Exes (Billionaire Romance #3)

by Aria Hawthorne

  “Originally, there was an open lightwell in the center of the building, but the group who owned the building in the ’60s extended the floors through it to expand their leasable square footage. Broke my heart a bit, I can say that much.”

  “You worked here in the ’60s?” Skepticism created an uptick in Harvey’s question. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he didn’t want to be taken for a fool either.

  The old man huffed. “And the ’50s and the ’40s. I’ve been working in this building longer than you’ve existed on the planet, son. So don’t be getting snotty with me.”

  Harvey stood up straighter, realizing he had just been bitch-slapped by an octogenarian. “Yes, sir.”

  Alma approached the guard. “You remember what it was like then? Before they made the renovations?”

  “Oh sure. I’ve worked here almost every day for the past seventy years. Started as a young boy working as an elevator attendant back when they had those sorts of jobs.” He nodded over to the gleaming golden elevator doors. “And just kept moving my way around every time she gets sold. New owners just never think to fire me.”

  “Yet,” Harvey added.

  Alma shot him a glare—was he really catfighting with a man three times his own age?

  Harvey stuffed his hands in his pockets and moseyed away. Yes, yes…he was. Because he was a man-child, after all.

  “So then you might know something more about this…” Alma held up the skeleton key.

  The old man squinted his cloudy blue eyes onto it. “Oh sure…but first you’ve got to tell me what you’re doing here. It’s my job, you know. Security and all.” He tugged on the iron-on security badge of this shirt.

  “We’re looking for a place to get re-married.” Harvey interjected from across the lobby.

  “You mean you’ve already married him once?” the guard asked Alma, as if Harvey wasn’t standing ten feet away.

  Alma smiled and nodded.

  “And how’d it go the first time?” he prodded.

  She gazed over at Harvey. He pantomimed ten stars.

  “About as well as you’d expect,” she finally replied.

  The guard huffed again. “Bet he screwed it up and now he’s itching for a second chance.”

  “Itching for more than that,” Harvey answered through cupped hands, just to make sure the security guard could hear him—hearing aids and all. “But she still hasn’t said yes.”

  “Smart girl,” the guard muttered, inspecting the key in the light before passing it back to Alma. “Yep. Haven’t needed it in years, but that’s the old elevator key that let us into the top floor penthouse where Mr. Graham had his private office.”

  “Ernest Graham?” Alma incredulously asked. “Daniel Burnham’s business partner?”

  The security guard nodded. “The same. He liked the view from up there until he ran into trouble with Burnham’s sons and moved his whole outfit into the Railway Exchange Building.”

  “You mean, The Santa Fe Building,” Harvey corrected him.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what old-timers like me call it,” the security guard snapped back. “Building owners come and go, names change, but the true pulse of a building beats within the heart of the person who first built it.”

  Harvey shot Alma a glance. Now, who was the one who was entertaining crazy?

  “So the only thing you know is that the key fits the elevators,” Harvey pressed him.

  “Used to,” the security guard abruptly set him straight. “Until they changed that, too.”

  “Is there any part of this building that hasn’t been changed since the time you first started working here?” Alma asked, the last bit of hope faltering in her voice.

  “Nope. It’s all been changed. The only thing left is me.”

  “Aren’t we lucky,” Harvey snarked before Alma grabbed his arm and led him away.

  “Thanks so much for your time,” she said to the security guard. “It looks like we’ll just have to rethink getting married after all.”

  She pushed Harvey towards the revolving doors, but he pushed back on her.

  “Wait, that’s it?” He settled his weight on his heels, stopping her cold. “We can’t just give up now.” He couldn’t help but think how far they had come and how easily she was willing to accept defeat. “You’re the mother of my child and the love of my life, and I’m not letting this end with you as my ex.”

  Taking her by the hand, he reversed their direction, dragging her back to the security guard.

  “So, here’s the deal, Mr. Security Guard…we’ve got a key and a photograph and a hunch that this building is important somehow, but we don’t know why, and I really need my ex-wife to agree to remarry me. So, isn’t there anything else you can tell us about it?”

  “You mean in terms of where to get married?” the security guard replied.

  “I just mean…” Harvey faltered, realizing he was reaching for something that was as elusive as his own belief in it. Alma squeezed his hand, giving him permission to give up the way she had.

  “Okay, yeah. Sure. Suggestions for where to get married.” Harvey sighed, taking anything he could get.

  “Are you really sure he’s the one?” the guard asked Alma, just to spite Harvey.

  She turned to peer into Harvey’s eyes. “Well…if he’s not the one, he’s definitely the one who’s going to drive me crazy trying to prove it.”

  “Yeah, that’s the sense I get, too.” The guard nodded. “Melodrama.”

  Harvey spread out his hands. “I am standing right here, you know.”

  The security guard shrugged like he couldn’t care less. “Well…if you want big and fancy and melodramatic, your best bet is to go over to the Rookery. At least that’s still got an original Burnham lobby and you could probably jump down with a parachute from the balcony and make a memorable entrance.”

  “Because breaking every bone in my body would be the epitome of melodrama,” Harvey noted with sarcasm.

  “It would be memorable,” Alma teased.

  “You’re saying no to remarrying me in Paris, London, or Rome, but yes to a full-on body cast?”

  “I promise to nurse you back to health.” Lifting up his hand, she pecked his knuckles with a kiss.

  Gee thanks, he snuffed, envisioning the scene and considering the fact that the only part of his body he cared about didn’t have a bone.

  “Otherwise…” the guard paused, almost long enough for Harvey to nod off to sleep. “If you don’t mind something smaller and more informal, there’s always the little chapel just down the street with the pretty stained-glass window.”

  Say what? That was enough to jolt Harvey awake.

  “What little chapel with the stained-glass window?” Alma insisted, sliding her hand into Harvey’s for support.

  “The one they moved from Mr. Graham’s office when they renovated his penthouse office into an entire floor of cubicles. A real damn shame, but at least they had the decency to move it. It was Mr. Graham’s favorite.”

  “And did it have a name? The window?”

  “I’m sure it did, but I don’t remember it. But Mr. Graham liked to call it his lady. She had a really lovely face that would glow every time it was sunny in the mornings.”

  Harvey looked down at Alma’s hand. It was trembling.

  “Please…” she treaded carefully. “Can you tell us where we might find it?”

  “Well…” the guard paused, giving Harvey the geriatric stink eye. “I’m happy to tell you anything, but not your friend. For him, it’ll cost one of those Benjamins.”

  Harvey rolled his eyes. Ahhh, of course. He knew there had to be a catch. It was all a fanciful lie to bilk them out of money. The scheming old-timer bastard had them from hello. “Yeah, because I’m a lot less gullible and trusting than my wife.” Harvey removed the hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and lifted it up between two fingers.

  “Ex-wife,” the guard corrected him. “And if I were her, I’d be giving it some second th
oughts myself.” Swiping away the hundred-dollar bill from Harvey, the guard passed it over to Alma.

  “There used to be a charity box inside the chapel, just past the doorway on the right. I haven’t been back to that hospital since my wife passed on, but if it’s still there, maybe you can make a donation for me.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Alma replied, accepting the honor. “So, the chapel is inside a hospital?”

  The security guard nodded. “Lutheran General. Right off of—”

  “—Lake Shore,” Alma finished his sentence.

  “The same. You know it?”

  But Alma didn’t answer. Instead, she abruptly ended the conversation. “Thank you so much for your time. You’ve been most generous with it.”

  She turned away and headed toward the revolving doors, forcing Harvey to rush after her.

  “Hey, hey, hey…slow down there.” He caught her arm. “Don’t go believing in everything he said before we check it out for ourselves.”

  “No, I don’t believe it,” she answered flatly. “And I’m not going to bother checking it out either”

  “Really?” Harvey peered at her, stumped by the cold glare in her eyes. “That’s supposed to be my line. Your line is supposed to involve begging me to come with you and bribes of sexual favors.”

  She folded up the hundred-dollar bill and returned it to Harvey. “Let’s just go home.”

  She started for the exit, but he blocked her, confused by the abrupt change in her mood.

  “C’mon. You’re making this too easy unless you think it’s complete bologna like me, which wouldn’t be like you.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But either way, I’ve lost my motivation to find out.”

  He stopped her again, knowing better than to accept her surrender. He gazed into her eyes, searching out the answer. But she only offered him an expression that she rarely showed—distress.

  “I’m not going back to that hospital.”

  “Back?” he asked.

  She fell silent, as if she had told him enough.

  “Because you’ve been there before?”

  She looked down at the floor. He knew immediately it was one of the few subjects that they never discussed.

  “You mother,” he offered, suddenly realizing exactly why.

  “I can’t go back there,” she whispered like a mantra. “Not even for this.”

  He could’ve said a thousand things, but none of them would have been as right as drawing her into his arms and hugging the hurt out of her. “I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.”

  He felt her shake her head. “I don’t want to. I’d rather just never know.”

  “Fair enough. But you told me you would consider marrying me again if we find this damn stained-glass window, and if it means I have to go there without you and take a selfie all by myself next to your hundred-million-dollar Tiffany stained-glass window, I still expect you to respond with a yes.”

  She covered her face with her hands. “Please promise me you’ll take the selfie with your clothes on.”

  “No way…Not unless you come with me and keep me dignified.”

  She attempted to pull away from him. But he knew he couldn’t give up. “We’ve come so far. Your mother would’ve never wanted you to quit now, just because of her.”

  Alma considered his point. “My mother was a very principled, uncompromising woman. She would have hated you, you know.”

  He shrugged in agreement. “At first. Then she would have loved me.”

  “Oh really? And why’s that?”

  “Because I’m the man who knocked up her daughter with her first grandchild.”

  “Out of wedlock,” Alma stressed. “She would have killed you.”

  “True. Until she saw how crazy in love I was with you.”

  “Or just crazy...”

  “I would have helped her in the kitchen,” he insisted, drawing her into his embrace.

  “Wearing one of her aprons?”

  “The floweriest one.”

  “Yes, she would have loved that.” Alma relented, accepting his kiss. “And you would have charmed her with your Spanglish.”

  “Tomates, lechuga, ensalada, la cucaracha,” Harvey replied in his most pronounced gringo accent. “See? We can’t let her down. Not now. Señora Castillo is expecting great things from us.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ugh, the smell.

  It was the first thing that hit her the moment they passed through the sliding glass doors of the hospital’s front entrance.

  Alma immediately backtracked, but Harvey caught her.

  “We can do this,” he whispered. “Together.”

  Unable to speak, unable to breathe, she shook her head. She wasn’t so sure. She had never told him what had happened there, and just because he was there with her now, wasn’t a guarantee that she could emotionally endure it.

  She mechanically turned down the hallway towards the intensive care unit—the same direction she had turned every day for an entire month. An entire month. She had spent an entire month clinging onto every smile from the nurses, every reassurance from the doctors, every whisper of hope invented by her father about her mother who clung to life while the ventilator did the breathing for her.

  Until it didn’t.

  Alma closed her eyes and stopped in the middle of the hallway, scented with a mixture of bleach and bodily fluids. She never got used to the smell. Just like she never got used to the idea that her mother had needed to be there in the first place—or the fact that she never made it out.

  It wasn’t supposed to end that way. Her mother was a strong, healthy, radiant woman who caught a bad cold that forced her to rest in bed. One minute, Alma got a call from her father that her mother was wheezing uncontrollably and could barely breathe, the next minute, she heard they were rushing to the hospital where she was admitted to the ICU.

  And after a long-drawn out month, she never made it out.

  It had been over ten years ago, and still everything in that hospital hallway looked the same—the linoleum floors and the frames of chintzy art hanging on the white-washed walls. Alma and her father stayed there every day for twelve hours a day. Conchita tried to visit, but usually left after a few hours, unable to bear it. Watching her mother, sedated in bed, face covered with an oxygen mask, feet bound in puffy boots, losing weight every day, proved too much for her to handle. It was too much for Alma, too, even though she pretended it wasn’t until the day her mother’s heart unexpectedly stopped. It had been the only time that afternoon her father had left the room to eat. Alma remained with her to keep watch. The machine’s alarms rang out. The nurse called code, and a cavalcade of nurses and doctors swept to her mother’s bedside. It wasn’t like the way they portrayed it on TV, Alma remembered thinking. It wasn’t loud, frenzied, and dramatic. It was all very eerie and silent as everyone surrounded her mother’s bed and studied the monitor displaying her vital signs while two male nurses pumped her chest. Four times they shocked her with the defibrillator…at least four…maybe more. Then when it was clear it had come to an irreversible end, they simply stopped, all before her father even had a chance to return to the room.

  It had been ten years and still she couldn’t talk about it: the moment she saw her mother’s life slip away without even a last chance to say good-bye.

  And now, she was back there in that hospital, when she didn’t have to be, and she absolutely couldn’t stand it.

  “I can’t.” She dodged Harvey and headed back for the entrance.

  She made it all the way through the sliding glass doors before he caught up with her again. She covered her face with her hands, trying to hide her tears. He had seen her cry many times before. But this was different. This was private, sacred pain that couldn’t be shared or discussed.

  To his credit, he didn’t say anything—not at first. He simply enveloped her hand in his own, and waited until she stopped sobbing. Then he offered an alternative.

&
nbsp; “If you turn the other way down the hall, there’s a gift shop.”

  She dried her runny nose on her sleeve. “A gift shop?”

  He nodded and used her confusion to his advantage. “With cotton candy.”

  She considered the oddity of selling cotton candy in a hospital, but then realized even children needed to be coerced into entering the building.

  Leading them back through the entrance, he pointed out their destination, away from the ICU.

  “You know…have I ever told you the reason why I love buying cotton candy so much?”

  She shook her head. She just always thought it was because he knew she liked it, too.

  “Because when I was a kid, we never got to eat candy unless we stole it. Whenever my dad sent us to the corner store to buy him a pack of Marlboros, my brother and I used to have to shoplift it.”

  They entered the gift shop and Harvey headed straight for the rack with miniature Mylar balloons, stuffed animals, and bags of pink and blue cotton candy.

  “Now, I love the feeling of being able to buy it whenever I want.” He took out a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “Blue or pink?” he asked her.

  “Pink,” she answered.

  He smiled and moved to the register. “Dumb question. I should have guessed.”

  “I didn’t know…” Alma started to say, reaching out for a travel-sized pack of tissues next to the postcards. “About you having to steal it as a kid.”

  Harvey shrugged and waited for the sales clerk to ring up the purchase. “I never liked the taste of cigarettes, but the taste of sugar definitely took the edge off of the everyday struggle.”

  Alma accepted the bag of cotton candy. She had known about Harvey’s childhood—the fact that his father was an alcoholic and his mother had divorced him. But he never talked about it and he acted as if it never bothered him. But now, she knew that he understood. Even though some pain couldn’t be shared, it didn’t mean it wasn’t acknowledged.

  “Will that be all for you?” the sales clerk asked.

  Harvey paused as something at the other end of the shop caught his eye. “And one of those Minnie Mouse headbands.”

  When the clerk retrieved it and handed it to Harvey, he placed it on Alma’s head like a crown.