Heartsong (Singing to the Heart Book 2) (26 page)

When he broke the kiss, he held out a small black velvet box.
What the devil?
She narrowed her eyes on him. “What did you do?”

He shrugged and opened the box. Lying on the satin inside was a simple platinum engagement ring. “Um…” She wiggled her left hand and the indecent sparkler dominating her ring finger. “I think we burnt that bridge. I’m yours for better and for worse.”

“That you are.” Gabe took the ring out of the box. “But I want you to have my mother’s ring back. It belongs to you.”

She glanced at the beautiful diamond he’d put on her finger when he proposed to her after they’d lost Jesse’s custody case. As obnoxious as the seven-carat diamond was, she had grown to love the ring. She wouldn’t ever part with it. Meeting his expectant gaze, she held out her right hand. “I would love to wear your mother’s ring, but I’m not giving up on mine.”

He slipped the ring on her right ring finger and grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Mrs. McKenna.” Then he stood, shifting her into a bridal carry. “Now, I’m taking you to bed. I know what I want Santa to bring me.”

She giggled as he carried her through the room and up the stairs. “And what’s that?”

“You.” His smile turned deliciously wicked, and she shivered as he whispered in her ear, “I want to make love to you until neither of us can move.”

Although Sara Walter Ellwood has long ago left the farm for the glamour of the big town, she draws on her experiences growing up on a small hobby farm in West Central Pennsylvania to write her contemporary westerns. She’s been married to her college sweetheart for over 20 years, and they have two teenagers and one very spoiled rescue cat named Penny. She longs to visit the places she writes about and jokes she’s a cowgirl at heart stuck in Pennsylvania suburbia. Sara Walter Ellwood also writes paranormal romantic suspense under the pen name Cera duBois.

Please visit her at
www.facebook.com/sarawalterellwood.ceradubois

http://www.twitter.com/sara_w_ellwood,
http://www.sarawalterellwood.com/blog/

https://plus.google.com/u/0/102888788054405451480/posts

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6869635.Sara_Walter_Ellwood

Be sure not to miss Sara Walter Ellwood’s sequel to Heartsong

Read on for a special sneak peek of the next book in the Singing to the Heart series!

Learn more about Sara Walter Ellwood at
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/29486

Emily Kendall was tired of life-changing events. She’d had enough. But God or whatever fate controlled the universe wasn’t done fucking with her life. “Are you sure? Hell, it’s been weeks since I’ve even seen my husband, let alone had sex. Maybe the test was wrong.”

She’d heard many life-changing words in her twenty-two years of life. The first had come when she was only fourteen and discovered superstar country singer Seth Kendall was her biological father. A few weeks after that revelation, the man she’d grown up loving as her father had shot her real dad and planned to kidnap her to sell into sex slavery.

Since then, a lot had happened. She’d become famous. Most people would even argue she was more famous than her dad, who helped her get her first record deal when she was barely fifteen. She broke sales records set by some of the best singers in the business, won countless awards, and sponsored everything from acne creams to jeans.

When she was three months shy of turning twenty, she’d met the British pop star Fabian McPhee. They’d collaborated on a TV special for the CMT network. He was fifteen years older than she was, mega famous, and super sexy. A month later while she was on tour in Australia, he’d asked her out to a nightclub.

That night had been full of firsts. Fabian introduced her to what would become her drugs of choice--cocaine and gin. Then, she’d lost her virginity to him. She’d thought she was in love. He was like no one she’d ever known. Despite her parents’ outrage over their tabloid-crazed, whirlwind relationship, only two months after that first date they were married by Fabian’s drummer, who happened to be an ordained minister from some online course he’d taken.

The medical director of the facility sitting across the wide, gleaming oak desk leaned forward and clasped his hands. “Your blood test isn’t wrong. You are pregnant.”

“Fuck.” She was on a birth control shot, but she’d forgotten to get it. The last time she’d seen Fabian had been about six weeks ago. They’d had sex, but she thought he’d used a condom. She couldn’t remember much of the event, like most of their two years of married life together. They’d split up ten months ago, but neither of them had gotten around to filing for divorce or could resist an occasional tumble in the sack or getting high together.

Not able to sit still any longer, she stood to pace the length of the posh office and folded her arms tightly around herself. She’d only been here for three days and already wanted to get the hell out of the medical facility. “How far along am I?”

Dr. Barton slid his finger over the screen of the computer tablet on his desk. “According to the history you gave the nurse who checked you in and your hCG level…” When she furrowed her brows trying to remember what the letters stood for, he clarified, “Pregnancy hormone. You would have to be six weeks.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her skin was too tight and hot. A coating of sweat caused her fingers to stick together, and she wiped her shaky hands on her jeans. Turning toward the window, she stared out at the woodland park surrounding the Fernwood Rehabilitation Center. In the past three years, she’d checked into the facility’s drug and alcohol program to sober up three times, and each admission had been against her will. She didn’t belong here because she wasn’t an addict. So what if she went a little too far this last time and was booed off stage? The venue, if the college auditorium could justify that name, sucked anyway.

This news was the very last thing she needed to hear. She turned and vigorously rubbed her arms, really needing a hit right now. The desire for a line of coke brought to mind another issue. She remembered when her mother had been pregnant with her brother five years ago she wouldn’t even take Tylenol for her headaches. Did she honestly want to know the answer to what all the coke she’d snorted could have done to her baby if her mother had been afraid to take something as harmless as over-the-counter pain pills? But she had to know if she’d harmed her child. “Do you know if the baby is okay?”

Dr. Barton stood to come around his desk. He leaned his backside on the heavy oak edge and folded his hands before him. “I don’t know. Emily, there is a chance your baby will be born with problems. You are an addict.” He held up his hand when she started to protest. “No, I’m not listening to your rationalizations. You’ve got to stop the drugs.”

“I can quit. I have before.”

He took a deep breath that made his shoulders rise, then fall. “And yet here you are again. Why were you admitted this time?”

She needed to get the hell away. “My manager has gotten a little too big for her pants.” Maybe she should fire Trish Russell for talking her into even thinking about this place again. Trish had been her manager for three years, ever since she was promoted by her father-in-law and took Emily on as one of her first clients. She considered Trish one of her few true friends, but, sometimes, the older woman was a pain in the ass.

She spun on her heels, which made her lose her balance as dizziness whipped her world out of control. Grabbing the back of the chair to keep from falling over, she tossed over her shoulder, “I think we’re done here.”

“Emily, I’ll let you go as soon as you tell me why you are here.”

She stopped halfway to the door. If she didn’t answer him, he’d only follow her. Letting out a long breath, she stared at the white-painted ceiling. “I’m here because I was too high to sing.”

The past five shows were a blur. Nothing fun or amazing about any of them. No fans waiting for her to autograph their T-shirts. But then again, when was the last time she took time to talk to her fans after a show? When was the last time she did anything special for her fans? Once upon a time, she’d put on massive productions in front of stadiums full to bursting with screaming, adoring fans.

Her last tour hadn’t even sold out to rundown opera houses and college auditoriums. In the early days, she’d arrange spontaneous private showings for more fans than had showed up for her current tour. She’d simply leave a date, time, and place on Twitter and a hundred or so of her fans would show up for a show. When had she last sent one of her own Tweets? She knew Kelly, her assistant, did all of her social media crap for her these days.

“I’m here because my record label said if I don’t sober up, they’re cutting me.”

“They aren’t happy with you?”

She shrugged and started pacing again. The cagy feeling was getting worse. “No. My last album is six months past due its production deadline. But I can’t help that all the songs suck.”

“Why do they suck?”

Turning, she met the doctor’s steady gaze. She wanted to tell Dr. Barton that her label and her manager had sabotaged her by giving her shit songs, but she couldn’t say that. Were the songs bad? Her father’s old friend, pop superstar Amanda Lang, had written four of them and had given them to Emily as a gift, despite three other singers wanting them. The other two songs she’d recorded were from an award-winning songwriter, and they, too, had been sought after by the best in the business.

She blinked when the realization hit her. The songs weren’t the problem nor were the studio musicians playing on the record. She was. “I don’t want to talk about my career. I want to talk about my baby. Is there any way we can determine if it’s okay?” As she laid her trembling hand on her belly, she silently prayed to a God she doubted would listen to anything she asked of Him.
Please let my baby be okay.

Dr. Barton looked down at his hands, then went back to his big leather chair and sat. “I’d like you to meet with a colleague of mine. Doctor Marcella Summers is an OB/Gynecologist who specializes in babies born to addicted mothers. She’d be the person who might know the answer to your question.”

She faced the wide windows again, but the early summer day and the forested mountains surrounding the center weren’t what she saw. “Okay.”

How was she going to handle a baby? Hell, she could barely take care of herself. What if it had a major problem from all the crap she’d put into her body?

She closed her eyes and fisted her hand over her belly. Dear God, what would Fabian say about the baby? He’d warned her when they got married he didn’t want any kids. Would he blame the pregnancy on her as he had so many other things over the past two years?

“Emily, I don’t know an addict who easily admits they are one.” Dr. Barton broke into a tirade of questions, bombarding her. “By your own admission, you use cocaine at least four times a week, but most weeks you use it every day.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. He swiped his finger over his tablet, the paused to read more of her medical record. “In August twenty-eighteen, your father admitted you to Fernwood when he found you passed out on your tour bus. According to your blood toxin levels, you were only a snort of coke away from overdosing; then in June of last year, you were admitted after falling off stage and breaking your arm. Again, your blood work showed dangerous amounts of cocaine and alcohol.”

Although she snickered at the memory, the humor was short lived, and she sobered. That had been her last stadium show. Tabloid and entertainment reporters hounded her after her release from Fernwood. Fabian’s own career also took a nosedive when he was arrested for drunk driving and resisting arrest. The two of them and their antics had been a favorite topic in even mainstream news since then.

He cleared his throat and folded his hands in front of him. “Your blood results weren’t as toxic this time, but if you don’t make an honest attempt to get clean and stay clean, not only will you jeopardize your child, you’re going to end up dead.”

The truth smacked her hard in the gut. She was an addict. Up until now, she never believed she was one. She used coke and drank gin because she liked them, not because she couldn’t live without them. But the reality was she used drugs to deal with life and all of its shit.

Would she have become so screwed up if she’d never met Fabian McPhee? Or had she been destined to a life of drug use due to her messed up childhood and sudden super stardom? Who knew? But in that moment, she hated the man who first introduced her to drugs and destroyed so much of her life. Her country music career was dead, and the fans she’d garnered when she put out a total pop album a year and half ago at Fabian’s insistence had abandoned her. She hadn’t spoken to or seen her parents, except from a distance at award shows, since her marriage. Since severing her ties with her mom and dad, she hadn’t seen her four-year-old brother. Now, she was responsible for developing a tiny baby who may very well end up paying for her lousy judgment.

She turned and met the doctor’s patient brown eyes. The man had to be a saint to manage the care of spoiled brat idiots like her. “Okay, Dr. Barton. I’m an addict. I use coke because I can’t deal with life.” She squared her shoulders and let out a breath. “There, I admitted it. Set up the appointment with the OB. But there’s something else I’d like you to do.” One of the conditions of admission into Fernwood was no contact with the outside world except for approved visitors on an extremely short list. “I want to file for divorce before I tell Fabian about the baby.”

The doctor’s surprise registered in the slightest widening of his eyes. “If that is want you want.”

Emily couldn’t help the snort as she sat in the chair in front of the desk again. “Oh, don’t be coy, Dr. Barton. I know you’ve been hoping I’d ditch Fabian McPhee since the first time my father dragged my sorry ass into this place a year and a half ago.” She looked at her hands as a rare moment of clarity blasted away the rosy sheen she’d painted over her life with her husband. “My counselor is right. Fabian and I do have a crazy love type of relationship. He might not beat me, but he has made me dependant on him by making me an addict.”