Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Zane
S tella ends up staying in Florida another month to round out her visit and to meet her grandparents, something she’d been putting off. She didn’t want to feel obligated to stay in Florida any more than she already was, but after she decided to come back to King’s Crossing, that opened her up to meeting the rest of her family. That suits, and our conversations on FaceTime are light and full of plans.
I don’t know what set off the spark, and maybe I don’t want to know. It could have been Monica, interfering even though I said it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe her therapist jiggled something during one of their sessions, or maybe even Banks said something if he called to find out how she was doing.
It doesn’t matter. Any reservations I might have had about her choice that seemed to come out of nowhere disappeared when I saw the clear, sure decision in her eyes.
We talk about her parents visiting King’s Crossing, and I assure her, whatever she needs, whenever she needs it. I understand her reluctance to talk about money—she’s always been like that. I’m a little disappointed that in an effort to show me she wasn’t using me she made things harder than they had to be, but while she’d been looking for family, I’d been looking for a woman who wanted me and not my fortune.
We’re blessed people to have found what we’re looking for.
I don’t want Stella to have to deal with Orlando’s enormous airport and fly on a crowded plane alone, and ignoring the panic attack her flight induces, I send a jet to pick her up in St. Pete.
The closing of the country house goes through the day Stella comes home, and I wait in the yard for Douglas to pick her up at the airport and drive her to the house. Champagne is chilling in the empty kitchen, and the dust the realtor’s vehicle kicked up as she hurried back into the city is still drifting in the air.
Doubts overwhelm me. Will she like it? Will it be too big? Maybe she won’t want to share the house with Zarah or put up with the small staff required to keep a house of this size clean and running smoothly.
All these thoughts are a jumble in my brain until Douglas helps her out of the back of the limo, and then nothing is in my head except how beautiful she looks and how much I missed her.