A Beautiful Forever - By Anderson, Lilliana Page 0,99

without the ex-girlfriend sighting.

Before he leaves, Elliot’s father, who actually seems quite nice considering what I was expecting, invites us both out to dinner the next week, saying that he wants to give us a wedding present since he missed our nuptials.

Now that all the guests have left, I’m taking over baby duty by lying on the floor in the lounge room with Grace while she plays on her mat, grabbing at little balls and shaking them so the animals and tiny beads inside them rattle about.

Elliot is off helping his mum, and Steven clean up after the BBQ of the century. We’ve decided not to say anything about Katrina to his mum. She went to so much trouble to put all of this together so we don’t want to appear ungrateful and Elliot seems very sure that she didn’t mean anything by it, so I will trust him on this one.

With the BBQ behind us, I can look back on the day and say that I honestly feel very welcomed by all of Elliot’s friends and family, and after I got over my moment of intense jealously, I can say that I had a lot of fun today, too.

Chapter 39

Elliot

Mum has agreed, well, actually she’s insisted on looking after Grace for us while we go out to dinner with my father and Erica. Both Paige and I are really nervous about leaving her. We've never had her babysat before.

“It’ll be fine you two, just go and have a good time. I’ll call if she won’t settle, don’t worry,” mum stresses to us as we leave. She practically pushes us out of the door and closes it in our faces.

“Shall we?” I say to Paige, holding out my arm for her to take. She smiles and slips her arm in mine, leaning into me. “You look gorgeous tonight by the way.” She’s wearing a fitted black dress that hugs her body in all the right places, and I wish that we had a room of our own to go back to after dinner tonight.

“Thank you, you scrub up okay yourself,” she replies.

We drive to the restaurant, spending most of our time wondering aloud if we’re doing the right thing leaving Grace behind, we could have brought her with us. But when we pull up at the restaurant, we realise it’s pretty up market. Not really the right place to bring a baby.

Paige

God, I hate being away from Grace, and I hate eating at fancy restaurants, obviously with my background; I haven’t been to very many. Ok, I’ll be honest; this is the first time, the only extended table manners I have are learned from watching Pretty Woman.

Elliot very gentlemanly opens my door and ushers me inside, the décor is very modern; all glass lined walls and dark square shaped furniture. The host shows us to our table where Elliot’s dad, and his wife are already waiting.

Robert stands as we approach, shaking Elliot’s hand and kissing my cheek. I take my seat across from Erica and smile at her.

“Are we late?” Elliot asks.

“No, not at all,” his father answers. “We just wanted to make sure we were here before you.”

“Ok?”

“Well, it’s not every day that a father gets to welcome his son home from overseas, especially when he brings with him, such a lovely wife and a beautiful daughter.”

I blush a little and thank him for his kind words. A waiter comes over and takes our drinks order. Robert orders a bottle of wine for the table and feeling uncomfortable asking for a coke in a place like this, I go with sparkling water. I feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothing in here.

“You don’t drink Paige?” asks Erica.

“No, I don’t. I’ll have one occasionally but I'm still feeding Grace, so I don’t drink at all at the moment.”

“You’re still feeding her? Isn’t she eating normal food yet?” she asks wide eyed.

“She only eats soft food, she still needs her milk,” I answer diplomatically.

As our drinks are brought to us, we all talk about what life was like for us in the UK, Erica is interested in the fact that I’m a hairdresser, saying that she always wanted to be one when she was a kid. Although I think, most girls go through that phase at some point.

The waiter returns and takes our orders, I order something to do with chicken and hope that it will be ok. The meals aren’t names that I recognise, so I just point at one