Page 35 of Drive Me Wild
Theo spoils the living hell out of his goddaughter. For her first birthday, he got her the cutest mini-Chanel bag I’ve ever seen in my life.
We walk in and are immediately surrounded by shelves lined with colorful board games, new innovative toys, and the latest and greatest in children’s literature. It’s every kid’s dream and every parent’s nightmare. I walk past it all, zoning in on the small shelf lined with fuzzy farm animals.
Standing on my tiptoes so I can reach, I carefully pull down a light pink piggy. It’s not a large stuffed animal, fitting perfectly in my palm. Two beady eyes stare at me while a snout and a smile hover just underneath. I’ve never seen these stuffed animals anywhere in London—and yes, I’ve looked. My own childhood stuffed animal, Mademoiselle, used to be fuzzy and soft like this, but years of cuddles and washing machine trips have left her rather rugged looking. The plushie in my hand looks exactly like Mademoiselle did in the baby photos my parents have hanging around the house.
Theo places his calloused hand on the back of my neck, gently kneading out the tension that’s sitting there. “Hey,” he says softly. “You good?”
“Hmm?” I lift my head, meeting his piercing blue eyes. His forehead is etched with worry lines as he studies me. I’m sureI look like a proper idiot standing there with tears in my eyes, looking at a damn stuffed animal meant for those “ages 3+.”
“Yeah,” I say, giving him a small smile. “I’m good. Don’t know what came over me.”
Theo rubs the pad of his thumb against my cheek, wiping away a stray tear I didn’t know was there. “You’re crying.”
“Tearing up,” I correct him. My eyes get puffier than a bao bun when I cry. “Very different.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I don’t like it.”
“Well, I apologize.” I laugh and wipe the skin underneath my eyes to get rid of any emotional evidence. “I used to have a stuffed animal just like this when I was a kid.”
Under no circumstances am I revealing that Mademoiselle is still a permanent fixture in my life. I don’t travel with her, but she’s sitting on my stark white duvet, waiting for me to return from France.
“Yeah?” Theo picks up a stuffed elephant from the shelf, turning it around in his hands. “It’s cute. From your parents?”
I shake my head. “Birth mum. I had her with me when my parents adopted me.”
Theo squeezes the back of my neck in a comforting motion before putting the elephant back. I follow his lead and place Mademoiselle’s twin back on the shelf in between a cow and squirrel.
“We can go now,” I announce. “I just wanted to see that. It caught my eye.”
I start walking toward the door before realizing Theo’s not at my side. Turning back to look at him, he’s holding up some sort of princess doll.
“Uh, Theo.” I laugh. “You good?”
Theo stares at me as if I should already know the answer. “I haven’t picked out anything for Rosalie’s birthday yet.”
“Oh, I forgot,” I admit sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Turning to the shop owner, he asks if they have a doll that has the hair color of the one in his right hand, but wearing the dress of the one in his left hand. As he tries to juggle a third doll in his hand, he says, “You can head outside if you need some air, eh? I’ll only be a minute.”
In the past few days, Theo’s done more for me than he’ll ever realize. He’s given me happy memories of a place that I’ve always kept in a shadowed part of my mind, too scared to bring it out into the light. If he wants to decide which princess doll to buy his goddaughter, he can take all the damn time in the world.
We both sleep—inour separate rooms—for ten hours straight once we got back to the hotel after the race. Theo wakes up crabby and hangry, so we head to a nearby restaurant the hotel manager recommends, and the host leads us to a booth positioned against the window.
“There’s got to be some joke about an Englishwoman and an Australian walking into a French restaurant,” Theo says with a grin as we slide into the cushioned benches.
“If there’s not, I’m sure you can think of something perfectly crude and inappropriate,” I reassure him. My eyes light up as I scan the menu. “We should get escargot.”
I feel Theo’s eyes gaze at me from over the top of his oversized menu. “You want to eat snails?”
Rolling my eyes, I correct him. “It’s notsnail,it’sescargot.”
“Giving something a fancy name doesn’t change what it is,” Theo argues. “It’s still a slimy land creature.”
“Fortunately for us,” I shake my head, “slimy land creature was too many words to fit on the menu.”
“You’ll eatthat,but not bananas?”
I’ve always claimed I don’t like the fruit because of the texture, so I see where his confusion lies. But I’m not admittingI’ve seen too many bananas covered in condoms to ever view them as edible. I flick up my left brow. “Says the guy who refuses to eat the left side of Twix bar.”
