Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Avril
I stand at the doorway to Ben’s apartment waiting for the doorman to arrive. He just buzzed up to tell me that he has a package Ben asked him to deliver. The elevator doors ping open and I smile at the now familiar face of Billy the doorman.
“Good afternoon,” he says, coming out of the elevator backwards. He’s pulling something and then I realize it’s one of those clothes racks on wheels. “Would you like me to bring it into the apartment?”
“That would be great, thank you.”
There are hangers on the rail but all that’s visible are black garment bags. There are at least ten. Is Ben getting a new suit or something?
“Where would you like it?” he asks.
I haven’t been into Ben’s bedroom since I moved in, so I tell him to leave it just inside the door.
Ben can decide what he wants to do with it when he gets back.
We’re going on a date tonight and I’m looking forward to it more than I should be.
I like talking to Ben. I feel like I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the last few days.
There are chinks in those affable, charming walls of his and I quite like what’s on the other side.
When I close the door to the concierge, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Ben.
I’m running a little late. Choose what you want to wear for tonight from the rail. I’ll be there at 7 to pick you up. Don’t get haughty that I bought you clothes.
Haughty? Is that even a word? His vocabulary is making me haughty.
Choose what I want to wear from the rail? I eye up the delivery the concierge just made. Does he mean this rack? What other rail could he mean?
Tentatively, I unzip one of the garment bags a couple of inches. What’s inside? I can’t see much, so I keep pulling down the zipper.
It’s a cocktail dress. Simple. Black. Very New York. I pull off the garment bag completely. It’s beautiful. The fabric is light and soft, and the way the seams are hemmed, I can tell it wasn’t cheap.
My stomach ripples with excitement—and then instantly the excitement is washed away by shame or embarrassment or something I can’t quite place.
Is he trying to control me? He very definitely said pick something from the rail.
He didn’t add I could wear what I wanted if I didn’t like anything he’d sent over.
Or is this part of his seduction technique?
He’s either being incredibly generous or completely controlling.
What I know of Ben, he’s not controlling of anyone but himself. He very carefully curates the version of himself that he lets everyone see. Maybe he’s done that to me too. Maybe he’s hidden the part of him that likes to control…women. Or me in particular.
I set about opening the rest of the garment bags, so I can at least see what he’s sent over.
Each dress is beautiful. Four are black, one with long sleeves, two sleeveless but long, one sleeveless and short.
One is a gunmetal gray silk and another full-length and nude.
The final one is red with ruffles. It’s similar to the black one I wore to Aurora and Deacon’s engagement party—the one Ben sliced off me and replaced.
Except that one was black and long and this one is short and red.
I peer more closely at the label—as I suspected, it’s the same brand. They’re all gorgeous.
There are three other hangers. One looks like a garment bag but it’s full of shoe boxes. Two others have evening coats in them. He’s thought of everything. Or maybe his assistant thought of everything.
I wish he’d tell me where we’re going. Is that part of his control? The fact that I can’t choose for myself what to wear because I don’t know where Ben has arranged this date?
I scan the hanging outfits in front of me. Other than the nude one, which would make me feel way too self-conscious, they’re all beautiful, and if I went to Saks with a limitless credit card, I can imagine picking out any or all of them. So why don’t I feel elated?
Ben has been kind to me. Generous. I mean, he’s also made this situation harder than it needs to be—he could have just agreed to help me with the Boston hotel—but there’s nothing in our interactions that suggests he wants to control me. So why do I feel so suspicious?
I check the time on my phone—it’s six thirty. I need to decide which outfit I’m going to wear…or maybe I’m not going to wear any of them. Maybe I’ll turn up in jeans and a sweater and see what Ben says.
I don’t wear jeans, but I do choose some black satin wide-legged trousers and a soft pink top that I wore with a floaty skirt to a wedding last summer. I finish the outfit off with the black shoes that I wore to Aurora and Deacon’s engagement party.
My phone buzzes with a message. It’s Ben again, saying he’s on his way up.
I meet him at the door, my normal winter coat on, my clutch bag in my hand, filled with some printouts of some things I’ve been researching that I thought Ben might be interested in.
He grins when he sees me, his gaze not focused on what I’m wearing, but on my face. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I reply. “You’re right on time. Do you need to come in?” He’s wearing a navy suit with an open collar. He looks hot as fuck, just like always.
He shakes his head. “No, I just came to pick you up.”
I smile. “I could have met you there. If I’d known where we were going.”
“Now that wouldn’t have been very gentlemanly of me, would it?”
I cock my head to one side. “I happen to know you have a very ungentlemanly side to you.”
His eyebrows pulse upwards. “I don’t know what you mean.” He turns and holds his elbow out for me to take and we head to the elevator.
When he slides into the back seat of his car next to me, he puts on his seat belt, and we pull out into the New York evening traffic.
“You didn’t like anything I sent over,” he says. It’s not a question.
“They were all beautiful dresses,” I reply.
“And here you are in trousers.”
“You don’t like them?”
He sighs. “I like anything you wear.”
“But they’re not appropriate for where we’re going?”
“They’re perfectly appropriate. You could have come in gym gear and it would have been entirely fine.”
“Then why send the clothes?”
“I thought you’d like them and I knew you’d look good in them.”
Always with the right thing to say. Always charming. Always on.
“Did you pick them out?” I ask. “Or did your assistant do it?”
“I told a contact I have what kind of thing I wanted. They sent a couple of dozen things over, and I picked out of that. I wasn’t trying—” He cuts himself off.
“What?” I prompt him.
“I don’t know. I thought you knew that I wasn’t trying to dress you up or control what you wear.”
“Maybe that’s not your motivation,” I confess. After he picked out the other things that he bought me, that’s what I’d thought. But now I’m not so sure. I just don’t understand what his motivation is. And I want to know.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d brought with you and I wanted you to feel comfortable.” He pauses and looks straight ahead. “And I wanted to buy them for you.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” he says.
Now I’m totally confused. “You’re not sure what you mean when you say you wanted to buy me clothes?”
“When I replaced your dress from the engagement party…I found I enjoyed it.”
“Shopping for women’s clothing?”
He chuckles, and instantly the tension in the air dissipates. “Shopping for you. I liked buying that dress and those shoes. And today, I enjoyed imagining you enjoying the surprise. I guess my imagination ran away with me, because you didn’t enjoy it at all.”
Regret gnaws at my stomach, and I feel guilty for being so…spiky.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. I’m so determined to be independent that maybe I’m inventing problems that aren’t really there.
“It’s fine. I got carried away.” He pulls in a breath. “I’m not sure anyone has enough power to control you.” He shifts in his seat, turning to me. “But not only do I not have the power, I don’t have any desire to.”
He holds my gaze, and I desperately scramble for something to say that will make me feel better about questioning him. “You’ve never given me any reason to think that you do.”
He offers me a small smile. “It’s easy for anyone to get caught up in their own head.”
“I really am sorry. I don’t want this to ruin our date.”
“It won’t,” he says. “Not if we don’t let it.”
“You have excellent taste.”
He throws me a glance. “Any you didn’t like? The nude maybe.” Is this a game? Is pleasing me the new goal he’s come up with?
“I didn’t try any of them on, but the nude was my least favorite. Correct.”
He smiles to himself like he just scored a victory. “Yeah, it was a bit of a wildcard, but I think you’d look great in it.”
I glance down at my lap, not wanting him to see how good it feels to get a compliment from him. I don’t want to be another person who falls for Ben’s charms, because everyone falls for Ben’s charms. “Thank you.”
“Will you keep them? I know you didn’t wear any of them tonight, but I’d like you to have them if you like them.
” He looks at me, and maybe it’s just his normal charming way, but it feels so genuine that all I can feel is flattered.
It doesn’t feel like manipulation or control or anything but generosity and… care.
“All of them?”
He shrugs. “I enjoyed picking them out.” His voice is a little less steady, less sure than usual. It’s as if he’s admitted something and he isn’t sure how I’ll react.
Small bursts of happiness bloom in my stomach. “Are you collecting loyalty points or something? Do you not want a whole bunch rescinded?” I’m joking because I don’t want this to be as big of a deal as it feels. I don’t want it to feel this real. This good.
He laughs. “Yup. That’s it. Gotta keep up my gold customer status at Saks. But seriously, I’d like you to have them—if you want to keep them.”
My stomach lifts, higher, higher, higher. This can’t be an act. Can it? Does he really not want to help me with Boston so much that he’s trying this hard to prove we can’t keep things professional?
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “It’s very generous. I’d love to keep them.”
He straightens slightly in his seat, like I’ve just given him a boost of energy by agreeing to keep the outfits that he picked out.
Like he’s just as pleased that I’ve accepted them, as I am that he’s spent his precious time and energy on…me.
I don’t feel controlled or like he wants to dress me up like a doll. I feel cared for. Thought about. Cherished. I’m not sure any man has ever made me feel like that.
“Here we are,” he says.
I glance out of the window, and my gaze trails up to the Metropolitan Museum. “The Met?”
He pulls another Saks bag from the front passenger seat. “Yes, the Met, and we’re going to need this.” When we get to the top of the steps, there’s a short, brown-haired woman waiting for us.
“Mr. East,” she says. “How lovely to have you with us this evening.”
Ben shakes her hand. “Good to see you again, Mei. This is Avril Huntington.”
I shake Mei’s hand, returning her smile.
“Dinner is at eight thirty, as you requested,” Mei says. “And we have two curators who are ready to tell you more about any area of the museum you want to visit.”
Ben lifts up the Saks bag. “We’re going to need more comfortable footwear.”
I peer inside the bag to see Nike boxes. “You brought sneakers?”
“I figured you wouldn’t be able to walk much in whichever shoes you were wearing.”
I narrow my eyes at the man in front of me. Is it possible that he’s as perfect as he seems?
“What?” he says. “Are you offended?”
“Whatever the opposite of offended is. That’s me.”
He grins and pushes his hand through his hair, like he’s relieved. He looks ten years younger, but still hot as all holy fuck.
Of course, Ben has remembered socks, and once we’ve changed, we take a look at the museum map.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Is there anyone else here tonight?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “We have the place to ourselves. Apart from the staff, of course.”
Excitement ripples through me. I love the Met, it’s a New York institution, and the idea that I would be able to explore without the usual crowds feels…special.
“This is really nice,” I say, as I grab his hand, without thinking.
He doesn’t flinch. He just squeezes my hand in his.
There’s no doubt that this feels like a real date. Ben feels like my man. I know this might be all part of his routine to prove to me that we can’t be friends, but right at this moment, I can push Boston to the side and imagine that Ben and I are real.