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She’d wanted their marriage to be all business. He was only giving her what she’d asked for.
‘Fine,’ she snapped eventually. ‘But you have to meet every condition we set. Every rule we make. If you mess up... I don’t believe in third chances, Sebastian.’
‘Right.’ Seb gave a sharp nod. ‘In that case, let’s get down to specifics. I’m guessing you have a list? Things you need from me?’
‘Actually...yes,’ Maria admitted.
‘Good. Because I’ve got some of my own to add, too.’ Or he would have, by the time it was his turn to dictate terms. He just had to think of them first. After all, she’d had a twelve-hour head start on this one. ‘Let’s get started.’
This would be easy. Just like setting quarterly goals at work. He never missed those. He wouldn’t miss these.
How could he, when the stakes were so much higher?
‘Okay, then,’ Maria said. ‘Point One A...’
Seb reached for the coffee pot. He had a feeling this could take a while.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WAIT—YOU PUT together a business plan for your marriage?’ Noemi stared at her incredulously as they stood together on the chalet’s sprawling wooden porch. Maria hoped that she could blame the icy air for the way her cheeks turned pink. It hadn’t sounded nearly so crazy until Noemi had said it that way.
‘Seb’s a businessman,’ she explained to her sister-in-law. ‘I figured I needed to talk to him in terms he understood—and, well, this is what I came up with.’
And it had worked, hadn’t it? It might have taken them most of the morning, but they had an actual plan, with commitments and objectives, all typed up, printed in triplicate, and signed by both of them. They’d each kept a copy, and the third had been stored away in the chalet’s fireproof safe, hidden behind the fake bookcase in the snug.
‘If we’re doing this, we’re doing this properly,’ Seb had said as he’d locked it away.
Maria was just grateful that Frankie had decided to sleep in again. Apparently the cold, crisp air was tiring him out. Well, that and his aunts and uncles—who had taken over entertaining him while she and Seb had finished their negotiations.
Noemi surveyed her over the mug of peppermint tea in her hands. ‘I guess that makes some sort of twisted sense. If you’re you and Seb.’
‘What exactly does that mean?’ Maria asked, even though she had a suspicion she already knew.
Noemi shrugged. ‘Just that... I don’t know. It’s not like your marriage was a conventional one from the start, was it?’
‘We were a means to an end. A merger marriage to save my father’s pride and money.’ Her tone was a little too bitter for Maria to pretend it didn’t still sting, but then, Noemi knew that anyway. She knew her.
‘But you were friends first for a really long time,’ Noemi reminded her. ‘I mean, I know I was younger, but you and Seb always seemed so close, and I was always trailing around behind you both. Honestly, I can’t remember a time you didn’t feel like part of our family already.’
Tears pricked at Maria’s eyes. The Cattaneos had been family. All of them, not just Seb. Returning to her parents’ estate should have felt like going home. But it hadn’t, not at all. ‘Apart from the time I walked out and left you all, you mean?’
‘No.’ Noemi shook her head emphatically, her gorgeous hair swaying in the breeze. ‘You were still family. You’ll always be family, I hope you know that. Whatever happens with you and Seb, you’ll always be my sister.’
Maria groped for Noemi’s hand, squeezing it tight. ‘Thank you.’
Noemi squeezed back, then let her go, smiling a little too brightly. ‘So. What does my miserable brother have to do to keep up his end of the deal?’
Putting her mug of coffee—her sixth cup of the day, she suspected, but to be honest, she’d stopped counting at this point—down on the rail that ran around the porch, Maria ticked off the basic terms of their agreement on her fingers.
‘The main thing is that he has to show me that his family is more important than his business.’ Noemi raised her eyebrows at that, but Maria carried on anyway. ‘He needs to include me in his life—personal and work—so that we feel like a true partnership again. He needs to spend time with Frankie—playing, reading him stories, putting him to bed, that sort of thing. He needs to learn Frankie’s routine and work with it. He needs to parent according to our agreed methods, and not undermine all the work I’ve been doing with Frankie over the last year. He needs to talk to me before making any big decisions about his time—like lengthy business trips overseas, that sort of thing. And he needs to come up with a plan for an actual family holiday next year—no laptops, no mobile phones, just the three of us together.’
It sounded like quite a lot, put like that, Maria supposed, but really, weren’t these things that any good father and husband should be doing anyway?
Noemi gave a low whistle. ‘They are some lofty goals, my friend. I hope he can live up to them.’
‘So do I,’ Maria said, and realised that she meant it. Even if it meant she spent the rest of her life with a husband who would never love her the way she loved him, if she could have all that—if Frankie could have all that—she’d be content. She hoped.
‘And it explains the current ski lesson.’ Noemi tilted her head out towards the snowy ground in front of the chalet, where Sebastian was currently explaining to a snowsuited Frankie all about the mechanics and physics of skiing.
Maria was pretty sure Frankie wasn’t getting much of it, but he seemed happy enough to be out in the snow with his father, all the same. That was something.
‘I have to say, though,’ Noemi went on, drawing her attention back, ‘nothing about this plan of yours exactly screams “romance”.’
‘Why would it?’ Maria asked. ‘Like I said, we’re a business partnership. Covering that up with roses and love songs doesn’t change that.’ And it only gave her false hope. She needed to be totally clear about what this was. A merger of their two families, and businesses, to support and nurture their child, who would grow up to inherit a share in them. Not a love story—a business contract.
It was the only way she could protect her heart if she decided to stay.
‘Hmm.’ Noemi didn’t look convinced. ‘Okay, so I’ve heard your demands for Seb. What did he ask of you?’
Maria resisted the urge to wince. She’d been hoping her sister-in-law wouldn’t ask her that. ‘Oh, you know. Regular debrief meetings over dinner without Frankie.’
‘You mean date nights,’ Noemi translated, sounding delighted. Maria ignored her. As long as she said they were meetings, they were meetings. Even i
f Seb had suggested they go back to the restaurant where they’d had lunch yesterday for the first one. But at night this time, so they could dress up and maybe go dancing afterwards.
Still, a meeting. Not a date. They’d had one of those now. How many more did they need?
She went back to her list.
‘That he and Frankie get to have a boys’ day every so often, just the two of them.’
‘Aw, that’s sweet.’ It was, Maria had to agree. It was also slightly unnerving. It had been just her and Frankie for so long. The idea of letting his father take him off to do who knew what felt alien and strange.
‘And that the three of us come to Ostania to visit you and Max, the moment those babies are born.’
Noemi pressed a hand to her bump, her eyes huge in her beautiful face. ‘He said that? He wrote that into your contract?’
‘He did.’ Maria smiled. She knew that Noemi and Sebastian’s relationship had been strained recently, maybe since before she’d left, but certainly since their parents’ deaths and the will reading that had put Leo in charge of the business. If her return could go any small way to helping mend the rift between the siblings, it only made it more worthwhile.
‘Then I can’t wait for that.’ Noemi beamed back at her, all sunlight on the snow and pure, unadulterated happiness.
Maria tried to ignore the envy bubbling in the pit of her stomach, and turned her attention back to Frankie and Seb, just in time to see Leo and Anissa walking up the path. As she watched, Leo bent over, scooped up a handful of snow, packed it between his hands, then lobbed it at the back of Seb’s head.
Maria bit her lip as she waited to see how her husband would react. He’d never had a brother before—neither of them had—and he’d never responded well to teasing, or anything that made him look a fool. Even as a child he’d hated it—although when they’d been younger he’d sometimes played the clown to make her laugh, if it was just the two of them. But never in front of anyone else, and never since he’d taken on the business mantle of being Salvo’s successor.
