was scrolling past the tinted windows and this, right here, this ordinary moment in the back of a car with her husband's palm against her hip and his voice low and warm in her ear, was still enough to make her breathless.
One month, and it still made her breathless.
She sat very still. She was being good. She was not going to distract him from his call, because she was a supportive wife and a mature adult and she understood that quarterly projections were important even if she could not for the life of her remember what a quarterly projection actually was, and—-
His fingers moved to her knee.
Chelsea jumped.
A low chuckle escaped him, the kind that vibrated through his chest and into the space between them, and the sound of it, oh, the sound of it. Olivio Cannizzaro chuckling was a relatively new phenomenon in the universe, and Chelsea had not yet developed any immunity to it.
He ended the call.
"You," she said, turning to face him with what she hoped was a look of dignified accusation, "were having fun."
"You—-"
She didn't get to say anything else, because his hand was at the back of her neck and his mouth was on hers and he was pulling her into his lap with the easy authority of a man who had decided that quarterly projections could wait. Her hands found his chest, his shoulders, the warm skin at the open collar of his shirt, and she was about to melt against him the way she always melted against him, the way her body had apparently decided was its default setting in all situations involving this man—-
He raised his head.
"To be continued."
"H-Huh?"
"We're already here."
The limo slowed to a stop, and Chelsea blinked, her brain scrambling to reassemble itself from the wreckage his kiss had made of it. It was only when she glanced out the window and recognized the iron gate and the old stone wall and the row of elms that lined the path that she understood.
Oh.
Right.
They were here.
Here, as in where her parents were.
Her heart did something complicated, and she was quiet for a moment, and Olivio didn't fill the silence. He simply waited, his thumb tracing a slow circle against her hip, giving her whatever she needed without being asked. He'd gotten good at that. Or maybe he'd always been good at it and had just stopped pretending he wasn't.
He helped her out of the backseat, his hand never letting hers go, and they walked in silence.
Chelsea's thoughts drifted, the way they did on quiet walks, to the month that had passed. Rhea had quit before HR could finish the investigation, which was probably for the best, because Chelsea had been dreading the possibility of having to see her every morning and pretend the awkwardness wasn't there, and pretending was the one thing Chelsea had never been able to do. Francine had been served a restraining order, drafted by Adriano personally and delivered with the kind of legal force that made Chelsea briefly, guiltily grateful to be on the side of people who could afford lawyers like Adriano Kontides. Amanda had been promoted to co-manage the front desk, and the quiet pride on her face the first morning she'd worn the new badge had made Chelsea's eyes sting, because Amanda had risked something real to do the right thing, and it mattered that the right thing had cost her nothing in the end except the courage to do it.
Johnny had been promoted too, which had coincided, in a timing that Chelsea was sure was purely coincidental, with him getting himself a girlfriend. She wasn't entirely sure what one had to do with the other, but she was so thrilled for him on both counts that she hadn't thought to question it. He deserved good things. He'd been the first person in the building to be kind to her, and Chelsea never forgot that sort of thing.
The Marquez deal hadn't been canceled in the end. Chelsea had insisted on that, because the deal itself wasn't the problem, the problem was that it had been the reason Olivio kept her, and once the reason changed, the deal was just a deal again. Adriano had drafted a new contract, not for the Vancouver property but for a donation, a significant one, to the hospital where Chelsea had spent three years asleep and eight months learning to walk again. Edgar had accepted a post there as investment consultant, which meant the man who'd called her every week for three years when she couldn't hear him would now be helping to make sure the place that had kept her alive could keep doing it for other people. Chelsea still cried every time she thought about it, which was often, and which she had stopped apologizing for.