Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (130 page)

She sniffed, taking some tissues out of
her pocket and wiping her eyes and nose.
 
“I just feel like enough is enough already.”

“It’s been less than a week,” he
said.
 
“Go easy on yourself.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Nicole said,
shaking her head.
 
“I was so sure
she was going to be ours.
 
I was
certain of it.”

“She was ours—she’ll always be
ours,” he said, coming over and taking her by the shoulders.
 
Red’s eyes looked into Nicole’s and his
voice was firm.
 
“And for the short
time she was a part of this world, inside of you, she was loved.
 
We’re never going to forget about our
baby girl.
 
Never.”

Nicole hugged him then, because he’d just
uttered out loud the very thing she’d promised herself.
 
She hadn’t thought anyone would
understand her need to remember such a little thing—a little baby that
had barely even existed to the rest of the world.
 
But she did need to remember, and
apparently so did Red.

As they were hugging and taking comfort
in each other’s arms, there was the loud chime of the doorbell.
 

“My mother,” Nicole whispered.

“Now just relax and try not to get worked
up,” Red cautioned.
 
“You know how
she can be.”

“I’ll try.”
 
She smiled an over the top, clownish
smile.
 
“See how good I am?”

“Oh, boy.”
 
Red took a deep breath.
 
Then he went to answer the door.
 
Nicole heard them speaking in low tones
that echoed to her from the foyer.

A minute later, in strode her mother
looking like she’d been shot out of a cannon.
 
She was always energetic, but it seemed
that much more over the top now that Nicole was so depressed.

“Honey,” her mother said, smiling sadly
and rushing over for a hug.
 
She had
a purse on her arm but also a large plastic bag with something large in it that
Nicole couldn’t yet identify.

Red followed behind the older woman.
 
“I’ve made a pot of coffee.”

“Oh, you’re such a dear.
 
That would be lovely,” the older woman
told him.

Nicole watched her mother with dull
suspicion.
 
Her demeanor was
strange—far too friendly to be real—especially towards Red.
 
Hadn’t she hated the man just a week
ago?

The older woman took a seat alongside
Nicole at the breakfast nook as Red poured her a coffee, as well as one for
himself.
 

“How do you take it?” he asked.

“A dash of cream and one sugar,” her
mother said.
 

Red fixed it up quickly, stirred it and
handed the cup to her with an easy grin.
 
“Hope you like it.”

“I’m sure I’ll like it.
 
Is it some specialty brew?”

“Starbucks French Roast,” he said.

Nicole thought her mother seemed
nonplussed, as if she’d been hoping for something more exotic.
 
“I could never afford to have Starbucks
every day,” she said, sipping from her mug.
 
“I have to settle for Folgers mostly.”

Red nodded empathetically.

Nicole stared at her hands.

“Honey,” her mother said softly.

Nicole looked up at her.
 
“Yes?”

“You seem depressed.”

“I guess I am depressed.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully.
 
“I know this is a difficult time.
 
It’s awful what happened.
 
Your father and I were crushed when Red
called and told us the news.”

Red walked over to the counter, holding
his own cup of coffee and surveying the tense scene unfolding before him with
trepidation.
 
“Nicole and I truly
appreciated your condolences and the flowers that arrived yesterday,” he said.

Barb nodded to him.
 
“Of course, it was the least we could
do.”
 
She brightened visibly and
turned to Nicole.
 
“Anyway, I
brought something along that should cheer you up.”

Nicole looked on doubtfully as her mother
opened the plastic bag and took out swatches of different colored cloths with
different designs on each.

“What’s that?” Nicole asked.

“These are some possibilities for your
table cloths—for the wedding.”
 
She laid them out on the counter.
 
“I particularly like this pattern.”
 
She pointed to a white tablecloth swatch with gold and blue
stripes.
 

Nicole couldn’t even focus on it.
 
She felt a complete and total sense of
disinterest in what her mother was showing her.
 
“I…I guess it’s nice,” she murmured.

“Do you?
 
Do you really like it?”
 

“It’s okay.
 
Yeah.”

“Just okay?”

“Mom, I don’t really know how I feel
about the tablecloth designs.
 
I
can’t focus on this stuff right now.”

Her mother was growing frustrated and her
happy-go-lucky façade appeared to be crumbling.
 
“Now’s the exact right time to focus on
these sorts of things.
 
You need to
get your mind off all of this depression and into something healthy.”

“I’m just not interested.”

“Fine.
 
Fine.”
 
She grabbed the swatches and swept them
all into the plastic bag.
 
“I’m
going to leave this bag here for you, and you can let me know when you’ve had a
chance to look at it.
 
How’s that
sound?”

“That sounds fine, Mom.”

Her mother sucked in her cheeks and
subtly shook her head.

Red sighed deeply, as if sensing what was
coming.
 
“You know what? I haven’t
even given you the tour, Misses Masters.”

Nicole’s mother looked at him and flashed
a smile.
 
“You know better than to
call me that.
 
My name is Barb.”

“Barb, would you like the tour?”

“That would be wonderful.
 
I can’t believe how much land you have
at your disposal, by the way.
 
When
I was driving in, I thought I’d somehow been transported to another
country.
 
It’s so beautiful here.”

“Thanks,” Red said, taking her by the arm
and leading her out of the kitchen.

“Nicole?” her mom asked, looking back
over her shoulder.
 
“Are you
coming?”

“No, I think I’ll just hang here until
you two get back.”

Nicole saw the look of annoyance mixed
with worry that flashed over the older woman’s face as Red escorted her out of
the kitchen.

Nicole knew he was doing this “tour”
primarily to give her a break from her mom, and she was grateful to him for
that kindness.
 
But she couldn’t
even smile a little—not even when she thought about how amazing Red was
and how safe she felt with him lately.
 
Nothing could shake her from this desultory state.

About twenty-five minutes later, Red and
her mother returned to the kitchen.
 
They seemed to be getting along famously.
 
Her mother was blushing and laughing
like a teenage girl, and Red was chuckling right with her.

“And they let you say that on
television?” her mother asked, in response to some story that Nicole hadn’t
been privy to.

Red nodded and grinned.
 
“They let me say it because we paid them
enough to let me say it.
 
But I
didn’t do it just to be controversial, I did it because I believed it was
important.”

Her mother nodded.
 
“I think you did the right thing, Red.”

“Apparently the network agreed with you,
because they asked me back the following year.”

The two of them walked back to the
breakfast nook, where Nicole was still sitting, having barely moved a muscle
since they’d left the room.

Her mother turned her attention to Nicole
now.
 
“The house is so lovely,
honey,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom.
 
I really like it.”

“Are you going to make it your own after
the wedding?”

Nicole thought about it, shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.
 
It’s pretty nice the way it is.”

“But it’s still his house—it’s not
representative of your tastes, honey.
 
Don’t you agree, Red?”

Red nodded ever so slightly.
 
“Yes, I suppose it’s mostly mine.
 
But then again, I just had a designer
come in and set everything up, so in a way it’s not really my taste either.”

“I’d love to come and help both of you
redecorate after the wedding,” Nicole’s mother said, her eyes practically
lighting up.

“We’ll see, Mom.
 
Let’s just take things a step at a
time.”

Her mother sighed.
 
“I’m really trying my best with you,
Nicole.
 
What more can I do?”

“I didn’t say you were doing anything
wrong.”

“Then what is it?”

Red leaned over the counter and gave
Nicole’s hand a squeeze.
 
“I think
Nicole’s just tired and sad, Barb.”

“I understand that this was a
disappointment,” her mother replied.
 
“But it seems a bit much, the way you’re moping about like life as we
know it has ended.”

Nicole looked up at her, and for a brief
moment she actually had the urge to slap her across the face.
 
It was gone as quickly as the urge had
arisen, but the feeling of intense anger left her shaken.
 
“I don’t have to justify my feelings to
you,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.

“You know, you’re not the first woman to
have gone through something like this.”
 
The older woman shifted into the seat by her daughter and lowered her
voice conspiratorially.
 
“It
happened to your father and I, many years ago.”

Nicole looked at her more closely.
 
It seemed that for the first time, she
saw how her mother’s face truly looked—not just the way she imagined her
to be.
 
And she saw that her mother
had gotten old without Nicole really noticing.
 
Her eyes had large, deep bags beneath
them, and her chin was fleshy and sagging.
 
The skin on her neck was loose and wrinkled.
 

Mom, you’re old! She wanted to say.
 
When did this happen to you?
 
When did you become this jaded, old lady
with rarely a kind word for anyone—including your only daughter?

But just as the urge to slap her had come
and gone, so too did this strange feeling of seeing her mother’s age for the
first time.
 

“You never told me that you had a
miscarriage,” Nicole said, finally.

Her mother just nodded, as if proud of
the fact that she’d had one and also had the guts to keep the pain of it to
herself all these years.
 
“Well, you
don’t know everything there is to know about me, honey.”

“I’m aware of that, Mom.”

“We were very disappointed when it
happened.
 
But I told myself—I
said, Barb, it will happen when it’s meant to happen and not a moment
sooner.
 
There’s a plan for you and
this just wasn’t your time.”

Nicole raised her eyebrows.
 
“That simple, huh?”

“It wasn’t simple, it was just the
truth.
 
There’s no use wringing your
hands about it.
 
Sometimes these
things happen.”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said,
quietly.
 
She didn’t want to have
such a clinical attitude about the death of her unborn baby.
 
She couldn’t have that attitude—it
would be like a second death of sorts, to put the baby out of her mind
forever.
 
Didn’t that sweet little
child deserve to at least have someone remember she had been growing and
striving to be born, and that she’d never even had a chance to live?
 
Didn’t she deserve to at least have someone
think of her from time to time and love her in spite of it all?

“Trust me, Nicole.
 
I’m a lot older than you and perhaps
I’ve learned a thing or two about being a mother.”