Page 30 of CEO's Marriage Miracle

‘Wait, you gave me this to keep me here, didn’t you? To buy me off. Because you can’t give me what I really need—you don’t love me that way. But you don’t want anyone else to have me either, because I’m your wife. Seb, this is...this is low.’

‘No!’ Oh, hell, this was all going wrong. Very wrong. This was what happened when he planned a grand gesture on no sleep, clearly. ‘That’s not what this means, okay?’

Scrubbing a hand over his head—and dislodging his elf ears—Seb sank onto the sofa, his whole body aching with exhaustion. After a moment Maria sat down next to him.

‘Okay, then. Tell me what it does mean. And why you’re dressed up as an elf, come to that.’

Seb huffed a laugh. ‘The elf thing was more for Frankie than you, unless you have some strange tastes you never mentioned before. And because Leo wouldn’t wear the Santa suit unless I dressed up, too.’

‘Ha! No. Although I think Anissa was secretly impressed with Leo’s costume.’

‘And she looks a lot better as an elf than I do,’ Seb commented. Maria didn’t disagree with him, which wasn’t a surprise.

‘So. Explain?’ Maria asked. ‘Everything, preferably. Starting from when I left you last night.’

Seb sighed. How to explain it in a way that she would believe? It felt like the realisation of his love had come on so slowly, over the years, then had sped up over the last week and a half. But would she believe that? If he just said ‘I love you’, Maria would think they were just words to make her stay, like she had with the shares.

It wasn’t enough to just say the words. But he also knew the words were what would mean the most to her.

‘When you left last night,’ he started slowly, thinking his way through as he spoke, ‘I realised that you were right about some things, and that I’d been dead wrong about others.’

‘Like?’

‘You said I didn’t see you.’ The memory was almost as painful as the words had been, especially when he knew what he’d been missing. ‘And in lots of ways you were right. When we got married, I believed our relationship was one thing—a business deal, a partnership. And I never looked beyond that. In my head, I’d assigned you to the role of “wife of heir to Cattaneo Jewels”, and looked forward to the day you’d be the “wife of the CEO of Cattaneo Jewels”. And it never occurred to me to rethink that, until last night.’

‘I noticed,’ Maria said drily.

‘But that doesn’t mean that was all you were to me.’ Seb twisted on the sofa so he was facing her, needing her to see the sincerity on his face. ‘Just because I never assigned words to it the way you did, or even gave it too much thought... Maria, you were never just a convenience to me. You were a friend, a trusted confidante and partner, the mother of my child, and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. With all those amazing qualities...of course I fell in love with you. So in love that you became an integral part of my life, and I’d jump through any hoop, meet any target you asked me to in order to keep you there. It just never occurred to me that, when you asked for those things, what you really wanted was my love. Because that was yours all along, even if I didn’t realise it until now. I love you, Maria. Not as a friend or anything except as the woman I love. My wife.’

* * *

Maria froze, trying to take in his words. First Leo’s shares, now declarations of love. Seb really was pulling out all the big guns to try to make her stay.

‘Is this...? I have to ask. Are you just staying this to keep me here?’ she asked, hating that it was even a question. But after everything...it was.

‘No! Maria, I...’ Seb stopped, looked down at his hands, then started again. ‘You know what you said last night? About me being your first thought and last dream? I’d like to... Can I tell you about my day yesterday?’

His day? The day where he’d sneaked off to work in the early hours and skipped out on seeing Santa with their son? And he thought that was going to help his cause?

‘I guess so,’ she said, confused.

‘I woke up yesterday morning to my phone buzzing, and all I wanted to do was ignore it and curl back up with you. But it wouldn’t stop and I didn’t want to wake you, so I checked my messages and...the deal my dad was working on before he died—the one you helped me work through the contract for? Well, you were right. That clause I dismissed...it was about to bring down the whole deal.’

‘I told you so,’ Maria said absently. Salvo’s last deal. His legacy. Seb’s last chance to make his father proud.

Suddenly Seb rushing off to Geneva to save it made a lot more sense.

He had been thinking about family, just in a different sort of way. And living up to his father’s expectations had always been what had mattered most to him.

‘It was...it was what Dad had been working towards for years. Our biggest expansion yet. He always said that once it was sorted, he was going to hand the whole company over to me and retire.’

‘Only he never got the chance,’ Maria murmured.

‘Exactly. And I couldn’t... I just couldn’t let this one go down without a fight. You know?’

Maria nodded. ‘So you went to Geneva.’

‘I had to take a—a helicopter.’ Seb’s voice almost broke on that word. ‘And I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents, or what had happened to them. And I was just praying I could make it through and get back home to you, because I knew everything would be okay then. I was thinking of you and of Frankie the whole way there. How much I wished I was here with you. Or that you were there with me, distracting me, holding my hand, anything. I just wanted you there. No one else. Only you.’

Maria bit her lip. ‘When I realised you must have taken a helicopter... I wished I could have been with you, too. But it didn’t even occur to you to ask me to go with you.’

‘How could I?’ Seb asked. ‘I was disappearing to take care of work stuff on our Christmas holiday. I mean, I’d forgotten all about Santa, I’ll admit, but even so, I knew I was cutting it close with the rules and regulations you’d set.’

‘That was why you didn’t ask me?’ Not because he hadn’t thought of her, or because she wasn’t important to him, but because he’d thought that was what she wanted. Because she’d set impossible rules that he couldn’t help but follow.

Something, somewhere had got very messed up in their marriage.

‘Yeah. Of course. Why else?’ Seb looked at her, confused. ‘Anyway, I really wished you could have come with me when I arrived in Geneva. All these idiots were up in arms about this contract, and I just knew that if you were there to talk it all through with them we’d have had it sorted in half the time. You were always so great at making these problems that looked huge more manageable, and you made far better sense of that contract than I could.’

‘I... It’s just about breaking things down into what really matters.’ Which was basically the opposite of what she’d done when she’d arrived at Mont Coeur. She’d given Seb some convoluted and taxing targets to meet, and had never stopped to focus on what really mattered most to her—whether he loved her. ‘Once you get to the heart of what both parties really want, it’s easier to figure out where there’s room to manoeuvre.’

‘Exactly,’ Seb said, his voice soft. ‘Anyway, by the time I flew home again, I was frustrated, exhausted, and all I wanted was to come home to you. To tell you about my day—and how it would have been better if you had been there with me. But then I realised about the Santa thing, and I just... I knew I’d failed. I’d spent my whole life trying to make my dad proud, and my whole day trying to salvage his last deal, and in the end it was going to cost me what matters most in the world to me. You and Frankie.’

What matters most. Not his father’s legacy. Not Salvo’s expectations.

Her. Their family.

A small, warm thing that felt a lot like hope started to unfurl in her chest.

; ‘So you called Leo and asked him for his shares and a Santa suit. And he said yes.’ Maria shook her head. ‘Seriously, he has taken to brotherhood amazingly well.’

Seb laughed, then sobered quickly. ‘Actually... Leo said something else last night, something that got me thinking.’

‘Oh?’

‘He said...maybe the expectations I was trying to live up to weren’t mine to meet.’

Maria tilted her head as she looked at him. ‘What do you think he meant by that?’

‘I think... I never knew about Leo until Papà and Mamma were gone. But now that I do... I wonder if the...pressure I felt was more about Papà’s guilt over losing Leo than what he expected from me.’

‘Salvo couldn’t live up to his own expectations as a father because Leo wasn’t there for him to be a father to,’ Maria said, thinking out loud. ‘It makes a lot of sense, you know.’

Seb shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I need to think about it some more. But sometimes I wonder if I was trying to be two sons rolled into one. If that was why I was never enough.’

Maria reached over to grab his arm. ‘You were enough for them, Seb. Salvo and Nicole...they loved you, so much. Not as a replacement for Leo but for yourself.’

‘I know.’ Seb glanced away, then cleared his throat. ‘But we were talking about last night.’

Maria let go. One emotional breakthrough at a time. If she stayed—if—there’d be time to deal with Seb’s feelings about his parents later. ‘You called Leo?’

‘Actually, no. I couldn’t call, because I’d thrown my phone out into the snow in some sort of misguided romantic gesture.’

Maria winced. ‘Of course.’

‘So instead I had to knock on Noemi and Max’s door and get them to call Leo and Anissa, and by that point everyone wanted in on the next grand gesture and...here we are.’