Page 142 of Thin Lives

“A happy day.”

Calisto sighed. “I am happy.”

“You could look a little happier,” Emma suggested.

Pursing his lips, Calisto chuckled dryly. “This is the best I can do right now.”

“It’s not the end of the world.”

“It’s the end of something, Emmy.”

She kissed his cheek, fast and fleeting. He wanted her to stay there and kiss him a little bit longer. Keep his mind occupied with the softness of her lips and the warmth of her breath on his skin. She was damn good at her distractions, and he’d learned over their two and a half decades together that her little talent for occupying his mind during rough times was a gift.

Some people might have seen it like a curse.

He knew it wasn’t.

But Emma had other things to do.

More important things.

At least right then.

She patted his cheek again.

“Not the end of the world,” Emma repeated gently.

“I know.”

“It’s just a wedding.”

Calisto let out another hard breath. “Yeah.”

“And she’s happy.”

Jesus.

His wife was not letting him go down without a fight, apparently.

“She’s happy,” Calisto echoed.

Emma smiled brightly, kissing his cheek once more before using her thumb to wipe away a smudge of lipstick. “And what does that mean, huh?”

Calisto forced back the lump beginning to form in his throat. “If she’s happy, I’m happy.”

“Tommaso is a good man, Cal.”

Well, he came from a good man.

And Calisto liked the kid enough.

Frankly, Tommaso Rossi wasn’t so much a kid as a man. A man who was marrying Calisto’s twenty-two year old daughter today. A ceremony that would take place in the very same church where both Calisto’s children had been Christened, where they had grown up in pews listening to a priest, and where Cal and Emma were married almost two and a half decades before.

That helped.

For some reason that Calisto just couldn’t explain, it helped to know he was giving away his only daughter in a place that he cherished and respected as much as he did her very breath and soul.

“Are you good?” Emma asked.