Valentine's Day 1988 – Three and a half months old
"Laura?" Remington called from the entryway, as he shrugged off his coat, tossing it over a chair, then picking up his offerings from where he'd laid them on the credenza.
"In the living room," she called back.
He found her stretched out on the floor next to Olivia's blanket where the baby lay. Smiling widely, he held out the fluffy, brown bear with a red heart embroidered on its chest.
"You romantic, you," she teased, her brown eyes dancing with mirth. He looked down upon her with feigned exasperation.
"Really, Laura, how many times must I remind you I'd never bestow a teddy bear upon a woman?" With a flourish, he removed his other hand from behind his back. "These are for you," he held out the long, gold box, tied with a red bow. Tucking her legs to the side, she sat up and accepted the box from him with a smile, then watched as he stretched out on the opposite side of the blanket from her, wiggling the teddy bear above Olivia.
Olivia cooed at the bear, reaching for it clumsily while chugging her legs excitedly.
"A bear, however, for a little lady is a completely different matter. Isn't that so, a stor?" he asked his infant daughter, as she continued to coo, kick and reach for the bear held just out of her reach. "For you, a dozen bears, a peck, a bushel—"
"And a new house in which there's room to store all those bears," Laura added drily, as she lifted the lid from the box holding two-dozen long-stemmed roses. Her eyes snapped upwards to find a pleased, cheeky grin on her husband's face. "With a closet big enough to fit all the jewelry Mommy suddenly has," she sing-songed to Olivia.
You shouldn't have, the look she bestowed upon her husband said, as she picked up the velvet covered jewelers box from where it was nestled amongst the blossoms.
His grin merely widened and he waggled his brows at her. Her lashes fluttered downward and she tentatively opened the lid, her eyes flickering up to his face when she saw what the box contained.
"You really shouldn't have, Remington," she protested as she removed the necklace from its box. She hung the chain from her fingers, watching prisms reflect off the diamonds encrusting the sculpted heart pendant. Between them, the baby cooed at the glittering object dangling above her.
"Nonsense," he disagreed. "Several years back, I saw a piece much like this one," he reached out and fingered the pendant, "That I wished very much to purchase for a particular young woman who'd thoroughly caught me by the heart. But I was… worried, if you will… being given a piece such as this, would be far too revealing and might send the young lady running for the hills…" He arched a brow at her. "Not to mention may have invited questions I was unprepared, myself, to answer. So, instead, I presented her with a much more… understated… trinket." Releasing the pendant, he reached for the charm on the necklace she was wearing, to finger it. "A piece which still conveyed the same meaning, but obliquely enough that we could both pretend it was anything but what it was." She graced him with a dimple smile and a challenge glimmering in her eyes.
"And now?" she challenged.
"And now," he released the pendant, and touched two fingers under her chin, "I've no reason to hide what it is I feel."
Leaning over the baby, he touched his lips to hers.
She uttered a surprised gasp, parting their lips, when Olivia let out a squeal of glee.
They shared a smile when they saw the source of their baby's joy: she'd managed to grasp that bit of sparkling temptation in her hand.
"Like father, like daughter," Laura mused.