by Nancy Adams
“What’d you do?”
“Well, I accepted your ma’s invitation down to Colorado,” he confessed. “We’re heading out there in two weeks.”
Claire smiled up at him.
“I mean,” he went on, “your ma sounded so desperate to see you, I just couldn’t say no.”
“You’re so sweet,” she grinned as she leaned her head up off the bed so that she could kiss him.
Paul bent down and kissed Claire on the lips. The two held it for a moment, savoring the feelings that traversed through their bodies.
When they were parted, Claire continued to look up at him with a glittering smile.
“Do you wanna come with me and see him one last time?” she asked Paul.
“Who?”
“Who do you think? The baby.”
He smiled at her and kissed her again. He was so pleased that she was willing to look on her son at least one time. She needed something of him that was more than just nine months of pregnancy and five hours of painful labor. She should have something other than that of him.
Claire gingerly made her way out of the bed and into the wheelchair, Paul helping her along all the way. Once she was seated, dressed in her nighty, dressing gown and slippers, Paul wheeled her along the corridors until they made it to the large window that overlooked all the little cribs. Paul pushed Claire all the way up to the window so that she had a perfect view of the field of tiny cribs on the other side, all filled with little beings only just awakening to the opening chapters of their lives.
Claire studied them all before her eyes settled on one in particular. Something inside of her stirred, as if awakening, and she raised her arm to point the little tot out.
“Is that him?” she asked Paul.
A huge grin covered his face.
“How’d you know?” he asked her. “Come on. You’ve been down here while I was away, haven’t you? Did one of the nurses bring you here?”
“No,” she said. “So it really is the one in the center?”
“Yeah. I guess a mother can always tell.”
They gazed for a while longer through the window at the little baby, Claire sitting in the chair with a faint smile on her lips and Paul standing next to her with a hand rested gently on her shoulder. A while later, Claire let out sigh and asked Paul to take her away, a longing feeling opening up in her that she was scared would swallow her up.
As Paul wheeled her away, Claire couldn’t help but take one last yearning look down the corridor toward the baby unit. She felt an instant tremble, and a tear fell down her cheek. But inside she knew that it was for the best.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Margot was pouring out four glasses of ‘overpriced’ Cristal champagne. Once she’d finished, she handed them out, one for Juliette, one for Jules, one for Claude, leaving one for herself.
“Cheers!” they all cried out as they met their glasses in the middle.
“To a new dawn in your lives,” Jules said.
They all drank to that. It was a month after Margot had sat in Juliette and Jules’s living room crying over her infertility. But now, as they all stood in the lounge of Margot’s Malibu beach mansion, a new and beautiful optimism spread its wings through the newlyweds. Only days after her initial bad news, Margot and Claude had contacted an adoption agency. Within a week, they both received initial clearance and an agent visited them in their home. After a long talk, the agent passed the couple for adoption.
Now, only a fortnight after that, they’d been contacted that a child was ready for them.
“And we fly out on Monday to Maine to fetch him,” Margot was saying.
“We fly out to see him,” Claude corrected her as he stood next to his wife with one hand around her shoulder.
“It’s the same thing, Claude,” Margot retorted. “He’s not a dog, he’s a baby. We’ll go out there and the first time we set eyes on him, we’ll fall in love and he’ll be our little boy.”
“I’m so pleased for you both,” Juliette applauded them. “This will make you both complete, I’m sure of it.” She then raised her glass and added, “To the new family.”
“The new family!” the others all exclaimed in unison, bringing their glasses together once again.
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BOOK THREE – A CATASTROPHE OF THE HEART
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PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Around a long black marble table sat the ten men and women that made up the Techsoft board of directors, five on one side, four on the other and CEO Stan Bormann at the head, a rather smug look on his face. The only one missing of the eleven company directors was, of course, Sam. Of the nine members that weren’t Sam or Bormann, there’s not much to tell. Seven of them were what Sam would describe as ‘Bormann’s cronies,’ and the other two were Sue Reynolds and John Calloway, loyal to Sam.
At the other end of the table, opposite Bormann, stood Jenna Blackwell ready to present her findings to the board. She was visibly nervous, something that the astute John Calloway hadn’t missed, and he wondered what was about to transpire. As she went to begin, someone had to remind Jenna that she hadn’t yet placed a copy of the report in front of each of the board members. In a shaky voice, Jenna apologized, went to her briefcase, pulled out the reports and began handing them out. While she did this, many of the board members observed the woman’s trembling hands as she dropped the report in front of them. When Jenna walked past Bormann, Calloway watched as the CEO let out a mischievous smirk, nonchalantly pushing the report away with his finger the moment she placed it in front of him. There was a pained look on Jenna’s own face as she passed by him.
Calloway was sure that something was up. He’d had his suspicions that Bormann would attempt to disrupt the process in some way. But in order to protect himself, Calloway couldn’t go head to head with his own CEO, especially with Bormann’s powerful support network both within the boardroom and the company as a whole. All Johnny could do was sit back and see what would be revealed in the meeting, then do his best to support Sam in any way he could if it all went badly.
Jenna was now back in front of them. A few members of the board, including both Calloway and Reynolds, were already poking their noses into the report.
“Firstly,” Jenna said loudly, “I’d like to ask you to hold yourselves back from reading the report just yet. All my findings within that report I will sum up quickly for you now. You can turn to the paper copy for detail later.”
Calloway and Reynolds closed the reports they were reading, placed them down on the table in front and turned their eyes to Jenna.
“Okay,” Jenna began, wringing her hands together as she did. She certainly cut a forlorn figure standing in front of all those self-important people. “So,” she stuttered, “and I’m gonna be as brief as I can—like I said, all the detail is in the report. So I wanna say that having spent a month with Sam Burgess and witnessed his behavior both professionally and as a bystander living at his house—” Jenna instinctively paused and looked over at Bormann at this point. The CEO wore a huge grin and it made her sick. “Anyway,” she continued, “having witnessed Sam Burgess for the past month, living with him and taking regular therapy sessions with him, it is my evaluation that Sam does not need the six-month layoff from company activity. He is perfectly fit.”
With the declaration of these last words, Jenna looked directly into Bormann’s eyes and stated them as sternly as she could, as if they were the cuts of a blade and Bormann were their victim. Bormann’s grin dropped and was replaced by a barely hidden scowl. Meanwhile, Reynolds and Calloway allowed themselves to smile. The rest of the board simply shrugged.
“I hope that’s enough for you,” Jenna continued as she glared at Bormann. “Like I said, it is my professional recommendation that Sam be passed fit for service and brought back onto the board with immediate effect. Again: all the detail is in my report.”
“Well,” John Calloway said, “I think that will do, Mrs. Blackwell.” He then turned to
Bormann and inquired, “Stan, do you have anything more for Mrs. Blackwell?” Bormann simply waved his hand in disgust and Calloway turned back to Jenna and, with a smiling face, added, “On behalf of myself and the rest of the board, I’d like to thank you, Mrs. Blackwell, for your service to Techsoft. Thank you.”
All Jenna could do was return him and the rest of the room a weak smile. After she had, she turned around, packed her suitcase as quickly as she could and left the room without saying another word or setting her eyes on another face.
As she walked down the empty corridor outside, heading toward the elevator, she felt like the world was falling apart around her. Her trembling legs made the ground feel as if it were shaking under her feet. She found the air heavy and oppressive, and barely made it to the lift doors.
When she did, she pressed the button and leant herself up against the panel. In her chest her heart raced along, and a frosty sweat had broken out all over her. A terrible nausea was building in her gut and she prayed that she didn’t vomit before getting into the elevator.
She was lucky; the lift arrived only a half-minute after she’d pressed the button and she was glad to find it completely empty. She flung herself inside and tapped the first floor button. As she moved steadily down through the floors, Jenna closed her eyes and leaned against the back wall.
The whole night before, after she’d gotten back from Bormann’s, Jenna had pondered over one of the hardest decisions of her life thus far. She spent the time until the early morning hours pacing the lounge of her Beverly Hills apartment, a large glass of wine in one hand, going over it all in her head.
On one side of the scales there was complete professional and personal ruin, with Bormann destroying her if she didn’t have Sam recommended for a six-month layoff. But on the other, if she went along with the devilish CEO, she would ruin someone who in the last month she had begun to fall in love with. Since Henry, twelve years ago, Jenna had played the game, but had never fallen into anything that would constitute love. Sam had presented himself as a breath of air blown into her life; into her soul. He made her want to be with him, always. By destroying him in favor of herself, Jenna would be selfishly betraying him. It would ruin the bright light that had so recently entered her.
Bormann had instructed her to go home and immediately begin writing a new fake report for presentation at the board meeting. But every time she’d attempted to sit down at her laptop to write the duplicitous report, Jenna had become resentful that she was being so easily used by the wretched CEO. She’d angrily slam the laptop closed and return to pacing her home with another glass of wine.
Even as she’d awoken that morning after barely four hours sleep, Jenna hadn’t really been sure which path she would be taking that day.
The main thing stopping her from going against Bormann wasn’t the fact that she would personally be ruined, as you’d expect, although that was obviously a huge part of her deliberations. No. It was that Sam would also be dragged into the terrible mess of it all. His name would once again dance upon every news anchor’s lips, every newspaper headline. The press had only recently begun to lay off of him. This was sure to blow the whole thing back up again.
And now, as she climbed into her Wrangler Jeep, it was this thought that weighed most heavily on Jenna Blackwell’s mind. Driving out of the underground car park of the Techsoft L.A offices, she took her phone out of her bag and dialed Sam, placing the handset immediately to her ear.
“Hey, Jenna,” Sam answered warmly, “it’s a little earlier than three months, I thought—”
“Sam,” Jenna interrupted, a frantic tone to her voice, “Bormann knows. He’s spying on you. He’s broken into your home security system. The creepy son-of-a-bitch taped us having sex and threatened to blackmail me with it. He wanted me to write a report against you. But I didn’t, Sam. I gave my original report to the board just now and I think Bormann’s gonna release the tape. He threatened that he had people in the tabloid press who would out me as proposing a story on you before I came to see you. He’s going to have me ruined. The city psychiatric association will disbar me too. Sam, I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay,” he said in a solemn voice, his tone having a calming effect on Jenna, “don’t panic. Can you get yourself to LAX?”
“Yes,” Jenna muttered as she drove along with the slow-moving traffic of early morning downtown Los Angeles.
“Then go home, pack whatever you can fit into a suitcase and drive to LAX. I’ll send my plane. It’ll be better if you’re out here with me. Otherwise, the media will make your life a living hell.”
“But Sam, what about Bormann?”
“Bormann I’ll take on within the company. He’ll be for another day. I need to get stronger within Techsoft before I go for him. For now we need to regroup at the reserve. I know some very good people in PR. I’ll get them down here with us and we’ll do our best to blow this out of the water. Then, after that, I’ll come for Bormann.”
“Sam?” Jenna said tearily.
“Yes, Jenna?”
“I love you.”
“Me too,” Sam replied, before putting the phone down.
Jenna felt a wave of energy break through the lethargy she was feeling only moments ago. His reassuring tone and words had put her at ease and she felt protected by him. For the first time in so many years, Jenna felt she had the protection of another person.
At this terrible moment in her life, there was something deeply comforting in that.
CHAPTER TWO
“Pass me the roller,” Claude said to Jules as he stood at the top of the stepladder.
Jules did as he was asked and handed him up the tray of blue paint and the roller. They were painting the baby’s room—blue, of course! Margot and Juliette were out shopping for baby clothes. In two days’ time, Margot and Claude were due to fly out to Maine to pick up their son.
“I never asked,” Jules said up to Claude as the latter painted the ceiling, the two of them decked out in paint-splattered white overalls.
“You never asked what?” Claude returned.
“Why did you and Margot decide on the name David?”
“Mmm,” Claude mused out loud. “Well, it is the only thing that I remember of my papa: his name. When my mother was pregnant with me, he left her and my two brothers and my sister. My mama clearly hated him for it and never talked of him again, removing all his pictures from the house. All I ever knew of him was from my older siblings and I can only remember his name, David. When I was only six, my mama died and we were all separated. I ended up in a boy’s orphanage and was there until I left at sixteen. The rest of my family I never saw again.”
“I feel for you, man,” Jules let out softly.
“Ah, it’s okay. I’ve had a good life for the most part. My youth was very rocky, but I learnt to grow up and now I’m married to a beautiful woman, living in this magnificent house and am going to be a papa myself.”
“Hey! All’s well that ends well,” Jules said, grabbing his beer bottle and holding it up to Claude.
The latter took his own bottle from the top of the ladder and the two clicked them together in cheers.
“I’ll drink to that, mon ami,” Claude said as they did. “I’ll drink to that.”
The two swigged from their beers. Claude then put his back at the top of the ladder and continued painting.
“I guess it was my rocky youth,” Claude started saying as he did, “that made me glad that we’re adopting. I feel like I’m giving this boy something that was deprived from me: a family. I spent the whole of my childhood sleeping with twenty other boys in a dormitory with barred windows. The place was run by nuns too, so we never really had any men around, only the priest on the Sunday and the occasional visit from some official. So I never had a father figure the whole of my childhood. When I left, I knew nothing of the world. They just sent us out at sixteen with some papers and a little money and expected us to get on with it. It was like being dropped on a jogging
machine while the belt is going a hundred miles an hour—of course, you will fall off! Kinda makes me a bit scared to be a father myself when I have no idea what a papa actually is.”
“It’ll all come natural to ya,” Jules said reassuringly. “I never knew my own father neither. I did, however, have many fathers. My ma was half-Paiute Native American, of the Northern Paiute. I grew up on a big old reserve in the middle of the Nevada desert. I was raised by all sorts of Native Americans and hippies—before the term ‘hippy’ was even invented. My ma was what you’d call promiscuous in that she enjoyed the company of men, and they enjoyed her. I didn’t mind the woman for it. After all, a man does it and he’s a man. A woman does it and she’s a whore. I guess men are in charge of the labels!”
“My own mama was a Catholic,” Claude mentioned. “She didn’t believe in divorce and she refused to commit adultery. She stayed married to a man who left her and his children to rot. Because of her religion, she prevented herself from ever enjoying the rebirth that would be offered by a new man. She denied us a father in a sense.”
“Yeah,” Jules exclaimed softly with a smile. “I’m glad my ma invited so many men into our lives.”
“But didn’t you feel a little put off by some of these guys? Not every guy wants a kid hanging around.”
“Ma was pretty cool. If they didn’t get on with me, she wouldn’t hesitate to kick them out. So the only ones that stayed around were guys whose company I enjoyed. I was taught to be a man mostly by a series of ‘uncles,’ who taught me about art, music, hunting, women and everything else I needed.”
“But didn’t it break your heart each time you watched these men leave your life?”
“It did a lot of the time,” Jules admitted with a sad feeling. “But I got used to it at an early age and came to understand that nothing lasts, everything is transient. Anyway, I had my Uncle Ezhno for consistency.”