I relaxed completely for the first time since being at James’s house earlier today, and my exhaustion just washed over me. I found it hard to keep my eyes open, and it didn’t take long before I was sound asleep.
The next couple of days were a whirlwind as almost everyone I knew, mostly colleagues and a few of mine and Becca’s friends came to visit me and to look at Alec.
“So this is going to be the next generation’s finest Seattle investigator, huh?” Demetri, my boss, said when I opened up the blankets so he could see my son.
I raised my eyebrow at him, and he just smirked. ”Since both his mom and grandad are cops, we’ll see how he feels about becoming one,” I replied to that, and he laughed, luckily not loud enough for Alec to wake up.
“Why break a beautiful tradition?” he asked and winked at me. I just shook my head at him and leaned my head against James, who was sitting on the edge of my bed with his arm around my shoulders.
Since James was exceptionally good at reading me, he knew that I was getting tired and so he told everyone to say their goodbyes and let me have my rest.
“Thank you,” I told him when he took Alec from me, very expertly this time, and placed him in his own bed.
“You know you could have told them to leave yourself,” he pointed out with a tender smile directed my way.
“No, I couldn’t. They were here for such a short time, and I’m always tired now. I feel so anti-social.”
James placed both of his hands on my face. “Jenn, you pushed your son out of your body all by yourself. I believe you have the right to be tired.” He gave me a kiss and then settled into his position on the edge my bed so that I could snuggle up to him.
“He’s not just mine, you know…not anymore,” I said lowly into James’s chest as I was about to fall asleep.
“Do you mean that?” he asked and stroked my hair lovingly. It made me relax even further and I was not far from unconsciousness.
“Every time…” The words trailed off as I disappeared to the land of dreams.
The next thing I knew, I woke up alone in my room. A small surge of panic went through me when I realized that I didn’t know where Alec was. James was gone as well, so while I truly hoped that he had Alec, my fear made it hard for me to be rational.
The door opened, and James walked inside with Alec in his arms and Sue next to him. I breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back against my pillows.
“Thank God,” I said lowly and the two of them looked my way.
James’s smile wiped off his face when he saw me. “Jenn, what’s wrong? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shook my head and swallowed hard. “No, it’s nothing. I just got a little scared when I woke up alone, that’s all.”
James walked up to my bed and handed Alec to me. I immediately calmed down when he was in my arms. “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t think you’d wake up yet. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I’m fine now. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You have as much right being with him as I do.”
Sue cleared her throat. She was still by the door.
“James, I suggest you include Jenn in what we were speaking of. She has the right to know.”
I turned my head toward James. “What? What do I have the right to know?”
Sue backed out of the room and closed the door.
“Love, while you were sleeping, I realized that I’ve been going at this completely wrong. I was holding Alec in my arms, and I felt immense regret that I’ve excluded you from parts of my life. At the time, when I did it, I convinced myself it was for both of our safety, but I knew the moment I laid my eyes on that little boy,” he gestured toward Alec, “that I’ve been lying to myself.”
I tensed up in expectation, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to disturb his flow.
He came and sat down on the edge of the bed and placed an arm around my shoulder. “Baby, I never lied to you about my job. I’ve just never told you the whole truth; I didn’t think I’d need to because within minutes of finding out the smallest piece of information about what I did, you very nearly figured it out. It scared me that you were so intelligent and even more so that you didn’t back away immediately when I asked you to.”
He sighed.
“I didn’t want to tell you because there’s a reason for the secrecy, but I believe it doesn’t matter anymore.” He locked eyes with me. “That call I received just before Alec’s birth was my boss. He wanted me back in Chicago immediately so that he could give me my next mission and ship me off to DC, but when I told him I couldn’t do that, he asked me where my priorities lie. I told him the truth, although I did say that I wanted to be present when my child was born, he got the point and told me I should be prepared for the cleaners to come to my house soon.”
“The cleaners?” I asked and frowned. None of what he told me made sense.
He sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose when he realized he’d tangled it all up. “I’ll just take it from the beginning.” He opened his eyes and looked at me again, but before he spoke up, he gently caressed Alec’s pink cheek. He was still sleeping, but he appeared to gravitate toward the touch. I smiled at that. “Jenn, I used to work for an organization that is rather unknown to the public because we handle state secrets. We do a lot of work with CIA, FBI, and the US army, but we are more on the down low than the other bureaus. I worked as a kind of spy, I guess. My job was to find out what information our targets had and if it in any way posed a threat. If so, I would report back to my superiors and they would send someone who could eliminate the threat.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry. It was all so amazing, and I had no idea what to believe. I kept my mouth shut, though, because I had a feeling he wasn’t done.
“Now that I’ve been fired, cleaners have been at my house to find and destroy anything that could relate to the organization. During my time, I’ve worked underneath a different name. My bosses don’t even know of my real name, and I don’t know theirs. That’s how I’ve been able to be with you without disruptions, because James Masen has nothing to do with my job. Now that it’s over, I’ll be able to be just James again—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
I looked at the man and blinked. I really had no idea how to wrap my head around all of the information I’d just received. My head was spinning, so for my own sake, I decided to dumb the whole thing down a bit.
“So what you’re telling me is that you’ve been working for a super-secret state organization underneath a code name, but now when you’ve been let go, that code name identification will be wiped clean and deleted and you can go back to a normal life?”
James nodded. “Pretty much.”
I nodded as well. “Okay. Cool,” I said and then left it at that. He’d probably told me everything he could, so there was no reason for me to try and pry further.
He chuckled and leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “You never cease to amaze me, Jenn.”
CHAPTER 37
EPILOGUE
I groaned in frustration as I straightened out from my crouch and set after the toddler who tried to outrun me and get to the toys even though I’d just explained to him that he had plenty of toys at home. He did not need any more, and especially not another action figure that would be disposed on the floor for me to step on.
“Alec, do not run away from me!” I cried after him, maybe a bit too loud since the others milling around in the aisles of the supermarket turned their heads and stared at me. I could see in their eyes how they judged me, how they thought I should control my child better, but they had no idea how completely uncontrollable Alec had become lately.
It all pretty much started the week after his third birthday when he suddenly realized that he did not get the toys he wanted.
I caught up to him and grabbed his small arm to keep him with me. He immediately began screeching and crying at the top of his lungs before he laid face down on the floor, hitting it with his fists and feet
.
I picked him up by his waist and set him on his feet. Once again, I crouched down to his level. “Alec, stop this behavior right this moment or we will walk out of here and I’ll drop you off with your father.”
He quieted down and looked at me with a huge pout and red, puffy eyes.
I gently wiped the tears of his cheeks and kissed his red, swollen face that was still the most beautiful thing to me. “Darling, you have more toys than you can count at home. Why exactly do you want that particular doll?”
“It’s from the movie Daddy and I watched,” he said lowly and looked down at his feet.
“Honey, you can’t get a toy from every movie you watch with Daddy. And what would Iron Man say if you came home with a new toy? Wouldn’t he get jealous?”
Alec sniffled and nodded.
“You know what. Let’s finish this shopping quickly, and then we can bake cookies after dinner tonight. Would you like that?”
The toy was completely forgotten as soon as I mentioned cookies. My son was a huge cookie monster, but I was keeping his sugar addiction under control for the moment. I didn’t want him to become one of those children that eventually refused to eat anything but sugary things.
Alec smiled huge and threw his arms around my neck before giving me a sloppy kiss. “I’m sorry for being bad, Mommy,” he said into my hair with his adorable mispronunciations and I hugged him tighter to me. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could compare to the love I felt for my son, not even the love I held for my husband.
Yes, James and I had gotten married almost a year back, and it wasn’t that it took me two years to realize that I wanted him as my husband. He had actually proposed to me the day after Alec’s first birthday. Apparently he had planned to do it at the birthday party, but Becca had threatened to castrate him if he took the spotlight off of Alec.
We planned the wedding for over a year because I had to admit that I kind of wanted a big, beautiful wedding. It was a rather big deal, after all, when the chief of police’s daughter finally became a ‘Mrs.,’ and having been born into the higher social circles, it was expected of both of us to have a big wedding, although we kind of flipped the bird at the socialites when we refused to invite the families that only wanted to come for the media exposure.
The Carters had even tried to crash the reception. That did not work so well, though, and they got a few embarrassing photos of them spread in the tabloids.
Renée did not even try to make contact, and I couldn’t have been happier about that. I hadn’t heard a fart from the woman in the almost ten years that had passed since I took my car and drove away from the PPP academy.
That night, Alec and I were completely covered in flour when James came home. He was wearing a crisp suit, as he always wore when he was at the bureau.
Through his old job, even though there were no records of him ever working there, Seattle FBI knew of him and offered him a position as a profiler. They were impressed with his skill to read people so thoroughly, and they tested him for a month before he was officially hired.
James was extremely pleased with this because he was able to work with what he’d always known, but at the same time, he could always come home to me and Alec at night.
“Well, isn’t that a sight for tired eyes,” he said when he spotted us and laughed. “Where is my little monster? I can’t see him anywhere.”
“I’m right here, Daddy!” Alec exclaimed from his spot on the counter and reached out his arms to be lifted. James didn’t care at all that he got flour all over his suit as he happily lifted our son into the air. Even though Alec wasn’t biologically his, you would never believe it when you saw the two of them together, although it was apparent that the older Alec got, he would probably resemble his biological father more, because apart from my dark hair and Dad’s nose, he didn’t look much like a Braun.
James and I hadn’t planned to tell Alec that he was a tube child. Only if he ever asked would we tell the truth, but we both thought he would be happier if he got to grow up believing his father figure was in fact his real father.
James situated Alec on his hip and then leaned in to give me a kiss. It caused Alec to giggle, and James blew a raspberry into his neck.
When I saw the two of them together, I began wondering, not for the first time, if James desired to have a child that was biologically his, or if he was content with being Alec’s father. If he did want a child, I was afraid that it would soon be too late. Neither of us were getting younger. I had already turned thirty-six, and James would soon turn forty. It wouldn’t be a problem for him, but my biological clock was ticking.
Being the daughter of an OB/GYN, I knew that when a woman passed the forty-year mark a pregnancy would be more difficult, and I didn’t know what James desired.
I wouldn’t be against having another child. I remembered how I used to want a sibling to play with when I was a child, but I had known from the start that Renée would never want another child, so I kept it to myself and pretended that I had a brother or sister instead.
I don’t think Alec would ever feel the same desire for a sibling because he had two parents who loved to play with him, but I don’t think he would mind one either.
When Alec was put to bed, James and I stayed up on the couch with a glass of wine and just enjoyed each other’s company. I was leaning against his shoulder and he had his arm around me and I couldn’t have felt happier in that moment.
“Do you have anything special you want us to do next week?” James asked after a few minutes of silence and took a sip of his wine.
Our one year anniversary was next week and my parents had promised to babysit Alec so that James and I could truly celebrate.
I thought about what I wanted to do, but drew a blank. I had never needed to do anything lavish to celebrate, but I kind of wanted to make this anniversary special since it was our first.
“Not really, but it would be fun to go out and eat someplace nice, although I don’t know where.”
“Just eat? You don’t want to go out dancing or something like that?”
I shook my head. “No. Just knowing that I will have you all to myself after dinner is more than enough for me.”
James leaned in and gave me the sweetest kiss ever, and it made me reminisce to that day when I finally had felt confident enough with my feelings to tell him that I loved him, too. I don’t think I’d ever seen James that happy before. He had almost not believed me when I told him, but only almost.
He’d said that he had noticed the change in me as soon as we brought Alec home from the hospital. I had become more affectionate with him, and I never wanted him to drive back to his place when the nights fell.
When it came down to it, James had only owned his house for a mere two and a half months before he moved back into my house with me and Alec. It just did not feel right not having him around.
The day before our anniversary, Becca decided that I needed a day to spoil myself, so while Alec was at daycare, she and I went to her favorite spa to get pampered.
“You have the most awful bags underneath your eyes, darling. We need to take care of those,” Becca said as soon as we met up at the parking lot.
“Alec’s been having nightmares for a while. We don’t know what’s causing them, but I have a hard time sleeping through the night. Hopefully, he’ll sleep soundly at Dad’s tomorrow night, and I get my rest.”
Becca laughed. “Rest? Is that what you’re going to do when you finally have your man alone? Don’t tell me you’ve gone dry down below,” she replied, and I rolled my eyes at her crassness.
“I am completely functional in that area, thank you very much, and you know I mean that I’ll get my rest after. I would never let a night like this pass me by.”
“You sure as hell wouldn’t!”
We walked through the entry doors and stood with the brochures for a few minutes, trying to decide what treatments we wanted.
“Uh, I think I’ll go with the ninety minute massa
ge and then the mani-pedi after,” I told the receptionist. She clicked on her computer and I gave her my credit card. The treatment was pricey, but totally worth it. I needed to relax. With my days being split between the station and Alec, and then James at night, I never did anything for myself. I saw this as an anniversary gift to myself. Besides, James and I could afford things like this from time to time. Not always, but sometimes.
“You’re not gonna wax?” Becca asked over my shoulder as I was paying.
“No. I home-waxed two nights ago and it’s still smooth, so I’m good.”
“Well, I am. It was a long time ago since I had a Brazilian, and I think Solomon would appreciate it.”
“I’m sure he would,” I replied with a chuckle.
I felt as if I would fall asleep as I sat in my chair after my massage and had my feet primped and polished. The pedicurist had the softest hands and it felt so good knowing that my calluses were soon just a memory.
Suddenly, I heard a voice that made my entire body go cold.
“You people are incompetent! My husband will hear about this and close this place down faster than you can say ‘manicure.’ Mark my words!”
My eyes shot open because I just couldn’t keep them closed. I had to have it confirmed if the voice did in fact belong to the person I believed it belonged to.
Sure enough, there she was. The woman who had once given birth to me stood merely a few feet away, but the time that had passed since I last saw her had not been a friend. It was obvious she’d had one or two face lifts and more than enough Botox injected into her forehead and lips. She looked worse than Janice Dickinson without the makeup. She looked so much older than her fifty-seven years, weirdly enough, despite her plastic surgery.
She made a dramatic turn toward the door, but on the way, we happened to get eye contact, and while I, too, had aged since we last saw each other, she instantly recognized me, and a sinister smile stretched her Botox-filled face. She abandoned her exit and stalked up to me.
“Jennifer, darling, it’s been ages! How are you?” She leaned in to kiss my cheek as if we were long lost best friends, but I shrunk back into my chair and away from her. She actually kind of scared me at the moment.
The Perfect Guy: A Romance Novel Page 27