“I will,” he says, squeezing my arm and sending tingles to the rest of my body. “Open yours now.” He slides the bag over in front me.
“Okay,” I say, trying to hide my giddiness. I begin pulling out the massive amounts of tissue paper to reveal… “Holy shit.” The words come out breathless and reverent as I spot the distinctive B on the gorgeous red purse.
“If you don’t like it, you can take it back and pick out something different from the Bouvier store.”
I pull out the purse with my mouth gaping open. “You got me a Bouvier purse?” My fingers run over the surface, the cool leather a stunning blood-red alligator-skin texture. This had to have cost thousands of dollars. “It’s the most beautiful purse I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Good,” he says, sounding relieved. “I must have looked at a hundred different purses, but none of them seemed right until the saleslady brought this one from the back.” He lowers his voice. “Ithasn’t actually been released yet, so she had to call New York to get special permission to sell it to me.”
This is the point where I should probably act all demure and say something like, “Oh noooo! This is too much. There’s no way I can accept it.”
But this man took his time to pick this out especially for me, so there’s not a chance in hell I would hurt his feelings and not accept it. Plus, I really fucking love it.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Hale. I absolutely love it.”
“Remi,” he says, his voice gruff. “Call me Remi when we’re alone.”
Holy fucking hotness. Just the wordalonefrom his perfectly sculpted mouth has me thinking thoughts that should probably give me a urinary tract infection.
“Okay, and you can call me Mindy if you want. When we’re alone. Not that I’m thinking about us being alone together or… shit. You know what I mean.”
He chuckles. “I know what you mean.” Then he gestures toward the purse. “Open it up. There’s something else inside.”
“What?” I practically yell in the man’s face. “The purse is plenty. You didn’t have to?—”
He cuts me off with a finger to my lips. “Hush and open the damn purse, Mindy.”
I sigh and mumble, “You’re the boss.” It doesn’t escape my attention when he shifts in his seat at those words.
My fingers open the silver zipper, and, once again, my mouth drops open. “You got me pens?”
I lift my gaze to his, finding him chewing the corner of his lip. “I remember you told me your dad always got you cool pens for Christmas.”
“See? I knew you wanted to be my daddy,” I say airily, and he shifts again, this time tugging at the thighs of his black dress pants.
I do my best to contain my smirk when he growls out, “Could you not say shit like that?”
“Whatever you say, boss.” My words soften when I realize something. “I can’t believe you remembered that. I mentioned it once and that was seven years ago.”
His hot brown gaze strips me bare. “I remember more than you can imagine.”
I yank my eyes away before I do something stupid like straddle my boss, rip off his tie, and demand he tie me to his desk. Instead, I spend the next few minutes gushing and squealing over all the pens and cute markers in the bag. There have to be at least a hundred of them.
Finally done fangirling over writing implements like a nerd, I pick up the white gift bag with silver snowflakes and hand it over.
He pulls out the golf ball first. It’s mounted inside a plexiglass and wood case, and he turns it over in his hands before freezing, his eyes shifting up to mine.
“Is this for real?” I nod, and he looks back down at the signature. “This is an actual golf ball signed by Arnold Palmer?”
“It is. It’s one of the balls he played with when he won the Masters in 1964.”
He holds the case in one hand and massages his forehead with the other. “Honest to god? This was one of Arnold Palmer’s actual golf balls?”
“Yes,” I confirm again. “There’s a certificate of authentication in the bag. It belonged to my dad.”
Remi pulls out the paper and inspects it, shaking his head before gaping at me like I just handed over the keys to the lost city of Atlantis. “You can’t give me this, Mindy. Not if it was your father’s.”
I wave him away. “He had a lot of sports memorabilia, a whole room full actually. My mom rented a storage locker for all of it after she moved to a smaller house.”