Page 25 of Say You Will

He huffs a laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and picks up my luggage. With a palm on my lower back, he guides me to the revolving front door. “Let’s get out of here.”

Oliver gives Henry side-eye and one incongruously deep bark before he patters beside me, nose in the air, head bopping side to side.

Henry’s SUV waits directly in front of the hotel, blinkers on, and a man stands beside it. I recognize the posture and the black suit of a McRae bodyguard from my years spent with them. Henry opens the door for me, himself. No chauffeur in sight.

“Oliver’s car seat is in my suitcase.”

He stops and eyes Oliver. Then he glances back at me. “Of course. The main compartment?”

“Yes, but I’ll—”

Henry has already unzipped my bag and reached inside for Oliver’s fleecy, blue car bed. As he drags it out, I cringe as stretchy lace in a variety of colors clings to the fleece.

The two fabrics together create a staticky combination.

Henry’s face is utterly blank as he takes in the sight of Oliver’s lingerie-covered bed.

Heat starts somewhere around my belly button and shoots all the way up and out the top of my head.

I make a grab for the bed. Before I manage to get ahold of it, Henry pulls a scrap of lace off the fleece. A zap of visible electricity sparks, and the lace clings as he lifts it between two fingers and his thumb.

I see the exact second Henry realizes what he’s holding in his hand. His face goes so red that between his white shirt and blue eyes, he looks positively patriotic.

Henry blinks. “Panties.”

I hiss, “Don’t say ‘panties.’ I don’t like that word.”

His eyebrows lift. “What word do you prefer?”

I snatch the other two pairs off the dog bed. “Just call them underwear,” I mutter under my breath.

Face still red, his fist clenched around the fabric in his hand, he says, “These are not underwear. If you want to see underwear, I’ll show you underwear. They’re made out of cotton. And they are white. Sometimes, they are black or navy. They are not . . . not . . .”

He waves the scrap of red lace in the damn street, and I shoot a concerned glance around to be sure no one has a camera out.

“These are panties, Franki,” he whispers.

“Call them what you want, then. But stop waving them around. Put them away and let’s go.”

He nods brusquely. “Put them away,” he repeats.Then he shoves my underwear in his pocket.

“Henry?”

He runs a hand through his mop of hair. “Yes?”

I planned to tell him to take my underwear out of his pocket and put them in the suitcase where they belong. But he’s so embarrassed, and so am I.

If I tell him what he did, it’ll just prolong it.

And he’s my Henry. We’ve both been through things, and he’s clearly struggling. But this flustered man in the sweater-vestismy friend. I saw it in the way he spoke to Oliver. In the way he smiled with his eyes, not just his mouth. The way he defended me so ferociously, and, yes, in his flustered reaction to my underwear. He’s still in there. He may be buried, but he’s not dead. Not gone. He needs someone in his corner whoseeshim. No matter how frustrated and angry his proposal made me.

So, I don’t tell him he put my underwear in his pocket. He’ll figure it out sooner or later.

Instead, I say, “Let me strap Oliver’s car bed in, and we can get on our way.”

seven

Henry

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