We rode together in the back of the car, with Scott up front, navigating us through the streets of Manhattan. I felt uncorked, able to release pressure for the first time in months, and it occurred to me only now that I"d been rather terrified: I hadn"t known whether Sara and I would ever find our way back directly to each other, or if from now on there would forever be something else-children, careers, the gradual bricklaying of life itself-bridging us.
I would have been all right if it had gone that way, if the secret we had and shared had faded away and we had to learn to find our intimacy in other ways. But knowing how easily we could go back to that, and anytime, relieved something a bit guilty and dark inside.
"What are you thinking?" she asked, as she always did, right when I wanted to admit my thoughts the least.
"Something rather d.i.c.kish."
"Ooh, then you have to tell me."
I turned to her, took her hand in both of mine. "I was thinking that I"m relieved we still have this. That if it had gone away, I would have been okay, but I think I would have been a bit devastated at first, too. I can share you with any number of kids, as long as there is a piece there that remains only mine."
"There"s more than one piece that is only yours," she said, looking mildly surprised. "That"s what our marriage is. It"s the thing between us that we take care of, knowing that someday it will only be us in that enormous apartment again."
"If you want more kids, you know we can"t stay in Manhattan forever," I told her.
She put her fingers over my lips, saying, "Shh. Let"s enjoy this new baseline for a bit."
We both straightened, seeming to realize in unison that we hadn"t heard our phones go off the entire time we"d been at the club.
"s.h.i.t," she whispered, digging in her purse. "Did I turn it off?"
"I know I didn"t," I said, pulling mine from my pocket. It was just that there were no texts, no missed calls, nothing.
I quickly typed a message to Niall: All good? We"re headed home.
His reply came almost immediately. Everything is fine. Anna is asleep. See you soon.
Niall was stretched out on the leather couch in the living room, watching John Oliver on the telly. Anna was asleep on his long legs, one fist in her mouth and the other curled around her lion blanket.
"Good night out then?" he asked quietly, watching as we hung our coats up in the closet.
"The best," I told him, taking in the scene in front of me. "Are you sure you don"t want to move in across the hall? There"s a flat for sale. This would be very convenient for us."
He laughed. "It"s tempting. Your building is rather posh, and this little one is brilliant, yeah?"
"Cheers, mate," I said quietly. "You let us forget to be worried."
He smiled up at me, giving me that look that told me he thought I was a sentimental w.a.n.ker, and then rested his hand on Anna"s belly. "It was really nice. Perhaps you can return the favor someday." His smile straightened for the span of a heartbeat, and in that tiny flicker in his expression, I felt the full weight of his disappointment in his marriage.
"Without a doubt," I rea.s.sured him.
Sara went to change out of her dress and I reached for Anna, picking her up with the confidence of a father who expects the child to remain sleeping. Except she didn"t; for once she woke when jostled, and her sweet little face screwed up in frustration as she began to cry.
"Ah, sorry, sorry," I whispered, bouncing her gently. "Just a minute, little miss, your mum"s almost done."
Anna didn"t want to be held and rocked, she wanted Sara, and the sound of her angry cry pushed an ache into my chest. But it didn"t bother me the way it would have only days ago. I felt recharged like a battery, full of patience and calm and the quiet that comes from genuine contentment.
Sara came into the hall, taking the baby from me, and I followed them both into the nursery, watching them settle into the rocking chair.
"You"re a lovely sight, my two girls."
"She"s probably the cutest baby on the planet," Sara said, grinning up at me. So relaxed, so f.u.c.king giddy. It was as if she knew all along we would end up right here, in this night.
I bent down, kissed Annabel"s soft cheek as she calmed down and began to nurse. "You got your sensitive side from your daddy," I whispered. "Sorry about that, baby girl. But you also got your mum"s steel, so you"ll be okay."
And up next in the Beautiful series, see what happens when Niall returns to the Big Apple in BEAUTIFUL SECRET.
Starring Niall alongside all the characters from Beautiful b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Beautiful Stranger, Beautiful Player . . .
and one from Christina Lauren"s Wild Seasons series.
"I"m not saying I bet his c.o.c.k is ma.s.sive, but I"m not not saying it, either."
"Pippa," I groaned, covering my face in horror. It was 7:30 on a Thursday morning, for G.o.d"s sake. She could not possibly be drunk already.
I aimed an apologetic smile at the wide-eyed man standing across from us and wondered if I could speed up the elevator with the powers of my mind.
When I glared at her across the lift, Pippa mouthed, "What?" and then held her index fingers up about a foot apart. She whispered, "Hung like a b.l.o.o.d.y horse."
I was saved from having to apologize again when we stopped on the third floor and the doors opened.
"You realize we weren"t alone in there, right?" I hissed, following her down the hall and around a corner, stopping at a set of wide doors with Richardson-Corbett engraved into the frosted gla.s.s.
She looked up from where she was digging through her enormous purse, the bracelets on her right forearm clinking like wind chimes while she searched for keys. Her bag was huge and bright yellow and covered in glittering metal studs. Under the brash, fluorescent lights, her long red hair looked practically neon.
I was dark blonde and carrying a beige crossbody purse; I felt like a vanilla wafer standing next to her.
"We weren"t?"
"No! That guy from accounting was standing right across from you. I have to go up there later and, thanks to you, I"ll take one look at his face and remember you saying the word c.o.c.k."
"I also said "hung like a b.l.o.o.d.y horse."" She looked momentarily guilty before turning her attention back to her bag. "Guys in accounting need to loosen up, anyway." Then, motioning dramatically to the still-dark office in front of us, she looked up and said, "I a.s.sume we"re acceptably alone for you?"
I gave Pippa a playful curtsey. "Please. Go ahead."
She nodded, brows drawn in concentration. "I mean, logically it"s got to be huge."
"Logically," I repeated, biting back my grin. My heart was doing that flip-tumble thing it always did when we talked about him. Adding in the current speculation about his size might be my undoing.
With a victorious thrust of her arm into the air, Pippa brandished the keys to the offices before fitting the longest of the set into the lock. "Ruby, have you seen his fingers? His feet? Not to mention the fact that he"s about eight feet tall."
"Six foot seven," I said under my breath. "Hand size doesn"t necessarily mean anything." We closed the door behind us and flipped on the main office lights. "Lots of guys have big hands and aren"t especially gifted in the man parts department."
Our interns" office was near the back of Richardson-Corbett Consulting, one of the largest and most successful engineering consulting firms in all of Europe. I spent more time here at work than at my new, tiny rented flat in London. And the effort was paying off: after completing the first ninety days of my internship, an actual metal nameplate had replaced the piece of masking tape with the name Ruby Miller scribbled across it, and I"d been relocated from a tiny office on the fourth floor to one of the larger joint offices here on the third.
School had always come easily to me. I"d breezed through high school and survived undergrad with only the occasional freak out. But moving halfway across the world and rubbing elbows with some of the finest engineering minds in the UK? I"d never worked so hard for anything in my life. If I managed to finish this internship as well as I"d started it, a spot at Oxford in the graduate program of my dreams would be mine. Of course, finishing it well most likely involved not talking about executives" c.o.c.ks in the elevator at work . . .
But Pippa wasn"t even done yet.
"I remember reading that it was wrist to the tip of the middle finger," she added, and used her fingers to measure the length of her own hand, and then held them up as an example. "If that"s true, your dream man is packing."
I hummed, hanging my purse and coat on the back of the door. "I guess."
Pippa dropped her bag to her chair and leveled me with a knowing look. "I love how you try and look all disinterested. Like you"re not staring at his junk whenever it"s within a ten-foot radius of you."
I tried to look indignant.
I tried to look horrified and come up with some sort of argument.
I had nothing. In the past six months, I"d logged so many covert glances in Niall Stella"s direction that if anyone was a qualified expert in the topography of his crotch, it would be me.
I tucked my purse in the bottom drawer of my desk, and pushed it closed with a resigned sigh. Apparently my covert glances hadn"t been quite as covert as I"d thought. "Unfortunately, I"m pretty sure his junk hasn"t ever, and won"t ever be that close to me."
"It won"t if you never speak to the man. I mean, look, as soon as I get the chance, I"ll snog that ginger in PR till he cries. You should at least talk to Mr. Stella, Ruby." But I was already shaking my head and she snapped me with the end of her scarf. "Consider it research for your Structural Integrity cla.s.s. Tell him you need to test the tensile strength of his steel girder."
I laughed-groaned. "Great plan."
"Okay, then someone else. The blond chap in the mailroom. Always has his eye on you."
I made a face. "Not interested."
"Ethan in contracts, then. He"s short, all right, but he"s fit. And have you seen him do that tongue trick at the pub?"
"G.o.d, no." I sat down, slumping under the weight of her inspection. "Are we really having this conversation now? Can"t we just pretend my enormous crush is not a thing? I date."
She sighed. "Don"t get me wrong. Stella"s fit as f.u.c.k, but he"s a bit on the prim side, wouldn"t you say?" she asked, cringing a little.
I ran a nail along the edge of my desk. "I sort of like that about him," I said. "He"s steady."
"Stodgy," she countered.
"Restrained," I insisted. "It"s like he"s stepped right out of an Austen novel. He"s Mr. Darcy." I hoped that would help her understand.
"I don"t get that. Mr. Darcy is short with Elizabeth to the point of rudeness. Why would you want someone who"s so much work?"
"How is that more work?" I asked. "Darcy doesn"t lavish her with false praise or compliments that mean nothing. When he says he loves her it"s because he does."
Pippa plopped down on her chair and turned on her computer. "Maybe I like a flirt."
"But a flirt is that way with everyone," I argued. "Darcy is awkward and hard to read. But when you have his heart, it"s yours. Maybe chipping away at that exterior could be half the fun." I"m sure I was a little breathy when I added, "That kind of gentleman-strong but silent-seems to be a dying breed," but the fantasy of seeing the restrained hero unleashed in a way no one else did-uninhibited, hungry, seductive-made it hard for me to think about anything else when he was within a four-foot radius.
"Then I say you go for it. Objectively he"s gorgeous and I guess I can believe he"s got something brewing under the surface. Talk to him, crack that sh.e.l.l. You have months before you start school again. Life is short, live a little."
"The problem is I become genuinely stupid when he"s around," I reminded her. It actually felt good to finally talk about this with someone who knew him, someone other than London and Lola, who were half the world away. "How could I ever hope to have an actual conversation? You know, one where we both know we"re having the conversation? During last week"s meeting, Anthony asked me if I could present some data he"d had me organize from the Diamond Square project, and I was kicking a.s.s until I looked up, and saw the man of the hour standing behind Anthony. Do you know how hard I worked on that? Weeks. Then one look from Niall Stella and my concentration was shot."
For some reason I was unable to call him by only his given name. Niall Stella was a two-name honor, like Prince Harry or Jesus Christ. "I stopped speaking midsentence," I continued. "When he"s near me, either I blurt out ridiculous things, or I turn into a mute."
Pippa laughed before her eyes narrowed and she looked me up and down. "You look especially pretty today," she said, and let the bait hang in the air between us. "Any particular reason?"
"Nope," I said, and busied myself checking the cords attached to my monitor.
Pippa picked up the calendar and pretended to scrutinize it. "You know, I just realized it"s Thursday," she sang. "You"re a little liar, and that explains why your hair looks particularly feisty, and you"re wearing that minxy little skirt."
"Shorter hair always looks Sunday School Teacher or Feisty," I deflected. "It"s not like I have a world of options." In truth, I"d spent way too long getting ready this morning.
When I graduated and decided to make the leap of a lifetime and accept the internship in London and-hopefully-a spot in the graduate program at Oxford, I"d decided I needed to simplify. That week, I went with Lorelei to the salon, and while she was being shampooed, I had them cut off all my hair: short in the back and over the ears, with an exaggerated part and full, swept-to-the-side bangs. It"s strange that a haircut could give someone such a boost of confidence, but that"s exactly what it did.
I"d felt like a s.e.x bomb mixed with a side of bada.s.s.
Which was exactly what I needed today. Because just like Pippa said, today was Thursday, my favorite day of the week. On Thursdays I got to see him.
In most respects, Thursday"s shouldn"t have been anything to get excited about. That particular Thursday"s to-do list included such mundane ch.o.r.es as watering the sad little ficus Lola insisted I smuggle the 5,400 miles separating San Diego from London, typing up a bid proposal and sending it out in the post, and putting the recycling out on the curb. A life of glamour. But pinned to the top of my Outlook every Thursday was also Anthony Smith"s engineering group meeting, where, for one hour every week I had an un.o.bstructed view of Niall Stella, Vice President, Director of Planning, and Holy h.e.l.l, the Hottest Man Alive.
If only I could add him to my to-do list, too.
An hour of prime Niall Stella time was both a blessing and a curse, because I was interested in what was happening in our firm, and found most of the discussions that took place between the senior partners to be absolutely fascinating. I was twenty-three, not twelve. I had a degree in engineering and would be their boss one day, if I had anything to say about it. That a single individual had the power to hijack my attention was beyond mortifying. I wasn"t usually flighty or awkward and I did date. In fact, I"d dated more since moving to London than I had back home because, well, English Boys. Enough said.
But this particular English Boy was, unfortunately, beyond my reach. Almost literally: Niall Stella was over six and a half feet tall and effortlessly refined, with perfectly styled brown hair, soulful brown eyes, broad muscled shoulders, and a smile so gorgeous, on the rare occasion it made an appearance at work, it made women in the office forget what they were saying.
According to the office gossip, he had finished school practically as an infant and was some sort of legendary urban planning mastermind. I hadn"t realized that was an Actual Thing until I started working in the engineering group at Richardson-Corbett and saw him advise on everything from Building Control guidelines to the chemical composition of concrete additives. He was the unofficial final word in London on all bridge, commercial, and transport structure blueprints. To my endless heartbreak, he even once left in the middle of a Thursday meeting to direct a construction team when a panicked city worker called because another firm had botched a foundation design and concrete had already been poured. Virtually nothing got built in London without Niall Stella"s hand in it somewhere.
He took his tea milk first (no sugar), had an enormous office on the third floor, clearly never had time for telly but was a Leeds United man through and through. And although he was raised in Leeds, he went to school at Cambridge, then Oxford, and now resided in London. Somewhere along the way Niall Stella had developed quite the posh accent.
Also: recently divorced. My heart could barely take it.
Moving on.
Number of Times Niall Stella Had Glanced at Me During Thursday Meetings? Twelve. Number of Conversations We"d Had? Four. Number of Either of These Events He Might Actually Remember? Zero. I"d been wrestling with my Niall Stella crush for six months, and I was pretty sure he still didn"t know that I was an employee at the firm rather than a regular takeout delivery girl.
Surprisingly, because he was almost always one of the first to the office, the man in question wasn"t here yet. I"d checked-a few times-craning my neck to see through the ma.s.s of bleary-eyed people filing in through the conference room door.
Our meeting room was lined with a wall of windows, each looking out onto the fairly busy road below. My morning walk to work had been relatively dry, but as it did most days here, rain had begun to drizzle from a sky heavy with clouds. It was the kind of rain that looked like a harmless haze, but I"d learned not to be fooled: three minutes outside and I"d be soaked through. Even if I"d grown up somewhere rainier than southern California, I could never have been prepared for the way the London air, between October and April, felt almost saturated with water, heavy and damp. Like a raincloud had wrapped itself around my body, and seeped straight into my bones.
Spring had just begun in London, but the little courtyard across Southmark Street was still dismal and bare. I"d been told that in summer it was filled with pink chairs and small tables belonging to a restaurant near the back. Right now it was all concrete and mostly-naked branches, damp brown leaves blown across the stark ground.
Around me, people continued to voice their displeasure with the weather as they opened up their laptops and finished their tea, and I blinked away from the window in time to see the last few stragglers rush in. Everyone wanted to be seated before Anthony Smith-my boss and the firm"s Director of Engineering-made his way down from the sixth floor.
Anthony was . . . well, okay, he was a bit of a jacka.s.s. He ogled the interns, loved to hear himself speak, and said nothing that sounded sincere. Every Thursday morning he relished making an example of the last person to walk in, sharply commenting with a saccharine smile on their outfit or their hair so everyone in the room would have to watch in leaden silence as they found the last empty seat and sat down in shame.