A Pregnancy Scandal (14 page)

Yes, she was about fourteen weeks pregnant. No, he didn't observe anything unusual prior to the episode. Yes, she'd been complaining of an upset stomach. No, she hadn't been drinking alcohol or taking any kind of medication—that he knew of. Actually, the fact that he hadn't been right by her side every second had dug under his skin.

No matter what, he should have been there, taking care of his pregnant wife, not nursing the wounds of his black, conflicted heart.

One of the nurses escorted him from the room, very much against his will, as they began setting up a number of frightening machines and attaching them to Alex, who was lying on the hospital bed, skin as pale as the white sheets under her. What if she woke up and didn't know what was happening? Who would explain it to her? Who would hold her hand?

“Senator Edgewood, you have to clear the area and let us do our jobs,” the nurse said firmly, leaving no doubt about whether his clout would have any sway here. It was a no.

He tried to take solace in the fact that the machines would help the competent doctors figure out what was wrong with his wife and assure everyone that the babies were fine.

They
were
fine. They had to be. Everyone was fine. Nothing else would be acceptable.

Time crawled to a halt as he sat in the waiting room, his head in his hands, partly because he couldn't hold it up and partly to keep anyone from recognizing him. Normally fame didn't bother him, but today he didn't want any questions about why he was in the emergency room...especially since he couldn't answer them. He had no idea what was wrong with his wife, because they weren't “together” right now.

Actually, he had no idea
what
they were. She hadn't called him, hadn't told him what she wanted to have happen next. Nothing. And he'd tried hard to honor her mandate that he give her space.

When he'd seen Alex again, it had been a punch to the throat—and then some. He'd been miserable since last Friday night. Miserable and unable to figure out what he was supposed to do to get what he wanted. And he'd had no idea how much he'd wanted her until he'd stood near Alex again, so close, yet unable to touch her like he longed to.

And then she'd been in his arms again, but not the way he'd dreamed. Oh, no. That swoon and faint was the stuff of nightmares.

Cassandra, Harper and Trinity rushed into the emergency room, heels clacking and dangly earrings sparkling with furious movement. The FDA tour must have concluded. He made a mental note to thank them all later for filling in the gaps his and Alex's absences had caused.

“What's going on?” Cassandra demanded before she'd even reached his chair.

Phillip shook his head. “I don't know yet. They haven't told me anything.”

“And you're sitting there like a bump on a log?” Trinity scowled and swung around to terrorize the lady at the reception desk. They exchanged words, Trinity's rather heated, until finally, Fyra's chief marketing officer conceded defeat and returned to pace in the small waiting area off to the side where Phillip had chosen to set up camp.

After an eternity, a different nurse entered and approached Phillip. He shot to his feet, heart pounding as he braced himself for whatever news was about to be dropped. With Gina, he'd had no warning, no time to process. The authorities had come to his office personally to tell him, but she'd already been gone.

This was far worse because it was happening as he waited.

“Mrs. Edgewood is awake and asking for you,” the nurse said without preamble.

Ten kinds of relief whooshed the air out of his lungs and he went a little light-headed. “What happened? Is she okay?”

The other three ladies clambered at his back, peppering the nurse with additional questions.

The nurse, who must have been used to the chaos of the waiting room, simply nodded. “She's stable. But she's dehydrated and her blood pressure was very low when she came in. We've got her on an IV.”

The big, glaring omission in the status of Alex's situation iced Phillip's skin. “What about the babies? Everything's fine, right?”

The nurse's mouth firmed into a thin line. “There's a possibility of some...complications. We'll be running additional tests in the next few hours. I can't say anything else definitively at this time. You can go see her. Your wife is understandably very upset. It would be beneficial for her to relax if you can influence her.”

With an apologetic backward glance at Alex's friends, he left them in the waiting room and followed the nurse through a maze of corridors to a different area than where Alex had started out.

Alex blinked up at him from the hospital bed, her skin ashen and her eyes huge and troubled. His heart went into a free fall and landed in the pit of his stomach. Mute, he stared at her as something cataclysmic shifted inside.

He could have lost her. And he knew what the pain would be like if that happened. He hadn't wanted to experience it again. But here he was, in the same exact boat despite all his efforts to the contrary. Despite all the pretending.

It would hurt to lose her.

Just like it hurt to be apart from her, and hurt to think about how his life would be meaningless if he didn't have Alex in it. He'd spent so much time shoving her away so he'd stay true to a promise he'd once made to another woman that he hadn't recognized it was already too late.

His problem wasn't that he didn't know how to get what he wanted—it was that he hadn't realized what he truly wanted until this moment.

Alex.

He was in love with Alexandra Edgewood. Letting her walk away last Friday might go down as the dumbest thing he'd ever done in his life. If he'd grabbed on to her with both hands, he could have been by her side all week as she'd grown sicker. He might have been able to fix things. At the very least, neither of them would have spent the past week in misery.

Also his fault.

Weakly, she stretched out a few fingers, seeking his hand. “Phillip. What's happening?”

She wanted his comforting touch. The fact that she considered it such floored him. What did that mean? That it wasn't too late?

He obliged her by sliding a palm under hers, steeling his nerves so she didn't notice the shakes he'd developed in the past thirty seconds. How did you apologize for being such a moron when the woman you loved lay in a hospital bed, scared and upset? Squeezing her hand, he mustered a small smile.

“Everything's fine,” he lied, which she obviously didn't believe for a second judging by the line that appeared between her eyes.

“They won't tell me what's happening with the babies.” Alex bit her lip, a sure sign she had something on her mind she didn't know if she should say. “Dr. Dean is on her way. That can't be good.”

“I'm sure that's standard procedure,” he assured Alex with a composure he didn't feel in the slightest, but the nurse's admonition to keep Alex calm rang in his ears. “They're probably waiting on a qualified obstetrician to give her opinion.”

“About what?” Alex asked tersely. “If nothing is wrong, then any doctor can look me in the eye and say that. I've felt so bad this week, but I thought it was because of...you know. What happened with us.” Tears sprang up instantly in her green eyes, magnifying the brown dot that made her so unique. “I should have known something was wrong.”

“Shh, you couldn't have known.” Guilt settled a bit more heavily across his shoulders. If only... “As for what happened between us, let's not worry about that now.”

“I can't just not think about it,” she whispered. “You were clear about the line I crossed. I've been ignoring the problems between us this week, obviously to my detriment. We have to figure out how to move forward.”

Her gaze bored into him, convicting him. This was his wife to lose.

Maybe now was the perfect time to tell her how much of an idiot he'd been. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“We have to consider the possibility that I might lose the babies.” One tear slipped free from her eye and slid down her face. “I know we said no divorce and I agreed to that. But I have to know. If Dr. Dean gives us bad news, will you fight me on it?”

“Fight you on what?” Agape, he stared at her, his brain having an impossible time putting the horrific blocks of words together into something cohesive. And then it clicked. “You mean on granting you a
divorce
? Hell yes, I'll fight you on it. No divorce.”

He couldn't lose her, especially not if the unthinkable happened and they left the hospital grief-stricken. The mourning process wasn't something you could do alone. He didn't want to do it alone and he didn't want her to grieve alone, either. They should be together. Always.

“Phillip, please.” Her fingers curled around his, urgently digging into his flesh. “This is hard enough. Don't force me to stay in this marriage if there's no reason to. We only got married because of the babies. Why drag it out? I don't have the energy to indulge you in a lengthy battle, so I'm asking you point-blank if you'll agree.”

“That's not the only reason we got married,” he countered a bit desperately. “I—”

“I know.” Her voice soured. “You have your voters to consider. I get it. Well, I have my life to consider, too. I've had my eyes opened recently, and votes aren't my top priority. I'm sorry. I wish I could have stuck to the agreement, but things are changing. Honestly, I'm not even sure I can stay in this marriage if the babies are fine.”

Misery turned her mouth down and he wanted to shut his eyes against it. “Alex, none of this has anything to do with votes. I'm trying to tell you I'm in love with you. Campaigns aside. I want to be married to you because of
you
. The babies are just an amazing bonus.”

“What are you talking about?” Alex's expression grew hard. “Is this because I'm lying in a hospital bed? What happens tomorrow when I'm not in danger anymore? Once again, I'll be the convenient wife that isn't as good as your first one.”

“Is that what you think?” God, he'd bungled this up but good. He squeezed his temples, wondering where all his stellar debate skills had flown off to. “I've never thought of you as second-best. You're actually better suited to me than Gina ever was.”

That hadn't been what he'd planned to say. At all. But the words tumbled out, and as he heard himself say them, the truth became so clear. Gina had been wonderful but she hadn't challenged him. Alex made him better. Gina had been right for him once but Alex was right for the man he was now. A man he'd become because of Alex. A man who believed in second chances.

“You're not anything like her,” he continued more strongly, determined to make up for some of the damage he'd done. “On purpose. I wanted you to be different so I could guarantee I'd never have feelings for you. But that's not how it went down. Instead, it just meant I could never compare you. I could certainly never find you lacking because you're perfect. You don't blend into my world, which makes you unique and special. You stand out wherever you go. I love that about you.”

That moment at the hospital ribbon cutting. When she'd tried so hard to speak to people, even though she'd been scared and uncomfortable and hadn't wanted to be there...that had probably been the moment when he'd fallen in love with her.

What had started as an attraction so fierce he'd dreamed about her pear scent for weeks had led him to a place he'd never imagined he'd be. In love again.

His promises to Gina had been slipping further away each day. He let them go, fully and irrevocably. His marriage to Gina was gone, but he had something wholly amazing in its place and he planned to embrace it.

Alex stared at the wall. “Too little, too late. You've had your chance to spout a bunch of pretty words. I think the only way to move forward is if we're not together.”

Finally he knew what he wanted and she wasn't having any of it. “You're saying you want a divorce no matter what? I can't accept that.”

“Well, guess what? I'm newly converted to the Phillip Edgewood philosophy of no second chances.”

The phrase cut through him like a machete. Touché. And he totally deserved it.

A nurse bustled into the room, oblivious to how Phillip's entire world had just crashed down at the precise moment when he'd figured out exactly what he had to lose. If he hoped to keep the woman he loved, he had to go big.

* * *

Dr. Dean performed a lot of tests that took forever, but finally she declared the babies were fine. Alex breathed deeply for the first time since she'd awoken in the hospital bed.

At last it was over, and she still had two little heartbeats in her womb. The happy tears wouldn't stop cascading down her face, even though the rest of her life was in shambles.

A grim-faced Phillip had stuck by her bedside despite her telling him to go away several times. She got that he was concerned about the babies, so she didn't make a big deal out of it even though the echo of his beautiful voice saying
I love you
still pinged around inside her heart, looking for a place to latch on to.

She wasn't going to let it. No matter how much she wanted to believe it was real.

All of his declarations were an elaborate ploy to save face with his voters. He'd always cared more about appearances than she'd credited. She'd known when he brushed aside all her concerns about marriage that he'd needed her more than she'd needed him, but they'd gone far past reason and logic into something else entirely.

And to use her feelings against her—it was cruel and the height of emotional blackmail.

He could figure out how to spin the lack of a plus one whatever way he chose. She wasn't up for a repeat of the past few weeks, when she let herself believe he might be open to something more, only to be disappointed and heartbroken again. They'd have to figure out something else because she didn't want to be in this marriage any longer.