He Chose Another Heir Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 61
When my mother was well enough for long-distance travel, we returned to Paris.
Nora had the window seat. Before takeoff, she checked her seat belt three times, insisting she wasn’t scared at all.
Dante sat across the aisle. He hadn’t chartered a Moretti plane or cleared out first class.
“Why buy regular tickets?” I asked.
“Because you bought three.” He looked at me. “I wanted to take the same flight as you.”
Paris was rainy.
I had given up my old apartment, but my firm had kept my office. A stack of contracts waited on my desk, the top one from Dante’s shipping company.
A formal consulting agreement.
The rate, scope of work, and confidentiality clauses were all drafted by my team. The last page had no extra conditions, only his signature.
“You really didn’t change a single clause?” I asked.
“I did.”
“Which one?”
“I changed the payment cycle from thirty days to seven.” He leaned against the doorway. “I didn’t want your partners thinking I was slow to pay.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
That evening, my mother and Nora were in the kitchen, learning to make soup together. Nora mistook salt for sugar, and Maria drank a spoonful with a straight face and said it was delicious.
Standing outside the kitchen, I suddenly understood that home didn’t have to be an old house with a family crest.
It could also be a small apartment, with three people crowded in the kitchen while it rained outside, and a door that could always be opened.
Dante hung up my damp coat.
“Elena.”
“Hmm?”
“That night at the hospital, you let me protect you as your husband. The title lasted one night.”
“Vittorio already reminded you.”
“Which is why I’m not using that title now.”
He stepped in front of me, looking uncharacteristically awkward.
“I want to court you. Properly. Not to repay a favor, not because of the ties between the Moretti and De Luca families, and not because you defused that bomb for me.”
He paused.
“Only because I love you.”
There was a clatter from the kitchen. Nora poked her head out and was promptly pulled back by my mother.
I looked at Dante.
Six years ago, when I left Boston, I thought love was always bound up with promises, surnames, and inheritance. That whoever gave their heart first gave the other person the power to decide their fate.
But Dante had drawn close when I needed him and stepped back when I said I could handle it myself.
He opened doors for me. He never told me which one to walk through.
“Okay,” I said.
Light slowly dawned in his eyes.
“What are the conditions?”
“No sending your men into my firm. No interfering with my clients. And no more buying the wrong kind of space heater.”
“The first two, I agree to.” He reached up and touched the gardenia at my collar. “The third, I’ll do my best.”
This time, it was me who reached out first and took his hand.