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As expected, he’d emailed me back a few hours ago. Connor was nothing if not efficient. His report was as detailed as it could be.
Janet Edwards was exactly who she’d claimed to be: Emilia’s biological mother.
She had records in at least a dozen states across the country for several crimes: prostitution, drugs, grifting. Janet’s scam appeared to be chasing one gravy train after another; she’d attach herself to rich men much older than her, and either scam them out of their money or wait for them to die and take what she could.
One thing I didn’t expect to see that had my eyebrows practically leaping off my head was the discovery of another child. It appeared Janet had given birth to a second daughter nine years after Emilia, and she’d roped this child into her life of crime.
Emilia had a half-sister named Helena. There was only one photo of her, an old mugshot. She looked like a younger version of her mother, and while there were some similarities to Emilia—they shared the same hair and eye color, and their faces were structured the same way—it was clear they didn’t share the same father.
Did Helena know who her father was, or had he just been another john, as Emilia’s had?
There were so many questions with no answers. Skimming over the documents, I could see Helena had had her fair share of trouble with the law as well, no doubt led astray by her mother. I felt sorry for her in some ways; if her childhood had been as bad as Emilia’s had been while in Janet’s custody, she’d never had much of a chance.
I studied the mugshot carefully. Something about her struck me as being familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Had I seen her before around the city somewhere? Could we have walked past her on the street? Maybe she had been to the nightclub.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to have this conversation with the woman who was my entire world, but there was no way I’d be able to avoid it. She had the right to know her mother was trying to make contact.
Besides, Emilia had always been a shrewd judge of character, even when she was young. She’d know herself if Janet was only after our money.
Fuck. It would still hurt, but I knew I couldn’t hide it from her. She was an adult. It was her decision to make. All I could do was be by her side to pick up the pieces when it was over.
“What are you doing up, honey?”
I opened my eyes again to find the love of my life standing in the doorway, wearing one of my tees and gazing at me tiredly. “Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I’d check my email. Didn’t want to wake you.”
I quickly shut down the windows I had open with the documentation Connor had sent me, then closed my email browser. Pushing back my chair as she came toward me, I waited until she settled in my lap, her arms around me.
My lips brushed her cheek, and when she turned her face toward mine, we kissed softly. “I’m sorry you woke up. Any of our competitors go down the toilet while we were sleeping?”
The corners of my mouth turned up. “Not tonight.”
She pouted mockingly. “That sucks.” Getting comfortable, she rested her head on my shoulder as I pulled up a website showing the current figures in the stock market. Stocks were not something we’d ever seriously considered dabbling in, but we still liked to keep our eyes open on every aspect of the business world.
“I’ve been thinking about our wedding.” Emilia’s voice had a wistful tone to it, and I tightened my grip on her, pulling her closer.
“Tell me.”
“Would you be mad if I said I didn’t want a really big wedding with hundreds of people?”
I could tell it was something she’d been giving a lot of thought to, and my heart ached a little that she thought I’d be angry about it. “Of course not, sweetheart. Do you want to elope instead?”
She lifted her head and brought her hands up to cup my face, her lips brushing across mine. “Would you be okay with that?”
“Absolutely. I honestly don’t care how we get married, Em, just that we do.” I kissed her mouth. “Why don’t we ask Victoria if we can get married at one of her resorts? Just you and me, the officiant, and Victoria and Marian as our witnesses. We can stay there for our honeymoon, and then maybe…”
I trailed off, an idea swirling around my brain. “What about this? We’ll marry privately, and then when we get back to New York we can plan a second ceremony, a big one. Invite everyone we know. You can wear a big, expensive princess dress, and we can go all out. Ask all the guests to make donations to the foundation as a wedding present instead of buying us something.”
I could tell from the look on her face she was on board with my idea. She clapped her hands excitedly. “That’s a fabulous idea, Jase! Then nobody will be hurt about being left out, and we can still marry the way we want to.” She leaned her forehead against mine. “You’re so clever.”
“Guess it’s rubbed off after being around you all these years.”
We smiled at each other, and when she closed the gap and kissed me once again, it was long and deep. She squirmed on my lap, and I only stopped long enough to turn off the monitor before I carried her back to bed and stripped my tee off her, kissing the newly revealed skin underneath it.
