I kept the surge off my face. Kept my voice gentle even as every instinct screamed to claim her right there, to seal this agreement with more than ink.
"We start slow," I said. "Nothing you're not ready for."
She looked up from the contract.
"And Gemma?"
"Yes?"
"I'm proud of you." The words came out thick with emotion I couldn't quite contain. "This took courage. Most people spend their lives running from what they need. You just ran toward it."
Her eyes welled.
"I don't know if I'm running toward anything," she whispered. "I think I'm just tired of running away."
I reached out. Cupped her face the way I had at the altar, at the gala, at every moment when touch was the only language I could speak.
"That's courage too," I said. "The hardest kind."
She leaned into my palm.
We sat like that for a long moment. The contract between us, signed and sealed. The future unwritten but no longer uncharted.
We had a map now. We had structure.
Now we just had to follow it.
Ididn’thavetowaitlong until the contract was tested.
The very next day, I came home from a meeting with the Gambettis to find the kitchen dark.
The dinner I'd arranged—Rosa's chicken piccata, specifically requested because Gemma had mentioned loving it—sat untouched on the counter. The plates had been set out. The wine had been opened to breathe. Everything was perfect and completely abandoned.
My jaw tightened.
I loosened my tie as I walked through the house, following the instinct that had become second nature over the past weeks. The library. She'd be in the library.
She was.
Curled in the window seat, laptop balanced on her knees, a cup of tea beside her that had long since gone cold. The last light of evening was fading outside, casting her face in shadows that emphasized the dark circles under her eyes.
She looked up when I entered.
She'd been researching something—I caught a glimpse of financial records on the screen before she closed the laptop. Moretti finances, maybe. Or something else. Something that had consumed her enough to forget—
No. Not forget.
I looked at her carefully. At the way she held my gaze. At the slight lift of her chin. At the absence of apology in her expression.
She hadn't forgotten. She hadn't been too absorbed to remember.
She'd chosen.
"You haven't eaten."
My voice came out calm. Controlled. The Daddy voice, she'd started calling it—the one that reached beneath her defenses and demanded attention.
"I wasn't hungry."
