Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (35 page)

“Keep breathing normally,” the tech said. Hope was probably holding her breath again. I took her hand, held it, and watched the screen along with her. And still had absolutely no idea what I was seeing.

Just like that, it was there. A pulsing white blob, and movement beyond it.

“Ah,” the tech said with satisfaction. “There’s our baby.”

“Is that the heart?” I asked over my own racing heartbeat. That was a person, and it was
mine?

“It is,” she said. “And we’re kicking. See that? Those are legs. Lively, eh. One second. Let me get through the business end.” She was moving her paddle, measuring, clicking, stopping to type onto the keyboard. Minute after minute, while Hope stared at the screen and I held her hand and stared with her.

Finally, when I could tell that Hope couldn’t last another moment without knowing, the technician said, “That’s that done. Now comes the fun bit. Want to meet your baby?”

“Yes,” Hope and I said together.

“Right, then.” She moved her paddle, and a cursor on the screen moved with it. “Head, nose, chin. See?”

I did. I saw. A face, in profile. A baby’s face. I was having trouble with my chest. With my breath.

“Arms,” the tech went on as the cursor moved. “Fingers. You see?”

Hope said, “Oh. They’re moving. She—he—they’re waving.”

“Kicking as well, still. Active, and that’s good. Do we want to know the sex?”

Hope turned her head, her eyes searching mine. “Do we?”

“Do
you?”
I knew how I felt, but I wasn’t the most important person here. I was number three, in fact.

“Yes.” It wasn’t tentative. It was sure.

“Yes,” I told the tech, and she smiled and said, “Here we are, then.”

More movement of the cursor, and she said, “Legs, and here we are between them.”

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

“That’s because,” she said, “you’re having a girl.”

Hope

We were in a café again, Hemi with a coffee and me with yet another herbal tea. Not because we needed them, but because we needed more time. Our hands were linked across the table, his fingers threaded through mine.

Somehow, I was going to have to let him go. Somehow. He left for Paris in a week, and Koro had a cast to get removed, and anyway, that was the plan. Karen was in school, Hemi seemed to be doing a fantastic job with her, and I needed that relationship to be cemented.

When he came home from Paris, though, I’d be there.
We’d
be there.

“What do you think?” I finally managed to ask. “About a little girl? A daughter?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer. I asked anyway.

“I think,” he said, “that I’m over the moon. I think I can’t wait. I think I love you. What do
you
think about names?”

I hesitated. I’d thought about them, of course, but I hadn’t dared to think quite enough, to take it all the way. Somehow, it still hadn’t seemed real. Now, it did. So real, I was overwhelmed by it. “I wondered,” I said slowly, “about Maori names. I wondered if you’d want that. I wondered if you’d want to choose.”

How had I ever thought this man was hard? There was nothing but happiness in the face opposite me, nothing but warmth and strength in the hand holding mine. And I’d been right, that day all the way back in the Auckland airport, when I’d imagined how fiercely he’d protect us, how tenderly he’d hold us. Our daughter and me, and Karen, too. All of us.

“I have a name,” he said. “Came to me when I saw her, as soon as I knew she was a girl. It came into my head, and it’s been there ever since. I’m hoping you like it, because to me, it’s her name.”

“What is it?” I asked, praying that I
would
like it, that it wouldn’t be something strange and hard to pronounce.

“Aroha Rose Te Mana,” he said. “That’s our daughter’s name. I hope.”

“Aroha,” I said. “Love. And Rose, my mother’s name. Hemi, that’s perfect. That’s beautiful.”

“This is when I ask you,” he said, “whether you want to change your name. And remind myself that it’s your choice.”

“You’d really say that?” I had to tease a little. There was too much happiness in me not to. “You really wouldn’t wage a subtle and not-so-subtle campaign to get me to change my mind?”

“Not answering that,” he said promptly. “Let’s hear it.”

“Then, yes. I want to change my name. I want to be my own person, but I want to do it with your name. I have my mother’s, because my dad took off. Aroha is going to have her dad with her all the way, though, and she’s going to have his name. And I want us all to have the same one.”

“Hope Te Mana,” he said.

Something went through me, strong and bright as silver, leaping from his hand to mine. “Hope Te Mana,” I said. “Very soon.”

It didn’t matter that Anika was still out there. She couldn’t hurt Hemi, and she couldn’t hurt me. She could take his money, but that wasn’t what we were about. That wasn’t it at all. We were so much more.

Hemi

Once again, I’d had to leave Hope behind. This time, it was harder, and it was easier. Easier because I was divorced now, and even though the specter of Anika still loomed over the company, still threatened everything I’d spent fourteen years building, it didn’t threaten Hope and me anymore. That was what Hope had done. She’d convinced me.

I could cope with anything. Coping was my life story. With anything except losing her.

It was easier, too, because it was only for a couple weeks. Then I’d be flying to Paris, and when I came home, she’d be there. That had been her promise, and Hope kept her promises.

Harder, now—“harder” was getting a photo that next week showing her belly a tiny bit bigger, and not being there to feel my baby girl under my palm or to hold her mother. “Harder” was talking to Hope on the phone in the early morning, then having to ring off and start my day without her. “Harder” was coming home to an apartment without her in it.

And tonight, on a Friday night a week after my divorce and two days before I left for Paris, I came home to an apartment with
nobody
in it, because Karen had gone off to the first school dance of the year.

She’d decided to get ready at her friend Mandy’s house in Brooklyn, close to school. That had sounded good to me, considering that Noah the Unfortunate Buddhist was driving her. He’d be picking her up in the Porsche Boxster his parents had given him for his eighteenth birthday, Karen had told me, and if I’d had Josh arrange some unauthorized checking of his driving record, I wasn’t going to apologize for it. Parking tickets appeared to be his specialty, though he’d had a speeding ticket a year ago as well. Which didn’t make me happy, but wasn’t enough to forbid Karen to drive with him. Unfortunately.

She was spending the night at Mandy’s as well, but I wasn’t worried about that. I’d rung up and had a chat with Mandy’s mum, and I was confident that Karen would be in good hands.

Once she got there.

At eight, I got a group text that eased my mind. A shot of Karen and Mandy in their pretty dresses, Noah and another bloke in suits, with a roomful of other students behind them. They’d made it, then. And Karen had sent that text to both Hope and me, which was good as well.

I texted back,
Pretty girls. Have fun,
then went back to work.

I was deep into it, part of me relishing the chance to have an entire uninterrupted evening, when my phone chimed with a text. I picked it up and glanced at the screen.

Could Charles come get me?

I was out of my chair before I’d finished reading. It was just after ten, I saw as I texted back,
I’ll come. Leaving now. Where are you? Safe?

School,
I read.
I’m OK. I just need to come home.

City traffic had never seemed slower, but finally, I was outside Brooklyn Friends, double-parking and out onto the pavement in an instant.

I didn’t realize how worried I’d been until I saw her sitting at the top of the steps in front of the building, her arms wrapped around herself against the night air. I slowed from my near-run and said, “Eh, sweetheart.”

She stood up, not looking at me, and said, “Thanks for coming. I thought you’d send Charles. I mean, I know you were working.” Her voice was tight, not sounding like my easy-breezy Karen at all.

“Nah.” I put my arm around her and tugged her against me as we headed down the steps again. “Always happy to come get my girl. Any time.”

Her breath was a bit ragged, and I said, “Whatever happened—he’s a fool, and not worth your time or your worry.”

She gave a half-laugh and said, “You don’t even know anything about it yet.”

“Call me prejudiced. Both ways.” I popped the locks on the door, and she slid into the passenger seat. “I like you, and I don’t like him.”

I began to drive home, and she was silent for a long couple of minutes. I waited as long as I could before I said, “You can tell me, you know. I doubt I’ll be surprised. I wasn’t even surprised that you weren’t crying.”

“I want to.” There was a catch in her voice now. “But I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, you know?”

I had to smile at that. “Nobody better. Of course you don’t.”

“You can probably guess anyway. Big surprise. He wanted to have sex. We’ve been, you know, making out.”

I relaxed my hands deliberately on the steering wheel. “And when you said you didn’t want to, he said you were . . . what? A little girl?”

“Yeah. And stuck in the past, like virginity was some special thing I’d give to the right man, like it was some big deal, instead of sex being something you started doing when you were old enough, like when you were old enough to start riding a bike. Which
sounds
right,” she burst out, “but it doesn’t
feel
right, you know?”

“Why would you want to sleep with somebody who thought you were no big deal?” I still sounded calm. Somehow.

“See?” It was an explosion. “See? That’s what
I
said! I said—if I wasn’t special, what was the
point?
And he said I was
scared.
I’m not scared! Maybe I just want somebody to
care.
What’s wrong with that? And then he said I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t . . .” Her voice wobbled for the first time.

“That you weren’t that good anyway,” I said. “Not that pretty. Not that exciting. That he’d have been doing you a favor.”

“He said if I didn’t want to, we could just . . . I could just . . .” She was crying, finally. Tears of anger, and I was glad to hear them. “You know. Oral.”

“Right.” I swung into a bus zone and stopped the car. “We’re going to his house. Right now. The little bastard. I’m going to rip his head off.”

“I don’t . . .” Karen’s voice was shaking. “I just . . . I wish Hope was here. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer, and I . . . I
wish . . .
I just wanted to
talk
to her, you know? She’s always . . . she . . .”

Her voice was breaking, and so was my heart. I said helplessly, “Eh, sweetheart. No,” reached out, and pulled her into my arms. Which was when she started to sob.

For the next few minutes, she tried to talk and kept trailing off, and I held her tight, ran my hand over her hair, said, “Shh,” and “Never mind,” and “It’s all right,” and wished I could think of something better. I wished Hope were here, too. Never more so. But she wasn’t, which meant it was down to me to harden up and do my best.