In the silence that follows I hear nothing except the birds that have scattered from the garden wall and the distant sound of the city and then I hear footsteps, unhurried, and the crowd parts.
Luca walks through it. His hair pushed back and his jaw tense as his green eyes find me through the frozen garden. He walks up to me and he stops, for a moment the garden, the reporters, the cameras, the chaos of my father's unravelling, all of it recedes and it is just him and me standing in the ruins of my wedding and looking at each other.
"You came," I say.
"You invited me," he replies. He looks at my face and he adds, "I'm not leaving without you."
"Alright then," I say.
He bends and he scoops me up and I feel his arms around me and the white dress spills over them and he carries me through the garden. "Do you want me to handle your father?"
I look back at my father, at Gerald pressed close to him managing the converging reporters, at the papers being held up and photographed, at the expression on my father's face as the story he has been building for twenty years begins to come apart in front of cameras he invited.
"He's pretty much done," I tell him.
Behind us I hear Renzo's voice addressing the reporters who have turned toward us.
"I'd strongly suggest keeping your focus on Mr. Keller," Renzo says pleasantly. "What just happened here is above your pay grade. Mr. Keller, on the other hand, has a great deal he'd love to share with you."
The reporters turn back to my father as Luca.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Luca
Icarry her into the passenger seat of my car, I lean across and I find the seatbelt and I pull it across her and click it into place.
I look at her face, this close, the wedding hairdo still perfect and the veil gone. I take her face in both hands and I kiss her. I breathe her in deep and she makes a sound against my mouth that undoes several months of careful containment all at once.
I force myself to pull back.
I go around the car, I get in and I drive.
I find a parking structure three blocks away and I pull in and cut the engine, before I turn to her, she is already turning to me. She wraps both arms around my neck and pulls me in and kisses me back, her mouth. I hold her face and I let it happen then I break apart and I press my forehead to hers.
"Princess," I tell her. "You were brave today."
She pulls back just enough to look at me with those blue eyes. "So do I get a reward?"
I want to answer that in the most immediate and direct way possible. I can't yet.
I reach into my breast pocket and I take out the crystal and I hold it out on my palm between us and I watch her face.
She reaches out to the crystal, holds it and looks at me and says, "Where did you find this? I thought I'd lost it forever."
"Is it important to you?" I ask.
She turns it over slowly between her fingers, looking at it with a slight frown. "It just gives me comfort," she says. "It always has. I don't know exactly why."
I look at her face and I ask carefully, "Where did you get it?"
She leans back against the seat and looks at the crystal in her palm and says, "I helped a man once. It was a while ago. He'd been shot and there were men chasing him and I pulled him into my car and hid him and helped him get the bullet out." She pauses. "It was on the back seat after he left so I kept it."
It was her. It was her the whole time. What are the odds?
Her bra is hanging between two dark suits. I have been looking for her ever since, and she has been here, right here, close enough to touch.
"He was such a pervert though," she adds.
