Beautiful Boss (Beautiful #9) - Christina Lauren Page 0,34

furrowed. “I was preparing myself for something really traumatic.” She squinted across the table at us. “Boston is sort of an annoying distance. It’s too far to drive regularly, but feels silly flying. Plus, it’s Boston.”

“Not to me,” I told them. “I’ll be down here three days a week.”

Sara passed me the baby, searching her purse for something a little quieter for Anna to play with than the spoon she was currently banging against the table. I turned her to face me, puckering my lips for a kiss.

Anna reached forward, grabbing my mouth in her chubby fist.

“Are you staying up there for the holidays?” Sara asked. She returned with a rattling plastic thing before noticing Anna’s death grip on my face, which, no surprise, Max was happily witnessing. “Oh, jeez, Will, that must hurt!”

Sara urged her daughter to swap my mouth for the toy, and Annabel promptly used it as a hammer against my forehead.

“Oi!” Max yelped, finally leaning forward to steady her hand. “Ouchie, lovey, be soft. That hurts Uncle Will.”

“Apparently Anna isn’t thrilled about Boston,” Bennett said dryly.

“It’s okay,” I told Sara, leaning in and kissing Anna’s cheek. “She should learn these moves. She’s one now; you never know when she’ll get into a fight in the alley behind the daycare.” I kissed her little nose. “And it depends on what Hanna’s folks want to do around the holidays,” I said. I glanced at Hanna, who just shrugged.

“Chloe and I will host,” Bennett interjected. “Dad and Mom are headed to New Zealand for the month, so we’ll have it at our place. And I don’t want Sara having to do anything strenuous with a one-month old.”

We all stared quizzically at Bennett for a beat before deciding in unison to not question his sudden sentimentality.

I eyed Sara’s protruding stomach. “You look like a movie prop.”

She groaned. “I know. Just get her out of me already.”

“When was your due date again?” Hanna asked.

“Yesterday,” Sara whined, sweetly. “They say the second one usually comes early. They lie.”

“You know what usually helps with inducing labor . . .” Chloe sang and Sara glared at her.

“We tried that.” She held up her hand, ticking off on her fingers: “We tried sex, and spicy food, and walking. I swear the only thing left is a scalpel.”

Max winced bodily beside her and Hanna leaned closer to her other side, putting her arm around Sara’s shoulders.

I listened as my wife laid out the details of Harvard’s hiring package, and leaned back in the chair, making faces at my goddaughter. Relief coursed through me like a drug and I couldn’t help but feel the tightness of emotion rise in my throat. We’d built a life here, and I didn’t want to lose these friends. I didn’t want to be too far from the people we loved.

We had looked online at houses in the area; we had talked about how our schedules would mesh. We had discussed our shared need to remain near our family: both hers and the chosen one here with us now. In Cambridge, we would be close enough to the Bergstroms that it would be Hanna’s turn to hassle Jensen about dating, and close enough to these idiots to share holidays.

I glanced at Hanna as she chatted happily, bubbly as ever. She grabbed a napkin and drew the layout of her lab, before looking guiltily up to me and then flipping over the napkin and drawing the floor plan of the house she thought she liked.

Massachusetts had no idea what was coming for it, but I did.

This beautiful boss across the table from me was about to take over the whole goddamn state.

Acknowledgments

When readers ask for more of certain couples, it’s fun for us to try to make it happen. And, more often than not, it feels a little like a family reunion to sit down and write another, small glimpse into their world.

Will and Hanna hold a special place in our hearts because it was the first book we wrote together where we both felt like authors, rather than women-in-other-careers who happened to also write books. And we think this grounding resonated with readers in a way that has really endured. So first and foremost, thank you to each and every reader and blogger who has picked up our books, read them, and then told us what you loved, what you didn’t love, and what you wanted more of. Without you, there would be no us.

Thank you to the constant MVPs in our