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

by Nancy Adams

  There, she found that the struggling Rosa had gone limp in the arms of the others and the doctor jumped up from where he was, shooing the girls away, attempting to revive Rosa while the room went silent except for the noises of his exasperated efforts to bring the girl back.

  Juliette did not see him, though. Nor did she see the faces of the others, or hear their occasional wails. All she saw were the dead eyes of Rosa dully looking out, eyes which had always held so much light for her, but which were now completely blank; the only light they held now was that which reflected off of them from the light bulb shining above the bed.

  The complete hollowness of that occasion swept over Juliette as it had back then, and she once again felt the loss of Rosa slice into her heart like a knife through watermelon. She rushed her hands over her face and almost clawed at them, not to see, not to feel, to go dark forever.

  It was at that moment that she realized she was screaming and that someone was attempting to place their arms around her. She opened her eyes to find David’s soft face looking back at her with ultimate worry. But she did not see him. All she saw was a boy looking at her. She glanced into the front seat where an old man kept glancing back at her with worry on his face while he drove, offering her calming words of reassurance. But she did not recognize him either, and a panic bit into her.

  “Momma,” the boy called softly, and the familiarity in his voice meant something to her, but she did not know what.

  Jules pulled the car over onto the hard shoulder as Juliette continued to glance about her with confusion while David held his loving arms around her. She felt herself still in that room, as though the wrong version of her had emerged from it; not the old one that she was in the dream, but the young version that she had been looking for when she had stood inside that terrible room. She still felt the loss of Rosa and it ached her heart so much so that she thought she might be forced to tear it from her chest if it continued to hurt her so much. Nothing else, however, could she muster into her head; just the room. Just Rosa and all those melancholy faces surrounding the dying girl.

  Jules opened the backdoor of the car and gazed benevolently at Juliette. She gazed at his eyes and slowly felt something—like wisps of smoke—return to her consciousness. She felt so safe under the radiant glow of those eyes, and she began to calm. The arms of the boy, too, gave her reassurance, and she started to feel okay, her aching heart abating slightly; still hurting, but no longer so prominently. It suddenly dawned on her and she smiled at them both.

  “Jules and David,” she mumbled, half expecting this to be wrong.

  Jules beamed a wide smile at her and repeated, “Jules and David.”

  “You better, Momma?” David asked, taking his face away from her neck.

  “Yeah,” she said with her best impression of a smile. “It was nothing but a bad dream is all.”

  “You wanna get some fresh air?” Jules asked her gently.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  With that, Jules and David helped her out of the car and she walked along the side of the desert highway for a moment before feeling much better and retaking her place in the car. They were close to their destination. Having spent two nights out at Topolobampo, they had left early that morning to make the final nine-hour drive of their journey and were now only five hours away from its end. Jules was eager to get them there. This wasn’t Juliette’s first bad dream, or bout of confusion. Many times in the last days she had become perplexed and talked of things of the past in a way that suggested they were still a part of her daily life. Old friends, many of them dead, were talked about as though she were planning to visit them that very day. She would point something out in the landscape and begin telling a story about it, even though she’d never been there before or seen it. Of course, the story would always be of somewhere else, the landscape merely reminding her crooked mind of something else and whisking her off there. On one of the nights they’d stayed at the guesthouse in Topolobampo, Jules had awoken to find her missing and eventually found her wandering the dark streets outside, barefoot with nothing on her except her nightgown.

  The constant change of it all, the transient nature of the past days, was taking its toll on his love and Jules wanted to get her to a fixed location as soon as possible. Once he got her to Jose’s cousin’s place, he could settle her mind with consistency and help bring resolve to her feeble state. While they were on the road, however, she was being constantly tortured with change and her mind found it difficult to fix itself to anything.

  As he glared down the desert road, Jules prayed to God that he could get her there safely.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paul awoke to the dim sounds of his parents talking below him. His room was above the kitchen, so he could always hear any discussion coming from there. This was something that, for some reason, his parents had never been aware of, so they therefore continued to talk plainly beneath him, giving him unimpeded insight to their current thoughts. It was as he lay awake in bed that he tuned slowly, and idly, into their conversation.

  “…I gotta go shopping, George,” his mother was saying to his father.

  “But I gotta be at surgery in half an hour. I got appointments. What can I do with him? Plus, he won’t wanna come with me anyway—he always has a look of hatred whenever he’s down there. I’m not sure this time will be any better by a long shot.”

  “The cupboards are bare and I have to go to the store. And the way he is, I can’t go knowing that he’s all on his own; anything could happen.”

  “Then it’s simple, Patty, you gotta take him to the store with you.”

  “Okay,” she gave in.

  Once they’d settled on this resolution, Paul listened as his father left for the surgery and his mother made her way to his bedroom. There followed a light rap at the door and Paul called out to her that it was open. She gingerly opened the door and stepped inside. The moment she did, Paul sat up in bed.

  “Paul, dear,” she began softly when she knew she had his attention, “I was wondering if you’d like to come to the store with me like you used to when you were a kid? I thought it would give us both something to do. What do you say?”

  “Sure thing, Ma,” he replied in the jolliest tone he could conjure up. “Just let me get showered and dressed.”

  “Okay,” she let out, retreating from the room.

  Within an hour they were both sitting in the front of his mom’s car on their way to the grocery store in town, the flat, bare fields lining the road on the way. Just as he always had as a kid, Paul spotted the store from at least a mile away, the even landscape doing nothing to impede his vision when the place appeared on the horizon. Not long after that, they were parked up and he was walking through the barren aisles of the store with his mother, as she continually sent him off for things and searched out what she wanted from her list.

  It was midday and the place was very quiet. As he wandered down the electric lighted aisles, Paul felt so lonely, like it was the end of the world or something, only the odd member of staff strolling by and seemingly oblivious to their presence. Making it to the meat counter, Paul stood idly to the side as his mother ordered the meats she would be wanting. Glancing blankly about the place, he spotted a little girl trying to reach something on a promotions stand. Two members of staff stood chatting just feet from her and didn’t seem bothered by the little girl’s effort. With a shrug of his shoulders, Paul went over to the girl and grabbed the item she was so desperately trying to reach, handing it down to her.

  “Thank you,” the girl said sweetly when she’d taken the box of chocolate crunch cereal from him.

  Paul smiled and went to walk away. But as he turned to leave, he was met with a face that was so familiar that he couldn’t help but stand stuck to the spot gazing intensely at the woman.

  “Shelly Temple,” he said with a smile once her name had come to his mind.

  “Paul Bishop,” she replied immediately.

  She was so pretty, even after a
ll this time. Paul hadn’t seen her since the prom night party when he had reluctantly watched her dance with Ben Slater, jock and hard-ass. She was brunette, about five foot seven, her long hair curled, though it had been shoulder-length and straight when he had last seen her. Her face was a dark olive color, owing to her mother's Greek routes, and she had the prettiest button nose. All the way through junior high and then high school he had been in love with Shelly Temple, but, although they’d been close as youngsters, he’d never dared even look at her once they were teenagers.

  “Mommy,” the little girl said up to Shelly, “the man got me my cereal.”

  “Did you thank him?” Shelly inquired, looking down at the girl.

  “She sure did,” Paul interjected in the little girl’s defense.

  Shelly smiled and looked back up at Paul, and he could see that she was blushing.

  “What you doing back in Casselton?” she asked after a brief pause.

  “I’m visiting my folks for a few weeks…Well, maybe longer, I’m not sure.”

  “Tommy King—you remember Tommy don’t you?”

  “Of course, we still e-mail occasionally. I been meaning to go see him, but I only got here a day or two ago.”

  “Well, Tommy told me that you were out in Maine for a while at college and then at Massachusetts at medical school, and now you’re a trainee doctor in New York of all places.”

  Paul was amazed that she knew all of this about him and felt esteemed to think that Shelly Temple had been asking around about him, as he was sure that Tommy wouldn’t bother himself with telling anyone about Paul’s exploits unless they asked.

  “I mean,” Shelly went on, “everyone here in Casselton is real proud of you, or either insanely jealous! You’re the one that got away! The boy from the small town making it in the big city! I know that I was sure pleased for you when I heard you were working in a hospital there.”

  “I was in New York,” he corrected, not wanting her to stay under the illusion that he was some kind of big shot. “But now I’m taking a little time to rest out here while I reassess things.”

  “Oh! I hope I haven’t upset you by prying where I’m not wanted.”

  “Of course not. I was living with someone and…well, you know, it didn’t work out…so I just need a little time, I guess is what I’m saying.”

  An embarrassing pause hung in the air for a moment and both of them kept glancing at the other and then away, Shelly’s little girl looking between the pair with a confused look.

  “So anyway,” Paul then began, “enough about me, what about you? You have a daughter, that I know.” He looked down at the smiling little girl as he said this last part.

  “What’s there to say? I was born in Casselton, I stayed in Casselton and I’ll most probably d…” Shelley stopped herself and looked down at her little girl, before adding in a softer tone, “Anyway, I ended up marrying Lacey’s father Ben Slater. You remember Ben don’t you?”

  A flash image of being held up against his locker came instantly to Paul’s mind.

  “Yeah, I remember Ben,” he said with a weak smile. “Everyone in the chess club remembers Ben.”

  Shelly smiled at his little joke.

  “So we married and had Lacey,” she continued. “Then his drinking and gambling got too much as well as his…”

  Once again she looked down at her daughter with hesitation.

  “You can say it, Mommy,” Lacey said up to her.

  “I can say what?” the mother asked her daughter with an embarrassed sideways look at Paul.

  “You can tell him about all of Daddy’s women. I know about it anyway.”

  “Lacey!” Shelly exclaimed down to the little girl, blushing all over and glancing at Paul as she did. “Anyway,” she went on, addressing Paul once again, “he was a bit of a boy; as you’d expect from the school jock. And in the end I divorced him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about that, Shelly,” Paul said with sincerity shining in his eyes.

  “Thank you, Paul, but it really was for the best. And he’s not the total asshole you may think him. Ben does well in his father’s haulage firm and pays above and beyond for Lacey, and he’s always good with her when she visits him in his bachelor’s pad. I think it’s much better this way.”

  “That’s good to hear, Shelly, I mean that.”

  “It wasn’t all easy; it hurt like heck when it first happened. I really felt like my heart was in pieces and just wanted to run. But in the end it wasn’t so bad, and now I’m much happier. Maybe you can find the same kind of closure in your own affairs.”

  Paul was taken aback by her sudden judgment of his own withered relationship.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, was I being intrusive? I shouldn’t have presumed that your own relationship ended in such bad terms, or is even over. It’s just I got the impression from your sad eyes and the way you stumbled over your words as you told me about it, that you were looking for closure in it all.”

  Paul smiled at her and felt a bright halo of light glow around him.

  “I guess that’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” he said to her.

  “And you came to Casselton of all places to do that?” she joked.

  Paul grinned and a silent giggle emerged from his lips.

  “I guess I needed my family…and to be away from big cities for the time being. No matter how glamorous they may be to small-town folk, they’re not always so in real life, and can be very lonely places.”

  “I’m sure,” Shelly agreed with a timid expression.

  Another pause erupted between them and they both fidgeted for a moment, until Shelly suddenly looked up at him and said, “Look, we gotta be going, my shift starts in an hour and I have to get this one home to the babysitter. But if I give you my telephone number, you call me up…” She paused, wondering if she’d said too much, gone too far, misread things. “That’s unless,” she went on, pausing once again.

  “No, that would be cool. I guess I need to start hooking up with people again if I’m gonna be staying around for a while.”

  They both swapped numbers and Shelly and Lacey were on their way, Paul watching them disappear down the aisle, Shelly glancing back at him as she reached the junction, smiling embarrassingly when she saw that he was watching her, Paul giving a little wave, a smile on his face.

  “Was that Shelly Temple?” his mother suddenly asked from behind him, making him jump.

  “My God, don’t do that,” he said as he turned to her. “How long have you been behind me?”

  “I was in the next aisle the whole time. I saw you talking and didn’t want to disturb it.”

  “But you didn’t mind spying on us from the next aisle?”

  “I needed some stuff from there, not my fault it happened to be right next to your little conversation. I couldn’t help but overhear it. She seems like a nice girl. I think I can remember you having a little crush on her when you were at school.”

  Paul huffed and turned to his mother as they strode off together.

  “I did not,” he stated mirthfully.

  “Yes, you did. You used to go all red whenever she was around when I used to go pick you up. She used to always say goodbye to you and you almost always went red, hardly even able to muster the strength to say goodbye back to her.”

  “Whatever!”

  His mother continued to rib him as they shopped and he continued to play along. He felt somehow lighter and better inside having bumped into Shelly. He was sure the moment he took her number that he would call her for certain and, as his mother made fun of him, he imagined when he’d call her and felt the flutters of a teenage boy with a crush move through him.

  Somehow, out here in the middle of nowhere, he had found a little light to shine down on his dim world. For the rest of the day with his mother, Paul allowed himself to smile every so often, and his mother would occasionally catch him, smiling herself.

  “Huh!” she said
to herself when she’d first figured out the source of his joy. “A man falls off a horse, the best thing for him is to jump right on back up there!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Claire lay awake in bed on her side facing the wall. All she did was scan the flowered design of the wallpaper, tracing continually over it with her eyes and pressing herself to think of nothing more than the petals on the flowers, counting them several times and trying to determine from the small patch that she was staring at, how many there were in total on the wall. Of course it was all to take her mind off of everything and nothing more.

  As she lay there, she heard Beth’s light footsteps make their way across the landing and stop at her door. At her light wrapping, Claire got up from the bed, fully clothed as she was, and answered.

  She immediately noticed the worried expression on her friend’s face.

  “You gotta come downstairs and watch the television,” Beth said.

  She walked off and Claire followed her downstairs and into the lounge, where they found Will watching Sports Line. Beth picked up the remote control and began scrolling for the news channel.

  “We’ll watch it on plus one,” she informed Claire, “because I saw it an hour ago and was waiting for it to come back on.”

  “Hey!” Will let out from the couch. “I was watching Sports Line.”

  “Well, watch it in the kitchen,” Beth retorted.

  “Why can’t you watch this in the kitchen?”

  “Because there ain’t no plus one on the kitchen set.”

  “Well, there ain’t no Sports Line either.”

  “So you just gotta wait. Now shush—here it is.”

  It was a gossip news program, and the moment it came on, Claire was struck with the image of Sam’s face on the screen, followed by that of Jenna Blackwell. Beth turned up the sound.

  “…now we haven’t spotted the couple together for over a week now,” Jenny Armstrong the presenter was saying, “and that’s odd as they’re usually photographed together several times a week. But what’s even odder is the fact that when both parties were approached for detail, no statement was given. A few days ago there was the whispering of an interview with Jenna on Oprah that was suddenly canceled at the last moment, but our source has been unable to get further detail. The last time either of them were pictured it was when Sam Burgess brought his daughter, Jess, into an emergency room in downtown L.A. after a jet-ski accident well over a week ago. However, something has come up from a member of the public.”