When Harper disappeared from view, Matt stalked off without a clear destination in mind, burning with anger. Didn't she know what a concession he had made for her? What he had just offered her?
Matt stopped when he found himself outside on a tiered balcony, staring sightlessly at the glittering city lights.
Thank God she hadn't taken him up his offer. What had he been thinking? He never took a woman on tour.
"I'm probably not the best person to follow you out here, but I know at least out of respect you won't walk off on me."
Matteo turned to find his mother standing behind him.
"Want to talk about it?"
No.
"Thanks, ma, but I'm fine."
"Don't ask me how this works," his mother stepped closer. "But a mother always knows when one of her children is lying even when they're fully grown."
Matteo blew out a breath and tipped his head to the starry sky. He really didn't want his mother butting into his life right now. He cursed himself for not leaving earlier when he had the chance.
"Ma –"
His mother held her hand up in an imperious way that reminded him of Harper. "Don't brush me off, figlio. I once let your father go into a race in turmoil and I won't my son to the same if I can't help it."
Matteo stared down at the tiny woman who had the strength and fortitude of an ox, and his anger morphed into something else. Something that felt a little like despair.
She stood beside him and the silence stretched taut until he couldn't stand it anymore. "You found it hard to be married to Dad with his job. I know you did."
His mom sighed, "Yes."
"Why didn't you ask him to quit?" Matteo heard the pain in his voice and did his best to mask it. "He would've done it for you."
She regarded him steadily, "You're still angry with him. Or with me, perhaps?"
He turned back to the lights below. Cars like toys were moving in a steady stream along the driveway. Harper said he was angry and right now he feels angry. What's the point in denying?
"I never realized just how much you closed yourself off from us after your father died," his mother's soft voice penetrated the sluggish fog in his mind. "You were always so serious. So controlled. But somehow you were still able to make us laugh."
She offered him a sad smile that held a wealth of remembered pain.
"I can see now it was your way of dealing with your pain, and I'm sorry I wasn't there more for you right after it happened."
Matteo raked an unsteady hand through his hair, "He always acted so bloody invincible and I..." he swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, "I stupidly believed him."
"Figlio, I'm so sorry. I must've only made it worse by relying on you so heavily after his death. I thought you understood."
Matteo felt something release and peel open deep inside him. Clasping his mother's shoulders, he drew her into his arms. "I'm not angry anymore at you, Ma."
"Not anymore, hmm?"
He heard her sniff and so he tightened his embrace. "I'm sorry I've been a stronzo to you and to Ricardo. I treated him appallingly when he dutifully drove me to go-cart meets every month, stood in the wings of every damned race." He stopped, unable to express his remorse at the way he had treated his mother's second husband.
His mother hugged him tight, "He understood."
"Then he's a better man than I am."
"You were only sixteen when we got married – a difficult age at the best of times."
"I think I resented him because he was around when Papa just never had been."
"Your father took his responsibilities seriously, Matteo. His problem was that he'd grown up in a cold household and didn't know how to express love. He didn't know how to show you that he loved you and adding to that, he was torn. That morning..." She stopped and swallowed, "We'd been talking a lot about him retiring leading up to that awful race, and I think that had he survived, he would have quit."
"I overheard you both talking about it that morning."
His mother closed her eyes briefly. "Then you must blame me for his death – for putting him off this race."
Her voice quivered and Matt rushed to reassure her. "No. Absolutely not. Honestly, I blame Papa for trying to have it all. I think, if anything, I was just upset that you hadn't tried to stop him."
His mother pulled back and gave him a wistful smile. "It is what it is. We are each defined by the choices we make for good and bad. And it wasn't an easy decision for your father to make. He had sponsors breathing down his neck, the team owner and his fans. He did his best, but fate had other ideas," she paused. "But life goes on, and I've been lucky enough to find love not once, but twice in my life. I hope you get to experience the same thing at least once. I hope all of my children do."
Jamming his hands in his pockets, Matt wished he could cover a lid on the emotions swirling around his brain.
Damn it, Harper. You're right.
He had been angry with his mother all this time. "Spaciente, mama. Thank you for telling me."
He caught a movement in his peripheral vision and saw Ricardo, his stepfather, about to head back inside, his expression clearly showing that he didn't want to interrupt.
Matteo beckoned him and Ricardo approached, putting his arm around his wife, love shining brightly in his eyes. "I didn't want to intrude."
Matt drew in a long, unsteady breath. "Ricardo" he searched for a way to thank this man he had previously disdained for loving his mother and always being there for him and his siblings.
Ricardo inclined his head in a brief nod, "We're good."
Matt felt a parody of a smile play on his lips. He nodded back, kissed his mother's cheek and left them to admire the view.
The urge to throw down a finger of whisky was intense. So was the need to find Harper.
Matt did neither.
Instead, he took the elevator to the ground floor and hailed a cab to the only place he'd ever found real peace.
His car.
The tight security team at the raceway were surprised to see him, but no one stopped him from entering.
Not ever having been in the pits in this late at night, he was surprised with how eerie it felt. Everything was deadly quiet. The monitors were off, the cars tucked away under a protective cloth. The air was still, with only a faint trace of gasoline and rubber.
He threw the protective covering off his car, pulled the steering wheel out and climbed in. His body immediately relaxed into the bucket seat designed specifically for his shape. The scent of molded plastic and polish soothed him.
After re-fixing the steering wheel, he did an automatic pre-race check on the buttons and knobs.
Then he thought of his father and the times he'd watched him do the same thing, remembering the connection they had shared.
He released a long breath, realizing that he had always felt superior to his father because he kept everyone at a safe distance. He believed it to be one of his great strengths, but maybe he was wrong.
A faint memory flickered at the edges of his mind and he let his head fall back, stared unseeing at the high metal ceiling. What was his mind trying to tell him? His father had once told him that when love hits you, you'd better watch out because you don't have any say in the matter. You just go for it.
Matt's hands tensed around the steering wheel. His father hadn't been weak, as he'd assumed. He was strong. He dared to have it all. He may have made mistake along the way but that didn't make him a bad person.
In a moment of true clarity, Matt realized that he was a little more than arrogant, egotistical dick. One who didn't dare to love because he was afraid to open himself up to the pain he had experienced at losing his father.
For years, he'd truly believe he was unable to experience deep emotion, but now he realized that was just a trick. Harper had cracked him open and wormed her way into his and into his heart.
Fuck!
Matt banged the steering wheel as the truth of his feelings for her stared him in the face. He loves Harper. Loved her as he'd never wanted to love anyone. And ironically, he was now faced with his worst nightmare. Forced to face the same decision he'd held his father to account for so many years ago.
For so long, he had resented his father for refusing to quit, but he'd had no right to feel that way. No right to stand in judgment of a man who'd been driven to please everyone.
Just like Harper Mitchell.
Matt felt a stillness settle over him.
He could hear tomorrow's crowd already, smell the gasoline in the air, the burn of rubber on asphalt, feel the vibration of the cars surrounding him, drawing him into a place that was almost spiritual. Despite all of that, he couldn't see himself doing it.
He could only see Harper. Harper at the bar wearing her black suit, Harper tapping her toes by the car as she waited for him to pick her up. Harper completely wild for him on the beach and in his bed. Harper staring at him with wide, sorrowful eyes in the ballroom as the light from the chandeliers lit sparks on her wavy hair.
He was more of an idiot than Carter. He had her, she'd been his, and he'd push her away. Closed her down as he'd done all week whenever the conversation had veered towards anything too personal.
Levering himself out of his car, he knew he was saying goodbye to a part of his life that sustained him for so long, but one that he didn't need anymore.
He didn't care what the naysayers would say when he will pull out of himself from the race tomorrow. For the first time ever he had too much to lose to go out onto the track. For the first time ever he wanted something else more.
The signs had been there – or maybe they weren't signs. Maybe they were coincidences. It didn't matter. When he closed his eyes and thought about his future, he wasn't standing on a podium holding up yet another trophy. He was with Harper.
Harper who had stalked off with tears behind her eyes.
Where is she?
He doubted she'd organized the jet to fly back home at this late hour. She was too considerate to disturb his pilot.
She is still likely at the hotel. He'd bet everything he owned she'd arranged for another room by now.
---
Harper felt terrible. Beyond terrible. Walking away from Matteo's offer to travel with him had felt like the hardest thing she'd ever done in her life. Even harder than leaving her father behind all those years ago.
She was in love with Matteo and she was never going to see him again – never going to touch him again. There was something fundamentally wrong with that.
Travel with me.
Had she made a monumental mistake?
Harper looked down, half expecting to find herself standing on a trapdoor that would open up at any minute and put her out of her misery, but instead all that was there was designer carpet.
She sighed. This morning she had woken up in Matteo's arms and felt that life couldn't get any better. Callum had signed the approval of their proposal for his company before finding out what Matteo's decision about Real Sport was, and the powers-that-be had requested a meeting with her first thing in Monday morning. Which could only mean a promotion because, as a staff had pointed out, no one got fired on a Monday.
But the idea of a promotion didn't mean half as much as it once might have. Not only because her priorities had changed over the course of the week, but because she felt as if all the color had been leached out of her life. Try as she might to pull herself together, it seemed her heart had taken a firm hold of her head and it was miserable.
She'd known falling in love would be a mistake, and boy had she ever been right about that. Love was terrible. Painful. Horrible.
She had accused Matteo of keeping himself safe from this kind of pain, but of course it was what she had always done as well. Hiding herself away from the world in an attempt to control her life. None of it had been real – just like her relationship with Matteo.
Only towards the end, it had felt real with him. It had become real without her even noticing. She'd fallen in love while he hadn't. Which just went to prove the law of relationships: one person always felt more.
And now, sitting on Matteo's plane as his pilot ran through the preflight check, she's still wearing the her beautiful, frothy dress. She felt like the heroine from a tragic novel.
She sniffed back tears and wondered if she had time to put her casual clothes on. She then wondered what was taking so long. Surely she'd been sitting on the tarmac for over an hour now.
The opening of outer doors brought her head round and was startled to see Matteo's broad shoulders filling in the doorway.
Like her, he hadn't taken the time to change. He looked impossibly virile: his bow tie was hanging loosely around his neck and the top buttons of his dress shirt was reefed open.
Harper swallowed, her heart thumping through her chest. "What are you doing here?"
Matteo stalked inside the small cabin, "Looking for you. I have to say this is the last place I tried."
"I told your assistant not to tell you."
"He didn't. My pilot did."
He looked annoyed.
"I'm sorry if you're upset about me commandeering your plane at this hour. I feel terrible doing it. But all the hotel rooms so I insisted –"
"I don't care about the plane. And stop moving," Harper stopped when she realized she was stepping backwards. "Where are you going anyway?"
"The pilot stowed my bag in the rear cupboard. I was just going to get it."
"Leave the damn bag, Harper." He dragged a hand through his hair and Harper realized how tired he looked.
She swallowed hastily. "Why are you looking for me."
Had she forgotten something? Left something in their room?
"Because I realized after you left that I love you and I needed to tell you."
"You... what?"
He came towards her again and Harper's back bumped the cabin wall. Her senses were stunned at his announcement. Matteo stepped into her personal space and cupped her elbows in his hands. "You heard it right. I love you, Harper Mitchell. I have spent my whole life convincing myself it was the last thing I wanted but fortunately, you came along and proved me wrong."
Harper tried to still her galloping heart. "You told me that racing was all you ever need."
"Which shows you that you need to add stupidity to my list of flaws."
"I might have been a bit harsh earlier."
"No, you weren't," he hesitated. "After my father died, I was determined never to love anyone because I convinced myself that I wanted to protect them from the hurt I had experienced. But you were right. I was protecting myself," he shook his head. "Until you came into my life, Harper, I truly believed that I didn't have the capacity to love anyone."
Harper felt her heart swell in her chest. She desperately wanted to believe that he loved her but her old fears wouldn't allow her.
He squeezed her hands gently. "You're thinking about something. What is it?"
"I thought you always knew what I was thinking?" Harper smiled weakly at her attempt at humor.
"Usually I do, but right now... I'm too scared to guess."
Matteo De Luca, scared?
His admission was raw, and unbridled hope sparked deep inside her. "You risk your life every time you race."
He laughed. "That's nothing compared to this. Now tell me what you're thinking, baby."
Harper felt as if her heart had a tractor beam of sunlight shining right at it at the softness of his tone. "I'm thinking that I may never outgrow my need for certainty, and I don't know if I can watch you throw yourself around a track every other week without making you feel guilty. Watching you qualify today, I thought I was going to throw up today."
"You won't have to do either. I've organized a meeting first thing tomorrow morning to announce my retirement from the circuit. Effective immediately."
Harper tried her best not to hide her shock. "Why would you do that? You love racing."
"I love you more."
Oh shit, I think my panties just fell.
His words made her heart leap with joy. "But what will you do instead?"
"Andy and I have a patent over the new go-cart designs and we have visions of taking Go Wild global. I like your idea of turning it into a venue for corporations to use and I'm also thinking we can use it as a place to keep kids interested in competing and some personal coaching.
Harper nodded at the idea, "That's a beautiful vision, Matteo."
Matt blew out a breath as if her opinion really mattered. "Good, I'm glad you like it. In fact, I was hoping to convince you to consult for us. We know a lot about cars, but we know nothing about running a business."
"You want me to work for you?" Harper knew she was smiling like a lunatic.
"With me, actually – God, Harper, you're insanely beautiful," Matteo dropped her hands and hauled her against him, kissing her so passionately she couldn't think straight.
He drew back, shuddering. "Where was I? Oh yeah, marry me Harper Mitchell."
"Marry you?"
"I'm sorry if I don't have a ring yet. Honestly, I've been fighting my feelings so hard for so long I'm embarrassingly under-prepared, but I promise to make it up to you."
Remembering how everything had gone so wrong between them just hours earlier, Harper felt some of her anxiety return.
As if sensing her tumultuous emotions, Matteo tugged her in against him again. "If you don't like the idea, it's fine. I know you have your own dreams to follow and I'll support you in any way I can," he smiled sincerely at her, "Just so long as we find a little bit of time to have a house full of kids."
"A house full?"
"You said you didn't like being the only child."
"I despised it." Harper's head was reeling.
"Then we should probably try for more than one because chances are, they'll hate it too."
Once again, happiness threatened to engulf her, but a tiny stain of doubt still remained. "Wait. You're steamrollering me again."
"But I am wearing a suit this time. Does that count?"
Harper felt both fearful and excited in the face of his unwavering resolve. "It does help that you look devilishly handsome in one, yes."
Matteo clasped her face in his hands. "Okay, you're still worried. Talk to me."
Harper wet her dry lips and took a deep breath. He'd put his heart on the line for her, was giving up his racing career to be with her. The least she could do was confide her greatest fear.
"Matteo, you can't possibly feel the same way about me as I do about you, and that will eventually ruin everything between us."
She tried to glance away, feeling utterly miserable now, but he held her fast.
"How do you feel about me, Harper?"
"I love you, of course. But –"
She didn't get any further as his mouth captured hers in a blistering kiss so full of sensual passion and promise that tears stung back of her eyes.
"Stop," she pushed at him weakly, her body trembling against his. "You're good at this, and it doesn't change the fundamental law of relationships.
"Which one is that?" he asked, nuzzling the side of her neck.
Harper tried to put some distance between them, but his hold was implacable. "The one that says one person will always love more than the other."
Her voice was so anguished that Matteo stopped kissing her and stared into her eyes. "I've never heard of that law, but you'll never love me as much as I love you. I guarantee it."
"No," Harper shook her head. "Your feelings can't possibly be as strong as mine are for you."
Matteo smiled, pressed her against the cabin wall, "Want to argue about it the rest of our lives?"
Harper bursts out laughing, radiant happiness slowly soaking into every corner of her heart. "You're serious!"
Matteo stayed her nervous hands in one of his. "I've never been more serious about anything. I once told you I'd never meet a woman who excited me as much as racing – but Harper, you do. I feel exhilarated just thinking about seeing you. And when I do..." he shook his head, the depth of his emotions shining brightly in his eyes.
Harper gazed back at the only man who had ever made her feel this way. "I love you so, so much. I didn't know it was even possible to feel like this about another person."
"Ditto, baby. Now, put me out of my misery and tell me you'll marry me."
Completely overwhelmed by emotions no longer held at bay, Harper grinned stupidly. "I'll marry you – with one condition."
Matteo groaned. "I knew you wouldn't make it easy. What is it?"
Harper linked her hands behind his neck, deciding to have some fun with him. "We do it at my pace, not yours."
Matteo threw his head back in laughter. "Remember the shirt I wore before at the bar? That was my lucky shirt. Now, it's my life-changing shirt."
Wriggling closer, Harper nuzzled his neck, the last of her doubts fading into nothing. "I love you."
Matteo's touch became purposeful and masterful, "And I you."
Whoever thought love was horrible was wrong. Love is actually incredible.
*****
A/N: Ta-da! It's done! At least I got to finish it before 2015 ends. I'm currently thinking of a new concept for another book but I think I want to finish it first then post it. I don't like the feeling that you guys have to wait in agony for the new chapter when the author is a lazy ass. Share this story with your friends, 'kay? Love you and I hope you'll be anticipating for my upcoming story!