STORM: A Standalone Romance (31 page)

“Get out of my house!”

She started to pull me toward the door from which I’d come, her grip so much stronger than I would have imagined. I tried to pull away, but I was at an odd angle and would have fallen if I did. Daniel came around the table and moved up behind Virginia, blocking her path.

“Get out of the way, Daniel!”

“You need to calm down, Virginia. Can’t you see you’re frightening the girl?”

“She’s a lying bitch! I’d be surprised if she’s even pregnant.”

I didn’t know what to do. I was shaking, and I just wanted to get out of there. This was obviously not what I’d expected to happen when I came over here today. I just wanted her to drop her crusade against Nicolas. I hadn’t imagined she wouldn’t believe me.

Daniel set his hands on her shoulders and whispered something I couldn’t hear against her ear. After a minute, Virginia let go of me, glaring at me as she waved her hands and walked away.

“You okay?” Daniel asked, lifting the arm that was still in the brace even three weeks later. “She didn’t hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” I pulled away from him and walked in the direction Virginia was trying to drag me, anxious to get out of that house before she came back.

“You have to understand, Aurora was her only child. She’s devastated by her loss.”

“Yeah, well, I knew that. That’s why I came here.”

“To do what?”

“To convince her to let Nicolas alone. He’s struggling enough, trying to prepare for these babies and salvage his career.”

“He should have thought of that before he flew to New York that night.”

I spun on my heel and confronted him. “Just because he was there doesn’t mean he had anything to do with her death. She could have taken those pills herself.”

“I know she did.”

I stared at him. “You what?”

“I know that Aurora died of an overdose. I know she was addicted, and she took too much that night, but she wouldn’t have taken it if Nicolas hadn’t shown up and argued with her.”

“If you know he’s innocent—”

“I didn’t say he was innocent. I said he didn’t drug her. There’s a difference.”

“A huge difference.”

Daniel looked at me, his green eyes piercing in the dim light of the hallway. “Aurora had her problems, but none of them were insurmountable until she met Nicolas.”

“What did he do to her that drove her to drugs?”

Daniel shrugged. “What does any star-crossed lover do to hurt his love? He loved her too much.”

“And for that, he deserves to be prosecuted?”

“Virginia needs to work out her grief in her own way. This thing…it will blow over.”

“Not soon enough.”

His eyes fell to my belly. “Those are really Aurora’s?”

“Yes.”

He stared at my belly for a long minute. It made me self-conscious, as I slid my hands over it and tried to protect the babies as well as I could. Then he nodded as though he’d made a decision.

“I’ll talk to her, but I can’t make any promises.”

“I wasn’t looking for any.”

I drove back home and slipped the keys in Constance’s purse while she was in the laundry room checking on the weeks towel load. No one seemed to have realized I’d gone. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

I was hoping, though, that things would be smooth sailing from here on out though.

Thanksgiving snuck up on us. One minute it was the end of May. School was ending and I was looking forward to summer. The next, my mom was dead, I was pregnant, and everything I thought I knew was turned upside down. And now it was Thanksgiving and I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant with another woman’s babies.

I insisted on helping Constance in the kitchen. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I could chop vegetables and wash pots and pans like a pro. She seemed to enjoy my company, laughing as I sang along to the Tejano radio station she always played.

“It smells like heaven in here,” Nicolas said as he moved up behind Constance and tried to steal a piece of turkey.

She slapped his hand. “Stay out of my kitchen. We’ll call you when it’s ready.”

He groaned even as he shot me a wink. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“He seems happy today,” I said, as I watched Nicolas disappear around the corner.

“It’s Thanksgiving. Everyone’s happy on Thanksgiving.”

I shrugged. It seemed as good an explanation as any.

I carried the china into the dining room and set the table, struggling to make sure everything was exactly as it should be. My mother taught me how to do this when I was barely tall enough to see over the table so that I could help when she served at formal affairs. I knew how it should look, but I wanted this to be perfect.

The babies were due in February. That meant this was my only chance to spend Thanksgiving with Nicolas. I wanted it to be special. I wanted him to remember it next year when he was struggling to have a meal with two nine-month-old babies. I wanted him to think of me fondly as he watched his kids grow up and they shared many, many holidays together.

Was that too much to ask?

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Adam said. He was dressed a little less formal today, wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He was actually very handsome when he smiled and he wasn’t trying to look so fierce. I was beginning to see this side of him from time to time. He even cracked a joke last week when I was complaining about not being able to go for a walk around the block. He really was a pretty nice guy.

“I’m just helping out Constance.”

“Why don’t you let me help Constance and you go relax with Nicolas? I’m sure he’d like the company.”

“When’s your family going to be here?”

He glanced at the screen on his phone before shoving it back into his pocket. “Fifteen minutes.”

He suddenly seemed nervous, which I found incredibly adorable. I touched his arm as I walked past him.

“It’s going to be great.”

He just nodded and headed for the kitchen.

Nicolas was in the living room, standing at the back doors.

“Do you think a swing set would ruin the layout of the garden?”

I moved up beside him and surveyed the scene that laid out before us. “You might have to tear out a few rose bushes.”

“I like the rose buses.”

“Yeah, well, thorns are not so great with small children. That’s why you never see rose bushes surrounding elementary schools.”

“True.” He slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “I guess a few of them can come out.”

“More than a few. Those swing sets get pretty big these days.”

“Don’t steal all my joy.”

I leaned closer to him and said, “Welcome to parenthood. Your life as you know it will never be the same again.”

He pulled me in front of him and pressed me to the glass door. His fingers slid over my face before burying themselves in my hair. His kiss was gentle, kind, the kiss I was beginning to expect from him. It was like heaven, moving into his arms and accepting his touch. I remembered the first time and couldn’t, for the life of me, remember why I’d pulled away. Or bit him, to be exact.

I slid my hand under the bottom hem of his shirt—a polo shirt whose rough material was a lovely contrast to his silky skin—my fingers playing a symphony on his ribs. There was a scar on his third rib, a thick, gnarly scar that I was dying to ask him about, but never got up the courage. Or found the right moment. I pulled back to ask now, but then he buried his lips against my throat and all thought just disappeared from my mind.

His hand wandered over my ass, his fingers looking for things he wasn’t going to find until he lifted my skirt. He was always searching, and that was what made him a perfect lover. Not such a perfect companion, but a perfect lover. He began to tug at my skirt, but then the doorbell sounded and brought us both back to reality.

“That’s probably Adam’s family. Or Constance’s.”

He groaned. “Whose bright idea was it to invite so many people over?”

“Yours.”

A slow smile formed over his lips, inspiring me to touch my fingertips to his bottom lip. He lifted my hand and kissed my palm, his lips lingering for a minute.

“Remember where I was.”

“I’ll definitely do that.”

Nicolas turned and strode toward the front entryway, confidence oozing out of every pore of his beautiful body. I loved to watch him walk, loved the way his muscles moved. And his ass wasn’t bad, either. If I had my way, I’d have him walk miles around this room just so that I could watch him both coming and going.

I poured myself some water at the bar and thought about all the things I had to be grateful for. It was something my mom and I always did, even when there wasn’t enough money for a turkey, or she had to work someone else’s celebration and didn’t have the energy left to share a meal with me. We always told each other what we were most thankful for.

“The experience of carrying these babies, and the chance to know Nicolas.” I glanced up toward the ceiling, thinking of my mother in heaven—where else would such a good Catholic be?—“I miss you, mom,” I said softly. “
Teamo
, mama.”

“What the fuck did you do?”

There was so much anger and bitterness in Nicolas’ voice that it frightened me. I turned and the look on his face was even worse. He was staring at me as though he wanted to murder me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He held up a set of papers that I couldn’t read from this distance. I was still clueless even as he shook them at me.

“You told her. I know it was you.”

“Told who what?”

“You told her about the babies so the two of you could find a way to steal them from me, right? You thought a rich, lonely widow would be thrilled to death to find out she’s about to be a grandma. So you told her, hoping she’d help you get out of the contract you have with me, right?”

Virginia.

“What has she done?”

He waved the papers at me. “She’s suing me for custody. The babies aren’t even here yet and she’s fucking suing me for custody.”

It was like I’d been struck by lightning. My entire body went numb. I couldn’t have responded to him even if I wanted to. But I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to an accusation like?

“I didn’t—”

He charged me, dropping the papers to the floor and grabbing my neck. “You have been scheming to take these babies from me from the moment you found out you were pregnant. And when I threatened to cut you out of their lives, you just hatched another scheme, didn’t you?”

“Nico,” I said, my voice garbled by his grip, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Wouldn’t you? You ran away. You insisted you wouldn’t let me have the baby. And now this. It adds up pretty quickly, my love.”

“Think about it, Nico,” I said, tugging at his grip on my throat. “I could have left when you were arrested. You said yourself there was nothing you could do.”

“But you didn’t know that until it was too late.”

“That’s not true. You can’t leave the county. I could run away today and you wouldn’t be able to come after me. But I didn’t. I stayed.”

“So you could conspire with that rich bitch whose trying to ruin my life.” He stared at me, anger still snapping in his eyes. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

“I didn’t do this. I only wanted to get her to back off of you. I didn’t think she would sue for custody!”

“Then you did talk to her.”

And that’s when I knew I’d dug myself a hole. What else was there to say?

I shook my head, but nothing I said now would get through to him. As if to confirm it, he pushed me back against the bar and let me go, anger like I’d never seen in his eyes.

“I thought you…” He stopped, unable to finish whatever it was he was about to say. He just turned away.

“Nico,” I said as pain slashed through my lower back, “please…!”

The pain was not like anything I’d ever felt before. I tried to straighten up, but it was so intense that I screamed. And then I was clutching my belly, the pain slicing around until my belly was as hard as a boulder. I cried out again, more from fright than pain. Nicolas was instantly at my side, his hand on my belly.

“What? Did I—”

Adam rushed over—he’d apparently come to inform us his family had arrived—and swung me into his arms, carrying me to the couch. Constance was there, too, a worried frown on her familiar face, as pain again traveled from my back to my belly.

“She’s in labor,” I heard someone say. “Call an ambulance.”

I’m a surrogate.

I made this choice because my mother was diagnosed with cancer and her insurance wouldn’t pay for her treatments. But right after the first implantation of the embryos, my mother had a heart attack. She died less than twelve hours before I was supposed to take her to the hospital to begin her chemotherapy treatments.

Needless to say, I was devastated. I locked myself in the house we shared and fell into a dark depression. I never gave a second thought to the implantation or the possibility that I could be pregnant. All I could think about was how empty my life would be without my mom.

And then I found out Aurora Parker, the starlet whose babies I could, potentially, be carrying died of a drug overdose in New York City. That brought me back to reality. I did a home pregnancy test. When it came back positive, I panicked. I thought Nicolas Costa, Aurora’s director husband, wouldn’t want anything to do with these babies now. So I ran.

The babies were all I had left.

I sublet an apartment in Dallas, not far from my best friend, Kelly. I was making plans for the babies, looking for a job, doing everything I could to start life as a single mom without too much difficulty. But then Nicolas showed up on my front doorstep and informed me that if I didn’t go back to Los Angeles with him, he wouldn’t honor the contract I signed with Aurora that allowed me pictures and the occasional visit. I would get nothing. And, at this point, I was head over heels in love with the babies I was carrying. I just didn’t know there were two at that point. I found out quick enough after Nicolas dragged me to a new doctor when we arrived in Los Angeles.

I also learned I had gestational diabetes, requiring up to five shots a day. And me, a little weary of needles.

Like all of that wasn’t stressful enough. But then there was Nicolas.

He kissed me in his home, feet from where his wife was resting. And when he came to retrieve me from Dallas—or, more specific, his child—he seduced me. He claimed later that I seduced him to get him to allow me to keep the baby, but that’s not what happened. He seduced me. Then we came to Los Angeles and things progressed.

I hate to admit it, but I like sharing Nicolas’ bed. I like when he touches me. But it’s not just about the physical—though Nicolas is incredibly hot and he knows how to make a woman feel like a woman!—there’s more to it than that. Kelly thinks I’m naive. She thinks I’ve been in love with Nicolas Costa since the first time my mom’s best friend, Constance, told me about him. Constance has been Nicolas’ housekeeper since he made his first blockbuster movie. And the stories she told us were pretty amazing. He was a party guy when his star first began to soar in Hollywood, always with a beautiful woman on his arm and a hot party to attend. But then he met Aurora and things began to change. He stayed home more. He tried to be a good husband. But something changed enough that Constance stopped telling stories about him—except, of course, to inform me Aurora wanted a surrogate to carry her children.

Aurora supposedly had a heart defect that wouldn’t allow her to have kids. However, Nicolas insisted she wanted a surrogate to protect her starlet’s figure. The fact that he insists she was major drug addict might have something to do with it, too.

Never mind that no one else knew Aurora was a drug addict. Never mind that even her mother was denying it now—or, at least, telling the world that Nicolas got her hooked. Aurora died of a combination of an overdose of Xanax and cocaine use.

It all seemed pretty obvious to me.

But then, just as I was beginning to believe that Nicolas had a heart and there might be a chance for us, the police arrested him for Aurora’s murder. There was some waiter who claimed he saw Nicolas put the drugs into Aurora’s drink. And then I found a whole bunch of drugs in a hidden bottom of a drawer in Nicolas’ bathroom. Including a baggie filled with Xanax.

But I couldn’t make myself believe Nicolas would do such a thing to anyone, let alone his wife. He might not have loved her by the time she died, but he loved her once.

So I went to Aurora’s mother and asked her to stop pushing the DA to file charges against Nicolas. According to the press, and Nicolas’ investigators, it was Virginia Davis, Aurora’s mother and the widow of a much beloved governor of California, who was behind the investigation in the first place. The coroner in New York called Aurora’s death an accidental overdose. But now, the New York police had this waiter and they flew all the way out here to arrest Nicolas. He was lucky his lawyer had gotten a sympathetic judge to allow him to remain in Los Angeles. Only, now he couldn’t leave the county.

It was all a huge mess. I just wanted Virginia to back off of him. I thought, if she knew I was carrying Aurora’s babies, she might let their father go. Instead…

“What the fuck did you do?”

There was so much anger and bitterness in Nicolas’ voice that it frightened me. I turned and the look on his face was even worse. He was staring at me as though he wanted to murder me.

What happened to the happy man who’d just kissed me next to the back doors, talking about swing sets?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He held up a set of papers I couldn’t read from this distance. I was still clueless even as he shook them at me.

“You told her. I know it was you.”

“Told who what?”

“You told her about the babies so the two of you could find a way to steal them from me, right? You thought a rich, lonely widow would be thrilled to death to find out she’s about to be a grandmother. So you told her, hoping she’d help you get out of the contract you have with me, right?”

Virginia Davis. Aurora’s mother.

“What has she done?”

He waved the papers at me again. “She’s suing me for custody. The babies aren’t even here yet and she’s fucking suing me for custody.”

It was like I’d been struck by lightning. My entire body went numb. I couldn’t have responded to him even if I wanted to. But I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to an accusation like?

“I didn’t—”

He charged me, dropping the papers to the floor and grabbing my neck. “You have been scheming to take these babies from me from the moment you found out you were pregnant. And when I threatened to cut you out of their lives, you just hatched another scheme, didn’t you?”

“Nico,” I said, my voice garbled by his grip, “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Wouldn’t you? You ran away. You insisted you wouldn’t let me have the baby. And now this. It adds up pretty quickly, my love.”

“Think about it, Nico,” I said, tugging at his grip on my throat. “I could have left when you were arrested. You said yourself there was nothing you could do.”

“But you didn’t know that until it was too late.”

“That’s not true. You can’t leave the county. I could run away today and you wouldn’t be able to come after me. But I didn’t. I stayed.”

“So you could conspire with that rich bitch who’s trying to ruin my life.” He stared at me, anger still snapping in his eyes. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

“I didn’t do this. I only wanted to get her to back off of you. I didn’t think she would sue for custody!”

“Then you did talk to her.”

And that’s when I knew I’d dug myself a hole. What else was there to say?

I shook my head, but nothing I said now would get through to him. As if to confirm it, he pushed me back against the bar and let me go, anger like I’d never seen in his eyes.

“I thought you…” He stopped, unable to finish whatever it was he was about to say. He just turned away.

“Nico,” I said as pain slashed through my lower back, “please…”

The pain was not like anything I’d ever felt before. I tried to straighten up, but it was so intense that I screamed. And then I was clutching my belly, the pain slicing around until my belly was as hard as a boulder. I cried out again, more from fright than pain. Nicolas was instantly at my side, his hand on my belly.

“What? Did I—”

Adam rushed over—he’d apparently come to inform us his family had arrived—and swung me into his arms, carrying me to the couch. Constance was there, too, a worried frown on her familiar face as pain again traveled from my back to my belly.

“She’s in labor,” I heard someone say. “Call an ambulance.”

That was two months ago. On Thanksgiving Day, to be precise.

I was in labor. The ambulance rushed me to the hospital, Nicolas at my side. The doctors started an IV and put this stuff into it that burned like crazy and gave me one of the worst headache I’d ever had. And, slowly, the pain that radiated from my back to my belly slowly stopped. But, by the time it did, my water had broken. One of the babies was happy and content in his amniotic sac, but the other was sitting in just a puddle.

“If we deliver baby B, baby A will deliver as well. And neither is really ready to leave the womb. It would be better to keep her here in the hospital and give the babies a little more time.”

But I couldn’t get out of bed. I had a catheter in my bladder—which was tons of fun, let me tell you—and everyone who came in the room had to put on scrubs and a mask. It was like I was Typhoid Mary or something. I felt like a leper.

Nicolas looked pretty good in scrubs though. Not that he talked to me when he came to visit. I think he just came into the room to make sure I was still here. He’d sit in a chair, watch the news for about five minutes, then he’d leave with a promise to return. And he always did. Just…not to talk.

Constance came nearly every day. She’d sneak in little treats to me, like tamales or spice cookies. And Adam was here almost constantly. He was Nicolas’ bodyguard. I guess Nicolas figured it was more important to have him guard me and keep the press away, than it was for him to keep the paparazzi off his car. I’m sure Nicolas had nightmares of the press finding out about me, especially now. His lawyers insisted they were close to getting the charges against Nicolas thrown out of court—I’d heard that on the news—so word that he had some pregnant girl locked up in a local hospital probably wouldn’t play well now that the gossip rags were mostly on his side.

TMZ seemed to think the charges were bogus and they’d be dropped pretty soon. All the other media feeds seemed to lean that way, too. I hoped they were right. I was almost thirty-four weeks pregnant. These babies would be here very soon, and they would need their daddy.

That is, of course, as long as Aurora’s mother didn’t get custody.

Daniel came to see me last week. I was shocked, to say the least. He was Virginia’s stepson and, when I went over there that day, they seemed very close. He snuck into my room when Adam wasn’t here and told me that he hadn’t realized what Virginia would do.

“When the lawyer called and said that he’d filed paperwork with the family court, I was shocked. I thought she’d sue him in civil court for wrongful death. I never imagined she’d try to take the babies away from him,” he said.

I’ve always considered myself a pretty good judge of character. I mean, I’ve been burned a few times. I thought Nicolas was a great guy until he kissed me in his living room the night Aurora called me excited because the embryos were viable. But now that I know more about him, I think my initial instincts were pretty much right on the money. So, when my instincts told me that Daniel was being truthful, I believed them.

I just hoped he could talk Virginia out of taking Nicolas to court.

I tried to pull myself up a little, but there was only so far you could go when you were supposed to lie flat all the time. One of the babies kicked. I touched my belly just over the kick and smiled as it came again.

“Soon, little one.”

I wanted to ask Nicolas if he ever finished the nursery, if he had chosen names. But he was so angry with me over what I’d done by going to Virginia that I was lucky he even remembered my name. I’m sure, as soon as these babies were born, he’d put me on a plane right back to Texas.

“Moving around a lot today,” the nurse said, as she came into the room, a syringe in her hand.

“They are. Did they knock the monitor over again?”

“Either them, or their mommy shifting in bed again.” She winked as she set the syringe on my rollaway tray and adjusted the elastic belts around my growing belly, moving the plastic heart monitors around until a clear beat showed on the machine beside my bed.  I smiled as two separate heartbeats appeared, the lines strong and steady.

Once the monitors were adjusted, she injected the medication into my IV line.

“Anything I can get you, hon?” she asked.

“No. I’m okay.”

“You know, as long as you’ve been here, it’s okay to ask for something every once in a while.”

“I know. But my friends keep me pretty much covered.”

“It doesn’t hurt that daddy’s a rich Hollywood type.”

She winked again as she stepped through the door.

Everyone seemed to think because Nicolas was the father of these babies, my life was so easy. How little they knew.

I flipped through the channels on the television for a few minutes, finally settling on a chic flick. I was so bored! Nothing to do all day but watch television might seem like fun to some people, but it was torture to me. I wanted to go outside so badly that I could hardly breathe when I thought about it.