A Heart's End - A Billionaire Romance Novel (Romance, Billionaire Romance, Life After Love Book 6)

by Nancy Adams

  Copyright

  A Heart's End

  Copyright © 2017 by Nancy Adams.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Published by: Nancy Adams

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FOURTY

  CHAPTER FOURTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FOURTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FOURTY-THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Claire awoke on the floor of the restaurant with Annabel’s benevolent face gazing down at her, a concerned compassion gleaming from her eyes. Around Annabel stood several other people—restaurant staff, the rest of Claire’s friends, and several customers, those on the tables nearby, compelled by an inner urge to see the catastrophe.

  “What happened?” Claire mumbled as she attempted to lift her sore body.

  “Be careful,” Annabel advised. “Don’t try to get up straight away, you could faint again.”

  “I fainted!?” Claire let out in a confused voice, rubbing the side of her head where it had struck the ground.

  The moment she had gone down, one of the waitresses had been passing and spotted the falling girl, immediately rushing to her aid. Several people sitting on a table nearby had also observed it and someone had called out if there was a doctor in the house. This had sent Annabel into action, and when she found her potential patient, she was alarmed to see it was her friend.

  “It appears so,” Annabel replied in answer to Claire’s question.

  “I think I’m alright to stand.”

  “Shall I call an ambulance?” someone asked.

  “No. Just give her space,” Annabel ordered.

  Eventually, two men helped ease Claire up onto a chair that someone else had placed close by for her. As she sat on it, someone held out a glass of water, and after taking a few sips she gave it back. It was then that she spotted her phone on the floor and realized that its screen was still lit up with ‘Ted.’ Sam had been listening this whole time.

  Claire went to lift herself from the chair to reach it, but someone placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and stopped her.

  “Give her air,” Annabel exclaimed as she ushered everyone away. “She’s perfectly okay. She just had a little turn is all.”

  Some of the customers were asking if it was the food that had caused the episode and the waiting staff were at pains to explain that this certainly wasn’t the case.

  “Annabel,” Claire said in a low tone, retrieving her friend’s attention, “can you get me my phone? It’s on the floor over there.”

  Annabel turned sharply to the space Claire weakly pointed out and, spotting the device, went over and grabbed it.

  “There’s someone on the line,” Annabel said as she brought it over to Claire. “It’s Ted. Did you faint because of him?” she asked when she handed Claire the phone.

  Claire ignored her friend’s question and immediately applied the phone to her ear, her whole body shaking as she did so.

  “Sam?” she said meekly into the mouthpiece.

  “What happened?”

  “I fainted.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it true then? That we have a son?”

  “Yes.”

  The phone went dead and Claire burst into tears.

  She recalled very little of what happened next, but she was soon whisked into a taxicab. And before she knew it, she was sitting in Annabel’s lounge with a large glass of whiskey clasped in her trembling hands, her friend sitting beside her.

  “You know you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” Annabel softly informed her while rubbing the forlorn girl’s shivering back.

  “It’s okay, Annabel,” Claire replied in a rasping voice, an effect of the tears upon it. “I feel like I need to get it off my chest. I’ve held it there so long that my heart aches so much from the weight of it all.”

  “Sounds like you’re about to make a confession.”

  “I am.”

  “Then I shall be your confessor.”

  The two were silent for a time while Claire appeared to be weighing everything up in her head and readying it for her friend’s ear.

  “I don’t exactly know where to start,” Claire began in a desolate tone, tears dropping relentlessly from her long eyelashes.

  “Work your way back from what just happened in the restaurant if you like.”

  “But that’s the point: what just happened has everything to do with the beginning.”

  “I don’t think I quite understand.”

  Claire gingerly lifted the whiskey to her lips, her weak arms finding much effort in the action, and took a large sip of the burning spirit. As she did, she breathed in deeply and felt the liquor warm her chest up, finding some courage in the feeling.

  “Nearly six years ago I began an affair with Sam Burgess,” she suddenly blurted out, beginning her tale.

  Once she had begun, Claire went on to tell Annabel every detail of the affair and her subsequent pregnancy. Not one piece was left out of it; falling
in love with a married billionaire; the affair behind Marya’s back; the secret hospital rendezvous; losing her virginity to Sam at the Cliff Face; their split; the shame and guilt she felt as a result of it all; the abandoned trip to the abortion clinic; her missing a year of college in order to have the child; Paul’s support through all of this; the adoption; her keeping it all from her parents—even now—and them all being none the wiser. It was all there without embellishment. Claire didn’t let herself off at all—she told it all as objectively as she could.

  At times she would have to stop and cry for a moment, Annabel holding her the whole time, asking very few questions, allowing the girl to get it all out, giving her an ear and no more. And with each new word that flittered from her lips, Claire felt something release from her, as though the mere act of talking about it, hearing it out in the open as opposed to in her head, set her free from it all somehow, made it all appear much smaller than it really was, shrunk it through the simple act of sharing it with someone else. Each new word, each new confession, was like a stone being released from her heart. For so many years she had kept so much of herself locked up inside where only she had access. All these secrets and lies that she’d kept had eaten into her. Now that they were being released, it appeared that she too was somehow being released.

  When she had finished, Annabel held her for some time as she cried bitterly; the last part of the story having been Sam’s recent discovery of the secret child.

  “What do you think?” Claire asked after crying the last drop of herself out of her.

  “About what!? There’s so much!”

  “About me not telling him when I was pregnant.”

  “Well, in hindsight it appears to have been a mistake, because fate brought it back to him in spite of your secrecy. You should have told him from the start. I believe that it was your body and your choice, but the father still should have been informed.” Annabel paused for a moment and studied Claire’s abject face, before going on in a softer tone, “But then I’m starting to sound like my old ethics professor. It’s all well and good in theory, but we can never judge people for the split-second decisions they make under immense pressure, especially at such a young age. When someone has to think quickly—and the results will be life-altering no matter which way they turn—can we blame them whichever way they went? I can talk about ethics all I want, but I wasn’t the nineteen-year-old girl who’d been left pregnant from her first real love affair; a love affair that had recently ended. In most cases, I believe people would have acted in a similar way to you.”

  Claire afforded herself a half smile at this, but no more.

  “Who told him, anyway?” Annabel asked after a moment.

  “He didn’t say, but I suspect it may have been Paul.”

  “Could he be so cruel?”

  “I think it was more about a lesson than an act of cruelty. I never told you, but he came by the hospital last night. He was acting really strange and I was scared that he’d make a scene. So I took him to the paramedics station at the back of the hospital.”

  “And he was cool? He wasn’t abusive?”

  “He wasn’t in the friendliest of moods, but he didn’t act up. He just told me some fable about keeping secrets from our partners and lying to ourselves about it. I suspected something then, but ignored it. I think he was trying to warn me—to get me to confess to Sam before he went and told him. Sam’s call came just over twenty-four hours after I met Paul last night—doesn’t that say something?”

  Annabel momentarily closed her eyes and let out an almost imperceptible groan. The callousness of it all bit deep into her. What right had Paul to tell Sam? she thought to herself. It was Claire’s secret to tell, and Claire’s alone.

  “He had no right to tell Sam,” Annabel suddenly blurted out, the thought no longer restrained.

  “Paul was hurt so bad,” Claire put in his defense, “and, whether he had a right to or not, he needed some sort of vessel for all his anger. I just hope he got it. He needed to show Sam and I the same misery that he feels we’ve shown him.”

  “And has he?”

  Claire’s bulging, sad eyes gazed forward into space. She took another sip of whiskey, felt it burn, and turned to Annabel.

  “I hope not,” she muttered with a sad look. “I hope not.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sam’s teeth were so fiercely clenched together that his jaw ached from the stress of it all. He was pacing back and forth across the whole of his office, a tempest raging in his head. He’d only just gotten off the phone to Claire, and Paul had left a mere ten minutes before. After the young man’s departure, Sam had spent what felt like an hour—but which was only a minute at the most—gazing at the piece of paper with the details of his child on it. The thoughts in his head were gathering such momentum that time appeared to slow down to a sloth’s pace and the words and numbers on that piece of paper branded themselves into him, until he wore every mark on that paper upon his heart.

  St. Patricks Hospital, Ellsworth, Maine. D.O.B: 10/07/2001. Maine Adoption Placement, Waterville, Maine.

  Having stared at the paper for long enough, a merciless anger had coursed through him and he had grabbed his phone so violently that he’d cracked the screen. As he’d waited for Claire to pick up, he had found himself no longer seated on the couch, the piece of paper nowhere to be seen; he was pacing the room, his body desperate for something to do, a coiled spring feeling ready to burst into action inside of him.

  It had only been when she’d fainted that his anger had abated momentarily. It sounded as if she’d dropped the phone, which she had, and he heard the light scream of a woman. He had felt a chasm open up inside of him for a moment as he listened to the worried voices echo through the phone, and his heart had felt like it were about to be poured into the yawning abyss. A terrible worry overtook all his anger and he waited impatiently for word that she was okay. When he heard her voice on the other end and found that she was, the chasm abruptly closed, and he was once again washed over by his former anger.

  Now he held that anger inside him, gripped it tightly in the fist of his heart, and threatened to wear the flooring out as he stomped around. A sudden thought hit him and he swooped to the intercom on his desk.

  Pressing the button, he said, “Karl, come see me.”

  That was all, and soon his assistant was standing before him as he sat at his large oak desk.

  “Has he gone?” Sam asked, referring to Paul.

  “He left the moment he walked out of this office. Street cameras picked him up getting into a cab about three blocks from here. Do you want him followed?”

  “No. Leave him alone. Paul Bishop is to never be touched by us.”

  “What did he want?”

  Sam took in a deep breath, before nonchalantly stating, “He told me I have a son who is out there somewhere.”

  Karl screwed his face up into a look of confusion at the news.

  “A son!? I don’t get it.”

  Without another word on the subject, Sam asked Karl to get in contact with John Ryan and have the man meet Sam there at his office. Twenty minutes later, John was sitting in a chair opposite Sam, who remained behind his desk, his expression distorted by his current state of perplexity.

  “What is it, Sam?” he asked his boss.

  “Can you find adopted children?”

  “It depends where the kid was adopted from, and where to.”

  “All here in the U.S.”

  “Makes it a lot easier. What else have you on the child?”

  “Date of birth, hospital he was born in and the name of the adoption agency.”

  “Then in that case I should have it done by this afternoon.”

  “But I want this all done extremely quietly. I don’t want anyone turning up anywhere asking any direct questions. Just find him discreetly, and then I’ll make a decision after that.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure the adoption agency uses Techsoft software to store t
heir records. That means we won’t ever have to go within a thousand miles of the place to get what we need. I’ll just have our boys hack them.”

  “Okay, I’m texting you the details now. Get on it and inform me of every development.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Sam took his cracked phone and texted John the details. Once he had, the head of security departed on his mission and Sam was left to ponder everything. Was it the right decision to go searching for the child immediately? Had he really thought any of it through for long enough to warrant going in search of the boy so soon? And what would the media make of all of this if they got a sniff? His affair with Claire during Marya’s last days was sure to get out if he found the boy and presented him in some way to the world. And what were his plans when he did find the child? Would he immediately attempt to enter the boy’s life? Or would he hold off, introduce himself gradually? What would he say to Jess?

  His mind spun in ever-increasing circles and, feeling heavy, he rested his head onto his outstretched arms, which lay across the desk. Soon the weight of everything got the better of him and he fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Wake up, Davey, we’re across the border,” Jules said softly into the back of the car, shaking the boy as he lay across the backseat in his blanket, driving with his other hand, his eyes momentarily off the road, Juliette asleep in the passenger seat beside him. At the crossing, the guards had even been kind enough not to wake the old woman and the boy, and merely allowed Jules to fetch their passports for the guards to take a look at, as well as ask a few brief questions.

  David gradually roused and opened his eyes, sitting up as he did and rubbing them, the piercing early morning sun dashing in through the window in sharp streaks. Staring out at the open desert, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light, the boy was amazed to find that it all looked extremely similar to Southern California and Arizona when they’d visited those places.

  “It looks just like back home, Pa.”

  “Landscape’s all the same for the moment; we ain’t nowhere near the jungle. You wait till we reach a town. You’ll see it’s different then. Plus we only just crossed the border, so it’s gonna still look a lot like America.”