Page 73 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually
David cut me short. “Do you lovehim?”
“Who? You mean Sean?”
David nodded.
My mouth went dry and I swallowed hard. “No.”
“Do you love your father?”
“What the hell sort of question is that? Of course I do!”
“Then leave it, Scarlett. Leave this whole notion of finding your mother alone. You’ll only end up getting hurt. And you’re going to end up hurting others too.”
I thought about what he’d just said. “What do you mean,people are going to get hurt? Are you talking about Dad and me if I find my mother? Or me and you if I go with Sean to find her?”
“Everyone, Scarlett—this whole process is going to end in heartbreak somewhere along the line. This started out as a simple—but now I see stupid—idea for you to have some time away, to ‘get your head together,’ I think was the exact phrase put to me. And it’s now escalated into this quite mad notion you’re going to find your mother. And what if you do, Scarlett? What if you find her and she doesn’t want anything to do with you? She didn’t all those years ago. Have you thought about that? How you’re going to feel if she rejects you all over again?”
I hadn’t even considered that possibility in all my euphoria.
“How will your father feel if by some chance she wants to be a part of your life once more? Have you thought about what that would do to him?”
I shook my head.
“No, I thought not. And have you thought about how I’m feeling in all this, when you, the woman I’m going to marry in a few weeks, is running around the country with another man? Have you ever stopped to think for one moment how that might makemefeel? Have you?”
I hung my head and looked at the ground.
“When are you going to start realizing, Scarlett, this isn’t a movie you’re in now—this is real life, real people, and there mightnotbe a happy ending if you continue messing with our lives like this.”
I looked up at David. He’d given it to me straight, and hewas right. Everything he’d said had been true, and I hadn’t ever stopped to consider it.
“But what if I don’t see this through, David? I might never find out if Icanhave that happy ending with my mum. And that’s all I really want, to be happy, and to know that I did everything I could to give myself the chance to be.”
David shook his head despairingly. “If I hadn’t given my word to your father…” he muttered.
“What do you mean? What did you say to him?”
“It’s not what I said tohim, Scarlett—it’s what he said to me.”
“I don’t understand. Explain yourself, David.”
“I can’t. I gave him my word when I went to see him that I wouldn’t get involved in this. And against my better judgment, that’s just what I’mnotgoing to do.” He straightened himself up. “Scarlett, you win—I trust you. Go to Paris with Sean tomorrow—go to the moon with him for all I care. Just promise me you’ll be at that church, by my side, in April. You do still want that, don’t you, for us to be married?”
“I do, David,” I said, solemnly looking into his eyes. “Really, I do. I just need to do this one thing first.”
“Then that’s all I want, Scarlett. For you to be there that day, saying those same words to me.”
“David, I promise you that on our wedding day I’ll be in London, in my wedding dress, saying the words I do.”
Twenty-One
Sean and I stood on the pavement in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. We’d been in Paris for most of the day, visiting the many Louis Vuitton stores that were scattered across the city. Now we had just emerged from the Metro yet again and we found ourselves this time on the bustling and ultra-chic Champs-Elysées.
“Right, I think it’s this way,” Sean said, looking up from his map. “We’re looking for 101.” Eagerly he set off along the pavement.
With slightly less enthusiasm, I followed.
It had not been a very successful morning so far. To begin with, there had been a decidedly chilly air in the hotel room as I’d packed my things into my suitcase and prepared to meet Sean downstairs after breakfast.
