What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(108)

“Yes. Yes, I did. We bonded.” Kellen wanted to laugh as she remembered Rae’s Monster MegaBond speech. But now was not the time.

Verona continued, “I’ve been with Rae since she was born. I love her, and she loves me. You’re going to be working. It’s a big resort. I can stay out of your way and still be close to Rae. And I am, if you’ll excuse my confidence, a damned good schoolteacher.”

Kellen took a breath. Everything Verona said about Rae was true; she loved her grandmother, Verona loved her, and most important, when Kellen had been unconscious and then missing, Verona had been there for Rae and Max every minute, and that could happen again. In fact, it might be necessary. “Then I think that’s a great solution,” she told Verona. “I think that’s exactly, exactly, what we need to do.”

“It won’t work forever. Sooner or later Rae will need higher education, more than I can give her, and we’ll have to move.” Verona had clearly decided she would be part of the household forever. “But she’ll have the best educational foundation any child could ever have.”

“She already has an amazing vocabulary.” Which sometimes isn’t comforting.

Verona smiled smugly. “She tests at the top of her class in every subject.”

Kellen offered her hand. “Well, then. It’s a deal.”

Verona shook her hand, then pulled her into a fierce embrace. “In the Di Luca family, we hug.”

Kellen stiffened, hesitated, then relaxed and hugged her in return.

Verona pushed her chair back, whisked tears from the corners of her eyes, looked around and announced, “It’s settled, then. We’re moving to Yearning Sands.”

Annie and Leo and the other guests at the table, Di Lucas and otherwise, clapped in appreciation and congratulations.

Max slid the key into his inner suit pocket and helped Kellen to her feet. “Although this is, of course, our favorite table, we should visit our other guests.”

They exchanged cheek kisses with all the relatives, and as they moved on, he said, “That was a good thing you did.”

“Your mother’s right. It is the best solution.”

“You didn’t have to go for it.” He turned Kellen to face him. “You do know you didn’t, right?”

“I know. I just... The resort will be a great place to raise Rae, and I’ll have a job, and you’ll have a job.”

“No doubt. We’ll be working all the time.” He sounded satisfied.

“If she can get a quality education there—and I know your mother will see to it—then we have everything we need.”

“Except time.” The bitter words slipped from him.

“Then we shouldn’t waste what we’ve got.” She joined their hands, leaned her body close, matched their lips and whispered, “Shall we leave on our honeymoon?”

Someone whistled in appreciation.

“Right now?” Max’s lips moved against hers. “We haven’t cut the cake.”

“To hell with the cake.”

“I knew it from the first moment I met you. You are the woman of my dreams.” He kissed her, long and slow, ready to take up his husbandly duties the moment they were alone.

Max didn’t realize that Daniel Lykke hadn’t lived to complete his dream of taking control of Lykke Industries, but he had fulfilled his desire to harm her; he had slammed her to the floor one too many times. Something was wrong with her. She suspected he had moved the bullet in her brain, for the edges of reality had become fuzzy and gray, like a camera with Vaseline rubbed around the edge of the lens.

But how did she tell Max that, on this day when he had married her and their daughter was safe from threat?

“Look!” he said. “The dead arises!”

At the fringe of the crowd, Nils Brooks stood, head bandaged, eyes bloodshot, looking as if...as if he’d been racked and beaten all in one day.

“He’s not having a good time,” Kellen observed.

“I know!” Max sounded fierce. “He deserves every ache and pain. I trusted him to guard Rae, and he screwed up.”

“He really is a good fighter.” She watched as one of the tiny Di Luca boys toddled over and embraced Nils’s leg with sticky hands. Nils picked up the child and grinned at him, then relinquished him to his laughing mother. “He likes kids, Rae bosses him around, and he took his eye off the ball.”

“You’re too forgiving.”

Kellen met Nils’s gaze.

For the first time since she’d known him, he looked sorry and embarrassed. He dipped his head in apology.

“I am too forgiving. But I keep thinking... I will never let him live this down.”

“I’ll never let him near you again.”

“Check. No more jobs for Nils Brooks.”

“We should probably have our first dance before we leave. For Rae’s sake.” Max knew what his little daughter liked, and he knew, too, she would miss them while they were vacationing in Italy.

“That sounds like a lovely plan,” Kellen agreed.

In deference to her injuries, Max and Kellen’s first dance was a slow waltz, a wonderful spinning tribute to love that made the guests sigh with pleasure.

Then Zio Federico stepped onto the floor with Rae, and the old man and the child danced in circles around them. Max waved his arm at the family and friends who were watching, and soon dozens of couples waltzed in a burst of rhythmic joy.