Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (129 page)

Red was driving with controlled
urgency.
 
He put his Bluetooth
earpiece on and immediately was on the phone with someone powerful.
 
She could tell by the way Red said
things that it was someone who could get them seen right away.

“She needs to be looked at right now,”
Red said into his headset.
 
“I’ll
have her there in under fifteen minutes, but I want Dr. Rosen, unless she’s not
available for some reason.
 
If not,
please get me the next best available person.
 
Okay?”

He looked over at her and tried to smile.

“I’m okay,” she whispered, not feeling in
the least okay.
 
But she could tell
he was frightened too, and she wanted to somehow reassure him.

The baby will be fine, she told herself.

They arrived at Yale-New Haven Hospital a
short while after that, and Red escorted her in and made another phone call.

Minutes later, the doctor herself came
and met them.
 
“I’m Dr. Rosen,” she
said to Nicole.
 
“Are you okay to
walk?
 
We can use a wheelchair if
you’re uncomfortable.”

“No, I’m okay to walk,” Nicole said.

Dr. Rosen put her immediately at ease
with her calm demeanor. She took them to the fourth floor, the obstetrics wing
of the hospital, asking questions while they went.

“How long have you been cramping?” Dr.
Rosen asked.

“Maybe an hour or so,” Nicole said.

“And bleeding?
 
Is it light spotting or—“

“No.
 
It’s heavy, like a period.”

They arrived at one of the examination
rooms and Dr. Rosen inquired about the pregnancy tests Nicole had taken to
determine she was, in fact, pregnant.

“Could it somehow have been a false
positive?” Nicole asked her.

“That’s very rare, especially since you
took more than one test.
 
You’re not
taking hCG supplements or anything, are you?”

“I didn’t even know that existed,” Nicole
said, trying to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“Yeah, it’s a new diet fad and it can
cause issues with elevating a woman’s hCG artificially,” she said.

Dr. Rosen excused herself and asked
Nicole to get into a hospital gown.
 
Red stood there, his arms folded, trying to look less nervous than he
was, while Nicole changed.

When she was done changing, she sat on
the table and the two of them looked at one another.

“What if something’s happened to the
baby?” she asked.

“I know it’s going to be fine,” he said,
but she could see the deep concern in his eyes.

“And if it’s not?”

“Then we’ll get through it together,
right?”

“Yeah.”
 
She nodded, not feeling any better.
 
He came over and gripped her hand.

A few minutes later, Dr. Rosen came back
inside and told Nicole to lie on the examination table and put her feet on the
stirrups.
 
“I’m just going to do a
brief pelvic exam,” she said, smiling.
 
“Try not to worry, okay?”

“Okay.”
 
Nicole tried to smile again.
 
This time she completely failed.

“You might feel some pressure or a little
bit of discomfort—just tell me if you feel any pain, all right Nicole?”

“Yes.”

Red was watching with tremendous
attention, but keeping very still and quiet.
 
She met his gaze and tried to just think
of him protecting her.
 

He won’t let anything bad happen to me,
she thought.

Dr. Rosen gently touched Nicole’s bare
stomach and pressed against it, feeling around the entire belly area.
 
“Everything feel okay so far—any
tender or painful areas?” she asked.

“Nope.
 
Everything’s just fine.”

Well, that was a lie—but maybe she
could manifest okay-ness if she could just act the part.

“Good.”
 
Dr. Rosen used the speculum to continue
the exam.
 
“There is some blood,”
she said.
 
“However, the cervix
looks as it should.”
 

Red continued to look into her eyes and
reassure her with his presence.

“I’m just going to look a little more,
here,” Dr. Rosen explained.
 
“The
vaginal walls are consistent with a pregnancy,” she said.
 
“Now normally I’d have you do a blood
test to make sure, but given the nature of your situation—I think it
might be best to do a transvaginal sonogram.
 
That will provide the quickest answer to
our questions.”

“How will that work?” Red asked.

“I have the ultrasound machine right
here,” Dr. Rosen said, pulling back her stool to talk to them.
 
“We can do it immediately.”

Red looked to Nicole.
 
“Are you okay with that?”

“I just want to make sure the baby’s
healthy.”

Dr. Rosen explained the procedure, her
calm, kind voice partially allowing Nicole to remain upbeat.

Maybe everything’s fine.
 
Maybe she’ll tell me that this is all
totally natural and normal, and that our baby is healthy.
 
The doctor asked her if she’d like to
proceed with the ultrasound.

“Yes,” Nicole said, nodding.
 

Dr. Rosen moved the monitor so that she
could clearly see the screen, and then she took out a probe, rolled a condom
over it, and applied some lubricant to it.

Nicole began to shake now.
 
She had just a terrible, awful feeling
about what was happening.

“Are you all right, Nicole?” Dr. Rosen
asked.

Nicole nodded.
 
She looked to Red and he came over to
hold her hand during the procedure.

“Just let me know if you experience any
discomfort.
 
Take some deep relaxing
breaths if you need to.”

When Dr. Rosen inserted the probe, Nicole
did feel pressure, however there wasn’t any pain and she had total confidence
in Dr. Rosen’s abilities.
 
Mostly
she was just frightened because she knew what they were going to find.

“Okay, I do see the fetus,” Dr. Rosen
said, as she moved the probe slowly from side to side.
 
“I’m getting a picture and now I’m just
trying to locate the heartbeat.”

A long time went by.

Dr. Rosen’s face was a study of pure
concentration, staring at the monitor.
 
Ever since she’d said she was trying to find the baby’s heartbeat, she
hadn’t said another word.

The seconds continued to tick by, and
Nicole felt her eyes well up with tears.

“It’s okay, Nicole,” Red said, but his
voice was choked up.

Dr. Rosen began to talk, but there was a
loud ringing in Nicole’s ears and she couldn’t really hear what the woman was
saying to her.
 
Nicole wasn’t
listening anymore.

All she knew was that her unborn child
didn’t have a heartbeat.

For His
Trust (For His Pleasure,
Book 5
)

By Kelly Favor

© 2012 All Rights
Reserved

It had been three days.

Three days since everything had changed
and Nicole’s entire world had gone dark.
 
No, not completely dark, because she still had Red.
 
But it was a gray film over everything,
and she was stuck in the gray.
 
It
was like her legs were filled with lead, every step she took was achy and
sapped her energy.

She was lying in bed mostly, needing to
be taken care of, and Red was doing just that.
 
Maybe he wished that he could lie in bed
all day and have someone take care of him.
 
Surely he had as much to be sad about as she did.
 
In the space of just a month he’d lost
the business he’d spent his life building from the ground up, and then he’d
lost his unborn child.

Losing your baby was painful—but
not even having the chance to really know your baby or hold your baby was also
painful.

The doctor couldn’t tell them whether it
was a girl or boy—it was far too early in the pregnancy for that.
 
Nicole wanted to know—she wanted
to be able to grieve, and somehow it felt like knowing the gender of the baby
would help that process.
 

Recently, she began to feel somehow that
the baby had been a girl.
 
Nicole
didn’t know where the conviction arose from, but she decided to go with it just
the same.
 
Secretly, she named the
girl Renee and made an internal promise not to forget her.
 
Sure, she’d been just seven weeks
old—but she’d still been alive and Nicole felt it was important to
remember her no matter what.

Nicole had also been told it might take
weeks for her body to expel the fetus—“expel,” as if the baby had been
somehow bad and needed punishment—but she’d actually done it yesterday.

It had happened when she’d gotten another
severe bout of cramps in the afternoon and gone to the bathroom.
 
She’d seen the gray fetal sac and everything,
and it had been horrible and deeply sad, and yet seeing it had brought some
closure too.

So now the physical part was over.
 
There was no more baby, there was
nothing more to come—just this emptiness, this gray air that Nicole found
herself walking through and talking through and seeing through.

Lying in bed was all she wanted to do
right now, and Red was letting her do it.
 
He brought her food, stroked her hair, spoke to her softly and held her
hand in his own.
 
He told her it
would be okay, that she would be okay again at some point.
 
He told her to take her time.

But today she couldn’t take her time
anymore, because her mother was visiting the house.
 
It would be her mother’s first time at
the mansion and Nicole didn’t know how she would react to it all.

“You’re mother’s at the front gate,” Red
said to Nicole as he came in the bedroom.
 
“Do you want to come down or should I just bring her up?”

“No, no, I’ll get up and come
downstairs.”
 
Slowly, Nicole pushed
herself into a sitting position.

She needed a shower but wasn’t going to
have time right now.
 
Even though
she’d known since yesterday that her mom was coming, Nicole still hadn’t been
able to get herself moving.
 
She was
like a toy robot whose batteries were running down.

Red left the room and Nicole got up, went
to the bathroom and washed her face, brushed her teeth, put on deodorant.

Then she changed into some baggy cargo
pants and a comfy sweatshirt.
 
She
tied her hair back in a ponytail and surveyed herself in the mirror.
 
She looked yellowish, sickly, and you
could read the depression in her eyes.
 

She put on some makeup—nothing
fancy—just to give her face some color.

And then Nicole went downstairs to wait
for her mother to arrive.

Red was brewing coffee when Nicole
entered the kitchen.
  
He
looked up at her, his expression hopeful.
 
Nicole knew what that expression meant.
 
She knew he was waiting for the real
Nicole to come back to him.
 
This
walking, talking ghost—this strange phantom was not the Nicole he’d
fallen in love with.

“Want some coffee?” he asked, his voice a
little too chipper.

She shook her head and sat down heavily
at the breakfast nook.

“Well,” he continued, watching the pot
brew, “your mother will probably want a pick-me-up after the drive from
Syracuse.”

“Yeah, probably.
 
That’s nice of you.”

He smiled.
 
“Well, I’m kind of awesome so…”

Nicole tried to smile back at him.
 
“You are awesome.”
 
And then she thought what a great father
he’d have made to their little Renee and the tears came to her eyes before she
could stop them.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, moving quickly
toward her.

She waved him off.
 
“I’m fine.
 
I’m just being silly.”

“No you’re not, Nicole.
 
Don’t say that.”
 
He stood by the counter and looked at
her.
 
The concern was written all
over his face.
 
“You’ve been through
something horrible.
 
Of course
you’re sad.”