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‘I don’t want to go and see Grandpa, I want Kate. I miss Kate...’ Freya wailed as she released her father’s hand.
‘I have explained that Kate has her own family and she has gone to see them.’
‘Kate is my family...she is mine. Get her back for me. Has Kate gone to heaven like Mummy?’
Marco dropped to his knees beside the weeping child, his heart in bits. ‘Oh, baby, no, she hasn’t...she’s in England.’
‘You swear?’ The little girl sniffed. ‘Cross your heart?’
Marco solemnly did just that. ‘Kate has other people in her life. We have to share the people we love sometimes.’
‘I don’t want to share her. I miss her! It’s not the same without Kate here.’
A thousand images of Kate slid through his head. The feelings rose up in him so strongly that he forgot to breathe.
‘I miss her too.’ The admission came from some place deep inside him where a secret corner of his heart had always longed for all the things he had denied himself over the years. The things that Kate had given him: love and a family.
All the things he had denied himself out of fear of failing, of being hurt...like he wasn’t hurting now!
‘You do? Then will you bring her back, Papa?’
He nodded slowly. ‘I will try.’If I haven’t left it too late?He shook his head. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, let himself believe that their moment had gone, that he had thrown away his one hope of happiness.
The thought of being alone again terrified him.
‘Now you go to see Grandpa while I...’ he began, his thoughts already moving ahead.
‘You’re going to get Kate, Papa. You won’t forget?’
‘I won’t forget.’
Marco put his head around the door of his assistant’s office where two young women and a man seated in a semi-circle around Luca were hanging on Luca’s every word.
‘Luca, a word.’
His assistant followed him back into the adjoining room.
‘I am going to England, the Dorset house, I think. Oh, and I’m taking Freya with me, so her things will need to be packed.’
‘There is a skeleton staff, but it will be... The security will need to be...’ The younger man began thinking out loud, breaking off when he realised what he was doing. ‘So when are you thinking of making the trip?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
The young man swallowed, but he had been working too long for the Crown Prince to make the error of saying anything along the lines ofimpossible.
‘I need some information. I’ll email the details over.’
‘Fine, sir,’ he said, walking into his office and addressing the heads that lifted at his entrance. ‘Anyone with any plans for tonight, cancel.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KATEANDHERmum crossed the finish line hand in hand for the five-kilometre park run.
Kate, hands clenched against her thighs, fought for breath.
‘I let you win,’ her mum, in a similar position, claimed as she slugged down the contents of her water bottle before regressing to her maternal nagging role. ‘Hydrate, Kate.’
‘Whose idea was this?’ Kate asked as she arranged her broken, or at least seriously bruised, body down on the grass.
