Playing the Billionaire's Game - Pippa Roscoe Page 0,55

father. But it also ached for the boy who had become a parent at such a young age. Not just to Maria, but to himself. Her heart melted for the man who would clearly do anything to protect those he loved, those within his purview. She’d seen that at the hotel. She saw it every day in the little things he did for her that she had almost stopped noticing. The way he would have spun the car round and driven back to Florence. The way he had arranged for her to see everything she could ever want in Siena and Florence, and further.

But Sia could see that he was still caught in the past, pulled by the negative tug beneath a tide of anger, and she hated the hold it had on him. And the only way he could move on was to change his thinking, to shift his focus. Torn for just a moment, she realised that the risk of hurting him was not enough to outweigh the gift of release if her plan worked.

‘I agree that Eduardo should have stepped up. I’m truly sorry that he wasn’t capable of it. You should never have had to do the things you did. But, because you did so, could it be that Eduardo didn’t need to?’ she asked gently, bracing herself for the reaction she knew would come.

‘So I should have let the whole thing crash down about our ears?’ he demanded hotly.

‘No. But Sebastian, it’s not about shoulds, coulds or might-have-beens. You did step up. And because of that Maria had a safe, loving, caring brother to look out for her. Which is exactly why she’s going to weather the storm she’s experiencing with her husband.

‘Your father had a very plush roof over his head with his wife, and you found the strength to build an international hotel conglomerate that is worth billions,’ she said, infusing her voice with all her awe and wonder that he had been able to do so. ‘Something that might not have happened had your father managed to resolve even half of the emotional baggage he needed in order to be there for his children. And perhaps, rather than focusing on whether that should have happened or not, you could focus on the amazing things that resulted because you did?’

Sebastian resisted the urge to shake off her words. For so long he’d been looking at what he’d missed, what it had cost him to compensate for Eduardo, to assume the position as head of his family. But Sia was right. When he considered what he had gained, not money or things but security, emotional and physical, for his sister and, as much as he could, for his father and Valeria and even himself, that was so much more than where they could have ended up. And the hard work that he put into his company, it had allowed him to invest in his friends, like Theo, and staff, the people who worked for him. In fact, all those early years of struggle and hardship, the impossibly long sleep-deprived hours, they had brought him here, to a moment in time where the world was his oyster—he could now do literally anything with his life. And the sense of accomplishment that spread through him, the pride in his own hard work and achievements began to smooth over the harsh hurts of the past. Not completely, but in its own way it began a healing that took him by surprise.

He cast a look at where Sia was sitting beside him and all he wanted to do was haul her into his lap. As if sensing the train of his thoughts, she smiled, pure wicked deliciousness.

‘I didn’t pick you as an optimist,’ he said, restraining that heat before he did something ludicrous that would have them arrested for public indecency.

‘Oh, I am—which is why I know I’m going to get my hands on the painting,’ she teased, and he wondered if she realised it was the first time that she’d made a joke, or even referenced the Durrántez since their first night in Siena.

Keeping his hands on the wheel of the car, and not all over her body where he wanted them, he pressed a kiss on her lips, a promise of more to come. He turned the key in the ignition and guided the car back onto the road that would see them home.

In that moment Sebastian realised that Sia hadn’t asked her question since that