Billionaire's Love Suite (19 page)

She was giving him a life.

I
t was the kind of Sunday morning Shana had thought only happened in
romantic movies. The heat wave that had caused “brown outs” in New
York and made for cranky hotel guests had moved out to sea. A dry, cool
breeze sifted through the trees in Central Park and ruffled the petals of the
geraniums and begonias on the penthouse roof terrace. Shana had slept until
after nine o’clock, which was something she hadn’t remembered doing since
childhood.

Stretching and yawning she opened her eyes to find Justin still in bed,
still naked, his elbow bent so as to prop up his head while he watched her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Trying to decide what I want for breakfast. Eggs Benedict, waffles and
strawberries or you,” he said leaning down to kiss her.

She pulled back. “Let me brush my teeth first,” she pleaded throwing
back the quilt and hand embroidered white Egyptian cotton sheets.

Justin grabbed her around her waist and yanked her back onto the bed.
He planted a very firm kiss on her right buttocks. “Damn the waffles. I’ll
take you. Yum.”

“You crazy…” she began and then spun around to face him. He clasped
her breast in his hand and pulled it to his lips. “First. Appetizers.”

Justin nibbled and nuzzled while Shana sank her fingers into his hair
and held him to her. She felt tingling sparks of arousal slinging through her
belly. She slid her hand down Justin’s chest and toward his abdomen, when
he took her hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed her fingers one by one,
then curled his fingers around hers and held her hand to his throat. Resting
his head between her breasts he said, “I want to apologize for being so angry
about the penthouse. I love everything you’ve done. I have a confession. I
sneaked a peak at the blueprints for the nursery.”

“I hid them in the closet. When did you find them?”

“This morning while you were sleeping. I figured you wouldn’t have
busted out the wall if you didn’t have a plan drawn out in triplicate for it.”

“And?”

He raised his eyes to hers.

At that moment, Shana would have sworn on her life that the glowing
soft lights she saw in his blue eyes were total, absolute love. She had been
right. If it was there now, she could build on that. Hope sprang to life inside
her like spring flowers.

“Perfection. Just like my girl,” he said softly and then pulled her mouth
to his for a deep kiss. He scooched up in the bed and leaned against the headboard
and gathered Shana into his arms. While she rested her head against
his solid chest, he toyed with a long lock of her hair. “This is so peaceful,”
he whispered as if he hadn’t meant for the thought to be voiced aloud.

“It’s as it should be.” She tilted her head back. “Let’s make that promise
that from now on, Sundays are sacred. We won’t work. We rest and play. We
do what we want to do.”

Justin kissed her forehead. “That’s how it was when I was a kid. We
went to church and then on picnics or boating. My mother loved to sail. It’s
from her that I have a love of the ocean.”

“That being the case when do you plan to introduce me to this boat you
have?” she teased.

“What a great idea! We should go today. I’ll call the harbor master and
have a crew go over and swab her down and open her up.”

Shana sat up. “You’re serious.”

“Sure. Why not? It’s mine, isn’t it? I should be…” he shook his head
from side to side in rapid whippets that made it look as if he were rattling
his brain to straighten out his new course of thinking. “…fun.”

“Fun, huh? Think of that!” Shana joked as she disentangled herself from
his arms and put on a long white silk robe with her new monogram emblazoned
on the breast pocket. “I’ll be in the shower after your call. Then you
can join me.”

“Don’t soap a thing till I get there,” he said chuckling and reached for
the telephone.

*****

Four hours later Shana and Justin were sailing on the New York Harbor
and then up the Hudson River. It had been years since Justin sailed and to
avoid any kind of mishap, he hired a captain to take them out. He wanted
the trip to be enjoyable and not a chore.

Shana had ordered rosemary encrusted roasted chicken, cold broccoli
salad, French bread and chilled white wine for Justin and sparkling apple
juice for herself from the hotel kitchen as their picnic fare.

Enormous white clouds scudded across an azure blue sky as they sailed
across the sunbeam riddled waters. The harbor was filled with boats as
New Yorkers knew that summer was fleeting. Shana had the time of her life
waving to people she didn’t know and shouting greetings to every boat that
passed them.

“Are you always like this?” Justin asked sinking his teeth into a
drumstick.

“Not really. Sometimes I’m friendly.”

Justin sputtered and spit out the chicken. He coughed and choked.
“Don’t do that. I could have died here!“

“Well, you didn’t,” she laughed.

Justin was amazed at how much the sound of her laughter had come
to mean to him. It tingled and fell into the air like the sound of tiny silver
church bells. It was a sound that he realized had come to mean a lot to him.
He’d actually brought her here to day to make her happy. He’d wanted to
please her and show her a good time. He hadn’t particularly cared about
being on the water because in times past it would have only reminded him of
the childhood he’d lost and couldn’t get back. He slipped his arm around her
shoulders and pointed out some of the buildings he knew. He talked about
the times when he’d sailed in the Bahamas and the more he reminisced, the
more he realized he was making plans for the future with Shana.

He told her he wanted to take her to the Caribbean where they would
snorkel and photograph exotic fish. She told him she wanted him to see
Geneva with her and they both longed to tour the south of France.

When the day was over and the sun sliced it’s way through the tall
Manhattan skyscrapers, they were tired but happy as they rode in the hotel
limousine back to the hotel.

Justin stopped at the front desk and picked up the Sunday newspapers
from Joan, the evening manager. The vague thought that Joan had given him
an odd, scathing look when he turned from her, crossed his mind. Shana
had been asking him a question about a movie they could watch on pay-per-view and so he hadn’t given a second thought to Joan and her scurrilous
demeanor.

****

Justin sat on the down-filled sofa in their penthouse and opened the
newspaper to the financial section as was his usual practice. Dispensing
with that section, he perused the front page while Shana was in the bathroom
combing her windblown hair.

He had just opened the Lifestyle section when she walked into the living
room, sat in the chair opposite him and asked, “Anything interesting?”

Then he heard her shriek.

Instantly, Justin dropped the newspaper. “What?”

Shana shot up from her chair and snatched the newspaper out of Justin’s
hands. “That’s us!” Shana pointed to a photograph of them cutting their
pink and white wedding cake. “How is that possible? Who could have taken
that picture?”

His voice was riddled with anger. “This is precisely what I didn’t want!
I wanted a quiet affair. No publicity. No cameras. We are not celebrities!”

Shana’s eyes shot to him. “The New York Times thinks you are.
Obviously, by virtue of that, so am I,” she said. A thousand thoughts flew
through her head about what their hasty wedding might mean to the media.
She’d worked with reporters and journalists for years but it was always
on the opposite end and on her terms. This was an entirely different situation.
Prying eyes and a camera on every cell phone and Blackberry in the
city would be focused on them if the media decided they were noteworthy
enough to pursue. In all the time that she’d been associated with Justin,
becoming a media-darling had never entered her mind. To think that their
private lives could be splashed in the newspapers or worse, on television,
was nothing short of horrific to her. Simple outings like their sail today
would be turned into a circus.

Mercifully, she realized that such over-the-top media attention was
reserved for movie stars, politicians and murder cases. All they’d done was
get married.

“I suppose they feel they need to announce the fact that you’re off the
market,” Shana joked.

Justin wasn’t laughing. “No one knew about our wedding. I had the
photographer sign non-disclosure papers. If he sold any of our photographs,
it would be actionable. This photo didn’t come from him.”

“Justin, dear. The entire staff knew about the preparations. We created
miracles in less than two weeks! It could have been the florist. It could have
been someone at the bridal shop when I got fitted.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Justin mused.

Seeing that his anger had ebbed, Shana started reading the article. “Let’s
see if they spelled my name right.” Shana started reading the copy and
nodded. “Imagine that. They did. And they mention the names of all my
sisters and Ethan and Evan. That’s nice. Actually, it’s well written.”

“Either read it aloud or finish so I can read it,” he said staring at the
photograph of himself holding Shana’s hand as she slid the long cake knife
through the three tiered confection.

“Mrs. Yates is the former Shana Jackson of Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona.
She is currently the Director of Operations for the Lux Hotel Chain. Mr.
Yates is the son of Peter and Diane Yates, New York City, who has recently
inherited the Lux Hotel Chain upon his marriage, which was a provision of
Peter Yates’ Will.”

Shana finished the last words of the article and gasped. For a long
moment the words swam before her eyes and she felt as if she’d just been
plunged into glacial waters. She felt cold and bloodless and everything that
had been sunny and happy in her life had just been annihilated.

Her arms fell to her sides and the newspaper slid out from her numb
fingers. She stared at Justin who sat stock still on the sofa with his eyes
boring into hers.

In a flash Justin was on his feet. “Shana. I can explain. I meant to
explain.”

He stepped on the newspaper as he wrapped her in his arms. “It’s not
like that. They made it sound…they were brutal.”

Her mouth had gone dry and her brain had completely shut down. She
was emotionless. Now she knew what it felt like to die.

“How…”

“I don’t know how they could find this out. There has to be a leak.
Someone wants to hurt us.”

Shana shook her head. “It’s not true?”

Justin kissed her cheek and realized she’d gone into shock. Her body
temperature must have dropped ten digits. He didn’t know anything about
being the husband of a pregnant wife, but instinct alone told him this wasn’t
good for the baby or Shana. He scooped her up into his arms and took
her into the bedroom where he placed her beneath the handmade quilt.
Then he crawled into bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. He
rubbed her hands and arms to bring her back. He had half a thought to call
nine-one-one.

“Tell me… it’s all a lie,” she muttered slowly as she felt blood coming
back to her extremities.

“I wanted to tell you about it in my own way. I didn’t want you to find
out like this,” he said.

“So, I’m just a clause in some document so that you can become even
more powerful than you are. Don’t you have enough money, Justin? In three
lifetimes I couldn’t spend all the money you have,” she retorted suddenly
feeling her emotions resurrect.

“It’s not the money and you know it. You know how much I have wanted
the family hotels.”

“I do. I love them, too.” Shana wrested herself out of his arms and sat
bolt upright. Her blue eyes locked on his with laser precision. “Give me all
of it, Justin.”

Justin had never allowed anyone in his life to interrogate him, but this
time, he figured he had it coming. “The proviso stated that if I didn’t marry
within a year, the chain would go up for sale.”

Shana let the words sink in. As much as her heart was breaking and
as much as she wanted to plow her fist into Justin’s body, her first thought
was not for herself. “What a bastard your father was! Even to the end. No
wonder there was no love between you. I’m so sorry for you, Justin.”

Justin’s mouth gaped with astonishment. What kind of a saint was this
woman he’d married? Was it possible for a human being to be this selfless?
And what kind of lucky star hung over him that had brought her to him?
“Shana. I’m the one who should be apologizing. What I’ve done is…”

“Unforgivable?” she offered.

Her sad eyes were shot with pain as they looked at him. He’d never done
anything that was unforgivable. But he had now. And he had never felt this
wretched.

“I suppose.”

Shana got up from the bed. “I need to be alone, Justin. I have to think.
Please leave.”