Delilah motioned him to the exam table and began assembling a tray of supplies to stitch up his cut. “Can someone check on you tonight? Wake you up a couple of times and make sure you know your name, date of birth, and how many fingers they’re holding up?”
His parents would stay if he asked them, but his one-bedroom apartment offered no comfortable space for guests. His partner, Hunter, could crash on his couch. He’d bitch like the princess with the pea about spending a night on the sofa, but he’d do it. “Yeah, I’ll get—”
“I can,” Savannah said.
He glanced over at her. She wore a guilty I-gave-him-brain-damage look.
“Perfect.” Delilah ran down the symptom list with Savannah while she prepped him for stiches, concluding with, “Do you want to stay while I close this up, or would you like to step out to the waiting area?”
“She’ll stay.” High-handed of him, yes, but he wanted to present a united front to their parents. They didn’t have their story tight, and if they got out of sync, the charade would be over before they made it out of the ER.
…
Watching Dr. West suture a neat line of stitches along the top of Beau’s forehead didn’t tie a knot in Savannah’s stomach. The older woman worked with the speed and efficiency of someone who knew what she was doing. Receiving the list of instructions and symptoms to keep an eye out for didn’t raise her stress level much. But tendrils of tension unfurled in her stomach when Beau linked his fingers through hers and led them to the waiting room—and their parents—all of whom stood as they approached.
The moms clucked over the bandage on his forehead and the stitch count. Seven. Beau downplayed the concussion to a lingering headache, and gave her hand a thankful squeeze when she refrained from blurting out the actual diagnosis, which probably made her the world’s best fake fiancée.
And a crappy fake daughter-in-law, a little voice in her head tacked on as they made their way out to the cars. Whatever. None of this was likely to earn her any honesty points, but going along with the omission seemed like the kind of thing a real fiancée might do to spare her future in-laws a sleepless night.
They re-formed their rush-to-the-hospital groups for the trip home, and Savannah spent the ride in the back of the Navigator again, buckled next to Beau. This time the moms didn’t have a medical emergency to distract them, and they jumped right into information-gathering mode.
“So,” Beau’s mom prompted, “tell us how he popped the question.”
Following his advice to stick to the truth, she responded, “Um. Very unexpectedly,” and glanced sideways at him.
“Really?” Her mom’s eyebrows lifted. “No need to play coy, Savannah. Sinclair told us you suspected last night’s dinner would include a proposal.”
Shoot. She straight up sucked at this. Less than a minute into the official spinning of the web of lies and already caught in an inconsistency of her own making.
Beau laughed and brushed her hair behind her shoulder, as if he’d performed the small, intimate gesture a thousand times before. She shivered as his fingertips lingered on the curve of her ear. “Guess I tipped my hand when I told you to wear something pretty?”
She turned to him, grateful for the rescue line. “I hoped you’d ask. I had a feeling, but I didn’t take it as a foregone conclusion.”
A teasing smile didn’t quite overshadow the sympathy lurking in his eyes. Yes, they’d touched on her situation before, but now she was one of two people sitting in the car who realized she’d gone to dinner last night expecting to become someone’s one and only, and instead came home alone. She looked away and blinked rapidly. A lump formed in her throat.
“What did you wear, honey?” her mom asked.
Beau beat her to the response while she battled the lump.
“She wore a purple dress that turned her eyes violet and turned me into the most envied man in the restaurant.”
Okay, two things just became immediately apparent. He really did have amazing powers of observation, and she should let him do most of the talking, since he could come up with a line like that from a two-second glimpse of her yesterday evening when she’d passed him in the hall on her way to meet Mitch.
“Which restaurant?” This time Beau’s mom posed the question.
Savannah held her tongue, waiting for him to respond, but he didn’t automatically toss out a place. Maybe he wanted her to go ahead and name the actual restaurant? The silence stretched.
“Le Bistro,” she blurted, at the same time Beau said, “Barcelona.”
“Le Bistro Barcelona,” she stammered. “It’s new…French-Spanish fusion.”
Beau’s mother laughed and turned in her seat to beam at them. “Olé and ooh la la! Sounds very sophisticated. I remember a time when this one wouldn’t eat anything he couldn’t pronounce.”
“I still don’t, but I can pronounce more stuff now.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Montgomery faced front again, her smile undimmed. “I’d say someone broadened your horizons. Keep at him, Savannah. He’s a diamond in the rough.”
“Speaking of diamonds,” her mom broke in, “I can’t wait to see the ring!”