Page 4 of Her Forever SEAL

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.

The suite opened up behind him, orchids on the coffee table by the window, a champagne bucket, the city spread out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and she looked at all of it and then looked back at Mason in his suit and then down at herself in the dress she had brought from home and back up at him.

“Where are we going?” She heard the slight panic in her own voice. “Mason, I'm not dressed for anything⁠—”

He pulled her inside and into his arms and kissed her, slow and deliberate, the way he kissed her when he wanted her to stop talking and just be present, and it worked; it had always worked for twenty-two years and she did not see that changing.

When he lifted his head she was not entirely sure what city she was in.

“Come here,” he said, and walked her into the bedroom.

She stopped in the doorway.

Four boxes sat on the bed in a row, each with a bow, and she stood there looking at them and then looking at him and feeling the particular mix of confusion and delight and mild alarm that came from knowing Mason Gault had planned something.

“What have you done.” It came out more as a statement than a question because she could already tell it was too much. She could feel it from across the room. “Do I need to open them in any order?”

“Start with the big one.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. She lifted the lid, pulled back the tissue paper and went completely still.

Silver. Streaks of deep blue. Simple and elegant and nothing she would ever have chosen for herself in a hundred years.

She stood up and held it in front of herself and she was moving toward the bathroom before she had consciously decided to, needing to see it in the mirror, and when she did she made a sound she couldn't entirely account for.

“My God, Mason.” Her voice bounced off the bathroom tiles. “This must have cost the world.”

She carried it carefully back out and sat back down on the bed. The next box was smaller and flat. She lifted the lid and found a clutch, it was silver, with just enough blue in it to be perfect. She held it against the dress.

“It matches perfectly.” She looked up at him. “How did you even know⁠—”