“Thanks, bud,” I said, clapping him on the back. As he took off around the car to hop into the driver’s seat, I put my arm around Ava’s waist, and we began walking slowly into the building. My heart was racing, and I could feel my pulse in my fingertips, but I was strangely calm. I didn’t know if it was an out-of-body experience or if I was just delirious from a lack of sleep, but time passed and suddenly we were in the delivery room, with Ava resting and a doctor telling us it would only be a few hours.
“Go get something to eat,” Ava said as my stomach grumbled loudly.
“I’m not leaving you here alone,” I said.
“I’m not alone. Mom is just outside, and as soon as you walk out that door, she will be inside. You need to eat. You haven’t had anything since dinner last night,” she said.
“Neither have you,” I responded and then stopped. She looked down at her stomach and then back up at me.
“My stomach’s a little busy,” she said and smiled.
“God, I love you,” I said, shaking my head.
“I love you, too. Now go get a sandwich downstairs.”
As I opened the door, her mother popped up from her seat in the small waiting area for families.
“What’s going on? Is she okay? Is the baby here?” The peppering questions came out in one breath, and I reached out to hold her shoulders and steady her.
“She’s fine. We still have a little time before the baby will be here. She said she wanted me to go get a sandwich from downstairs. You can head on in. She’s expecting you,” I said.
She reached up and hugged me tight and then darted off into the room without another word. She was so anxious about not being in the room with Ava, but Ava had been clear that she only wanted me in there during the delivery. I shook my head and headed for the elevator, and as I entered the main waiting room, I came upon a gaggle of family and coworkers.
“Mason,” Miranda called out as I came into view. I saw several of my brothers jostle awake and immediately arrive on their feet, as if the mention of my name shot a rod of lightning through their spines.
“Hey, nothing’s happened yet, I’m just going down for some sandwiches,” I said, waving everyone off. “Does anyone want anything?”
I took a few orders and headed down, taking my time and trying to keep myself calm. Tom accompanied me, but he didn’t try to get me talking. I appreciated the silent company and the extra hands to carry drinks. As we arrived back at the waiting room floor, I handed the drinks out and turned to my brothers and friends.
“Alright, guys, I’m going to go back and eat with her, and I’ll let you know when something happens, but it might be a while.”
The words had barely come out of my mouth when the door behind me opened and Ava’s mom, red in the face and a smile plastered on it, stood in the opening.
“Mason, come quick! It’s happening!” she exclaimed.
I turned to look at my brothers, seemingly rooted to the spot. I could feel my eyes were so wide that the cold air of the hospital was drying them out.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Tyler shouted in glee.
“Right,” I said, taking off for the room.
As I arrived, I saw the hustle and bustle of doctors and midwives surrounding Ava and felt out of place. Stupidly I stood there for a moment, holding the subs in one hand and a soda in the other. After what seemed like eternity, one of the nurses noticed me.
“Sir, would you like to come over here?” she asked, motioning to a chair beside the bed Ava was in.
I nodded, incapable of functional thought, and wandered toward her in a bit of a daze. Everything was happening, and it was so fast, and I was still holding this damn sub.
Putting it down on the table nearby, I looked into Ava’s flushed and sweaty face.
“Where, were, you,” she said, deep breaths punctuating each pause.
“I went to get sandwiches. I have sandwiches.”
“You have sandwiches?” she asked.
“I have… sandwiches,” I repeated.
“I am going to need Ava to push now,” the midwife said from her place at the foot of the bed. It seemed to shake some of the cobwebs out, and suddenly, I was very present in the moment, and when Ava clasped my hand, I wiped her forehead and settled in.
Two hours of intense labor later, I held my baby boy in my arms for the first time. He was so beautiful I could barely contain myself, and I kissed Ava on the forehead as I held him close to my skin.
“Welcome to the world, little Robert,” Ava whispered to him as she kissed him on the head. I smiled, knowing that my father would be proud of us naming the baby after him, and would have loved to see his grandson.
Sometime later, after Ava had a chance to clean up and brush her hair back into a bun, she let me invite everyone in. It took almost no time at all before my mother and hers were haggling over which nights they would be able to have the baby.
“Alright, you two, maybe we can hang on with the schedules. He’s less than a day old,” I said.
After an hour or so of visiting, and everyone getting their turn holding Robert and whispering secrets of the universe to him, they began to filter out, eventually leaving just the three of us in our spacious recovery room. It usually was designed for two families, but we lucked out and it was just us. Ava and I sat up for most of the evening, deliriously happy with our new baby boy, and possibly delirious in general from a lack of sleep. I was so over the moon happy in that moment that I felt like it could never get any better.
“I love you, Ava,” I whispered as Robert fell back into a deep sleep in my arms. “And I love you too, Robert,” I said, kissing his head.
“I love you both,” Ava said smiling. I kissed her deeply, and she curled up around me on the makeshift bed we created out by pushing the futon next to the hospital bed.
In that moment, our baby between us, our foreheads touching, I felt like the luckiest man on earth, and knew deep down, it was only ever going to get better from here.
The End
Millionaire Hero (Sample)
Here is a preview of my previous novel that’s apart of my Freeman Brother series. All stories are standalone and can be read in any order!
Enjoy this free sample!
1
Bryn
“Oh, come on!”
I stuck my fingers under the beige twine and yanked, but it wouldn’t release. Digging my nails into one of the knots, I cursed the manicurist who told me the short, sporty look was trendy for this season. No matter how much I pulled, poked, or prodded, I couldn’t get the twine off the packaging. It was beyond me why a butcher felt the need to bind up a roast so tightly. It wasn’t like it was going to escape at this point.
Glancing over at the clock, I saw my time was dwindling away. When I first came up with this plan, it seemed like such a good idea. Silly me, I didn’t take into account the need to wrestle the roast free before I would be able to put it in the oven. The battle had already put a significant dent in the time I had to prepare dinner. If it didn’t get it in soon, Justin would come home to a less-than-romantic assortment of takeout Chinese. Granted, at this point I was almost ready to take the knock against me in the romance department if it meant not dealing with this massive chunk of meat.
But I was never one to give up that easily. Some people called it stubbornness. I called it… well, stubbornness. But I thought of it in a more positive way. Something closer to persistence.
Wrenching open the junk drawer, I dug through the odds and ends of life that ended up tucked there. My search for kitchen shears came up dry. It didn’t surprise me. The scissors had a way of climbing out of the drawer and walking away from the kitchen. At least, that’s the way Justin would tell it, considering he insisted he never touched the things and couldn’t understand why they kept showing up on his desk.
Letting out a sigh, I left the offending roast on the counter and headed for Justin’s office. Crowded into one of the two extra bedrooms in my
little house, the office was where he buried himself in work. He spent hours locked away trying to get to the next level. That was how he described it. I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. He wanted to make more money and be more successful.
I was proud of him. We were trying to build our lives together, and he was working so hard to make it happen for us.
The door to the office was shut, but it wasn’t locked. I stepped inside and glanced at the desk. The scissors weren’t there. Sifting through the papers piled on top, I still didn’t find them. They had to be there. I didn’t have them, and they weren’t in the kitchen or living room. I opened the first drawer but didn’t find them. The second drawer was files and papers. I was closing it when I noticed a particular file.
I paused. Why would he have that in here?
Taking the file out, I checked the label, just to make sure I was seeing it right. Justin didn’t have an account in that bank. But I did. The account my mother set up for me that held my entire inheritance, everything she had worked so hard to build up for me before she died.
My stomach sank and my hands shook as I flipped the file open. I went through the papers not believing what I was seeing. Rage bubbled up inside me, and my eyes blurred. This couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was. I went back to the first page and read through them again.
He’d stolen my entire inheritance.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and break things. I wanted to storm back in the kitchen and throw the roast out the window. But before I could do anything, the doors to the office opened and Justin walked in.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked.
I looked at him incredulously. “Are you seriously going to try to be angry with me right now? This is my house. Don’t forget that. I can go anywhere I please. Especially now that I know what’s been happening right under my own roof.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t act dumb,” I said. “Don’t add to how much you’ve been insulting my intelligence and disrespecting me by pretending you don’t know what’s going on. I was in the kitchen acting like an absolute idiot trying to make you a special dinner to show how much I appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing. But the scissors were missing, yet again. So, I came in here to find them, and look what I found instead.”
I shoved the papers into his chest, and Justin stumbled back a couple of steps before taking them in looking down at them. His eyes widened. “Bryn, let me explain.”
“There’s nothing for you to explain,” I said. “You can’t possibly talk your way out of draining my entire inheritance and then losing it all. You stole from me. You took everything I had. I thought we were trying to build a future together.”
“We are,” he said. “That’s why I did this.”
“Just stop. Stop trying to defend yourself. There’s nothing you could say that could even come close to making this okay.” I let out an exasperated sigh and covered my face with my hands, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I was putting myself through all that hassle to make you dinner because I was so proud of what you were doing. I thought you were working so hard. Turns out all you were doing was stealing from me.”
“I wasn’t stealing,” he said. “I was investing. You had all that money sitting there not doing any good for anyone. All you’ve been talking about for years is wanting more security, a bigger house, more opportunities. But you wouldn’t even touch that money. Investing it could get us there faster. It could make far more money far faster than either of us could working regular jobs.”
“So, you stole it.”
“I invested it. I was going to surprise you when all the profits came in,” he said.
I let out a mirthless laugh and shook my head, putting my hands on my hips and staring at him. This couldn’t possibly be the man I’d been in love with. He couldn’t be the person I thought I might spend the rest of my life with. That man wouldn’t betray me like this. He knew how much that money mattered to me. That it was so much more than just the balance on the account.
“You weren’t going to tell me about it at all. If you had any intention of making me a part of it, you would have included me from the beginning. You wouldn’t have gone behind my back and stolen every dollar I had, then handed it over to some incompetent investor to toss away. How could you do something like that?” I asked.
“This was for us.”
He opened his hands, stepping toward me with hope in his eyes, but I backed away from him.
“No. Don’t even try. How could you do this?”
He let out a breath, his hands falling and his expression shifting to something dull and unaffected. “I thought I could get away with it. Honestly, it didn’t seem like it would be that difficult to get past you. Considering I’ve been doing it for the last six months and you didn’t know, I was on the right track. You’re just so blind, Bryn. So stupid when it comes to money. If you didn’t come in here and find those papers, you never would have found out.”
“I never would have found out? How exactly would you explain to me that all my money had disappeared?” I asked.
“I would have figured it out,” he said.
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out. Get out of my house,” I said.
“You can’t be serious,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“I am. This is my house. Get out now.”
I pushed past him into the bedroom and started yanking his clothes down off the hangers in the closet and scooping them up from the drawers in the dresser. He stood in the doorway to the office, watching me when I stopped as I passed to the front door. I opened it and threw everything in my arms out onto the front lawn. He let out a shout to protest, but I didn’t care. Stomping back up to him, I snapped the papers from his hands and went back into the bedroom for more.
“Bryn, stop it. You’re being ridiculous,” he said.
“No, I’m done. I am done with all of this and with you. Get out now before I call the cops.”
I felt a measure of glee when I was finally able to kick him out and throw the rest of his stuff out after him. It stayed like a hum buzzing in my head as I watched him at the window plucking his clothes and other belongings up out of the grass. I walked away just before hearing the door slam closed. The amplified feeling drained out of me when I heard the car pull away.
Sinking down to the floor, I clutched the papers harder in my hands, and the tears came.
It was gone. All of it. My entire inheritance, gone. All the money my mother had worked so hard for her entire life, gone. One of the very few links I had left to her, gone.
Now I had to deal with the reality that I had to figure out what to do next. It wasn’t just about the money being gone. This was an upheaval of my whole existence, and I had to figure out how to rework my life.
I had never relied on it. That was my nest egg, my safety net that protected me in case things went completely wrong.
I dropped my head back against the door and let out a breath. Maybe there was a way I could get it back.
2
Nick
I was just coming back into my office after lunch when my phone alerted me to a new text message. I sat down behind my desk and got myself situated before I checked it. It was from Lindsey, and before I even read it, I had a feeling I knew what was coming.
Come over for dinner tonight? The message read.
I let out a groan, happy nobody was in the office with me to hear my reaction. My best friend had been hounding me for more than a week to go over to her place for dinner. Actually, it wasn’t even her place. It was my older brother Vince’s place. She had started spending a lot more time over there recently, which was exactly where my issue lay.
I don’t know, I messaged back. I have a lot going on with work and everything. I might be working late.
Her answer came almost instantly, and I could almost see her leaned against her bar, holding her phone and waiting for my res
ponse.
Just something quick. Nothing big and elaborate. If you have to work late, we’ll eat late.
It wasn’t that I had a problem with Lindsey and Vince being together. The idea of my best friend and my big brother being involved might seem strange for some people, but I thought it was great. They fit together perfectly.
It didn’t even bother me that they were going so fast in their relationship. I figured there wasn’t much point in delaying too long or dragging their feet. It wasn’t like they were teenagers. They were old enough to make their own choices, and once they knew, they knew. It didn’t make sense to slow things down and move through the stages of a relationship gradually just because it was what was expected of them.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. I enjoyed spending time with both of them, and it had been a while since we’d spent any time together. I loved Lindsey and her son. Remy was a fairly new addition to my life, at least in terms of spending time with him. Up until recently, Lindsey had been keeping him a secret from everyone but me. I was the only person who even knew she had a son but didn’t spend any time with him. It wasn’t until a nasty custody battle with her ex that she let other people in, and he started spending more time with his mother, and, by extension, the rest of us.
Getting a chance to hang out with them, and with my brother, was appealing. Which was the only reason I was considering taking her up on her offer for dinner. The truth was, as much as I wanted to spend time with them, watching them play out their new role as a happy little family was a bit difficult for me. In fact, it had gotten sickly sweet enough to make it hard to be around them for long.
My label as the last of the Freeman brothers to remain single didn’t exactly help the situation.
First Merry came along. A young, driven social media consultant and marketing expert, she burst onto the scene of Freeman Racing and instantly clashed with company owner and oldest brother, Quentin. The friction didn’t last long. Somewhere between overhauling the company’s social media presence and establishing events that took the fans by storm, she and Quentin fell in love. A baby and wedding quickly followed, and now they reigned over the compound together.
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