Dan scooped up a cardboard shoebox on the floor by the wardrobe, and Laurel, still in shock, saw the very expensive fashion name on it. He put it on the bed and opened it.
“See?” he said. He held up a pair of elegant evening heels, in matching vermilion, then dropped them back on the bed.
“You’ve got to have a shower now, Mum,” he instructed, “and wash your hair. Dad’s got you some make-up too, because he said that since tonight is a surprise you wouldn’t have your own with you. I’m going to have my bath in Dad’s bathroom, and he’s bought me new jim-jams, and then he’ll get ready for your posh dinner too, and I can watch TV in his room while he does, and then the babysitter will be here, and I’ll come back in here and go to bed, and you and Dad go off to your posh dinner! It’s all sorted, Mum! Me and Dad sorted it!”
He ran across to Xander. “Go on, Mum!” he instructed her, turning back. “You have your shower, and I’ll have my bath! See you!”
He grabbed his father’s hand and started tugging him back through the communicating door.
Laurel stood motionless.
Xander looked at her. “See you,” he echoed softly. Far too softly. Mockery open in his voice. Knowing exactly just how royally she’d been stitched up. By a master tactician.
Laurel walked over to the dress. Emotion rose in her, but just what it was, she had no idea. Except that it was filling her totally…
Xander’s mood was buoyant. Almost as buoyant as Dan’s. Finally, he was getting his own way with Laurel. Getting her out of those damn rags she insisted on wearing. And to ensure the success of his cunning plan, he’d got the absolutely essential help of his son. Dan was as cock-a-hoop as he himself was. He had his bath—lavishly filled with bubbles from the complimentary toiletries provided—in record time, and was in his pyjamas and snuggled up on Xander’s bed, while Xander sorted out a children’s TV channel for him, then left him to it, together with a bottle of fruit juice from the room bar to get his own ablutions done. Knowing how long it took women to glitz themselves up he took a leisurely shower and shave, then emerged from the en suite in the courtesy towelling robe to share in the ending of the adventure film with Dan.
“Can we go and see Mum yet?” Dan asked hopefully, as the film ended.
Xander cast his son a worldly-wise look. “Ladies don’t like being hustled, Dan, when they’re getting themselves ready. Boyfriends are strictly banned till they’ve done their hair and face. It takes them forever,” he added, from long experience.
Dan nodded in an equally worldly-wise fashion. Then he looked at Xander quizzically.
“Are you Mum’s boyfriend?” he asked. “Because you’re my dad?”
Xander froze. Talk about out of the mouths of babes and innocents…
He picked his words carefully now.
“I was when your mum and I were in Greece,” he said, keeping his voice nonchalant. The wordboyfrienddidn’t really cover what had been the state of things in Greece, but he knew it was the only one that would make any kind of sense to Dan at his age.
Dan was still looking at him. Expecting more. Xander went on, even more carefully.
“Then she came back here, to England.”
Dan’s eyes, dark like his own, stayed on him.
“Were you inlurve?” He said “lurve” exaggeratedly, as if he’d heard it in a film, which he probably had.
Xander stilled even more. Babes and innocents…more forensic than a cross-examining barrister.
“It was,” he said, “a holiday romance.”
Because what else was it?
His own question hung there. He’d never had to answer it because of that ruby-and-diamond bracelet.
Condemning Laurel.
And yet now—
He got to his feet. How could he be planning the evening ahead with a woman he thought a thief? How could he just set that aside, ignore it? When it came to Dan, to sharing parenthood with her, he had no choice but to set it aside.
But for what I want now?
He didn’t want to answer it. Didn’t even want to ask it. Didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not here.
He looked down at Dan, who was still looking up at him with his dark eyes, so like his own.
