One To Watch(84)

“Gwen, come on. We’re eating!”

“I had a worksheet to finish,” she said matter-of-factly as she walked downstairs, but she paused when she hit the ground-floor landing. “What are those?”

She nodded toward the gifts Bea had left on the table in the entryway—Bea got up to retrieve them.

“They’re for us?” Gwen asked.

Linus gasped. “Presents,” he whispered, his eyes growing wide behind his giant glasses.

“I was going to wait until after dinner, but …” Bea made eye contact with Asher, who nodded.

“You can open them now, but quickly. Aren’t you guys as hungry as I am?”

“No!” Linus exclaimed as he tore through the paper on his gift—but Gwen just held hers in silence as she took her seat at the table, making no move to unwrap it.

“Richard Ave-don,” Linus sounded out the name. “Who’s that?”

“It’s pronounced Ah-ve-don,” Bea said gently, opening the oversized book of photos she’d bought for him. “He’s one of the most famous fashion photographers ever. Some of his pictures are even in museums.”

“No way.” Linus turned the pages delicately. “Like the museum you went to with Dad?”

“Exactly.” Bea grinned and caught Asher’s eye. “Your dad told me you really like clothes, like I do. These were some of my favorite pictures when I was your age, so I thought you might like them too.”

Linus gave Bea a tight hug—well, as tight as his tutu would allow—and she closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his small frame nestled against her. When she looked up, she saw that Asher was watching them, his eyes full of emotion.

But across the table, Gwen regarded Bea with distaste.

“Did you think this was all you needed to do?” she asked. “You bring us presents, we’ll want you to be our new mother?”

“Gwen!” Asher exclaimed.

“What?” Gwen’s tone was impassive. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” Bea interjected softly. “Obviously, I don’t expect you to set your opinion about me based on gifts. We’re supposed to be spending time getting to know each other—that’s what tonight is for.”

“Why did you bring the gifts, then?”

“To make a good impression.” Bea smiled. “And you see? My plan worked flawlessly.”

There was a moment of stillness as Gwen looked at Bea, appraising her. Bea held her gaze … and then Gwen unwrapped her gift: a DVD of the 1938 classic movie Bringing Up Baby.

“It’s one of my all-time favorites,” Bea explained, “and I thought you might like it too.”

“Why would you think that?” Gwen wrinkled her nose. “It looks like a romance.”

“It is,” Bea admitted, “but Baby is a leopard—the leopard is Katharine Hepburn’s pet, and it gets loose, so there’s a whole thing about that, and your dad, um. He told me you like leopards? Cary Grant plays a museum director, and there’s a dog who steals a dinosaur bone, so …”

Bea looked to Asher for help, but he shrugged apologetically. “I’ve never seen it.”

“So Dad told you about my research project.” Gwen turned over the DVD in her hands. “I take it you two talk a lot about Linus and me?”

“Of course we do,” Bea replied. “He’s really proud of you guys.”

“But in Morocco, you told him you didn’t know if you were ready to be a mom.”

“Gwen,” Asher warned, “that’s between Bea and me, okay?”

“No, it isn’t,” Gwen corrected him sharply. “It was on TV—everyone knows. And it concerns us, Dad. What if Bea decides to walk out on us like Mom did?”

Bea drew in a sharp breath—this was the most she’d heard about the circumstances of Asher’s divorce, and in truth, she was dying to know more.

“This is neither the time nor the place to discuss that.” Asher’s tone was terse, and Bea noticed a flush of anger creeping into his skin.

“Then when is?” Gwen demanded. “This is our only time to meet Bea, and we’re supposed to say ‘Oh goody, can’t wait for her to move in’ by the end of dinner?”

Asher moved to respond, but Bea put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Hey,” she said to Gwen and Linus, “did you guys know my biological father left our family when I was a baby?”

The two kids turned to look at her, Linus’s eyes wide, Gwen’s narrow.

“That wasn’t your dad in Ohio?” Linus asked.

“That was my stepdad,” Bea explained. “He and my mom got together when I was four, so as far as I’m concerned, he’s my real dad. They didn’t show this on TV, but that day at my parents’ house, I got really sad—I went and hid in my room, and my parents came to find me. I told them I was scared that I would never fall in love, that I would always be alone.”

Asher looked at her, his expression pained.

“What did they say?” Linus asked.

“My stepdad told me that if I wanted to get married, I couldn’t just fall in love. He said I had to choose someone to be my family, and that they had to choose me back. He said that was how it felt with our family—that we didn’t just happen. We chose each other. Do you know what I did right after that?”