Jilted (4 page)

So Skylar had swallowed her pride and headed to the restaurant she’d waited tables at all through college and law school. She had handed in her resignation a few months back in preparation for her wedding so it had been a bit embarrassing to walk back there with her tail between her legs and asking for her job back. Fortunately the owner was understanding and was able to squeeze her in to a few shifts. She’d gotten some flak from a few of the other servers who had been jealous of her relationship with Ashley but she managed to ignore them.

Everything seemed to be going fine for about a week or so. She’d pick up extra shifts to keep her busy and when she wasn’t working, Skylar would be in the library studying for the bar exam. By the time she’d get home, she’d be so tired, Skylar would fall asleep the second her head it the pillow. She kept busy so she wouldn’t think about Ashley and how badly he’d hurt her. And then she started having health issues. Skylar had come down with a cough she couldn’t quite shake no matter how much Vitamin C and Echinacea she took. She worked harder, pushing herself until one day after working a second shift at the restaurant she couldn’t breathe. Skylar had passed out in the middle of the kitchen. Her next memory was waking up in the hospital bed. She hated that the first thought upon opening her eyes was the disappointment of not being dead. Being laid up in bed gave her nothing but time to think about him and the pain that felt like a heavy weight on her chest.

She licked her lips that felt dry and chapped, wishing she was anywhere but here. Just then the door opened and her mother stepped inside the room, dressed in her scrubs. Her mother was a pediatric nurse at the local children’s hospital. Judging from her outfit she was either getting off a shift or on her way to one.

“Mom,” she whispered. Skylar throat felt like sandpaper.

“Don’t try to sit up. How are you feeling, baby?” Priscilla took a seat at Skylar’s bedside.

“Tired.” It was difficult to get the words out.

“Well it’s good to see you awake. For the last two days you were barely coherent. I didn’t know if you were aware of what was going on around you.”

Skylar licked her lips again but her mouth felt so dry it did no good. “I heard everything; I was just too tired to respond.”

“I warned you not to run yourself ragged working as hard as you did. Honey, what were you trying to do? Kill yourself? No. Don’t answer that. Just promise me you’ll take it easy, okay?”

Skylar nodded as much as she could.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Some water. My throat is really dry.”

“I bet! You’ve been hooked up to this IV. You were severely dehydrated when they brought you in.” Priscilla produced a cup and pitcher that was at Skylar’s bedside and poured out some water. “Here you go. You may want to gulp but just sip it or else you’ll throw up.”

Skylar nodded, allowing her mother to cradle the back of her head and guide the cup to her lips. The cool liquid was refreshing as it hit her parched lips. Skylar resisted the urge to take big swallows and did as she was instructed. She was nearly finished the entire drink when it was taken away. She whimpered in protest.

“Take it easy. Let it settle in your stomach first and then I’ll give you some more.”

“It was so good.”

“I bet. When you’re home and feeling better, I’m going to fatten you up. You’ve lost way too much weight these past few weeks.”

Skylar sighed. “I haven’t had much of an appetite lately. Trust me; every time I try to eat something, I get nauseous. It’s been a battle to keep my food down and sometimes I’m not always the winner. Besides, I’ve been so tired lately, I’d much rather sleep than eat.”

Priscilla took Skylar’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I know, but if you don’t take better care of yourself, you’re going to keep making yourself sick. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Besides, do you have any idea what it did to me when I received a call saying that you’d been rushed to the hospital? I nearly had a heart attack. Don’t do that to your old mom.”

A smile touched Skylar’s lips. Her mother always lamented over how old she was but the truth was at 42, Priscilla could have easily passed for her sister and many people thought they were the same age. “Mom, stop that. You’re not old.”

“Sometimes, I feel like it. I just got off of my shift at work. I switched my schedule around to work at night so I could sit with you all day today. But around three, I’m going to go pick up Izzy from school and bring her for a visit. She’s been bugging me to bring her to see you. I wanted to wait until you got some rest before you had any more visitors because we both know that girl will talk your ear off.”

“True, but I wouldn’t mind. I miss her.”

“And she misses you, too. We both do.”

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Priscilla raised a brow. “Expecting someone?”

“No. It’s probably a nurse coming to check in on me.”

“Probably,” Priscilla agreed. “Come in!”

The door opened and the doctor stepped inside. He offered Skylar a smile as moved closer to her bed. “Miss Brown. I’m glad to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Like crap,” Skylar answered honestly.

He chuckled. “Well hopefully we can remedy that. I’m Dr. Keyes by the way, since we haven’t been formally introduced. You’ve been mostly in an out of consciousness these past two days. Since you’re awake I can go over some of these test results.”

“What kind of tests?” Skylar asked.

“We did a chest x-ray and some blood work to make sure we could rule out any number of illnesses. It’s basically what we thought which is pneumonia. It was probably exacerbated by your refusal to slow down. When you have a persistent cough as your mother described you have to make an appointment with a doctor, young lady. Your blood works seems to be in order but…” He frowned as he looked at his chart.

“What’s the matter doctor?” Priscilla demanded before Skylar could.

“Hmm, it’s usually just preliminary but we give all of our female patients within child bearing age range pregnancy tests.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” Skylar asked.

Dr. Keyes raised his head and met Skylar’s gaze. “Yours came back positive.”

Chapter Three

“I think the way you’ve been behaving has been absolutely ridiculous.” Katherine Hollingsworth strode into Ashley’s office without a “how do you do” or even the semblance of civility.

Ashley took off his reading glasses and placed them on his desk with a sigh. His mother was not one to be easily ignored, though he’d tried these past few weeks. Since he’d returned from Dubai, he’d barely visited his family and he kept late hours at the office. When he wasn’t at work, he went to the gym and hung out at Tim’s. He did anything that he could to keep himself busy, so he wouldn’t think about
her
. “And hello to you too, Mother. To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

Katherine narrowed her eyes to ice blue slits. “Don’t you get smart with me, mister. Why have you been ignoring my calls? Better yet, why have you been ignoring Tiffany’s? How could you treat that poor girl like that, especially after she dropped what she was doing to go with you to Dubai so you could get your mind off that tramp you had the poor taste to associate with?” She raised her nose in the air as if she smelt something bad.

In the past Ashley always defended Skylar whenever his mother said something disparaging against her, but now all bets were off. Still, hearing the vitriol in the older woman’s voice was jarring. “First of all, I’ve been busy. I’m a partner at one of the largest firms in the city and you know that my job requires a lot of my time. I help to keep this firm going so you, Owen and Coleen get your quarterly dividend checks without having to lift a finger. Second, Tiffany invited herself to Dubai. I never asked her to come with me. She showed up at the airport determined to tag along. The only reason I didn’t send her back was because she paid for her own ticket on the plane. It wasn’t as if I could tell her ‘no.’”

“But you allowed her to stay in your suite,” Katherine pointed out. “That must count for something.”

“It just meant that I had a spare room for her to stay in which she did.”

“That’s not how she tells it. In fact she said the two of you had a good time together. Although she didn’t go into detail, it’s not hard to ascertain what the two of you were up to. I can’t believe you would use her and then treat her so abominably. I’ve raised you better than that.”

“No, a bevy of nannies raised me, although none of them stuck around long enough for me to remember their names because you always found fault with something they did.”

“I was a hands-on mother and you know it.”

Ashley shrugged his shoulders, bored with this conversation. “If you consider supervising from the chaise lounge with a martini hands-on then I guess you were.”

Red splotches stained his mother’s cheeks. “Just because you nearly made the biggest mistake of your life gives you no reason to take your bad temper out on me and your siblings, who by the way say you’ve basically ignored them these past several weeks.”

“As I’ve already pointed out I have work to do. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to it, Mother.”

“You’ve allowed that woman to influence you. You never used to be so disrespectful.”

Ashley pinched the bridge of his nose as he felt the tension building up in his head. “Mother, I’m sure you came here for a reason other than to nag so if you don’t mind telling me what that is, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

Katherine folded her arms over her chest and pursed her lips before releasing a sigh. “The Purple Ribbon Auxiliary is throwing a charity event to support the families of fallen troops. We decided to do something different this year besides the regular $1,000 per table event. We’ve decided to do a bachelor auction and I volunteered you to be—”

“Absolutely not,” he cut her off before she could even finish.

“But you’d bring a lot of money to a very worthy cause. Besides, I already said you’d do it.”

“That sounds like a ‘
you’
problem. Perhaps you should have consulted me before volunteering my time. If you’d like me to write a check to your little charity event I’d be more than happy to but beyond that you can forget about it.”

Katherine’s face was now bright red. “If you don’t do this, you’ll make me look like an absolute idiot. Everyone is expecting you. Besides, several of the ladies in our club will have their very eligible daughters bidding on you. Suitable women.”

And there is was. She was determined to bring up his lapse of judgement pertaining to Skylar with every chance she could get. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to leave when his phone rang. The light indicated that it was coming from his administrative assistant’s phone. He hit the button putting her on speaker. “Yes, Amanda?”

“Mr. Hollingsworth, you have a visitor downstairs in the reception area.”

He frowned when that was all she offered. “Do you plan on telling me who this visitor is?”

“It’s Miss Brown.”

“What the hell is that woman doing here?” His mother demanded. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken up with her again.”

Ashley held his hand up to shush her. “Have security escort her off the premises.”

“Well, I had already figured you might not want to welcome her presence so I’d already taken the liberty of doing just that. She’s causing quite a scene and I just wanted to remind you that we have the Gallagher Group coming at any minute. This wouldn’t be a good thing for one of our largest clients to witness.”

She had a point.

“Okay, send her up.”

“Are you sure? I could always call the police,” Amanda suggested.

“I’ll handle her.” He clicked off before she could respond.

“Are you crazy? Absolutely call the police and have her sent to jail with the rest of the trash. That’s where her kind belongs.”

“Mother, enough!” he roared. “I get it. You don’t like Skylar. You never have. But let me handle this my own way. By the end of this meeting, she will know in no uncertain terms that she’s not welcome in this office, or near our family.”

Katherine sniffed, seeming mollified by his statement. “Well as long as you make that clear. And let’s not have another repeat of last week. The nerve of that whore showing up at my house begging for an audience. My house! Ugh, it makes my skin crawl that I had to even have her in my home in the first place. I had the place thoroughly steam cleaned once you came to your senses.”

Ashley rolled his eyes heavenward. “If you’re finished being overdramatic, you can leave.”

“No. I think I should be here when that tramp comes.”

Ashley didn’t need the added headache of dealing with his mother when he confronted Skylar. “I can handle this without your intervention. Please go.” He made sure his tone conveyed that there was no room for argument.

His mother gave him a long narrow-eyed stare before releasing a sigh. “Fine, but just so you know, if you ever get the crazy idea of reconciling with that woman, I will never accept her under any circumstances, especially after what she’s done.”

“Duly noted.”

And with her usual dramatic flair, Katherine Hollingsworth turned on her heel and stalked out of his office.

Once she closed the door behind her, Ashley slid out of his chair and walked over to the window and stared outside, not seeing anything in particular at all. In the past couple weeks after hearing nothing from her, Skylar had tried contacting him. Whenever he saw her number pop up he automatically sent it to voicemail, none of which he listened to. He ignored her texts. She showed up at his apartment building but he had left instructions for security to send her away. In fact he instructed them that if she was to show up at his building again, to have her arrested. He ended up changing his personal phone number.

She’d even gone by his mother’s house. Ashley wasn’t sure what she could possibly say to him that would be so urgent but whatever it was, it ended today because after this, he wanted nothing else to do with her.