Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (170 page)

“You
okay?” Red asked,
glancing at her nervously.

“I
think
so, yeah.
 
Just some heartburn or
something.
 
Too much damn
stress.
 
I need to try and relax and
breathe.”
 
She laid her head back
and focused on her breathing, but there was another pain in her
stomach—worse this time.

“Ouch.”

“Are
you having contractions?”

“I
don’t think so.”
 
She put a hand on her stomach.
 
“Contractions are supposed to come on
gradually, aren’t they?
 
This is
like a sharp pain.”
 
The pain struck
again and this time she really cramped up.

Red
was alarmed now.
 
“Tell me what’s going on, Nicole.”

“I’m
fine—probably
just need to get home and get into bed.
 
I’ve been up way too long.”

They
drove
in silence for another minute or two and then Nicole got another painful
contraction, and then a few rapid cramps right after that.
 
She was sweating now, and her heart was
galloping in her chest.
 
“I think
something’s wrong,” she gasped.

The
pain
was getting worse.

“Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No,”
she
told him, shaking her head.
 
“It’s
fine.
 
It’ll go away.”

“I don’t know, Nicole.
 
I think—“

“I’m
fine, Red.
 
Don’t make me scared.”

She
was
scared, but it wasn’t his fault.
 
Nicole focused on relaxing, focused on her breath.
 
Inhale and exhale and let go.

But
then another painful cramp hit and she
nearly doubled over.

“That’s
it,
we’re taking you to the hospital,” he growled, and the car suddenly speeded up
and they were flying down the street.

Nicole
didn’t
care that he was speeding, because she was scared and feeling very strange
indeed.

There
was a wet sensation down
there
, and
she looked down and saw a dark, red stain spreading across the lower front of
her pants.

I’m
bleeding, she thought.
 
A feeling of unreality washed over her.

Why?
Why is this happening again?

Luckily,
they weren’t far from the hospital, and
with Red’s driving and his car’s high-powered engine, they got there in record
time.

Red
parked right in front of the hospital by
the Emergency Room entrance and helped Nicole out of the car.
 
He started yelling to anyone who would
listen that there was an emergency.

Soon,
Nicole was surrounded by hospital staff
asking questions, putting her in a wheelchair, and then there was more shouting
and they were moving quickly down the hallway.

She
was
frightened, but she was also bleeding badly.
 
The dark stain had spread quickly down
her pant legs, and she was feeling rather faint.

Or
maybe it was shock.

Red
kept looking down at her, asking if she
was okay.
 
Telling her that he would
take care of her, not to worry.

And
then
she was just hearing the high pitched buzzing sound in her ears again— a
nightmare that was recurring—and snatches of conversation as more people
joined the gathering party.

“…bleeding
heavily…third trimester…Dr. Rosen…husband
says she’s had a previous miscarriage…complained of
cramping…preeclampsia…recommended bed rest…possible placental
abruption…emergency C-section…”

Everything
was
jumbled together and Red was holding her hand and she was just thinking,
please, let my baby be okay.
 
Please.
 
Please.
 
Please.

***

Kallie
was
online looking at one-way flights back to Ohio (and thinking that soon it would
be time call her parents and tell them) when she received a text from Red
Jameson.

He’d
never—despite
what Nicole might have wanted to believe—texted her or called her.

What
he’d written made Kallie’s heart skip a
beat.

Nicole
in
emergency surgery.
 
C-section.
 
Waiting for news.
 
Will update as soon as they tell me
anything.

She
actually
felt sick to her stomach.
 
How could
Nicole be in emergency surgery so soon after leaving the The Hamptons to go
back home to Connecticut?
 
It had
only been a few hours, and somehow in that short timespan something had gone
terribly wrong.

Suddenly,
Kallie
had to face the truth.
 
She’d been
hurt that Nicole had accused her of such an awful thing as sleeping with Red,
and that’s why she’d wanted to leave and go back to Ohio.
 
Kallie realized she’d basically been
throwing a temper tantrum to let Nicole know how much those comments had hurt.

But
Nicole
had taken Kallie in that horrible day when Brad had assaulted her, Nicole had
responded to Kallie’s call for help, even though she had been a total stranger.

Nicole
had
treated Kallie like family.
 
And
Kallie truly felt as though they were sisters—and sisters should be able
to get through something like this.

The
bottom line was that Kallie was
frightened.
 
She couldn’t just sit
there in the

Hamptons
and wait for text updates.

She
googled
a taxi service and then quickly made the call, explaining she needed to get a
ride into Connecticut as soon as possible.
 
Because of the length of the drive, they told her she’d have to pay a
flat rate of three hundred dollars.

“That’s
fine, just get here as soon as you can,”
she told them.

She
would
have paid everything in her meager bank account to be there for Nicole when she
needed her.

***

Darkness.

Swimming
out
of the darkness was like breaking the surface of a lake and finding that the
sun was shining on your face.
 
It
was too bright.

It
was too much.

Nicole
closed
her eyes and then opened them again, blinking.
 
She didn’t really know where she was.

Am
I
in Connecticut? She thought.
 
No, it
didn’t feel right.
 
She was
somewhere else, but her brain couldn’t seem to put it together.

Her
mouth
felt like it had been stuffed with cotton balls.
 
Her tongue was thick, and her head
ached.

Then
it
all came back to her in a rush—the ride home, the sudden pains, and Red
speeding all the way to hospital.

She
was in a hospital bed, in a room and it
was post surgery.
 
Her baby was
gone.

Where
is she?
Nicole asked.

A
nurse came over and looked down at her,
asking her how she was feeling.

Why
won’t anyone tell me if my daughter’s
alive? Why?

And
then
she realized that she hadn’t gotten the words out.
 
It was a jumble, she was barely even
conscious.

Her
eyes
fluttered closed, then open again.
 
“Tell me where my baby is,” she rattled through numb lips.

The
nurse
smiled at her.
 
“Your baby girl is
healthy, Nicole.
 
The surgery went
very well, although you did lose a great deal of blood.”

“Where
is she?”

“She
needs
special care right now, so she’s in the neonatal care unit—but she’s
doing great.”

Nicole
breathed a sigh of relief and closed her
eyes again, drifting off.

***

“Nicole,”
he said
softly.
 
“You awake?”

She
was,
as it turned out, although she’d been drifting again.
 
Nicole opened her eyes and saw Red
standing next to her hospital bed, his face radiant with joy.
She’d never seen him this happy, she
realized—and her heart leapt in her chest.

“How
is
she?” Nicole said, holding out her hand.
 
Red took it and kissed her fingertips.

“She’s
so
beautiful,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears of pure joy.
 
“I couldn’t
believe it when I saw her.
 
She looks like you—the spitting image.” “I want to see her,”
Nicole said.
 
“When can I see her?”

“They’re
actually
bringing a wheelchair for you,” Red told her, squeezing her hand tight, “so
that you can go see her right away.”

Nicole
tried to sit up a little, but she
grimaced.
 
There was a great deal of
pain in her abdominal area, for reasons she didn’t need explained to her.
 
Still, she was shocked by the
discomfort.

“I
need to sit up.”

“Let
me
raise the bed,” he laughed, grabbing the controller and raising the top of the hospital
bed slowly.

“That’s
good,
Nicole told him, sighing.

“Kallie’s here,” he told her.

“She’s
here?” Nicole said.

“I
ran
into her in the waiting room when you were sleeping. Apparently, she took a cab
to the hospital right away when I let her know what happened.”

“Really?
That
must have been expensive.”

“I’m sure it was.”

The
door
to the hospital room opened, and Nicole saw a nurse pushing an empty
wheelchair.
 
The nurse smiled and
said, “Are you ready to see your daughter?”

“I’m
already getting up,” Nicole replied.

Red
jumped
to help her out of the hospital bed.
 
It hurt to stand up, but she didn’t care about the pain right now.
All Nicole cared about was seeing her baby
girl.

They
got
her situated in the chair, and then Red wheeled her out of the room and they
went down the hall.

A
minute later, they were approaching the
NICU.
 
Nicole’s heart was racing and
she felt like she could barely contain herself—she wanted to jump out of
the wheelchair and run to her baby.

“Where
is
she?” Nicole asked, as they wheeled her past the incubators. “We’re almost
there,” the nurse told her.

Bringing
her
to the back row, and stopping at one incubator in particular, the nurse pointed
straight ahead.

“Oh
my god,” Nicole said.
 
“Can I hold her?”

“Just
a
moment.”
 
The nurse reached into the
incubator and began to take the baby out.
 
Nicole was surprised at how much medical equipment centered around this
one tiny little being—it was kind of frightening.

But
she
couldn’t be frightened for long, because a moment later her daughter was being
placed in her arms.
 
She looked down
at her child, saw the girl’s little beautiful face, and tears flowed down
Nicole’s cheeks.

She
looked up at Red and he was laughing and
tears were there for him as well.

“I
can’t
believe it,” Nicole said, looking back at her baby.
 
“You’re here, beautiful girl.
 
Look at how little and perfect you
are.”
 
She cooed at her.

Nicole
rocked
her gently, feeling her warmth, and Nicole felt her own heart open and melt and
break into a thousand pieces.

She
thought
of Renee, the little baby who’d never had a chance to live.
 
Maybe her spirit was with them now,
happy and relieved and celebrating—it felt like she was.

“I
think
we should call her Riley,” Nicole told him.

“She looks like a Riley,” he agreed.

This
was
it, Nicole thought.
 
She had
everything she could ever want right here in this hospital room full of
equipment and machines and tubes.
 
She had Red and she had her little girl, safe and sound.

They
were finally a family.

***

Kallie
didn’t
know if she was overstepping her boundaries by showing up at Nicole’s hospital
room so soon after her surgery.
 
After all, Kallie wasn’t family—she wasn’t even a longtime friend
like Danielle.
 
She was just a girl
that Nicole had been nice enough to help out of a difficult spot.