SAFEHOUSE (A BWWM BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE)

by Mia Caldwell

  It took plenty of hard work, but Alain was patient with me. He showed me how to till the dirt, and then reprimanded me when I called it dirt.

  "No. Not dirt. Soil, there is difference," he had said, scooping up some of the dark Earth in his hands. Not much really got to him, but the moment you started dissing mother nature, Alain had plenty to say about it. It was one of the things I liked about him best.

  In the end, we had pretty little perennials growing not too far from the front entrance. It stood out against the bright green foliage that mainly lined the sidewalk. I wondered if Julien would notice.

  I was dying to see him again. I had so many questions.. I wanted to know every single detail about his trip. I wondered if he’d thought about me as much as I’d thought about him.

  As the days wore on without Julien’s return, my curiosity turned something sour, just like my stomach. I was finding it harder to keep on my toes, especially with the amount of work Marie had thrown at me. Usually I had plenty of energy, but for some reason something just wasn't sitting well with me. Maybe I had caught something?

  When I finally made it into the kitchen to speak with Marie, Gervaise looked at me funny.

  "Not feeling well?" he asked, bringing me a cup of steaming hot tea. I frowned at him, wondering how he knew. Was it that obvious? Did I look that bad?

  I tried to smile at him, shaking my head. "I've felt better. But I'll be okay. Probably just a little bug, or something."

  He narrowed his eyes at me, but didn't say anything further.

  “Thank you for the tea…”

  “It is my pleasure. You should finish it quickly… Julien should arrive any minute.”

  “He’s coming today? I thought he wasn’t going to be back for another week!”

  I stood up, a feeling of excitement rolling through me. I wanted to run out toward the entrance to the estate to wait for Julien, but it was too fast. My stomach turned on me, and it was all I could do to avoid vomiting on the pristine floor.

  Oh yeah, something was definitely going on. My eyes watered and my stomach burned in agony. It had been so long since something had made me feel like this. Luckily Marie had just shown up in the doorway, clearly worried.

  "What happened? Are you ill?"

  “I think I need to go lie down. Is Julien back?" my words jumbled together, and I clutched at my stomach tightly, hoping to keep from throwing up. Sweat broke out over my brow and my upper lip. I had no idea what had gotten into me, but whatever it was I didn't like it.

  I groaned, wishing the bubbling in my stomach would just go away. If Julien was home, this was and not the time or place to be getting sick. I wanted to see him, wanted to touch him and kiss him, tell him how much I missed him. How much I loved him.

  "How long have you felt like this?" Marie asked me, pulling me by my elbow to us sit down on the bench at the table.

  "A few days. I’m just feeling nauseous. Do you know of anyone else in the château is sick?"

  She looked at me, her eyes steady, and slowly shook her head no. "No… No one else."

  It'd been a while since I had been out in public, so to think that I suddenly just picked something up was strange to me. It didn't matter though, I just wanted to see Julien. Hopefully seeing his face would make me feel better…

  A claminess settled over my skin like a ghost. I patiently sat there, hoping for the worst to pass. A few minutes later it did just that, even though deep down I could feel that it wasn't all the way gone. I was still sick, but at least I could get up now.

  Marie helped me walk back to my bedroom, equipped with a plastic wastebasket and a cool pack for my forehead. I found my way to the bed, gingerly pulling myself up onto the massive mattress.

  It didn't take long before there was a knock at my door. My heart raced.

  "Come in," I rasped, my voice still unsteady from before.

  Julien burst through the door, his eyes darting all over the place before he realized I was in bed. He made a beeline to me, his arms immediately pulling me in and crushing me against his chest. "Ma chérie, what is wrong? I heard you were ill."

  I nodded feebly, but still tried to put on a brave face. The last thing I needed was for him to worry about me. He had a lot of other things going on at the moment, I was sure.

  "I'll be fine. I must have some sort of bug. Your guess is as good as mine. It's just strange, because I haven't been anywhere to catch anything. Or maybe it's one of those illnesses that take a few days to show up. Other than that, I have no clue."

  Julien narrowed his eyes at me, taking me in. Usually I loved when he stared at me like this, but the intensity in his eyes was more disconcerting than usual. He was trying to figure out something in his head, I was sure of it.

  He placed his hands on my knees, gently rubbing my kneecaps, before looking back up at me and softening his eyes. "Amira . . . is it possible that you are…..”

  I raised my brow at him, his words taking a while to sink in. He paused without finishing his sentence, but slowly, a lightbulb went off in my head.

  It couldn't be… there is no way.

  Except… of course there was a way. We hadn't been careful like we should have been. And between the first time we made love and the many times afterward, well, I couldn't be totally shocked if something had happened because of it, could I?

  Julien bit his lip, casting his eyes downward. I hoped he wasn't disappointed. We should've been more careful—it was that simple. We were two grown adults acting like young teenagers. And while part of me had been enthralled in the last six weeks or so, I had to admit that we definitely could've been more careful.

  He sighed, pulling himself away for me. "We need to be sure. I won't be too long, my love," Julien said, rising up off of the bed.

  I nodded, feeling almost numb at that point. There I was, feeling nauseous one minute, and possibly being pregnant the next.

  If there was one thing I had learned during the past year of my life, it was that things had the tendency to change and just a snap of the fingers. And we were about to find out just how much they could change…

  It had taken Julien twenty-seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds to get back to my bedroom with a small plastic bag in hand. I know this because I had been watching my phone, my eyes glued to it. It felt like forever to me, of course.

  I took the box from his hand, taking in a deep breath before heading over to my bathroom and quietly shutting the door behind me. Part of me wanted him to hold my hand the whole time…

  I tried to take slow breaths as I finished preparing the test and washed my hands. It was so hard not to keep my eyes on the test, and I had to continuously find a new spot in the bathroom to stare at every ten seconds or so, to keep my mind and eyes from traveling back to it.

  To busy myself, I pulled out the two-page instructions to the pregnancy tests reading over them with without really taking them in. I couldn't concentrate, at least not until I was able to look and see what the results for. This deep breathing is not helping me worth a damn, I groaned inwardly.

  With both of my hands I grabbed the edge of the countertop, bracing myself against it as I looked at myself in the mirror in front of me. My hair had certainly grown out some since I had been in France, and I had been keeping it up in my usual French twist, trying to keep it simple and pretty. Suddenly I felt the need to do something completely different with it, but the only person I trusted with my hair was my neighbor Raquel Morrison, and she was over three-thousand miles away.

  I rolled my eyes at myself at my flippancy and tried to see past the makeup I was wearing… to really see inside myself.

  Would I be able to handle the news? Was I strong enough to face what might happen?

  I knew what my sister would say. She’d tell me to get a grip, and to deal with whatever consequences I might be facing. She'd be over the moon, of course. She loved babies.

  It was time…

  Julien didn't play around, he got the dummy-proof test. And boy was it
easy to read the word PREGNANT in all caps.

  I slowly picked it up, tilting it this way and that. No, it definitely said what I thought it said. There was no mistaking it.

  I started shaking. My hands were trembling immensely, making it nearly impossible for me to hold still. I gripped the countertop again, settling myself.

  Deep breaths, Amira. Deep breaths. All these thoughts about the what-if's and consequences, all of it flew right out the window. There was no more what if. This was happening, one way or the other.

  I waited until my heartbeat had finally calm down from the erratic thumping it was doing in my chest. I didn't need another hyperventilating scene again, especially if Julien was right on the other side of the door.

  I gathered all the courage I could muster and opened the door, the test in hand.

  He said nothing. And from the corner of my eye I couldn't tell by his facial expression what he was thinking. I couldn't handle it anyway, because I had so many thoughts to process on my own.

  A baby? It brought so many different variables into our relationship that it wasn't even funny. And that was just looking at it from a scientific and not at all subjective point of view.

  "Amira?" he said, his voice nearly a whisper. I looked up, surprised to see the tears in his eyes. I couldn't yet tell whether they were the kind of tears that were going to tell me to find somewhere else new to go, or what.

  He cleared his throat, blinking back the wetness in his eyes. "I’m going to be a father?"

  I nodded, bottling my emotion as much as I could.

  “I love you, Amira.”

  He tipped my chin up with his hand, softly rubbing his thumb over my jawline. “By the way, I liked the flowers you put in. They’re almost as beautiful and bold as you.”

  I tucked my head underneath his, silent tears escaping down my cheeks as I smiled to myself.

  Whatever the case was, if I had Julien at my side, I knew that things were not going to be quite as scary.

  (Back to Table of Contents)

  Chapter 27

  Believe me when I say that being the pregnant girlfriend of a billionaire was not how I saw my life going... Yet here I was, already twelve weeks pregnant and enjoying another visit with my doctor. She had been wonderful to me, and I couldn't be happier to have her on my side.

  Dr. Thibodeau was a world-renowned obstetrician loved by the rich and famous… I was worried that she’d look down on me, but Julien insisted on the best doctor money could buy.

  So much had happened in the past seven weeks since I had found out that I was pregnant. We had a long and thorough chat about our future, but I refused to entertain the idea of marriage just yet—something that seemed to aggravate Julien to no end.

  The truth is… I wanted Julien to propose to me when he was ready, not because I was having his child.

  Of course Julien insisted on me sharing his bedroom with him and I was all for that idea, obviously. Anything that let me be closer to him was all right in my book.

  He sat there with me, holding my hand as Dr. Thibodeau squeezed some of that ridiculously cold gel onto my slightly swollen belly. She ran the instrument over my belly, smiling when she finally picked up the baby's heartbeat. "Ah," she began, listening in closely. "The baby is very active. Heartbeat is at 162."

  Julien grinned over me, squeezing my shoulder. The baby's heartbeat sounded like the craziest herd of galloping horses you'd ever heard. It always made me smile to hear it, knowing that the baby was healthy and happy in there.

  After Dr. Thibodeau had finished up with me, she gave me the usual European goodbye and kissed both of my cheeks before giving me a little curtsy. I always thought that was hilarious, and tried to do the same.

  Julien helped me sit up, giving me a kiss on my forehead. It felt so nice to be loved by someone like this, I had to admit.

  But the problem was just that. He loved me so much, and he loved the idea of this baby and the family that we were starting together.

  Not everyone was quite as pleased…

  When Julien sat down to let his mother know about the situation, she hung up on him immediately. I wasn't privy to the conversation he tried to have with her after she cooled down a bit, but the way it seemed was that she was not at all happy.

  I didn't want that to affect me, but it did. I tried to give myself some space to cry in private.

  I had never met Julien's mother before, let alone any of the rest of his family. But something told me that they weren’t too pleased that he had taken up with ‘the help’.

  How else would it come across?

  Even though I had no proof of it, I just knew that his family didn't like me, and were not supportive of what was going on. It hurt to know that they couldn’t see the love I had for Julien.

  "I read that a high heartbeat in the first trimester means a girl," he teased me, pulling me into his arms.

  I let out a little sigh as he released me, looking around the room I would give birth in. I was scared… I knew plenty women liked to do the home-birth thing, but I just wasn't one of them. Of course, Julien had spared no expense in making this room in the château a proper delivery room. It put me a bit more at ease to know I would have the absolute best post possible doctor and nursing staff on hand when the time came, even if I wasn’t in some big fancy hospital…

  "I guess we'll just have to think of some more girl names, then, won't we?" I teased him back, intertwining my fingers with his.

  Part of me really wanted to be excited, and to fully enjoy the excitement that danced in Julien's eyes whenever we spoke about the baby. But there was still that small part… Okay, maybe not such a small part of me, that was still hesitant.

  Maybe it was just me being selfish, but becoming a mother was something I wasn't sure I knew how to do. I was just going to have to roll with it.

  Julien picked up the phone in the room and dialed for the kitchen, asking Gervaise if he would mind bringing me and Julien some lunch. Not even twenty minutes later we had hot sandwiches and soup sitting on the small coffee table between us. Usually Julien and I liked to have lunch outside when it's nice enough, but it had been pretty hot since the summer was starting to really blaze down here between the mountains.

  My sandwich practically melted in my mouth, and I groaned, thoroughly enjoying the taste even if I was going to regret it in a few hours. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I couldn't wait to be done with the morning sickness. I had read somewhere that most women start feeling it fade away by now, especially with second trimester approaching. Apparently, I was one of the unlucky few who enjoyed morning sickness just a bit longer…. All I could do was hope and pray that I wasn't going to be one of those cases that had to take Zofran the entire pregnancy.

  His phone rang, and he quietly picked it up, holding up a finger to me to signify that it was important.

  "Yes?" he answered, dabbing at the corners of his mouth. It always cracked me up to see how manner-driven he could be in the silliest of moments to me. Nobody but me was watching him eat, yet he found the need to stay as polite and on point as possible. Me? Ha! I didn't care at this point. I was wolfing down the sandwich even though I knew there was really no point of it.

  "Really?" His voice wavered a bit at the end, and he sounded incredulous. I raised my brow at him, as if to ask him what was going on.

  He took in a deep breath, clearly listening with great detail to the person on the other line.

  I slowly chewed my sandwich, bringing my glass of water up to my lips, not bothering to take a sip until he looked back up at me. He shook his head slowly, and I shrugged. Whatever it was I would probably find out eventually anyway. No need to worry about it now, right?

  Julien slowly rose from his seat, not bothering to look back at me as he walked out of the room.

  I frowned. Seriously? Not even a backwards glance? Sometimes he could be so off-putting and not even realize it, I swear.

  I wanted to follow him, but I knew that would be r
idiculous and so I stayed put, trying to finish my soup as best as I could. Thank God for Zofran, because heaven knows I wouldn't have been able to eat anything without it. I drank the rest of my glass of water and picked up the plate, along with Julien's barely touched food, and loaded my arms full before heading back towards the kitchen.

  I struggled down the hallway, but when I heard his voice above the clanging of the glasses in my arms, I knew something was going on. Something that I wanted to listen to…

  I sat the dishes and food on a nearby hall table, and crept closely to the door where Julien had shut himself inside the room. It was a room I wasn't familiar with, and probably just some room that didn't matter much to him, either of which told me he was quickly trying to get rid of me so that he could speak freely to the person on the phone.