The Tycoon's Toddler Surprise

Prologue

She wasn’t aware of the salty tears streaming down her face as she listened to the soft beeping beside her.   Kristin watched the monitor carefully, her eyes never leaving the jumping line that coincided with each beep, willing the line to jump.  Praying with all of her heart that the line would jump. 

“You need to sleep,” the nurse said
gently
as she walked quietly into Kristen’s hospital room.  “You’re body needs to recover.” 

Kristen knew that the nurse was right.  She even nodded and closed her eyes for a moment
, wanting to follow the nurse’s advice, willing her body to relax
.  But as soon as she heard the door swoosh shut
indicating that the nurse had left the room
, her eyes popped open and she continued to watch, both her hands gently covering her stomach as if to keep the tiny
human
fighting for life under her fingers
warm and safe. 

“Please don’t give up on me little one,” she said to the empty room, although she was talking to the
tiny
girl in her womb, the
tenacious heartbeat
that was fighting for her life at the moment.  “I promise I’ll do better if you’ll just hang on.”

The
antiseptic
smells almost comforted her and the muffled
murmurs
of the
medical personnel
outside the room told her that help would be close if she needed it. 
Unfortunately it was all up to the little girl, barely sixteen weeks along in this life, who would have to decide if she wanted to stick around and meet her momma, or if she was too tired and frail from all the stress of the past few weeks to keep up her effort to survive. 

The doctors and nurses had done all they could at this point.  It was now up to God and this child’s will
to
live. 

At some point during the night she must have fallen asleep because she woke to a darkened room but knew that Mikhail was there.  She couldn’t see him, but there had always been something about him that had stirred her senses.  From the first moment she’d met him it had been that way and even the terror of losing her baby couldn’t diminish the impact he had on her senses. 

“You’re awake,” she heard his deep, sexy voice say from somewhere at the end of her bed.

She considered ignoring him, but knew from experience that one simply didn’t ignore Mikhail.  “What are you doing here?”

His sigh indicated his frustration, but he had better control of his emotions than she did.  He always had more control she thought, and the tears started once again because he hadn’t been there to help her when she’d needed some of that strength and control.  “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant,” he replied.

His words, spoken so calmly, as if this were simply a meeting that she hadn’t included him in, broke through her control, releasing the stream of tears that had stopped while she slept.  “You don’t have to worry about the baby any longer,” she said, knowing that he wouldn’t anyway.  He was too busy
setting up
his next business deal, buying up whatever
company
he considered would be a profitable investment or a strategic move for a future business tactic.  The man was a genius at making money and was worth more than one human be
ing could spend in several lifetimes
, but it was never enough
for him
. 

In truth, Mikhail didn’t care as much about the money as he did about the challenge of beating the competition.  He was brilliant at strategy and moved through the business world as if he owned it all.  In fact, he owned such a large portion of the world it was ridiculous, but that didn’t help her right now and she wanted to hurt him as much as she’d been hurting for the past twelve hours as she watched her unborn child fight for life inside her body. 

“Just leave me alone, Mikhail.”

Mikhail Benovich stared at the defeated woman
lying
on the hospital bed, her slender form taking up only a fraction of the space, and for the first time
since becoming an adult
, he didn’t know what to do. 
As he looked at her long, brown hair curling against the clinical white sheets, t
here was a sharp, stabbing pain emanating from the general area of his chest but he wasn’t sure if the cramping in his stomach was worse. 

As a man used to being in complete control, of knowing exactly what to do to win, usually several steps ahead of any competition he might run into, watching his wife of only six months cry silently in front of him made him ache in areas of his body
that he didn’t recognize or know how to deal with
and he hated the feeling. 

He wanted to fix this, but he didn’t know how.  He wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her that the loss of their baby was okay, but even thinking the thought in his mind made him hurt even more.  He had to be strong though.  She needed him now even if she didn’t know it
and wouldn’t admit to wanting his strength
. 

He sighed and thought about all the moments in the past two months that she’d been trying to tell him something and now he knew what that message was.  He hadn’t listened though.  He worked at least twelve hours a day and when he wasn’t working, he was socializing in ways that would gain him knowledge or valuable connections for a future acquisition. 

Kristen was the only person in his life that hadn’t wanted anything from him but his time. 
Sadly, time was s
omething he had given her very little of since their honeymoon and even that had been cut short because he’d needed to get back to his business
interests
.  He couldn’t even remember what crisis had occurred that pulled him away from that week. 

Over the past two months, he’d noticed that she’d tried to talk to him, but he’d been so busy with this latest acquisition and the debacles of inefficiency he’d run into, that he’d either been coming or going from a meeting, or on a conference call with someone trying to work out the crisis du jour.  He’d brushed her off so many times and, looking at her now, lying in the bed, defeated and more sad than he’d ever seen anyone in his life, he wished to have those moments back
, to hold her in his arms and feel her softness, her sweet breath against his neck
.  She’d been trying to tell him that she was pregnant, that they’d created a life together and he’d pushed her away. 

Now it was too late.  He understood from her response and the constant tears, the dark circles under her eyes and the way her hands were covering her stomach, that she’d lost the baby.

How does one comfort when he was still reeling from the fact that he’d just lost his own child? 
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t know the child existed until a few hours ago, he still was furious with the God that had done this to him.  He didn’t want comfort from anyone at the moment
, much less a cruel deity that would cause such unbearable pain
.  He wanted to smash something.  He wanted to grab one of the doctors outside this horrific room and demand that they fix this and make her whole again, to give him his child back. 

As his hands clenched the bars of the hos
pital bed, he wanted to fold Kristen
into his arms and hold her gently, to feel her soft arms wrap around him like they had each time he’d pulled her to him at night when he’d finally joined her in bed
.  And she’d always turned to him
no matter what time it was
, her giving was unending
. 

But i
nstead
of holding her
, he watched
helplessly
as she cried herself to sleep, the damned beeping noise
from the machines beside her
driving him insane as it matched the rapid beating of his heart
as he ruthlessly berated himself for not being there to protect his family, or even his wife
. 

Sitting down in the plastic covered seat, he covered her hands on her stomach, praying to a God that he’d dismissed angrily as a child, asking for help and forgiveness, since he didn’t know where else to
go.  Throughout the whole night
he prayed, yelling at God in his mind,
and then
transitioning into begging him to save this woman who was such an essential part of his life.  He didn’t love her, he told God.  He didn’t love anyone.  That emotion had been destroyed when his own mother had died in the shack they’d called a home and he’d been left an orphan on the
vicious, heartless
streets of
St.
Petersburg
, fighting for food from other homeless kids, finding shelter from the brutal winters in basements of abandoned buildings or warehouses.  The warehouses had been worse because there was no protection from the cold
but if that was all there was, he’d hidden out, hiding from the authorities in order to survive away from their cruel “protection”
. 

Mikhail thought like that now.  There was no
defense
from the pain shooting through him as he railed against an unjust and unloving God who would do this to his wife who had never hurt anyone in her life.  The pain was unstoppable and he didn’t understand how to push it away.  He wanted to help Kristen, but didn’t think she would allow his touch at this point. 

He took her hand anyway, stroking her cold fingers with one hand and covering her other hand, the one over her stomach, with his other.  He knew it wouldn’t help but it made him feel better to be touching her, to be warming her if only
through
her fingers. 

He watched her as he prayed, noting the dark circles under her eyes and the cheekbones that were too prominent.  She hadn’t been eating or sleeping well he realized and yelled at God for not taking better care of one of his own.  And then he became angry with himself because, of all the things he had learned in life, it was that he took care of his own.  And he hadn’t done that with Kristen.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the high back of the nightmarish chair.  He would rest for just a moment, he told himself, just a quick rest before he would wake and keep his vigil beside her.