Page 2 of Her Forever SEAL

“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.”