“I’d better get dressed, Dan,” he told him. “The babysitter will be here soon.”
He fetched his tuxedo out of the wardrobe. He always travelled with one. The last time he’d worn it in England had been to take Fabia out for the evening. It seemed a million years ago. Another lifetime.
Dan watched with interest as Xander busied himself with his dress tie, always a tricky business. “It takes practice,” he told his son.
Dan nodded wisely. Then a question was in his face. But it had nothing to do with dress ties. “So, are you going to be Mum’s boyfriend again?”
Xander stilled again. Heard the continuing cross-examination of a barrister putting him to the question again.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly.
Tonight is as far as I can think.
Flying blind—
The buzz of the house phone on the bedside table came to his rescue. He snatched it up.
After he hung up a moment later, he announced, “That’s the babysitter on the way up.” He nodded at Dan. “We’d better go and see how your mother is doing.”
Dan sprang up eagerly and ran to the communicating door, not bothering with a knock, but opening it and running through.
Xander followed more slowly.
His son’s innocently spoken words rang in his head.
Are you going to be Mum’s boyfriend again?
He’d given the only possible answer.
But as he stepped through the doorway in Laurel’s bedroom, and his eyes went to her, he knew, with a searing through his body like a hot brand, that tonight was going to be exactly what he wanted.
Starting right now.
Laurel jerked around at the sound of the communicating door opening. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror inset into the door of the mahogany wardrobe on which the silk vermilion evening gown had been hanging. Which she was now wearing.
Dan was running into the room, then he stopped dead. A gasp broke from him. His face alight. “You’re a princess!” he exclaim rapturously. He turned his head back, calling out. “Dad, Dad! Come and see! It worked! Mum’s a princess!”
Laurel’s eyes went past Dan to the tall figure walking slowly into the room. She felt her breath catch. Memory burned instantly. Overpoweringly.
It had been seven years since she’d seen Xander in a tuxedo. She remembered it vividly. It had been that awkward, difficult dinner on board his yacht with Olympia playing gooseberry, but doing her damnedest to make Laurel feel she was the gooseberry.
Overstaying my time—the final-fling floozy who should clear off now.
Conversation had been stilted, and Laurel had known that she was trying too hard, emphasising her newly acquired history degree, deliberately asking erudite questions about Greek history to show she wasn’t the bimbo Olympia clearly wanted to think her.
Xander, it had been obvious, was in a bad mood, and had been since Olympia had been dumped on them, but his moodiness had only, Laurel vividly recalled, made him even more darkly attractive. He always looked a knock-out whatever he was wearing—or not wearing, because stripped down he was breath-stopping—but in his tux he was at peak Xander.
She blinked now. That Xander was right here, again, in front of her.
Whatever it was about a tuxedo, from the superb tailoring to the set of the sable shoulders to the old-world pizazz of the wing collar to the perfection of the bow-tie and the discrete but oh-so-classy gold studs at his cuffs and on his shirt front, whatever it was, whatever it did, took her breath away.
Dan had stopped gawping at her open-mouthed and thrilled, and had run up to her. “Oh, Mum, you look beautiful,” he said, his little face upturned to her with open delight and wonder.
Her heart melted. Oh, she’d been royally stitched up, and Xander had used Dan shamelessly to achieve his ends, but in the instant of hearing Dan say what he had all her spleen vanished. She had nursed it all the way through the lengthy process of showering, washing her hair, then glamming herself up as Dan so gleefully wanted her to do, to style her hair and adorn her face with the conveniently provided make-up, to slip that fabulous silk vermilion evening gown over her head and feel it slither over the wispy bra and panties that had been discreetly included in a separate up-market carrier bag, and then ease her feet into the elegant satin shoes. Nursed it with a set expression on her face as she’d gazed at her own finished reflection, bearing undeniable witness to what Dan had just said.
But I’ve done it for Dan, for my adored son! So I wouldn’t disappoint him.
She dropped down, which was tricky in her strappy heeled evening sandals and flowing skirts, and lifted her hands to his arms. “Thank you, darling,” she said, her smile radiant, planting a kiss on his forehead and standing up again. Feeling resolute now, not fuming at what Xander had done so outrageously.
