Chapter 21: The Blue Box

It had been nearly a month since Dani had come home from Barcelona in a daze, clutching the blue box, and she still felt like she was stuck. She remembered the last time she'd felt 'stuck' like this, remembered that she'd forced herself to make a choice that time, and that it had been the wrong choice. So even though it was hard, this time she wanted to be absolutely sure.

And it was hard. And becoming harder every day.

She and Nico still worked together with clients and other employees, and she found she could manage that. There were always other people around then, and Dani was able to maintain her composure and professionalism without much difficulty. But the lunches, those few hours in the week when she was alone with Nico, those were the tough moments. She'd sit there each time, talking and eating, outwardly composed, but inside she was trembling, and all she really wanted to do was to pull him out of his seat, drag him off to the nearest quiet corner, wrap her arms around him, and never let go.

Instead, she forced herself to limit their physical contact to a brief hug – nothing at all would have been impossible – while she waited to figure it all out. Waited to become unstuck.

But she didn't try to fool herself. Those brief hours had become the focus of her entire life.

So when Nico was gone for a few days on V3 business, and they had to miss their Wednesday lunch, Dani found it hard to contain her disappointment. But she reminded herself that it was only two days until their Friday lunch. But then he had to cancel Friday, too, because he was going to be tied up for the entire day with a group of Japanese businessmen who wanted V3 to manage the American affairs of their clients.

And she just knew it was going to be almost impossible for her to sit in her office, calmly working, knowing Nico was in the building, but unavailable, after the disappointment of two missed lunches in a row. So when a patient who wanted a private appointment called, she scheduled the appointment for that Friday morning at her home, and decided to take the rest of the day off.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dani had just shown her patient to the door and was wondering what to do with the rest of her day, when she heard the ding that accompanies an incoming email and decided to take a quick peek. When she saw who it was from, she had to sit down quickly and take some shallow breaths while she screwed up her courage to open it. Because the email was from Nico's sister, Liz.

Finally clicking on it with shaking hands, Dani found the message was short and to the point.

"Hi Dani," it read. "I meant to send these pictures ages ago, but it slipped my mind. There are a couple of great ones of you and my big brother. Hope we'll get a chance to see you again soon. Liz."

She saw there was an attachment, and she knew they must be the pictures from the anniversary party.

Dani sat there a long time, trying to decide if she really wanted to torture herself with pictures taken on a night that she had been so extraordinarily happy, but in the end, she couldn't seem to stop herself.

She opened the attachment, and started to work her way through the photos.

Most of them made her smile, as she remembered the Careleses and all their kindness. Yes, there she was, and there was Nico, and his brothers and sisters, and parents, and there they were again –

Dani stopped suddenly, just staring at the picture that had come up on the screen. She remembered the occasion of that photo perfectly. Nico was being his dour self, Liz had complained to him, and Dani had poked him in the ribs to get him to smile. She'd looked up at him, just as a smiling Nico had looked down at her, and the photographer had taken the shot.

As she looked at that picture now, she knew it wasn't just a snapshot of a man and a woman in their party finery, smiling for the camera. In fact, they weren't even looking at the camera. They were looking at each other. And even though she was one of the two people in that picture, she gasped at the expressions on their faces.

Because this was a picture of love.

And suddenly that film, the one that she couldn't remember, the one that contained all those vignettes of two lovers getting to know one another, that film came back to her full force.

And as she continued to look at the picture on the screen, her eyes filled with tears. Is this what it looks like, she asked herself. I know what it feels like, but is this how we look at each other, as though the rest of the world only existed in our peripheral vision? How can anyone else stand to be around us?

And she laughed at that. Maybe they couldn't, she thought.

She didn't even realize that she was crying until her eyes were so blurry that she could no longer see the picture. So she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and asked herself, what the hell is wrong with me?

I love this man more than I ever thought I could love anyone, and he feels the same. He's a good person, Jeanette said so. Lindsay reminded me about his extraordinary self-control. And Juliette said he'd never let her down. And I didn't need any of them to tell me those things because I know him better than anyone. I know what kind of a man he is.

I know what kind of a man he is. But for a little while there, I forgot.

She felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off her heart. She laughed as she thought of her daughter's recent words to her. Lindsay had said that she thought her mother was fearless, but for a little while, Dani had forgotten that, too. But today was the day that she remembered. Today was the day that she finally knew what she wanted, and was going to find the courage to make it happen.

Sitting still was impossible now, as she tried to make a plan. Oh, yes. First things first. She looked around her office desk in a daze, shaking her head when she realized she wasn't going to find what she needed there.

Lindsay, she thought. I'll bet Lindsay has what I need. She flew up to her daughter's bedroom and rummaged around in her desk until she found what she was looking for. Aha! Here it is, a whole stack of photographic printer paper.

She grabbed a bundle of it and rushed back downstairs to load it into her printer. Now – pick the size, crop a little here and there, and the picture was printing. Two copies, she'd need. No, three. Better to be safe than sorry.

While she waited impatiently for the ink to dry, Dani started searching for the perfect frame. She thought she had some in the built-in cabinet in her living room. No, not that drawer. Yes, here they were. She found a simple silver frame and popped the picture into it.

And there it was. Love, framed in sterling silver.

What next? Her mind was racing now and she ran back upstairs to change her clothes. What should she wear? The green dress from the V3 party – no, she'd worn that to dinner in Paris with Gabrielle. The red dress? Ugh, no. Bad memories of Barcelona.

Then she thought of the ring. Maybe it was time to open that box. Maybe she'd let the ring decide. She knew she was being fanciful, like she was some character in one of those interminably long fantasy movies, but she couldn't help thinking that the ring would somehow lead her in the right direction.

She'd looked at that ring box for weeks now, held it in her hand dozens of times, but she'd never found the courage to open it. But today, she didn't even hesitate. In a flash, she tore open the drawer and lifted the cover on the box. And there it was.

She laughed when she saw the ring, and knew she'd been right. It had told her what to wear after all. The ring was a gorgeous square-cut emerald, surrounded by diamonds, and mounted in a delicate white-gold filigree setting that revealed its age. It was an extraordinarily beautiful piece of jewelry.

She went into her closet to find the emerald-green dress from Paris. This was clearly the occasion she had been waiting for.

Her hair, she decided, she would leave down around her shoulders. She curled it expertly and applied some make-up. Her hands were shaking so that she had to wipe off her eyeliner and apply it a second time. She laughed at her own clumsiness.

And then she put on the dress. Just as she remembered, it fit her perfectly, and needed nothing to enhance it. She found some small diamond studs and put them in her ears, and completed the outfit with a pair of 4-inch black heels. Gotta have my stilts, she thought to herself, laughing as she remembered Nico's teasing nickname for her shoes.

Now what? Oh, yes, the picture. She'd left it in the living room. She went down and grabbed it and her coat and was almost out the door before she remembered.

The ring. She ran back upstairs and closed the blue box again, dropping it into her purse.

XXXXXXXXXX

It didn't take Dani nearly as long to get to V3 as it usually did, since it was late morning when she left, and not the middle of the morning commute time. She left her car in the commuter lot, and just made the train into the city by the skin of her teeth.

When she walked into her office, Paloma looked up, puzzled. She was almost certain that Dani had told her that she wasn't coming in today, that she was going to be working from home.

She watched as Dani removed her coat, then took something out of her bag and put it on her desk. A framed photograph, Paloma thought, but she couldn't see the subject of the picture because it was turned toward Dani's seat.

But then Dani did something a little...odd. She was on her way out of her office, but just as she reached the doorway she turned and retraced her steps, picked up the picture, and turned it around so that it was facing outwards and could be seen by anyone who happened to look into the room. Paloma could see the satisfied look on Dani's face as she nodded at the photograph's new position on her desk. And then Dani left her office and went out into the corridor.

Paloma couldn't help herself. It was a little too far to be able to see the photo from her office and she just had to know what image Dani had so vehemently placed on the corner of her desk for all the world to see. So she went around the glass wall and through the open door into Dani's office. She stopped when she got to the picture, and tears came into her eyes.

It was a picture of Dani and Mr. Careles. When Paloma looked at it, at the expressions on their faces as they gazed at one another, it took her breath away. Dani was making a statement and she wanted everyone to know. Paloma hurried to follow Dani out to the corridor that ran around the perimeter of the soaring two-story atrium. She was watching when Dani spotted the person she'd been looking for, a person who was currently escorting a large group of very dignified men across the atrium floor.

"Nico!" Dani called out to him in such a loud voice that even in that place filled with glass, where noise often bounced around and echoed, he couldn't possibly have failed to hear her.

"Dani?" He looked up then with a puzzled expression on his face.

"Don't move," she said. "I'll be right down."

XXXXXXXXXX

It was unusual for the chief of security to personally interact with prospective clients, although he often vetted them. But this particular group of Japanese businessmen was obsessed with security: physical security, financial security, computer security. They even wanted to check out the bathrooms and the cafeteria. And they'd specifically requested the very well-respected Nico Careles as their escort, so he couldn't even foist this job off on one of his underlings.

Not that he would ever let it affect his professional demeanor, but he'd been at it all morning now and he was getting tired of it. He knew that this was an important client and that their concerns about security were legitimate, but Japanese was not one of his five languages, and every piece of information had to be passed through an interpreter, and that had made his entire morning extremely tedious.

It was approaching the lunch hour, and the clients had insisted that they would be just as happy to eat in the V3 cafeteria, so he was escorting them there now, hoping to take a small break for himself. He was just crossing the atrium floor with his flock, when he heard his named called from above.

Heard it called by…Dani? But that wasn't possible, because she wasn't even in today. It was the principal reason he'd been so annoyed about having to perform these escort duties personally. After missing their Wednesday lunch, he'd then been forced to cancel his Friday lunch with Dani. As a result, he'd barely seen her all week. And then she'd suddenly taken the whole day off, so he hadn't even been able to look forward to those occasional glimpses he'd have of her during the normal workday.

He looked up then. It was Dani. What the hell?

"Dani?" he called back.

"Don't move. I'll be right down."

The Japanese are a very polite race, so they waited patiently when Nico stopped their forward motion towards the cafeteria. She'd asked him to wait, so he would. He hadn't thought he'd see her at all today, thought he'd have to wait until at least Monday to see her smile again, so he was happy to wait for her, no matter what she wanted.

And he had no idea what that was.

The elevator doors opened and she walked out, and he noticed that she was moving as if she had a purpose. He also noticed how she looked, because she looked amazingly beautiful.

Not that Dani ever looked less than attractive, but that dress she was wearing - he didn't actually keep track of her clothes, but he knew he'd never seen it before. It was emerald green, and he thought that the material must be silk from the way it shimmered in the artificial lights that surrounded the atrium.

She walked toward him now and smiled – a smile such as he hadn't seen on her face in weeks.

"I didn't think you were coming in today, Dani." He was a little puzzled.

He glanced back at his group of Japanese businessmen, who'd all suddenly become very quiet, intent on observing their escort's interaction with the beautiful woman in the green dress.

Nico remembered his manners then.

"Gentlemen, this is Dr. Dani Santino, the resident therapist here at V3." He could see the interpreter speaking softly to the others.

The Japanese nodded to her courteously, but the normally polite Dani barely spared them a glance as she gave them a cursory, "Hello."

"I need to talk to you, Nico."

Nico shot her a puzzled glance.

"Dani, I'm working." He said it softly.

"I can see that." She hadn't moderated her voice at all. Discretion was not her aim. "But you'll just have to stop working."

Besides the Japanese businessmen, there had been a few others in the atrium area when Dani had first made her appearance. And then other curious individuals besides Paloma had poked their heads out of offices and doorways, wondering at the odd conversation taking place. TK had been talking to his manager when he'd heard Dani's voice, and he had looked out casually to see what she was up to.

But then she told Nico Careles to stop working, and everyone who was watching the scene became suddenly silent, motioning through the glass walls to their colleagues to join them on the upper walkway, or on the outskirts of the atrium itself. And all were now waiting to see what might happen next.

Dani didn't notice; she was focused solely on her objective.

And Nico? He shook his head in disbelief. What the hell was she doing?

She smiled at him then, a radiant smile. "I think you have something you want to ask me, don't you?"

It was clutched in her hand. The blue box. He saw it then as she unfurled her palm, opened the box, took out its contents, and carefully bent down to place the box itself on the floor beside her.

She took the emerald and diamond ring, and smiled at him in delight as she pushed it onto the third finger of her left hand. It fit perfectly, as she had known it would.

The folders that Nico had been carrying fell out of his hands onto the floor, and he just stared at her, the Japanese businessmen completely forgotten.

"I seem to remember you telling me that if I ever put this ring on this finger, that you would ask me to marry you. Does that promise still apply?"

Nico looked around him at all the staring faces. Dani did not; she only looked at Nico.

"Yes, I know," she said. "We have an audience. But we had an audience when you made that promise, and that didn't seem to bother you."

And suddenly, Nico Careles was the single happiest man in the city of New York.

"Dani," he said, "are you sure?"

"Are you looking at my ring finger, Careles?"

And he smiled then, a real smile, and many of the V3 employees and clients who were watching them - and there were dozens now assembled around the atrium, all standing in complete and utter silence - thought that they must be hallucinating. They'd never expected to see Nico Careles actually smile.

"Dani Santino," he said, walking across the few feet that now separated them, his voice cracking slightly. He took a deep breath and started again.

"Dani Santino, love of my life," he said the words softly, but the acoustics in the room carried them to every corner. By then he was standing right in front of her, so he reached out and touched her cheek, smiled at her softly.

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Definitely, yes." The words were out of her mouth practically before he'd stopped speaking.

She threw herself into his arms, kissing him for all she was worth, and he was kissing her back with equal fervor. It had been so long since he'd touched her, really touched her, and he couldn't seem to let her go.

And so they didn't notice, at first, the cheers and the applause that had erupted around them. Not that they really cared. But Connor McClane heard it. He'd been waiting in the cafeteria for the Japanese businessmen to show up when he heard the noise coming from the atrium, and followed it to its source.

It was certainly no surprise to him that his chief of security and his resident therapist might be found kissing, because he'd discerned their feelings about one another a while ago. But he'd hardly expected to find them doing so in the middle of the V3 atrium. He reached the pair just as they became fully aware of their audience and broke off their prolonged embrace. He could see that Santino was actually blushing. He also noticed the gorgeous emerald and diamond ring on her hand and realized suddenly that he had come in at the tail end of what must have been a very public proposal of marriage.

He was amazed. He didn't think that Careles had it in him to be that open. Hell, he didn't think that he himself would have the balls to propose in such a public setting.

"Santino, Careles, let me be the first to congratulate you."

Nico was suddenly aware of how inappropriate they'd been, on just about every level.

"Uh, Connor. I'm sorry about this. It wasn't planned…it just sort of happened. I know it was completely unprofessional , and uh…" Nico trailed off, still too stunned by the turn of events to form a coherent sentence.

"Are you kidding, Careles? Look around you, look at all those cell phones pointed down this way. Don't you know that this whole thing is going to be on YouTube in about five minutes? And I'm glad, because I missed the actual event, so I'll need to take a look."

And Connor McClane smiled his famous shit-eating grin.

"And do you have any idea of the amount of fabulous publicity we're going to get out of this? You can't buy that kind of publicity. I'll have people crawling out of the woodwork who want to work here or sign with us."

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of future business.

Dani looked as though she'd been hit by a bus, but Nico just look amused.

"YouTube?" Dani gasped. "Oh, my God, Nico, I'm so sorry."

He laughed and hugged her tighter. "Do you think I give a damn about that? As far as I'm concerned, they can broadcast it on the big screen at Yankee Stadium."

"Yankee Stadium." Connor McClane looked thoughtful. "You know, that gives me an idea."

He looked at them both, wondering if they'd ever go for it.

"There's been an engagement, so there has to be a wedding, right? And, I mean, let's not dilly-dally about it. After all, you two aren't getting any younger."

Their faces went blank at that.

He looked around then, and their eyes followed his around the atrium.

"Don't you think," he asked, "that this would be a perfect place for a wedding? Huh? HUH? It's huge. Plenty of space for a lot of chairs. We can make an aisle for Santino to walk down right here. And then up at that end, you could have the priest, rabbi, or JP of your choice. Great idea, right?"

They could scarcely believe what he was proposing, and it showed in their faces. Undeterred, Connor McClane forged ahead in his most persuasive manner, his famous grin in place.

"So what do you say? Santino? Careles? Yes or yes?"

XXXXXXXXXX

After the initial wave of cheers and applause, most of those who had been watching this tender moment seemed unsure how to react. This was Nico Careles, after all, a man who intimidated all but the most intrepid, and so they waited to see what the others would do.

But Paloma Madsen didn't wait and she didn't hesitate. Indeed, she ran down the stairs – not stopping even to wait for the elevator – rushed across the atrium and scooped Dani into her arms. She was crying, had been crying from the moment Dani had taken the ring out of the box and put it on her finger.

"I knew it," Paloma said. "I knew I had it right."

Dani just laughed. "You did, Paloma. I guess I couldn't hide it from you."

"Oh, no, Dani, you hid it pretty well." She looked at Nico then. "But Mr. Careles - I knew about him from day one."

And then some of the others who had been watching came forward, offering congratulations, most of them in a quick and casual way.

But there was one person who was going to be neither quick nor casual, and they heard his booming laugh long before he reached them.

"Well, all I gotta say to you is that it's about damn time!" TK's grin was firmly in place. "I mean, I been watching this little song and dance you two been doin' for 'bout three years now, and it was gettin' just a little old."

"Terrence, thank you…Oh," Dani said as TK pulled her into an embrace.

"Now don't you all forget that TK will be expectin' an invite to the main event."

And Nico actually smiled at that. "I think we can probably manage that, TK."

"Oh, you'll have plenty of room here. Have whoever you want." Connor McClane was apparently going to moonlight as their wedding planner.

McClane had checked YouTube, and, as he predicted, the video of their engagement was going viral, and he was into the spirit of it now. He told Careles he could take the rest of the day off, and that he'd handle the Japanese businessmen himself.

"Dani," Nico said. "I appear to be off duty. What do you say we get the hell out of here?"

She nodded.

"Where would you like to go?" he asked.

Dani smiled at him coyly. "You know, Nico. I've never seen where you live. Don't you think I should, I mean before we make this thing official?"

And Nico, who had spent months sitting alone in his apartment, dreaming of Dani being there with him, did not need to be asked twice.

They got out of there in record time. Since Nico lived in the city, they were into a taxi and back to his place in less time than she could have imagined.

Dani wanted to look around his apartment, but she barely had time to take off her coat before Nico picked her up and carried her into his bedroom.

"Nico," she said, voicing what would be her last coherent thought for several hours, "don't you think that we should call people – let them know. You know, my kids, Juliette, Jeanette, your family. They'll all want to know right away…"

But she never even got to finish that sentence before he was kissing her senseless.

"Later, Dani." He smiled his crooked smile, the one that made her toes curl. "Right now," he said as he helped her out of her dress and into his bed, "I have other plans."

XXXXXXXXXX

"So what made you change your mind?" It was several hours later, but they were still curled up in his very comfortable bed. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered if he really wanted to know.

"I didn't change my mind, Nico. I never stopped loving you." She fingered the ring that was sitting on her left hand and looked up at him with a smile.

"I'm only sorry it took me so long to figure it out. Sorry that I put us both through this."

Nico smiled in return. "Well, I won't say I enjoyed the last month. In fact, it was pretty goddamned awful. But if it helped you to figure out what I've known for a long time, then it was worth it."

She breathed a little sigh, trying to explain. "I was just so confused. Our vacation started out so perfectly, and then things…began to happen. After a while, I was so tired and angry and stressed, and every day, there seemed to be something new to worry about. In the end I just…I wasn't thinking the right way round."

"The right way round?"

"Yes. I became so focused on the one thing that I was most afraid of…you not being open with me, keeping secrets from me…that I somehow forgot about all of your wonderful qualities. And I needed to be reminded."

"I have wonderful qualities?" He was teasing her now.

"Well, according to Juliette, and Jeanette, and even Lindsay, you have many wonderful qualities."

"I paid them very well for their endorsements, you know," he smirked. But she could see that he was touched.

"And I guess we need to thank Liz, too."

"You talked to Liz?"

"No, I didn't talk to her. I got an email from her this morning with pictures from your parents' party."

"Yes, I think she sent me the same pictures." He paused, sighed, looked away from her for an instant, then laughed a little ruefully. "I didn't have the guts to look at them."

She smiled at him. "I felt the same, but I'm glad I changed my mind. It's why I'm here, now, with you."

Nico got that patented quizzical look on his face.

"Do you have that email handy?" she asked.

He grabbed his iPad off the nightstand and pulled up his email account. "Here they are. She just sent them this morning."

"Go ahead and open them up."

"Why?" He was more than curious now.

Dani gave him an enigmatic smile. "Nico, even after talking to Juliette, Jeanette, and Lindsay, I still couldn't seem to understand about…us. Not until I looked at one of the pictures in that group. That picture told me everything I needed to know."

"Which picture?" He had the file open now, was starting to scroll through the photos.

"Why don't you see if you can figure it out?"

But he already had. He'd stopped at the picture of the two of them, the same one that was now sitting in a silver frame on the desk in her office.

He smiled at her, nodded, and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean. I need to print this off."

She laughed. "Don't bother, I've got two copies at home – and one on the desk in my office at V3."

"You put this picture in your office at work?" He could hardly believe it.

She laughed. "I think that picture is the least of it, Nico. Remember, I'm the woman who made your proposal famous on YouTube."

"That's true. I guess I'll be hearing about it for a while," he laughed.

"Oh, yeah, once it's out there it never goes away."

Nico suddenly looked thoughtful. "And why did you do that, Dani? I don't mean why did you do it that way, I mean, why did you do it at all?"

He picked up her hand and kissed the finger that was now adorned by his ring, and looked up at her. "You know I want to marry you, Dani. I hardly made any secret of that. But you could have just…come back to me. You didn't have to promise to marry me. I would have been happy just to be with you again."

He knew he probably shouldn't press his luck, but he just had to know.

"But you got yourself engaged to me. Why?"

"Sometimes, Nico Careles, you are a great stupid oaf." She frowned and shook her head.

"Is that one of my wonderful qualities?" he teased.

Dani rolled her eyes.

"Why do you want to marry me, Nico?" she asked him.

His answer came instantaneously. "Because I love you more than anything in the world and I can't imagine living without you."

Her smile was filled with amusement and affection. "Then I think you answered your own question."

"Oh," he said simply, returning her smile, his eyes alight with happiness.

"And don't forget," she added with a laugh. "We aren't getting any younger."

THE END

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