Glass Ceilings (25 page)

Today marked one month since she stepped back into my life. One month ago today, the sight of her sitting in that cold interrogation room caused my heart to flip violently in my chest. Not much had changed in a month regarding my reaction toward her. My heart still flipped every time I looked at her, except now it flipped because she wore my ring, bore my name, gave me a son. Watching her run around the surf giggling and laughing with my son close behind caused my heart to also burst with love.

What did change tremendously in a month was my attitude toward my career. Where then it was all I could think about, now my job and all its responsibilities lay millions of miles away. Now, I no longer lived for my work, but instead lived for them…my family, my wife, and my son.

Angela Cavello was now Angela Farley. Nicholas David Cavello was now Nicholas David Farley. Nick Farley was now a husband and a father. Nick Farley now lived and breathed for them.

Most anyone who's had a gun pointed at their head with little to no hope of surviving would claim it was the most poignant moment of their life. A moment when you were forced to reflect on your past in the little time you had left. That near-death experience altered every part of you.

For me, my poignant moment didn't come as I stared at Rupert wondering if he'd end it all at any moment. It actually occurred hours later, after I got home. I realized I was no longer the same man. I honestly can't say my transformation happened all at once. Over the weeks that passed between that first day Angela and I reconnected, to the day we caught Rupert, little by little I'd been morphing into this other person. The final transformation happened later that night when I lay in bed holding my wife in one arm while my son slept in the other, and realizing I could quit the FBI without a second thought.

I didn't, of course, but realizing I could and not miss it is what changed me. So, when I went into headquarters the next day to talk to anyone and everyone regarding all I knew and all I didn't on Rupert, for the first time in my life it was just a job and not my life.

The days after Rupert's arrest were spent going back and forth to headquarters for endless questioning. James Pagan, director of the FBI, interviewed David and me personally. A few months ago, his praise would've fueled my job performance for months. The day he thanked David and me for our help in apprehending Rupert, he also offered me a promotion.

As Rupert's replacement, I'd be taking on the role of deputy director of criminal investigations, with a huge pay increase and the best corner office at the New York headquarters.

That day, he also offered David a position, stating his military background made him perfect FBI material. David thanked him, but said he needed to consider what it was he wanted to do. I thanked him, accepting the promotion he dangled yet not feeling excited about it in any way.

My first order of business would be to find every fucking agent who'd worked with Rupert. I planned on cleaning house, and surrounding myself with men I cleared and trusted. I had DC headquarters backing me in this investigation. It would be the hardest case I ever handled, because those men were supposed to be my brothers.

Where my thoughts should have been on my job and what it entailed, instead all I could think about was where I should take Angela and my son on a much-needed vacation.

Bermuda…that was where.

“Dada!”

The sound of his voice calling my name jolted me out of that lounger and sent me running toward him. His face was a combination of excitement and terror as I growled and pretended to be a bear.

“Dada, no bear!” He thrust his tiny hand in an attempt to halt my attack. I stopped abruptly, and when I dropped to my knees turning into a barking dog instead, he giggled adorably.

“Mama!” he called, his tiny feet kicking up sand as he ran away. “Dada doggie!” Even though he was much steadier on his feet these days, running on sand still had him wobbling back and forth as if in a drunken stupor.

Angela snatched him up, screaming along with him while pretending to run away from me. When the distance between us grew, I quickly stood and caught up in a few long strides.

Easily lifting them both, I carried them into the ocean, turning his squeals into another fit of giggles. Sandwiched between Angela and me, we took turns kissing him and each other.

“Dada whim.”

“You want me to swim, little man?” Droplets of water rolled over his cheeks as he nodded furiously. I bent to kiss them away one by one. “Okay, hold on tight.” Angela placed him on my back, circling his arms around my neck in preparation for the ride. I gripped his wrists securely and asked, “Ready, dude?”

“Ya.”

My wife watched as I took my son for a swim around the shallow waters, her smile a vision of beauty. Her bikini-clad body was hot enough to bring the Pope to his knees. Each time we completed a lap back to her, she'd bend to kiss his head and then my lips.

“Nicholas, isn't Mommy pretty?”

“Ya,” he repeated, before he kicked his legs impatiently on my back. “More whim.”

“Okay, more swim coming up.”

Since arriving, I'd been determined to mentally catalog every new memory between the three of us. His first time on a plane, his first time in the ocean, the first time he and I napped together in the same bed may all be tiny inconsequential things to some, but to me they meant so much more.

The warm turquoise sea surrounding us became a metaphor for what I felt deep inside my heart. The best word to describe what I was feeling would have to be “buoyant.”

“You literally conked him out.” Angela came into our room, closing the door behind her.

After we had dinner, we both bathed him, read to him, and put him down for the night in the white wooden crib the resort supplied. The junior suite we spent the last seven nights in became our little haven here in paradise, and I was going to miss it.

I looked up from my book, taking in every inch of my gorgeous wife. With her hair still damp from her shower, I could smell her vanilla shampoo as the fragrance filled the air around me. She smiled shyly at my heated gaze and a light blush tinged her cheeks. “What?”

“You look stunning.”

She looked down at the FBI T-shirt she had on. “You got too much sun.” She smirked, not believing what I just said. “When we get home I need to get some new sexy pajamas. Your shirts aren't very sexy.”

“Baby, a sack would look sexy on you. I like you in my clothes.”

My T-shirt that served as a nightgown rode up when she slid into bed beside me. Like a magnet to metal, my hands instantly found bare skin and held on without a conscious thought.

“I wish we could stay here forever.” With her head on my naked chest, the feel of her lips moving against my skin when she spoke was an instant turn-on.

“Me, too,” I agreed, squeezing her closer to kiss the top of her head. My fingers played with the chestnut curls that lay on her back, distracted by memories of our time here. It had been a great vacation and it was going to be hard to leave it all, but I was ready to start the next chapter of our lives.

“I guess come Monday, it's back to reality for us. We'll just have to start planning our next vacation to have something to look forward to.”

“Maybe Disney World.” She laughed at my groan. “Okay, okay. We can probably wait a few years for that.” After a pause she asked, “Nick, are you going to be okay?”

“I'm more than okay. I've never been happier.”

“Not with us, with work. That promotion puts you behind the desk more, and I worry you accepted it to make me feel better. I also worry you'll regret it. Being in the field is what you love.”

“There's only one thing I love, Angela. It has nothing to do with work, and everything to do with you and my son.”

She didn't respond, but instead placed a soft kiss on my chest. Using a fingertip to tilt her chin up, I looked at her before asking my own question.

“You don't believe me?” I continued to watch her carefully.

“I want to,” she admitted with a small shrug of her shoulders. “It's just that your job is such a big part of you. I know what you do terrifies me, but that's my issue. I never want you to feel you have to give it up for us.”

I shifted so we were lying side by side, face-to-face. Burying my hand in her silky hair, I held her head to ensure she met my gaze. The green and gold flecks in her eyes shimmered, coming alive before my very eyes. I ran the pad of my thumb across her bottom lip, and they parted at my touch.

“I need you to listen to my words, okay?”

She nodded slowly, waiting for me to continue.

“Baby, I learned a lot about myself recently. The most important thing I realized, being an FBI agent was my job and not my life. You and Nicholas are my life. I won't deny that before you guys came back to me, I needed the thrill, the danger, to fill a huge void. I most definitely used my job to distract myself from what I was missing. I now know, I don't need it to fulfill me anymore, because I have you to do that.”

“I'm going to ask another obvious question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you really forgive me for hiding Nicholas from you?”

“I do,” I said immediately. “But…I'm not going to pretend all that I missed doesn't haunt me. I'll just have to revel in each and every memory we create together, and all the new ones we'll create in our future.”

“Tell me what you're most looking forward to.”

“Getting you pregnant. Watching our baby grow inside you. Being there every minute of every day until he or she arrives. I can't wait for that.”

She buried her fingers in my hair, running them through the strands repeatedly. I loved when she did that, and pulled her closer as a response to my arousal.

“Me, too.”

That all too familiar charge we first felt almost two years ago zipped between us, not having lost any of its intensity. Staring into her green eyes affected me as much today as it had the first time I saw her at The Dump. Tasting her sweet lips reminded me of that moment at midnight when I first tasted them. Feeling her pressed against me was just as thrilling now as it had been the first night we made love at Eve's townhouse.

Much had changed over these past two years, but the one thing that hadn't was our connection. I knew it then. That night we parted, I just knew that she'd forever affect me, and I've never been more right about anything in my life as I was about her.

It wouldn't matter where our lives took us once we got back home. It wouldn't matter where my career led me, or even where we decided to live. As long as we were together, that's all that mattered.

“I can't believe all that has happened these past few weeks. I have to keep pinching myself as a reminder it's all real, that everything I dared to dream of all those days in Ohio is actually real now.”

I moved a hand and pinched her ass causing her to squirm in my arms. “I'll do the pinching for you,” I said teasingly. Keeping my hand on her butt, I pulled her even further into my body, pressing my hard-on against her. “I'll do a lot more than that to remind you this is real, I'm real, and my love for you is very, very real. I'll remind you every day, for the rest of our lives.”

“Remind me now,” she whispered, while our eyes remained locked on each other in a trance-like state.

And so, I did…

Through my kisses, I showed her how real it all was.

Through my caresses, my lips on every inch of her skin, I showed her how real it all was.

Through staring into her eyes as I slid into her warmth, mouthing how much I loved her, I showed her how real it all was.

Through our climax, as we clung to each other while we were completely connected in every possible way, I showed her how real it all was.

We spent the rest of our night in paradise making love, slowly, tenderly…and it was pure heaven on earth.

Even once we got back to New York, back to our everyday lives, I reminded her what we shared at that moment in Bermuda was our new reality, no matter where we ended up.

The three of us as a family was our new real.