Maybe he hadn’t rushed into this based on a single conversation with Jack, it was obviously something he’d been planning for a while.
“Well, she gave me suitable options and I picked from there,” he corrected.
“This is too much,” I breathed, looking at the box and the bag.
“You don’t even know what’s in there yet,” Beau said.
I put my hands on my hips. “I know that any item of clothing that comes with a garment bag is definitely too much,” I replied. “And that those shoes are a price that should’ve made you blush.”
“Nothingmakes me blush,” Beau countered. He walked to the shoe box, taking the lid off.
He lifted the patent-leather heel—thankfully nowhere near as high as Calliope wore—a soft pink, delicate ankle boot with small, studded details.
I didn’t consider myself to be a shoe person, but those might convert me.
“I might blush seeing you in these and nothing else,” Beau murmured, observing the heel as one might a foreign artifact.
My neck flushed with the image of me in those heels. Naked.
“Those aresocute!” A small voice exclaimed from the doorway. My mind jerked itself out of sexual fantasies.
Clara ran into the room, standing beside her father to pick up the other shoe in the box, eyes flaring.
“These areyours, Hannah?” she asked, stroking the leather carefully.
I nodded, even though I wanted to protest they absolutely weren’t. It was much too expensive of a gift to accept, but I already knew how stubborn Beau was on that front.
“And this is her dress for our date tonight.” Beau tapped the garment bag. “Want to help Hannah unzip it and make sure she doesn’t argue about keeping it?” He played with his daughter’s hair. “Maybe even rip it a little so she cannot return it,” he suggested playfully.
I gave him a scowl. “Low blow, Shaw,” I muttered. Using his daughter to ensure I couldn’t refuse his gift.
He merely smiled in response. No, not a real smile. Not what I’d become used to. It was that quirk to his lips that barely passed for a smile these days.
Clara, unaware to the micro changes in her father’s behavior, was already unzipping the bag.
And Beau was right. I could not argue once Clara’s small gasp filled the room and she demanded I put on my new outfit. Thankfully, she didn’t rip anything on it. That would be a crime to fashion, even if I didn’t consider myself a fashionista.
She sat on the bed, while her father finished off a few things in his office, watching as I dressed in the outfit Calliope helped pick out.
It fit me like a glove, the fabric finer than I’d ever put on my body. Soft pink cashmere, with a neckline that dipped off the shoulder. Clara was full of compliments, sitting in the bathroom as I did my hair and makeup. It sent me hurtling forward into a future where I might be sitting, helping her with her makeup before her first date. On her twenty-first birthday, if her father had something to do with it.
The very real prospect that I’d be here to see that, that Clara “helping” curl my hair before a date with her father made my heart soar. It was a life I didn’t dare dream of for myself.
Then when she heard the door open and close, she kissed me on the cheek, running out to meet her grandfather.
By the time I finished getting ready, Clara and her grandfather were gone, the house was quieter than usual.
I’d expected Beau to come and find me, but he didn’t. That was unusual, in it of itself. But he had mentioned work that had been piling up and wanting to finish it before our date. I didn’t let it trigger any fear his demeanor had awakened. Work. He had a job. He ran a freaking restaurant. There was more to his world than me.
We would eventually—hopefully—have to settle into an everyday rhythm where we’d have to get things done outside of our family unit.
When I began my final year, I’d be spending most of my time on placements, working in hospital settings. Beau, the restaurant, maybe even the cookbook that I told him he should do. He was almost on board, except when I told him he’d sell more copies shirtless on the cover.
Life would have to be normal … whatever that looked like now that we were together. A normal life with Clara and Beauwas more than I could’ve dreamed of in a hundred years. That’s what I reminded myself was possible—not just possible but most likely—as I walked to Beau’s office.
I lingered in the doorway for a moment, marveling at the broad shoulders, his mussed dark hair, the soft scratch of pen against paper. Beau only used a computer when forced. He hated technology.
The scratch didn’t last for long, though. He was Beau, which meant he sensed my presence. Or more likely, I was less graceful than I liked to think and my heel had clicked against the wood of the door.
