The Billionaire's Call Girl: A BWWM Billionaire Romance (13 page)

"Yes! Yes, of course." Jake said, and he followed the doctor into a room where a nurse rolled up his sleeve and wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his upper arm. In moments, there was a needle protruding from him and he saw his lifeblood zipping out of him through the clear tube to the blood bag where it would be gathered.

Ten minutes later, the nurse came back in and, after filling several little glass vials of his blood, she pulled the needle from him arm, sealing up the bag and taking it to storage.

That done, the nurse took him in to see Christopher. The boy was laying asleep on the bed, his soft blonde curls twisted and poking up sweetly around his little head, all in disarray from the sweat and fever his body was fighting. His blue eyes were closed and he took shallow breaths as the monitors around him beeped and hummed.

Jake reached out his hand and ran his fingers lightly over the boy's head. He hated to see him like this, suffering and in pain, but at least he was resting, and that was the most important thing next to recovering from it altogether.

He sat there with Jake for an hour, watching and waiting. His phone went off over and over, but he knew that he was at the most important place he could be and there was no call that should come before what he was doing just then.

A knock on the door drew his attention and he turned to look up at a red-faced nurse who walked into the room. The doctor followed her, a grim look on his face.

He sat beside Jake and his demeanor suddenly took on a fatherly sort of feel.

"Mr. Johnson -- Jake..." he started. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Jake's heart began to race and his eyes widened. "What is it?" he asked in a worried tone. "Christopher?" he questioned, looking helplessly at the doctor.

The doctor planted his hands on his knees and then looked down at them.

"Jake, the reason we ask parents to donate blood is so that there's a match for the kids, in case they need a blood transfusion while they are in surgery. You know, just in case anything comes up. The blood matches and it's the right type of blood."

Jake looked at him in confusion. "What are you telling me, doctor?"

The doctor shook his head. "Jake, I don't know how to tell you this. We ran every test on it that we could find, and we ran them all twice. Our lab was looking for other infections and indicators that might tell us why his fever is so high, and when we tried to match your blood to his, there was a problem."

Jake's heart felt like it would beat right out of his chest. "What was the problem?" he asked breathlessly.

The doctor shook his head. "There's just no good way to say this, Jake, and I'm truly sorry. Physiologically, there is no way that Christopher could be your son."

He looked as if he had dealt the worst blow in the world to an unsuspecting father. The nurse stood behind him, red faced and staring a hole into the floor.

Jake pursed his lips and nodded. He couldn't tell them that he already knew. He couldn't tell them that his wife and he had not been intimate in over a decade and that the son they raised together publicly was the product of her relationship with her partner outside of their marriage.

"Are you certain, Doctor?" Jake played along.

The doctor nodded with a deep frown on his face. "Absolutely."

Jake rubbed his hand over his face and faked surprise. "Thank you for letting me know, Doctor." he said simply, and then he turned his back to walk toward the window, and looked out of it pensively.

The doctor nodded his head, pushed his hands down into his pockets, and shuffled out of the room. The nurse looked as if she wanted to say something to Jake, to tell him something, but instead she bit her lip and followed the doctor out.

Jake waited until they were gone and then he went to Christopher's bedside and sat with him, holding his hand and looking down at him with deep love. He was more like an uncle to Christopher than anything else, or maybe a stepfather, but no matter what role it could be classified under, Jake loved the little boy beside him more than any child in the world. His parentage was never an issue.

Outside the room, the nurse spoke to another nurse.

"Did you tell him about what's on the television and radio right now? Does he know?" she asked in a gossipy tone.

"I was going to, but he just found out that Christopher isn't his son, so I think he needs some time to work through that. It's so sad, isn't it? All this time we all believed that they were such different people than they are. It's really mind boggling." the doctor's nurse, Annette, said.

The other nurse nodded with tremendous disappointment and then turned to go back to her rounds.

Annette brought her finger to her lower lip as a thought began to form in the recesses of her mind. She chewed on her fingernail, worrying it until she had made her decision.

She walked down the hall swiftly, her soft shoes patting the sterile floor as she headed to the little chapel, which was nearly always empty. She looked around for a moment and then ducked inside, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket and swiping her finger over the pad a few times; then she held it up to her ear.

The line at the other end of the call she was making began to ring, and after two rings, someone answered.

"Roberts here." Isaac spoke quickly. He was busy handling all the domino effects of his video going viral over professional media, social media, and the World Wide Web almost instantaneously.

"Mr. Roberts?" the nurse asked hesitantly. "This is Annette Jackson over at the... uh... over at a hospital here in the city. I saw your story and video on Mariah and Jake Johnson, and I was going to tell you that there is something that I think your viewers should know."

Isaac sighed and covered his eyes with his hands. He sorely wished that he hadn't picked up the phone.

"Well, I just wanted to tell you that their son Christopher is here at the hospital. He's getting his tonsils taken out because he has tonsillitis, but, anyway, we ran blood tests on his son and we just found out some horrible news," she whispered as if it was a national secret.

Isaac dropped his hand and picked up his pen, making a few notes about their son being in the hospital.

"Kids get tonsillitis, lady, it's not news." Isaac groaned into the phone, trying to be patient with her.

Annette drew a deep breath and told him everything then. "Well, you see, the thing is that we did the blood tests and compared his blood to Jake's, but there wasn't a match. We just had to tell him that Christopher isn't really his son."

Her eyes were wide as she nodded her head and held the phone cradled in both hands as she spoke quietly to him.

Isaac's pen stopped scratching ink over the piece of paper and he blinked.

"What do you mean, Christopher isn't his son?" he asked in a hushed panic.

She shook her head. "Just what I said... he's not Jake's son. Their blood work doesn't match up at all. There's no way in the world that it could be possible. Christopher is someone else's son, but Jake's in there with him now and he hasn't left his side. Even after we told him the news. Poor thing; Jake was just so shocked and devastated! I wish everyone could have seen his face. He just cried and cried. Wept like a little baby, he did.

We did everything we could for him, of course; we always try to do all we can here. Good service is our motto, but he was just completely broken."

Annette got so excited about telling her story to Isaac Roberts that she began to exaggerate as thoughts of fame blazed through her mind.

"Do you think you will publish my name as your source or do you think that I should remain anonymous? I should probably remain anonymous, you know, because I wouldn't want to lose my job, and there should be some kind of privacy on my end, anyway." She rubbed her chin with her finger, thinking about it.

Isaac rolled his eyes at the irony that she wanted the world to know about Christopher being someone else's son, but her own privacy was very important. Still, he was excited to get the story. He wanted to get off the phone with Annette as quickly as possible because he was sure that she already told him the only part he would want to know; everything else she would tell him wouldn't be much more than drivel.

.

"I always keep my sources anonymous, Miss Jackson, but I want you to know that you've done a great service to the public in sharing this information and letting everyone know what's really going on. You know, you are doing your part to bring the truth to light and uncover dark secrets."  He wanted her to feel she had done something good and useful so that she'd call him back if something else came up. He always kept his informers feeling good about themselves and well hidden. No one needed to know who the story came from.

"Now, I'm going to go give your tip to the editor.  You call me back and let me know if you hear anything else or if something comes up with them that you think I should know about. Thank you for your contribution to journalism, Miss Jackson!" he said resolutely.

She lifted her chin and put her hand on her heart. "It's not much, but I'm just doing my part!" she said with pseudo-humble pride. She bit her lip and tried to hold back emotion and tears. "I love that family so much, I always have, and now here they are, unraveling so fast right in front of God and everyone!" She looked up at the cross hanging on one of the chapel walls.

"Thank you for your commitment and work, Miss Jackson, I'm going to go now and give this to the editor." He hung up the phone just as she was about to say something else, and rushed into Bissey's office.

Annette's words were cut off and she stopped short and looked at her cell phone, smiled sympathetically, put it back in her pocket and headed back to her shift on the floor.

"Bissey! Bissey, you lucky bastard!" Isaac yelled as he went tearing into his boss's office.

Bissey looked up suddenly from the television and glared at Isaac. "Roberts! I'm watching our story! This better be good! What in the hell are you doing now?"

Isaac laid the swiftly written story update on the desk in front of Bissey.

Bissey read it and his eyes widened. To Isaac's amazement, he began to smile and then the smile grew to a laugh and then the laugh grew into great guffawing, People in the office behind Isaac began to pop up like prairie dogs out of holes all over an empty field of cubicles. One by one, they came rushing to the doorway, looking in and staring at Bissey.

"My God, man! This is one of the best follow-ups we've ever had! First, we get the video of the conversation between the wife and the mistress, and now we have confirmation from a nurse at the hospital where their kid is that the kid was fathered by someone else? That's gold! Roberts, you may get the Pulitzer yet! Get this on the air
now
! Go!"

He suddenly noticed all the people staring at him through the doorway. "What the hell are all of you doing standing around gawking at me?
Get back to work
! There's news happening right now and none of you are getting it! Go! Damn it!
Go
!" His frown returned instantaneously, and he grabbed the page that Isaac had handed him and thrust it back at him.

"Get this to print and on the air! Now!" he snapped, and then turned back to his monitor.  As Isaac walked from the office, he could hear his boss chuckling again.

Five minutes later, they were broadcasting the story. The world at large just stopped in its tracks to be worked up about all the intimate details of the discussion between Mariah and Felicia. The world had time to calm down as some of the shock wore away slightly. Then there was a story update of big enough proportions to throw all of the followers of the story into a tizzy, and bring new followers with them. The story exploded and, in no time at all, it was all that the general public was talking about. It was a media circus, and Felicia and the Johnsons were the main event in a three-ring act.

Jake was sitting at Christopher's bedside as the boy slept deeply; both of them peaceful and completely unaware of the media mayhem going on in the world outside.