Chapter 1
The suite was perfect.
Mason stood in the middle of the living room with his hands on his hips and did a slow survey of everything.
The orchids the florist had arranged sat near the window, the champagne bucket with the sparkling cider already chilling, the boxes stacked on the bed in the other room, and he felt the particular satisfaction of a man who had planned an operation down to the last detail and watched it come together exactly as designed.
“Did she suspect anything?” Kayla was sitting cross-legged on the suite's sofa, watching him with the same evaluating expression her mother used when she was waiting for a complete answer rather than a partial one.
“Not a thing.” Mason checked his watch. Five o'clock exactly. “She still thinks we're having an early dinner at the restaurant across the street and then going home.”
“What about us?” Lisa asked, with the air of someone who found the entire deception personally thrilling.
“She knows you're with the DeLucas this afternoon. She doesn't know about any of this.” He glanced toward the bedroom where the boxes were waiting on the bed. “They'll send her up at six-thirty.”
Lisa's eyes went wide with delight. “Ooooooh. She's going to be so mad.”
“No, she won't,” Kayla said, with the authority of someone who had done considerably more analysis on the subject. “She'll be too happy from all the facials and massages. You can't be mad after a six-hour spa day. It's physiologically impossible.”
Lisa considered this. “What's physiologically mean?”
“It means her face will be too relaxed to frown.”
Mason bit back a grin and went into the bedroom to check that the boxes were arranged the way he wanted them on the bed.
The dress was tissue-wrapped inside the largest one.
He had spent an hour and fifteen minutes in Nordstrom with both girls two weeks ago, which was an hour longer than he had ever voluntarily spent in a department store, but he did not regret a single second of it because the dress was perfect and he knew it the moment Kayla pulled it off the rack and held it up.
It was silver with streaks of deep blue that matched Sophia’s eyes.
It would come a little above her knee, and she’d say it was too short, but Sophia had great legs.
But even being a little short, it was elegant.
Like her. And it was something she never would have purchased for herself.
Then there was the tiny purse. Nope, it was a clutch. That meant it didn’t even have a handle, so it cost more than a purse. The girls insisted on it. They said their mother needed something to put her phone and lipstick in. Which is all that would fit in it. So, he got it.
The shoes were in a separate box. He had made peace with the cost of the shoes. He had not yet fully made peace with the cost of the shoes.
The fourth box, smaller, was already tucked in the dresser drawer where the girls couldn't see it. He had handled purchasing those pieces of lingerie on an earlier shopping trip, entirely on his own.
He came back out to find both girls near the coffee table in a debate he had apparently missed the beginning of.
“It should be draped across the bed,” Lisa was saying. “So she sees it right when she walks in. Like in a movie.”
“That's not how you present something important,” Kayla said. “It needs to be in the box. So, she has to open it. The opening is the moment.”
“Fine, but how about if we get bigger bows? Like enormous?”
Mason looked at her. “How enormous are we talking?”
“Like, bigger than my head,” Lisa announced.
“No,” Kayla said.
“In the box,” Mason confirmed. “Both of them. The bows they have are just fine.”
Lisa accepted this with the grace of someone already moving on. Mason glanced back into the bedroom at the nightstand with more orchids on it; white and pale purple, Sophia's favorites, then at the bed with the boxes, and felt the faint pull of something he couldn't quite leave alone.
“I might call down to the lobby florist,” he said to no one in particular. “About rose petals.”
Kayla turned to look at him with the patient firmness of someone who loved him very much but was not going to allow him to screw up. “Dad.”
“Just a few. On the bed. It's our twentieth anniversary.”
“Look at the room.”
He turned fully around and looked. Everything looked elegant and beautiful.
“Rose petals are overdone,” Kayla said. “The orchids are perfect. Leave it alone.”
Mason looked at the room for another moment. She was right. He knew she was right. “Yeah. Okay.”
Lisa was already in the living room investigating the champagne bucket. “Is this the good kind?”
“It's sparkling cider. Your mother doesn't drink.”
“I know that. I meant is it the good kind of sparkling cider?”
“Yes, Lisa.”
“Okay, good, because the cheap kind tastes like carbonated apple juice.”
“That's because it is carbonated apple juice,” Kayla said.
A knock at the suite door saved Mason from wherever that conversation was heading.
He crossed the living room and opened it to find Frannie DeLuca already in motion, which was the only way Frannie DeLuca ever existed, her Tony a half-step behind her with the expression of a man who had learned decades ago that some things were simply going to happen.
“Let me see,” Frannie said, by way of greeting.
She was already past him before he could respond, moving through the living room with her hands clasped and her head turning, taking inventory.
She stopped at the orchids by the window and made an approving sound.
She looked at the champagne bucket and nodded.
She looked at the city view through the window and put a hand to her chest.
“Mason.” She turned to him with shining eyes. “This is beautiful.”
“Thank you, Frannie.”
She was already moving toward the bedroom.
“Frannie—” Mason started.
“Just a peek.” She was already in the doorway, taking in the boxes on the bed, the orchids on the nightstand, the turned-down duvet.
“Are there rose petals?” she asked.
“No,” Kayla said, from directly behind Mason.
Frannie turned. “There should be rose petals. It's romantic.”
“It's also very 2010,” Kayla said pleasantly. “So, no.”
The silence that followed lasted approximately two seconds. Mason winced. Tony winced. Frannie looked at Mason and Tony then back at Kayla. “You’re right, honey. It was so last year, what was I thinking?”
“The orchids are Mom's favorite,” Kayla added, in the tone of someone offering a consolation prize.
Frannie looked at the orchids. Then she looked at Kayla. Then she let out a breath that conceded the point without quite admitting it. She turned to Tony. “Take me out of here before I age another decade.”
Tony put a gentle hand on her elbow. “Come on, Frannie.”
“Come on girls, your Uncle Tony is cooking.”
“Fantastic. Can I help?” Lisa burst out.
“Of course,” Tony grinned. “Food always tastes better when you help.”
The girls grabbed their backpacks, and Lisa looked all over the suite for her phone charger before Kayla suggested she look in the front pocket of her backpack. Which is where it was.
Lisa threw her arms around him first, full-speed, the way she did everything. “Bye, Dad. Tell Mom happy anniversary from us.”
“I will, baby.” He kissed the top of her head.
Kayla waited until Lisa had released him and then stepped forward. She hugged him with both arms, properly, the way she had started hugging since she hit fourteen and seemed to understand that hugs were worth doing correctly. He felt her hold on for just a moment longer than necessary.
She stepped back and looked at him, then perused the suite, the orchids, the boxes on the bed, and something moved across her face that was too old for fourteen and exactly right for who she was. She didn't say anything sentimental. He hadn't expected her to.
“She's going to love it,” Kayla said.
Simple.
He nodded. “I know. You did good, kid,” he whispered in her ear.
She nodded, then turned to her sister, and put her arm around her.
Frannie kissed him on both cheeks. Tony shook his hand and held it for a moment and looked at him with the warmth of a man who had watched Mason and Sophia's marriage from the very beginning and had always been glad of it. Then the door closed and the suite went quiet.
Mason stood in the silence for a moment.
Then he went and changed into his suit.
He was straightening his tie in the bathroom mirror when the phone on the bedside table rang. He crossed the room and picked it up.
“Mr. Gault?” A woman's voice, professional and slightly amused. “This is Celeste at the spa desk. We're sending up a very confused Mrs. Gault. She should be at your door in just a few minutes.”
“Perfect,” Mason said. “Thank you.”
He set down the phone, opened the nightstand drawer, took out the box of lingerie, and set it on the bed with the others.
He looked around the suite one more time. The orchids, the cider, the boxes, the city going amber and gold outside the window as the evening came in. Twenty years married. He had loved this woman for twenty-two years and he was somehow still not used to how lucky he was.
He went and stood near the door and waited for her knock.
Her knock was met immediately, like he had been standing right there waiting.
The door opened and Sophia forgot everything she had been about to say.
Mason stood in the doorway in a charcoal suit, clean shaven, and he looked so good it took her a full second to find her footing. Twenty-two years and the man could still do that to her.
She started to say something. She wasn't sure what.
“You are more beautiful than the day we got married,” he said.
She stopped. She let those words land and felt them move through her the way his words always did when he meant them completely, which was every time. Her throat tightened in the best possible way.
Then she looked past him.