LITMIR.BIZ

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have done. Dammit.

      “Breathe,” he said, forcing himself to speak in a quiet tone. He wasn’t sure he was nailing “sympathetic,” but at least he wasn’t yelling. “Breathe, Serena.”

      She gave her head a tiny shake, as if she’d forgotten how.

      Oh, hell. The absolute last thing any of them needed was for his pregnant assistant to black out in the middle of the workweek in an upscale department store. Mario would call an ambulance, the press would get wind of it, and Helen—the woman he was still technically married to—would make him pay.

      He crouched down next to Serena and started rubbing her back. “Breathe, Serena. Please. I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you.”

      She leaned into him then. Not much, but enough to rest her head against his shoulder. Hadn’t he wanted this just a few days before? Something that resembled his holding her?

      But not like this. Not because he’d lost his temper. Not because she was...

      Pregnant.

      Chadwick didn’t have the first clue how to be a good father. He had a great idea of how to be a really crappy father, but not a good one. Helen had said she didn’t want kids, so they didn’t have kids. It had been easier that way.

      But Serena? She was soft and gentle where Helen, just like his own mother, had been tough and brittle. Serena worked hard and wasn’t afraid to learn new things—wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty down in the trenches.

      Serena would be a good mother. A great mother.

      The thought made him smile. Or it would have, if he hadn’t been watching her asphyxiate before his very eyes.

      “Breathe,” he ordered her. Finally, she gasped and exhaled. “Good. Do it again.”

      They sat like that for several minutes, her breathing and him reminding her to do it again. The assistant knocked on the door and delivered their beverages, but Serena didn’t pull away from him and he didn’t pull away from her. He sat on his heels and rubbed her back while she breathed and leaned on him.

      When they were alone again, he said, “I meant what I said on Monday, Serena. This doesn’t change that.”

      “It changes everything.” He’d never heard her sound sadder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want anything to change. But it did. I did.”

      They’d lived their lives in a state of stasis for so long—he’d been not-quite-happily married to Helen, and Serena had been living with Neil, not quite happily, either, it turned out. They could have continued on like that forever, maybe.

      But everything had changed.

      “I won’t fail you,” he reminded her. Failure had not been an option when he was growing up. Hardwick Beaumont had demanded perfection from an early age. And it was never smart to disappoint Hardwick. Even as a child, Chadwick had known that.

      No, he wouldn’t fail Serena.

      She leaned back—not away from him, not enough to break their contact, but far enough that she could look at him. The color was slowly coming back into her face, which was good. Her hair was mussed up from where her head had been on his shoulder and her eyes were wide. She looked as if she’d just woken up from a long nightmare, like she wanted him to kiss her and make it all better.

      His hand moved. It brushed a few strands of hair from her cheek. Then his fingers curved under her cheek, almost as if he couldn’t pull away from her skin.

      “I won’t fail you,” he repeated.

      “I know you won’t,” she whispered, her voice shaking.

      She reached up—she was going to touch him. Like he was touching her. She was going to put her fingers on his face and then pull him down and he would kiss her. God, how he would kiss her.

      “Knock, knock!” Mario called out from the other side of the door. “Is everybody decent in there?”

      “Damn.”

      But Serena smiled—a small, tense smile, but a smile all the same. In that moment, he knew he hadn’t let her down yet.

      Now he just had to keep it that way.

       Five

      “Breathe in,” Mario instructed as he held up the first gown.

      Serena did as she was told. Breathing was the only thing she was capable of doing right now, and even that was iffy.

      She’d almost kissed Chadwick. She’d almost let herself lean forward in a moment of weakness and kiss him. It was bad enough that she’d been completely unprofessional and had a panic attack, worse that she’d let him comfort her. But to almost kiss him?

      She didn’t understand why that felt worse than letting him kiss her. But it did. Worse and better all at the same time.

      “And breathe all the way out. All the way, Ms. Chase. There!” The zipper slid up the rest of the way and she felt him hook the latch. “Marvelous!”

      Serena looked down at the black velvet that clung to every single size-ten curve she had and a few new ones. “How did you know what size I’d need?”

      “Darling,” Mario replied as he made a slow circle around her, smoothing here and tugging up there, “it’s Mario’s job to know such things.”

      “Oh.” She remembered to breathe again. “I’ve never done this before. But I guess you figured that out.” He’d guessed everything else. Her dress size, her shoe size—even her bra size. The strapless bra fit a lot better than the one she owned.

      “Which part—trying on gowns or being whisked out of the office in the middle of the day?”

      Yeah, she wasn’t fooling anyone. “Both.” Mario set a pair of black heels before her and balanced her as she stepped into them. “I feel like an imposter.”

      “But that’s the beauty of fashion,” Mario said, stepping back to look her over yet again. “Every morning you can wake up and decide to be someone new!” Then his face changed. “Even Mario.” His voice changed, too—it got deeper, with a thicker Hispanic accent. “I’m really Mario from the barrio, you know? But no one else does. That’s the beauty of fashion. It doesn’t matter what we were. The only thing that matters is who we are today. And today,” he went on, his voice rising up again, “you shall be a queen amongst women!”

      She looked at him, more than a little surprised at what he’d said. Was it possible that he really was Mario from the barrio—that he might understand how out of place she felt surrounded by this level of wealth? She decided it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d made her feel like she could do this. She felt herself breathe again—and this time it wasn’t a strain. “You really are fabulous, you know.”

      “Oh,” he said, batting her comment away with a pleased grin, “I tell my husband that all the time. One of these days, he’s going to believe me!” Then he clapped his hands and turned to the cart that had God only knew how many diamonds and gems on it. “Mr. Beaumont is quite the lucky man!”

      But he wasn’t. He wasn’t the father of her baby and he wasn’t even her boyfriend. He was her boss. The walls started to close in on her again.

      She needed to distract herself and fast. “Does this happen a lot? Mr. Beaumont showing up with a fashion-challenged woman?” The moment she asked the question, she wished she could take it back. She didn’t want to know that she was the latest in a string of afternoon makeovers.

      “Heavens, no!” Mario managed to look truly shocked at the suggestion as he turned with a stunning diamond solitaire necklace the size of a pea. “His brother, Mr. Phillip Beaumont? Yes. But not Mr. Chadwick Beaumont. I don’t believe he ever even joined his wife on such an afternoon. Certainly not here. I would recall that.”

      Serena

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