Chapter 10 - Dawn Over Lake Michigan
Six months later, the morning air over Lake Michigan was warm, sweet with the scent of green clover and the damp stone of the shoreline.
Emma Carter stood on the second-floor stone terrace of the Lake Forest estate, holding a cup of Earl Grey tea in both hands. She wore a simple white linen dress, her hair loose, tumbling over her shoulders in the light summer breeze.
Below her, in the formal garden that had been buried in snow during her first terrifying visit, Arthur Carter was kneeling beside a bed of hybrid tea roses. He was wearing canvas gardening pants, his face tan, his shoulders broad and thick again. He was laughing, showing Lily how to trim the deadwood from a climbing rose arbor without damaging the new canes.
Lily had her textbooks spread out across a stone picnic table nearby, her laptop screen reflecting the morning sun. She looked up, waved a highlighter at Emma, and shouted something about corporate torts that was lost to the breeze.
A pair of hands came to rest gently on Emma’s waist from behind.
She leaned back against the broad, solid heat of Vincent’s chest, letting her head rest against his shoulder. He wore a crisp white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, smelling of sea salt, clean skin, and cedar.
"You're up early," he murmured into her hair.
"Your mother wanted to check the accounts before breakfast," Emma said, turning her head slightly to smile at him. "She told me that if the third-quarter diesel hedges aren't locked in by nine, she's going to fire the chief investment officer."
Vincent let out a low, quiet chuckle, his arms tightening around her waist, pulling her flush against him. "The chief investment officer is fifty-four years old and terrified of her. He calls me twice a week to ask if she’s pleased with the returns."
"She isn't," Emma laughed softly. "She said he thinks like a banker instead of a merchant. She told him to go buy two thousand tons of soy futures before lunch."
Vincent rested his chin on the top of her head, looking out over the blue, sparkling horizon where three massive red-hulled container ships—part of the Moretti Maritime fleet—were cutting slow, white wakes through the calm water of the lake.
"How is Arthur feeling?" he asked.
"He asked Marcus if he could borrow the small tractor to regrade the gravel driveway," Emma said, her voice filled with a quiet, boundless wonder. "He hasn't touched a machine in six years, Vincent. He looked at me this morning and told me he felt thirty years old again."
Vincent turned her in his arms until she was facing him.
He reached up, his thumb gently tracing the soft curve of her cheekbone, his dark eyes studying her face with that fierce, unwavering devotion that had become the anchor of her life.
"And you?" he asked softly. "How does the Director of the Moretti Family Foundation feel?"
"Overworked," she teased, though her eyes were shining. "We have forty-two scholarship applications from Bridgeport union families on my desk. And three community health clinics that need new dialysis wings."
"Approve them all," Vincent said without hesitation.
"I already did," she replied, tilting her chin up. "I don't need your permission, Mr. Moretti. Rule number one in my employment contract: *Miss Carter has absolute discretion over philanthropic capital.*"
Vincent laughed—a rich, deep sound that carried out over the rose garden below, making Arthur look up from his pruning shears with a broad, toothy grin.
Vincent lowered his head, his forehead resting gently against Emma’s.
"Do you remember what you told me in the alley behind the Drake?" he asked softly. "When you said you weren't for sale?"
"I remember," Emma whispered, her hands coming up to rest over his chest, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart beneath the linen. "I told you that you couldn't afford me."
Vincent smiled, his lips brushing hers, warm and tender in the summer sunlight.
May you like
"You were right, Emma," he murmured against her mouth. "I couldn't. I had to surrender the entire fortress just to get you to stay."
Emma closed her eyes as his mouth found hers, deep and sweet, sealing a promise that had begun with a raised hand in a gilded ballroom and ended here, high above the blue water, where the light reached everything, and no one was left in the dark.
