Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad-Chapter 806 : An Old Enemy

*Cat*

The next morning my limbs felt deliciously heavy and my mind was sluggish. For some reason, Elio had to make enough noise to wake a cemetery. On days like this, I swore he woke me up on purpose.

“Hey, baby, have you seen my shoes?” he asked as if I were the one who wore them.

“They’re in the bathroom,” I muttered, wondering how he’d overlooked them. I’d tripped over them in the dark when I’d gone in there last night.

He had a meeting today at the legit business. Though he was full-time Don now, he occasionally had to make legitimate business appearances to explain where our money came from.

“You’re the best,” he said.

I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow. I wanted to go back to sleep.

“Hey, Cat?” he asked.

I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming that I was sleeping.

‘Remember, you love him, Cat.’ I rolled over onto my back, probably looking like a starfish plastered to the side of someone’s aquarium. I internally reminded myself why I loved him, and I finally just got up with him.

“Yes, dear,” I said in a saccharine sweet voice.

He gave me a suspicious look over his shoulder as he flipped through the hangers in the closet.

“Where’s the gray pin-striped suit? I want to wear it today with the light blue tie.”

“It’s at the cleaners, but there’s the other gray one you can wear with the navy tie.”

“Hum?” he murmured and sighed over the choices.

I watched him dress for his meeting with his mysterious important client. The man was absolutely edible. I wanted to jump his bones even as I yawned and bemoaned my wakened state.

I went downstairs to grab some coffee and watch the cook make his breakfast sandwich to take with him. She was just wrapping the sandwich in parchment paper and lidding his carrying mug when he came in looking like something out of GQ in his four-piece suit with a crisp white shirt and navy tie on.

I wanted to pull at his tie and mess him up a bit before letting him go, but I knew he didn’t have time.

“Have a nice day,” I said, pulling him down by the tie anyway to get a kiss before he left for the day.

I looked at the clock over the stove and realized Emilia would be waking any minute now. I was surprised her little voice gurgling and babbling coming through the baby monitor speakers hadn’t been what woke me.

Instead, my very sexy fiancé had been banging around the bathroom and closet as if he were battling back intruders instead of getting ready for the day.

I shook my head with a smile at his inability to keep the noise down this morning. I pulled a sanitized bottle from the cabinet, mixed Emilia’s bottle, and grabbed a jar of apples and cherries for her breakfast.

I thought of the way she liked to pick up foods and eat them and made her a small bowl of dry cereal puffs, put everything on a tray, and headed upstairs to the nursery.

She kind of looked like I felt this morning. She was on her back, her eyes at half mast and her little fists out to the side of her body, but her legs were still bent as if she were sleeping with her rear in the air the way she liked to do.

I smiled at our baby, and her eyes brightened and she smiled back at me.

“How’s Mama’s baby?” I asked, putting the tray aside and lifting her to kiss her cheeks.

“Ma-ma,” she said.

It never failed to make me smile the largest grin ever when she said my name.

“A-da-da-da,” she called clapping her hands.

I laughed at her. “He’s at work, sweetheart, but we’re going to have fun together this morning. Hungry?”

She smacked her lips and clapped again, making hungry noises and babbling eagerly at me as if she were sharing her overnight adventures with the angels with me.

“Is that right?” I asked while changing her diaper and listening to her incoherent story.

“Did you go flying with the angels last night, baby?” I kept talking with her as I put her in her highchair and gave her a bottle.

We spent the morning together. Emilia was doing that scooting kind of moving in a laborious stomach-crawling thing babies do. She rolled over. She scoot-crawled, tried to stand but fell onto her bottom when she couldn’t catch her balance even while holding on, and then she just decided to play with her toys.

She’d finally decided that trying to build with the blocks was more fun than tearing things down, though she didn’t get her structure very high. Then, she’d tear it down with no compunction and clap with glee at her demolition efforts.

It made me laugh every time she did it. She was making different sounds and laughing. It was a wonderful morning of laughter sweet babbles, and endless conversations I didn’t have a clue the contents of.

“How are you ladies doing today?” Mom asked, picking up Emilia and kissing her cheek when she came over that afternoon.

Emilia was getting drowsy. She rubbed her fists at her eyes and whimpered.

“I think I wore her out,” I said, watching as Mom sat in the rocker with Emilia’s squirming and wriggling little form in her arms.

“She’s fighting it, but the sandman’s after that baby hard, isn’t he?” Mom asked Emilia while I went to the cabinets to make Emilia another bottle for Mom to give her before Emilia’s afternoon nap.

“Yeah, she’ll be out before you know it.”

“How did things go with Emilio about the dress?”

“He’s a wonderful man!” I gushed with a big silly smile on my face.

“I take it he said yes,” Mom asked, laying Emilia down in her arms and relinquishing the holding of the bottle to Emilia.

Emilia was starting to be more independent these days. I was a little sad to allow her the little things she wanted to do on her own. It meant that she was growing too fast to me, but the doctors said she was right on schedule and meeting all her milestones. I was the one who wanted her to go slower.

“He said yes. He was good about it. He doesn’t realize how his generosity and care affect me. if I wasn’t already in love with him, I’d just keep on falling for him. He just keeps loving me so well.”

“Good, that’s what he’s supposed to do,” Mom said, a wicked gleam in her eye.

“Mom!” I admonished with a smack to her arm as I walked by her to put the toys Emilia and I played with back in the toy box.

Mom laughed at my outraged surprise. “I don’t know why you kids act like you’re the ones who invented sex when we’re the ones who brought you into the world.”

“I guess it’s because we think our mothers should be as innocent as the driven snow.”

“Then, you’re delusional,” Mom said, lifting a drowsy Emilia to her shoulder.

“I guess,” I said. “I’d better call Olivia so I can get the ball rolling on my dress.”

Mom nodded, still patting Emilia’s back and rocking her the rest of the way to sleep.

I called Olivia to set everything up with the dress designer she’d recommended. I was excited and ready to run out and get everything taken care of all at once, but my appointment would be tomorrow, so I had the afternoon free.

“Hey, Mom, do you mind staying with Emilia while I surprise Elio with a lunch date?”

“Not at all. Emilia will be just fine with me.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, and I ran to get ready.

When I was finished dressing in a calf-length, curve-hugging sleeveless navy sheath with a pair of silver slingback heels with my hair up in a stylish bun, I called Leo to see if Elio was still at the firm’s office.

“No, the meeting’s over and he’s back at the warehouse,” Leo said.

I grabbed my purse, checked my reflection and was pleased with what I saw, and left to take my man out for lunch.

I had the driver take me to the warehouse. When I walked in, Elio’s eyes lit up. He stood and walked toward me, smiling.

“Hey, beautiful. What are you doing here?”

I tugged at his tie and smiled up at him. “I came to take my man out for lunch.”

Behind his smile, I saw an underlying tension. It dawned on me that Elio was supposed to come home after his meeting at the firm. I searched his dark eyes and saw the stress there.

“What’s up? Is everything all right?” I asked, feeling him tense.

He hadn’t expected me to pick up on the tension in the room or the worry in his eyes. I sighed, wondering when he was going to realize how much I knew him. I smoothed out his tie, waiting for the lie I could see gathering in those dark eyes.

If I were anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have caught it, but this was the person I loved the most other than our child. I paid attention to everything about him. I wanted to know him. I was attuned to him because he meant everything to me, so I knew every minute detail of that gorgeous face, from the dark stubble that grew too fast for him to keep up with to stay clean-shaven throughout the day to those eyes, which could grow opaque in minutes when he wanted to hide something from me.

“It’s nothing, just work.”

I nodded, pretending to go along with the lie. “Get your things, your woman wants to treat you today,” I said, rubbing my fingers over a small wrinkle in his shirt just over his pec.

He smiled again, kissed my lips, and walked back to the desk he’d been sitting at to gather his wallet, phone, and keys.

When we got into the car, I nodded to the driver and turned to Elio.

“I don’t get to know where we’re going?” he asked, smiling at me, a gleam of mischief in his eyes.

“No,” I teased back, giving him back a bit of his own medicine.

He chuckled at me and drew me closer into his arms.

My head rested on his shoulder and my legs were over one of his knees as we relaxed, the driver taking us into the city. I decided it was a good time to bring up the tension in the warehouse.

“I know something’s wrong,” I said. “I am with you because I love you. I don’t love you for who society says we should be. I love you for you. I want you, and I want you to be honest with me.”

I didn’t yell at him. I didn’t feel like yelling. I just stated every word of my declaration as the facts they were. This was an old argument. I was starting to realize it was going to be an ongoing one that we’d have to have every now and then with Elio, thinking he’s protecting me by keeping me out of the loop, and me, reminding him I needed to know what the dangers were so I could be prepared for them.

While he contemplated how he would handle what I’d just said, I waited for him to decide. I’d said what I had to say. It was up to him to decide on the dynamics of our conversation and afternoon together.

He took a deep breath and blew it out with a hard sigh. “Junior is back. After all this time, he’s finally out of his cave.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, staring at him a little horrified.

“I don’t know yet, but the boys and I are working on it.”

I shuttered, thinking of all the trouble Junior could cause. I was hoping he’d stay gone forever. I felt a little sick to my stomach as I thought of all the ramifications that Junior’s reappearance could have on our lives.