LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Being constantly in the public life is difficult for everyone. Some handle it better than others. Aurora…I thought she was stronger than she was.”

  I nodded, thinking again of the excited woman I met nearly six months ago. I remember the way she looked over her shoulder from time to time when we met at her country club and that one public restaurant. I thought at the time she was looking for the waiter. Now, I thought she might have been looking to see who was watching.

  It couldn’t be all that great to be watched all the time.

  I crossed my legs and looked out the window. I’d lived in L.A. almost all my life. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was nice to be back. All the familiar sights…even the canyons of Mulholland Drive were familiar thanks to my mom’s job. And, of course, I knew the gate of Nicolas’ house from the times I’d met with Aurora there. It would be odd, walking into that house knowing that Aurora would never come walking into the room, her long, silk skirts flowing out behind her, or that I would never hear the soft, breathless tone of her voice again.

  I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Nicolas.

  I slid out of the car the moment it came to a stop in the circle drive. Nicolas rushed around to my side, taking my arm and pulling me hard against his side.

  “Don’t go wandering off without me, please.”

  “I’m just walking to the door.”

  “The paparazzi are everywhere,” he said, gesturing with his chin toward a low section of the wrought iron fence along the side of the property. I could just barely see the flash of a camera’s flash. “I don’t want them getting a clear picture of your face. Then your name will be all over the tabloids first thing in the morning and you’ll never be able to go anywhere on your own again.”

  I glanced at him, but I didn’t say anything. The thing was, I was pretty sure he was right. And that was a little frightening.

  He guided me up to the front door, careful to stand between me and the paparazzi in the bushes. Once inside, he let go of me like I was a hot potato or something.

  “Make yourself at home,” he said, gesturing toward the living room at the back of the house. “Constance should have made up a room for you. I told her to put you in the front guest room.” He gestured toward the stairs. “It’s the second door on the left at the top of the stairs. Right next to the master.”

  “Afraid I’ll sneak out in the middle of the night?” I asked, only half serious.

  “Yes.”

  And then he disappeared, walking down the hallway that shot off from the entry way and around the side of the grand staircase.

  I went into the living room and took a water bottle from the mini-fridge in the bar. As I stood there, sipping from the bottle, I remembered how Nicolas had stood here that night months ago, drinking a huge slug of brandy from a thick crystal glass. And then I looked at the long, white couch and remembered how Aurora sat beside me the day she told me that she wanted me to be her surrogate. This wasn’t even my house, yet I had so many memories here. It was a little surreal.

  I wandered to the back doors—gorgeous French doors that looked out on a huge, well-tended garden. There were low bushes, beautiful trees, and roses everywhere. I found myself imagining a little girl running around out there, her father lifting her in the air and spinning her around as she laughed down into his face. This was the kind of place where a child would have an idyllic childhood. I touched my belly lightly.

  “You are a lucky one,” I said to the baby nestled inside.

  “Mija?”

  I turned and cried out at the sight of Constance. I ran to her and threw my arms around her neck, so grateful to see someone I knew, someone I loved and whom I knew loved me back, that I was overwhelmed with emotion. I pressed my face to her neck and sobbed almost like I had on Nicolas’ shoulder the day before. The difference was, I knew Constance wouldn’t judge me and she wouldn’t play on my vulnerabilities to get me to do something I shouldn’t.

  “How are you, nina?”

  I shrugged. “I miss mi madre.”

  “I know, mija, I know. I miss her, too.”

  She pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “But she’s okay. You know that. She’s looking down on us, and she’s so proud.”

  I shook my head, more tears falling from my eyes. “She would be ashamed of me. Of what I’ve done.”

  “No.” Constance touched my belly lightly. “She would be happy to see you bringing life into the world. And this child is even more special because she comes from you.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “Don’t tell me no sabe, nina,” Constance said. “You may not believe it, but ya se.”

  If I’d learned anything growing up with a single mom and a woman like Constance, it was that you didn’t argue with a woman who said she knew what she was talking about. So I just nodded, trying in vain to stall the flow of tears.

  “Te amo,” she whispered against my ear. “Everything will be okay.”

  I wanted to believe her, but then I saw Nicolas watching us from the hallway. I couldn’t read his expression because he was standing in shadow, but the fact that he turned away the moment he saw me watching him told me everything I needed to know.

  It wasn’t going to be okay. I was held prisoner by a man who was willing to do anything to get what he wanted, including using me to take the child growing in my womb. I wasn’t sure this man was capable of love. He clearly hadn’t loved his wife. How was he going to love a child?

  How could I allow this child to come into the world aware that it would be stuck with a father who couldn’t care less about her emotional wellbeing?

  I couldn’t. It was as simple as that.

  Chapter 10

  “Ms. Martinez.”

  I nodded, more out of habit that anything else. The doctor smiled as he approached me, his hand outstretched.

  “Dr. Bishop.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  The doctor glanced at Nicolas and did something of a double take. But he caught himself and his voice was quite neutral when he said, “I’m guessing you’re the father.”

  “I am.” Nicolas held out his hand. “Nicolas Costa.”

  The doctor nodded. He’d clearly known that.

  The introductions out of the way, the doctor settled on a stool in front of a computer monitor that hung on a retractable arm against the wall.

  “It’ll be a few weeks before we get your chart from your last doctor, so I’ll have to ask a lot of questions,” Dr. Bishop said as he typed away at the keyboard. “You’re fifteen weeks, correct?”

  “A day short of sixteen weeks,” I said.

  He nodded. “And you haven’t had any issues in this pregnancy? No bleeding, cramps, swelling, excessive nausea, or vomiting?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Good. And are you feeling any movements yet?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Bishop looked up, his eyes moving from my face to Nicolas’. “That’s perfectly normal,” he said. “Most first time mothers don’t feel any definitive movement until about eighteen weeks. I’ve even had a few who didn’t feel anything until twenty weeks.”

  Nicolas let out a breath near my ear. I glanced back at him, surprised by the tension I could see in his jaw. What did he have to be worried about? I was the one carrying the baby in my belly.

  “Any morning sickness?”

  “No. Just a little nausea when I smell things like coffee or cigarette smoke.”

  “Also normal.” The doctor laughed a little. “A great deterrent for my patients who don’t see a reason to avoid caffeine or cigarettes.”

  “You have patients who smoke during pregnancy?” Nicolas asked, his tone incredulous.

  “Oh, yeah. Some women figure if their mothers did it when they were pregnant with them, there’s no reason for them not to do it with their kids. What they don’t understand is that the damage is sometimes undetectable, but there’s damage just the same.”

  The doctor was
quiet for a moment as he looked through his computer chart. Then he frowned, clicking on something several times before he glanced at me.

  “Is there a family history of diabetes in your family?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

  “I see here that you only listed medical history for your mother’s side of the family.”

  My face warmed a little. “I don’t know anything about my father or his family.”

  “That’s fine,” the doctor said, rolling his little stool over to the examination table and touching my hand lightly. “But it also leaves something of a black hole in your medical history.”

  “She had a whole workup before she got pregnant,” Nicolas said. “They didn’t find anything on that.”

  Dr. Bishop nodded. “I see that in her chart. You were with Dr. Beattie?”

  “Yes. My wife’s infertility doctor. However, we decided to go a different direction for the actual pregnancy and delivery.”

  Dr. Bishop nodded again, clearly one of those men who hated to disagree with anything anyone had to say.

  “Not a problem,” he said. “The workup actually helps. But the problem is, your wife’s urine tested positive for sugar this afternoon.”

  “I’m not—” I started to say, but Nicolas cut in.

  “Is that bad?”

  “Well, sugar usually doesn’t spill into the urine until it is over 180. Normal is under 140. So it is a bit of a concern. I’d like to send her to our lab to have some more testing done. If it’s what’s called gestational diabetes, we can get it under control fairly easily.” He patted my hand again. “Nothing to worry about.”

  He picked up a device that looked kind of like a short, fat microphone and gestured for me to lie back.

  “Why don’t we listen to that baby’s heartbeat?”

  Nicolas scooted over and pressed his hand to my shoulder, helping me lower myself against the cheap, flat pillow at the head of the bed. Then, he watched as the doctor pushed aside the oversized t-shirt I was wearing. My belly was exposed, sticking up like a four-square ball, my belly button stretched and flattened like someone was pulling at it from multiple different directions. The doctor squeezed a little lubricant on my belly toward the top and pressed the tip of his probe against it.

  After a second, the room filled with these screeching, annoying sounds, like feedback from a microphone. But then a quick, steady thump could be heard. Thump-thump-thump. I smiled recognizing the confident heartbeat of the baby. Nicolas gasped, his hand seeking mine and squeezing as our fingers became intertwined.

  “That’s amazing,” he whispered.

  “You haven’t heard it before?” Dr. Bishop asked, a little frown crossing his face. He moved the probe some more, and the heartbeat came back, louder than before. And a little faster, too, if my sense of rhythm was anything like it was in high school. Dr. Bishop caught my eye and asked, “Have you had a sonogram, Ms. Martinez?”

  “Just once, when I was eight weeks. They said everything looked fine.”

  Dr. Bishop looked as though he wanted to ask another question, but he stopped mid-grunt. He stood and went to the door. A moment later he was back, wiping the lubricant from my belly.

  “I’m going to have the nurse bring in the sonogram machine so that we can take a closer look at what’s going on in there.”

  “Is something wrong?” Nicolas asked, quickly letting go of my hand.

  “I don’t think so. I just want to have a look.”

  But doctors don’t just take a look on a whim. He’d heard something within the heartbeat. And now my heart was pounding, jumping almost as fast as the baby’s. What if something was wrong? What if the baby had some sort of defect or something? Had I done something? Did I not eat enough fruits and vegetables? Should I have avoided tea, too? Was it the fast food tacos that I craved so much my first trimester?

  As these thoughts whirled through my mind over and over, the nurse brought in the sonogram machine. It seemed to take an hour for them to figure out all the cords and get it up and running. And then Dr. Bishop was squeezing more lubricant on my belly and pressing a new probe to my bump.

  I couldn’t really see what was showing on the computer monitor, but Nicolas was leaning over me like I was as inconsequential as a stack of books, staring at everything the doctor was doing. Then, Dr. Bishop turned the monitor so that we could both see it clearly.

  “This is the baby’s head,” he said, pointing at a rounded object in the center of the screen. “And here are the arms, the legs.” As he said it, I could suddenly see it, the perfectly shaped human being living in my stomach. The baby moved as he talked, jerking its tiny arms as though it had the hiccups or something. It made tears well in my eyes as the sight of this perfect creature suddenly made everything so incredibly real.

  “And now,” the doctor said, moving the probe lower on my belly, “here is another head, another set of limbs.”

  “Did the baby move?” Nicolas asked.

  Dr. Bishop smiled as the baby did something like a flip just under the probe, turning so that what we were now looking at must have been its back because I could see the spine as clear as day.

  “There’re two babies,” I said.

  “What?”

  Nicolas looked down at me, his eyes wide with wonder.

  “That’s right, Mr. Costa,” Dr. Bishop said. “You’re having twins. This sort of thing often happens with infertility treatments.”

  I never thought I’d ever see Nicolas Costa speechless. But he was. Absolutely, mouth-hanging-open speechless.

  I laughed.

  Chapter 11

  Did I say I don’t mind needles? I lied.

  I lay in a hospital bed, my belly itching like I had poison ivy, an IV in my arm, and a plate of half-eaten meatloaf on a rollaway tray beside me. The nurse peeked her head in through the door and shook her head.

  “You have to eat the whole thing or you’ll have a low blood sugar and we’ll have to infuse you with glucose again.” She smiled almost apologetic. “You want to get that IV out of your arm, don’t you?”

  “I do. I just don’t get this insulin thing.”

  “I know. It’s complicated.” She came to the bed and sat beside me. “My brother’s diabetic. I never thought about it until I went to nursing school. And then I was dumbfounded by how my parents kept his blood sugars under control back then when doctors knew even less about diabetes than they know now.”

  She stood and picked up the tray. “Why don’t I go see if I can find you an apple or something instead, huh? Might go down easier.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I watched her walk out of the room.

  Dr. Bishop sent me to have more blood tests after discovering the second baby hiding in my womb, and the tests came back the next morning showing that my blood sugar was way too high. So he put me into the hospital right away and I’d been here for nearly a week, trying to find an insulin regiment that worked with my body. I was highly reactive to insulin, he had told me, so even a tad too much made my sugars go too low and they had to intervene. He wouldn’t let me out of the hospital until I could go two days with a low. So far, the longest we had gone was four hours.

  The only good thing about being in the hospital was that I hadn’t seen Nicolas in two days. He didn’t want to visit too often. He was afraid it would attract the paparazzi. However, I suspected that wasn’t the real reason. I saw the discomfort on his face every time he walked into the room. He didn’t like hospitals.

  I wondered how he was going to survive forty-eight hours of labor—which is how long it took my mom to give birth to me. She reminded me every time I did something I shouldn’t have in high school.

  I lay back and closed my eyes, the low volume on the television like white noise from one of those fancy machines Kelly always insisted were the only way she could sleep in almost any time zone. I missed Kelly. She called a few days ago, but I told her to stay away. I really didn’t want her to meet Nicolas. I could just
imagine the things she would say to him in an effort to help me. But it wouldn’t help. It would only make things worse.

  I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I knew, that kind nurse was standing at my side, injecting glucose into my IV line.

  “Fifty-two,” she said.

  I groaned. I was never getting out of this hospital.

  The nurse patted my shoulder sympathetically. “They bumped the numbers down another unit. I think they might have it this time.”

  And she was right. Two days later, I was pulling on the jeans I’d worn into the hospital only to discover they were too tight around my middle. I pulled my t-shirt down and it, too, was shorter than it had been before. I stuck my head out the bathroom door and caught the kindly nurse just as she was leaving with the debris from the IV she’d just taken from my arm.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a rubber band, or something, would you?”

  She glanced at my belly and managed not to laugh out loud. “I’ll go look at the nurse’s desk.”

  “You need new clothes,” Nicolas said from his perch against the wall by the door.

  “Thank you for reminding me.”

  He studied me for a second. “There’s a maternity shop on Rodeo Drive. We can swing by there on the way home.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can afford…wait, I don’t think I can afford to walk through the doors at a shop like that.”

  “Who said you were paying?”

  “I don’t want anything from you, Nicolas.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s my kid—kids—in there. I can’t have you walking around with your belly hanging out, or wearing cheap clothes that might contain some sort of chemical that could hurt the babies.”

  I glared at him, ready to say something that wasn’t very lady-like, but the nurse came back then with a rubber band. She even helped me fasten my jeans with it, tugging them closed enough so that I wasn’t exposing myself when Nicolas led the way outside ten minutes later.

  When we drove down Rodeo Drive, I had flashes of every romantic movie I’d ever seen. And when we walked into the maternity shop and a sales girl looked down her nose at me, I had a very vivid image of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The only difference was, my Richard Gere was standing next to me.