The Billionaire's Bauble

by Ann Montclair

  “Sure thing,” he said, backing out through the curtained opening after pecking her mud stained cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

  Sloane exhaled and put her hand to her stomach.

  Her brain buzzed with fear. The fall forgotten, she focused now on the test results, which should be forthcoming soon. She felt a nervous wreck, but she twisted her grandmother’s ring and tried to calm her breathing.

  When she had gotten to x-ray, the technician had asked her if she could be pregnant. The answer was yes. In fact, Sloane was now almost sure all her recent symptoms added up to one thing. She was carrying David’s child.

  The nurse had drawn blood right then, and the x-ray had been cancelled. Somehow she had to get David out of the hospital without him finding out. She felt like bees were boomeranging in her head, and she was excited and sick at once.

  “Can you please ask my family to stay in the waiting room? Tell them I’ll be out shortly,” she requested, and the nurse nodded before leaving Sloane alone.

  “A baby,” she whispered to herself and shook her head in disbelief. Why hadn’t she figured it out before now? She had never maintained a particularly regular cycle, but she couldn’t remember having her period once since applying at Grant Oil. Add to that her on again off again queasiness and the weight gain, and the possibility of a pregnancy became a probability. Though she now used birth control, she hadn’t that first night at David’s mansion. They’d made love with reckless abandon, without any heed to a possible pregnancy. Sloane groaned aloud. What would she do? She couldn’t tell anyone yet. She had to figure this thing out if it were true. She twirled her ring around her finger again and again as she waited.

  Sure enough, the results came back positive. David and she were going to be parents.

  Half of her wanted to shout with happiness, and half of her wanted to cry in defeat. Things had been going perfectly since she had gotten on that plane for New York, and now, everything was in limbo. Sloane rubbed her eyes. She would not cry. She had to keep it together long enough to convince her family she had a sprained arm, nothing more.

  After fitting her with a sling, the nurse made her sign some papers detailing instructions on how to treat her bruised arm once she left. Sloane crushed the instructions into a ball and put the paper in her pocket. The nurse insisted on wheeling Sloane out to meet her family, to meet David, and Sloane slumped into the wheel chair to be escorted out.

  The nurse said, “He’s a nice young man. So handsome and attentive. You are a lucky woman,” and Sloane bit back her tears. “Thanks,” she mumbled and the nurse stopped rolling.

  “Do you need to see a counselor? Is your pregnancy bad news?” the nurse asked.

  “No,” Sloane quickly answered. She didn’t know which question she was answering. Her mind seemed unable to focus on anything. She held her tummy protectively. “I’ll be okay. I’m only surprised. Please don’t say anything,” she added, nodding to the assembly outside the emergency room doors.

  The nurse smiled and said, “Honey, things always work out. You’ll see,” and she gave Sloane’s elbow a confident pat.

  When Sloane exited the emergency room, a flurry of tender words greeted her ears. Rob, meekly apologetic, offered to take her home, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re coming with us,” her mother said, and David smiled diffidently at Sloane.

  David held Sloane close, gently rubbing her shoulders and kissing her ear in the back seat of her father’s sedan. She turned to David and threw her one good arm around his shoulders. She wanted to be in Alaska, in his home, in his bed, as his wife expecting their baby, more than she ever wanted anything in her life. But she couldn’t do it this way. No way could she coerce him to do “the right thing.” She loved him, she knew, but she had pride and big dreams. Now, they all seemed impossible to accomplish. Burying her head in David’s chest, Sloane wept bitterly. He soothed her as best he could.

  “Oh sweetheart, does it hurt so much?” he worried.

  “Yes,” she said, wishing she could tell him why.

  “I can’t go back to Alaska, David,” Sloane said. She sat in her old bedroom atop her single bed, the bed she’d slept in for twenty years. The delicate floral pattern on the pink walls did little to soothe her quaking heart.

  “I know you need to heal, but you can do that at my place as well as you can do it here,” he argued. Sloane hated to cause him upset, but she felt desperate to keep her secret. Eventually she’d inform him, but she was too frazzled to form the words now.

  The conversation wasn’t going well, and he strode about the room angrily. He had his hands shoved in his pockets when he sat next to her on the bed. Already their physical closeness was dissipating. Sloane didn’t want him too close for fear he’d feel the bump that seemed to grow every minute.

  “I know that David, but really, it’s been so long since I was home, and I can’t work yet, so it makes sense that I stay here.”

  “Okay, then I’m staying, too.” He had that matter of fact, stone cold look on his face, and Sloane had to screw her courage into place before continuing.

  “No, Grant needs you. You’ve already been gone longer than ever before. What will Bev do without you? What about that big deal you and Tony have brewing?” she asked, trying to reason with him.

  “That’s done,” he answered curtly.

  “What?” she said, incredulous that he should be so nonchalant about the biggest maneuver of his career.

  “We moved too late. It fell through.” He shrugged his shoulders, and his lips puckered a bit. She wanted to kiss those lips, to rub his shoulders and comfort him the way he had done for her. Instead, she let the feeling pass.

  “Oh, no,” she lamented, covering her face with her hands. “Is it my fault?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, but his tone was terse, and she knew the whole thing had fallen apart because of the trip, because of her.

  “See what I’ve already cost you,” she said dismally.

  “Nonsense,” he chided. “I chose to focus elsewhere. You didn’t force me into coming. Remember?”

  Sloane’s stomach was in knots. She needed some time to think, some time to plan, but David wouldn’t budge. If she went back to Alaska he would find out sooner than later about their baby, and Sloane wasn’t sure she wanted him to know. She made a quick decision.

  “Listen, David. We have a great thing, but it isn’t permanent. It’s all just fun, and I don’t want it anymore. I need to stay home and get my priorities straight. You’ve got me all mixed up.” Her tone turned denunciatory. What she said wasn’t entirely false.

  What?” It was his turn to be surprised. He stood up and walked to the window. His fists were balled at his sides, and he spoke with tight control. “That’s BS and you know it. We’ve got something you just don’t throw away. I find it totally unbelievable that we could go from making love to breaking up in one day. Did you bang your head when you fell?”

  “No, of course my head is not injured. Why can’t you believe I would want to stay here, maybe get my life back? We got together as quickly as that.” She snapped her fingers, and the sound came harshly into the room. “Breaking up isn’t so different.” Sloane hated lying to him, but she had to. It was the only way.

  “Sloane, please listen to reason. Let’s go home and figure this thing out.”

  “Do you love me?” She threw the words like a gauntlet, and she knew the answer would free her.

  He turned to her from the window, and the light streaming in behind him diffused his expression.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think I do. I have been happier with you than I have ever felt in my life. I don’t want to lose you now.” He came to her side and reached for her then, and as much as she wanted to collapse into his strong embrace, she wouldn’t. He was only saying what he knew would get him his way. He didn’t love her. He couldn’t, or . . .

  She avoided his touch, and he plowed his hands through his hair in frustration.

&
nbsp; “I think I do isn’t enough for me. If we spend some time apart, you may know you do… or don’t. I deserve a firm answer, don’t I?” She did.

  “Dammit, Sloane, I am doing the best I can. Why are you doing this now? Why can’t you just come home with me, and we’ll work it out?” His level of frustration grew with every word he spoke, and she could see she had hurt him as well as angered him. His eyes flashed at her, almost black. She looked away.

  “I’m not a possession you can lug around until you decide how you feel about me, what to do with me. I’m staying here, and you’re going to Alaska. That’s final.” She laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes.

  David sat in silence, and she felt his eyes rove over her. If she opened her eyes, she would see his pain, and then she’d be lost. She loved him more than life, and she couldn’t settle for maybes and perhaps. Sloane wanted her happily ever after, and that didn’t happen on accident, like her pregnancy.

  “David, please leave.”

  “Look at me, Sloane. Tell me you don’t love me, you don’t want me. I won’t leave unless you do.” David’s voice cracked and shred the air.

  It took every ounce of courage she possessed to speak.

  “You don’t love me. I don’t love you. There. Are you satisfied?” she said, and she opened her eyes. She felt overwhelmed and ashamed of her lies. She also felt very close to throwing up again.

  “No, I don’t believe a word of this, but have it your way. I’ll go. Call me if you change your mind.” He stood up and strode out her bedroom door. She heard his steps retreating down the wooden stairwell.

  Sloane really bawled then. Like a baby who’d lost its mother, like a woman who’d lost her lover. Covering her head with her pillow, she let all the shame and sadness overtake her body. She sobbed until her mother came tiptoeing into the room and laid her cool hand on Sloane’s heaving back.

  “He’s gone,” she said, and Sloane sat up and threw her arms around her mother’s slight shoulders.

  “Oh, Mom, I think I might die,” Sloane cried.

  “Sweetheart, it’s just the hormones. They’ll settle down at about the fourth month. You’ll see,” she wisely conjectured, patting Sloane briskly.

  Sloane pulled away, surprised, chagrined, and looked at her mother miserably.

  Her mother grinned and said, “I hope its twins after all this hullabaloo.”

  Chapter 14

  Bill stood in the entryway. David nearly bowled him over trying to get out the door. He had his suitcase in hand, and he imagined, a nasty look on his face, so he stopped, set the bag down, and extended his hand to shake Bill’s goodbye.

  Bill took David’s hand and looked him square in the eye. “Let me drive you to the airport, son.”

  David nodded agreement, too choked up, too angry and betrayed to speak. He got into the white sedan’s passenger seat and slammed the door behind him. David looked up at Sloane’s bedroom window, wishing she’d stop him, knowing she wouldn’t.

  “She’s a woman, David. She’ll change her mind,” Bill said as he drove down the dusty drive.

  “Ya think?” David asked dolefully. He stared out the window, watching Sloane’s life pass by.

  “You two are crazy in love. It always goes like this—up and down, until you get it smooth. Sometimes that never happens, but in your case, I think the smooth’ll happen. Give her some time to miss you.”

  Tony and Maya had given him similar advice, and that had worked out, at least for a while. David digested Bill’s words before answering. “I don’t know a damned thing about love. Never saw it growing up and I don’t know if I’m capable.” David put on a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes. He felt like he’d been beaten up.

  “I was in the same boat. My dad was a big drinker, and he left my mom and me when I was a little guy. My mom dated a bunch of different men, some good, some bad, but she died before ever settling down. I spent my whole life thinking love was for the birds until I met Dora. The woman knocked my socks off, and I never looked back.”

  David took off his glasses and looked at Bill in puzzlement. This man, Sloane’s father, the patriarch of all that rolled by the car window had been the child of a loveless marriage, too?

  “How’d you know you loved Dora?”

  “She told me,” he laughed a deep throated chuckle.

  “I learned from Dora that character is a decision. Just because my daddy was a fool and my mom never got it right didn’t mean I had to follow their footsteps. Dora taught me that you leave the animals in the barn at night, and you focus on what matters. Family. Health. Fortune. In that order. When I met her, all I wanted was to own a farm, be a wealthy man, but without her, all my plans turned hollow. She’s a wise woman, that Dora Mae.”

  David could hear the tenderness in Bill’s voice, and David took a deep breath.

  “You think she’ll forgive me for being such a horse’s butt? Should I go back and beg her?”

  “Yes and No,” Bill laughed. “I know my girl. She can’t stay mad for long, but if you press her, she’ll bolt like a pony. You know something? I bet once you get back to Alaska, she’ll come around.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” David dared to ask.

  “You’ll have lost the best deal of your life.”

  David nodded his head slowly. “You’re right about that, Bill.”

  David’s jet waited on the runway. He waved goodbye to Bill and ascended the stairs. His legs felt leaden, and his heart felt heavier than that. He wished Sloane were beside him again. He’d wanted to surprise her with a private trip back to Alaska, but his plans had disappeared like Slone around the corner on her ATV. He wondered again if the fall had addled her brain.

  Everything had been going so well up until they left the hospital. If he could do it all over again, he would have kept her naked in that tent. They never had trouble communicating that way.

  David felt the familiar tug at his crotch that thinking about Sloane always induced. The woman made him hard from thousands of feet in the air and with hundreds of miles between them. He could only imagine the fun they’d be having now if she were sitting next to him.

  She had only wanted one thing from him today, and he refused to give it to her. What did he know about love? Sloane well knew his past foibles with women, with relationships. Why had she pushed him so hard to say the three words he had never used before? And he had tried, had been honest, and that had only gotten him shoved out her door.

  David ground his fist into his palm. How he wished he hadn’t equivocated. If only he’d said I love you, she’d be in his arms right now.

  But did he love her?

  He began to mentally tally the pros and cons of his relationship with Sloane. By the time his list compiled itself in his head, he was too tired to come to a conclusion. He fell asleep somewhere over the heartland, dreaming of Sloane.

  When David finally made his way into his mansion, he was struck by a familiar smell. It wasn’t Sloane’s Chanel, but a sweeter odor, almost cloying. He flipped on the lights in the hallway even though it was still summer and light outdoors. He couldn’t believe what he saw.

  The house had been transformed. He looked at his mother’s furniture, at her art on the walls, at the vases and books—all belonging once to her.

  He walked room to room in a daze, and then he saw her. After all their years apart, Lexi hadn’t changed one bit.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked her coldly.

  She sauntered up to him, her long blonde hair swaying side to side. She wore a green silk number that did little to hide her slim, fit figure. David noted the dress was almost the same emerald color of Sloane’s eyes, and it made his stomach tense.

  “I came to return your mother’s things,” she said smoothly, and she put her arms around David’s neck and placed her mouth on his.

  Sloane had stayed up half the night, talking to her mom and then her dad about her predicament. Listening intently to her fears and hopes, each had sage advice
to offer. As Sloane watched the sun rising over the farm house, she laid in bed, pondering their words.

  Sloane’s mother said that from what she’d seen, David cared deeply for Sloane. David might not know it yet, but he was certainly acting like a man in love, all possessive and demanding.

  “They get that way when they’re scared of losing us, or scared of their own feelings. Think about it, sweetheart. What bull doesn’t run when the knife gets close to their boom booms?” Sloane loved her mother’s sense of humor, but she doubted David, nonetheless.

  Her father had been more understanding and had let Sloane cry on him until he needed a fresh shirt.

  His kind of comfort was to be strong and quiet. “There, there,” he soothed. “You kids will work it out,” he consoled.

  The one thing both her parents agreed upon and emphatically stated was that David must be told the truth. He had a child coming, and he needed time to prepare for fatherhood.

  How they might share the child with thousands of miles between them was a particularly disturbing thought. Sloane didn’t want their child shipped cross country on a plane, spending one part of the year in the wilds of Alaska and the other part on a farm in New York. The baby deserved one home, one set of parents.

  Logically, Sloane knew lots of kids lived in two homes, and they grew up to be successful, happy people, but she never envisioned that reality for her baby. Sloane believed she and her husband would marry, have a home, raise their children, live together in bliss, forever. How could she settle for less? As these dim visions lit up her overtired mind, her cell phone buzzed on the bedside table.

  Sloane grabbed it so quickly she almost hung up before answering.

  “Hello?” she gasped into the phone, waiting to hear David’s voice.

  It was Maya.

  “Hi, Sloane, how’re you?” Maya asked. Sloane could picture Maya in bed with Tony, snuggled up under a blanket, sipping coffee, phoning a friend. Sloane groaned pathetically.

  “Not so good. I sprained my arm yesterday, and I stayed in New York because David doesn’t love me.” The words sounded like a frog’s croak, escaping her throat.