by Maya Blake
Relief turned to something else. Something not so pleasant. “Yeah?”
“We should get back home and think of other things that might please your father to know when he wakes up.”
Tension ramped up his spine. “Things like?”
She toyed with the collar of his T-shirt. “Oh, I don’t know. My birthday’s coming up. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a party? I know what I want. And what would possibly make everyone else happy.”
“What’s that?” he pressed reluctantly, knowing in his gut her answer wasn’t one he wanted to hear.
“Why, news of a baby on the way, of course, provided we get started right now. Wouldn’t that be the absolute best news ever for your father to wake up to?”
* * *
Nora grimaced at the unflattering hospital gown the technician had asked her to put on. Even before the material touched her skin, she knew the cotton would be scratchy and uncomfortable, nothing like the satin gown her doctor in Paris had provided before she’d been forced to switch practices.
In the not-too-distant past she would’ve gone to a much more exclusive practice than this one. But with her funds fast dwindling and the situation with Harrison still not resolved, she had to watch her spending. Much to her displeasure.
She wouldn’t have made an appointment with this ob-gyn at all. At least not here in Santa Barbara and this close to the Marshall family. While the word confidentiality was tossed about when reputations needed to be protected, she knew the chance to reap rewards from a scandal was never far away and more often than not trumped confidentiality.
She was probably being overly cautious, but after flinging herself into the Marshall family’s orbit twice in a few weeks, perhaps it was time to pull back a little. She couldn’t afford to let the cat out of the bag. Not just yet. Not when she hadn’t gotten to the bottom of where Harrison was hiding. Harrison had once told her she had an unforgettable face. Compliment or not, all it would take was some keen paparazzi to see pictures of her at the Marshall wedding for speculation to start. She couldn’t afford for her bargaining power to lose value before she had all the pertinent facts.
Anonymity was the reason she’d chosen a clinic on the outskirts of town.
She massaged the small of her back after she tugged off her Zac Posen sweater dress and draped it over a nearby chair in the sterile ultrasound room. Even that small effort was draining.
And that was the main reason she’d made an appointment with the specialist. The bone-deep tiredness had come out of nowhere. Despite her healthy diet and religious prenatal vitamin regimen, she couldn’t shake off the weariness.
For a couple of days, she’d tried to dismiss it. But now she was worried. This baby was her insurance and a passport to a far better life than she’d dreamed of. She couldn’t afford for either herself or the baby to be unhealthy. So although this was costing her a small fortune, she’d thought it best to get herself checked out before she boarded the plane back to Paris.
The female technician entered, smiling briskly as she checked off an item on the clipboard in her hand. She perched on the stool next to the bed and rolled up to the ultrasound machine.
“If you would just hop onto the table for me, Miss Smyth?” she said.
Nora bit her tongue against retorting that pregnant women shouldn’t be asked to hop anywhere and mentally rolled her eyes at Americans and their weird humor.
She slid onto the bed and adjusted the gown when instructed.
“The gel is a little cold. Sorry.”
Nora didn’t reply as the gel was squirted over her stomach. She wasn’t in the mood for mindless chitchat. She just wanted to get the examination over with, reassure herself her baby was fine and board the next plane back to Paris so she could begin to solidify her plans.
“I understand you requested this consultation because you’ve been feeling excessively tired?” The woman began to pass the wand over her belly.
“Oui...yes. It seemed to come out of nowhere.”
The technician nodded, her gaze fixed on the monitor as she pressed buttons on the keyboard. For a few minutes, she said nothing, then she nodded again. “Ah, well, this is to be expected, considering your situation,” the woman mused.
“My situation? What do you mean?” She couldn’t help the snap in her voice. Merde. Why the hell didn’t doctors just come out and say what they needed to say?
Nora understood the need to be coy and coquettish when seducing a man. On a cold bed in a doctor’s examination room being probed by a gray wand, not so much.
“I see you’re in your second trimester. This is when the fetus starts drawing large amounts of calcium from your system to properly develop its bones. And in your case, the stress is much more pronounced. But it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll get the doctor to prescribe you some extra vitamins—”
Nora held up her hand. “Wait, what do you mean in my case?” She looked from the technician’s face to her glistening, swollen belly, her heart constricting a little. “Is there something wrong with my baby? Why do I need extra vitamins?” This child was all she had to ensure Harrison played ball. She couldn’t afford for it to be in any way defective.
The technician looked surprised. “Baby? Don’t you mean...?” She paused and stared at Nora with her head tilted. “Have you not had an ultrasound before now?”
“Of course I have. Can you just tell me what’s wrong with my baby?” Nora demanded sharply.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong. With either of them. Their heartbeats are strong, and the measurements show they’re growing within the normal parameters.”
“Excusez-moi. What do you mean they?”
The technician’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know, Miss Smyth? Congratulations, you’re having twins.”
Nora shook her head. “Ce n’est pas possible,” she muttered under her breath, but already the idea was sending an avaricious thrill through her.
“Oh, trust me, it’s very possible,” the young woman responded with a smile. “Wanna see?”
Nora nodded dumbly, her whole body riddled with shock. The technician turned the monitor, slid the probe once more over her swollen belly until the heartbeats echoed in the room. “There’s one—” she moved the wand over to the right “—and there’s the other. Both perfectly healthy.”
Nora just gaped at the screen as two black-and-white outlines came into focus.
Twins. Mon Dieu.
She couldn’t believe her good fortune.
Twins meant double the attention. Double the bargaining power.
There was no way Harrison or his stuck-up family could ignore her now.
Chapter Five
Ana stood on the wide terrace on the second floor that fronted her sister’s bedroom, enjoying the light breeze that drifted up from the beach. The excellent bottle of Château Margaux she’d had a housekeeper bring up from the wine cellar was almost gone.
Time for another, I think.
She grinned at the thought of her superior sister’s face when she saw how much of her wine collection Ana had already plundered.
She gave a mental shrug. So she loved the finer things in life. So what? Mariella had probably not even set foot in her wine cellar in years, the expectation that it would be fully stocked one of the many things her sister took for granted these days.
And that was just one of her sister’s many flaws—her inability to truly see what was going on right under her nose.
Right now she was racing to her husband’s hospital bedside like the foolish, trusting, dutiful wife Harrison had conned her into being.
So trusting. She had no idea that her husband would screw anything with a pulse. That her so-called upright husband had been unfaithful to her right from the word go.
Ana had stopped feeling sorry for her si
ster a long time ago. Oh, there’d been a time, right after she’d seduced Mariella’s first boyfriend, when she’d experienced a brief pang of regret.
Her sister’s heartbreak had been deeply melodramatic, enough to touch Ana, especially when her sister hadn’t been able to escape the evidence of her first love’s infidelity, thrust under her nose as it was with Ana’s subsequent pregnancy.
That had been unfortunate. It was the reason why she was so accommodating when Mariella had offered to take care of her son when Gabe turned ten. That and the money she and Harrison had been throwing at her for the privilege of raising her child.
Truth be told, she’d been glad her sister had embraced her maternal gene early on, because Ana herself hadn’t been able to summon even a whisper of it.
But the time for indulgences had long passed. And with each year she’d endured her sister rubbing her good fortune in Ana’s face, any trace of regret for poaching Gabe’s father from Mariella when they were younger had disappeared.
As for Harrison...
A smile twisted her lips as she took another sip of the full-bodied red. She hadn’t needed to go chasing after him, the sly dog. Not content with having one Santiago woman in his bed, Harrison Marshall had made it clear on their very first meeting that he intended to bed Ana too. Although she’d made him work for it—she always did enjoy the thrill of the chase. He’d secretly showered her with gifts, with late-night phone calls promising the most shockingly dirty things while his young wife slumbered in the next room. Trusting. So trusting.
It had all started under the pretext of negotiating for his precious Mariella to adopt Gabe.
And it’d swiftly turned into something so much more. Something that had, surprisingly, lasted through the decades.
Something that would most likely tip Mariella over the edge were she to find out. Ana grimaced at the rare pang of regret she felt.
Yes, her sister had her flaws, but one thing Ana couldn’t fault her for was that she also understood family. As grudging as it felt to admit it, she’d done an excellent job with Gabe. With all her children, in fact. They weren’t perfect—who the hell was?—but she’d witnessed how they’d all rallied together at Harrison’s side. How they supported their mother.
As for her, even though they butted heads every now and then, Mariella had never been able to stay mad at her for very long. Her sister had a good heart. Which boded well for Ana’s plans to stay in Santa Barbara for more than the short visit her sister expected she was here for.
Of course, all of that would change when Harrison woke from his coma. If he woke up.
Hmm...
Her gaze narrowed on a sleek yacht cruising across the horizon.
Call her heartless, but the old dog staying exactly as he was at the moment, or even sliding off into the afterlife, would suit everyone—okay, her—down to the ground. That way he could take their secret to his grave, and she wouldn’t need to worry about their illicit affair coming to light.
Ana was one hundred percent sure that that was one sin Mariella would never forgive her for in this lifetime.
But... Dios, she pulled herself up short. Did she really wish her sister’s husband and the father of her children dead?
She looked across the grounds of the stunning mansion to the beach, then slowly turned around to cast her gaze over the equally breathtaking view of the mountains in the distance.
For a chance to keep enjoying this life, even if it was through what Mariella or Gabe stood to inherit from Harrison? Hell, yes, she did. Harrison was a lying, unfaithful hijo de puta.
And it wasn’t as if she was asking for the impossible. The man was already at death’s door.
Why not send a few thoughts to encourage him to step through it?
She laughed under her breath as she set her empty wineglass down on the terrace wall and inhaled a deep breath of the rich Santa Barbara air.
Dios, she was so bad...
* * *
Elana rushed to the door like her feet were on fire when the villa’s bell rang. Even though she’d instructed both butlers and the housekeepers to make themselves scarce, she couldn’t risk the door being answered by anyone else but her.
She was already taking a big gamble by trusting the concierge’s assistant she’d sent on the errand. Hopefully, the woman was romantic and discreet enough to have bought Elana’s story that she wanted to keep her actions a secret from her husband for now. After all, wasn’t it the most romantic thing in the world for a new bride to wish for a honeymoon baby?
She’d smiled wide and made the universal sign of sealed lips when Elana had pressed a hundred dollars into her palm and asked her to go buy the pregnancy tests.
She opened the door now, and the young woman slipped inside. After a dramatic, wide-eyed look around that wouldn’t have been amiss on a telenovela, she reached into her handbag and handed over the white pharmacy bag.
“I got you the top-shelf one, as you requested, Mrs. Marshall-Scott,” she said in a stage whisper.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”
She started to hand over the change. Elana shook her head and handed over another hundred dollars. “No, keep the change. And this is for helping me out.”
Her smile widened. “You’re welcome. And thank you, Mrs. Marshall-Scott. I hope you’re very happy with the result.”
Elana hurried away without responding. Despite the definitive signs she couldn’t ignore, there was only one result she was praying for. Wasn’t nausea supposed to arrive and stay for at least a month or more during the first months of pregnancy? Sure, she’d thought she was pregnant before the wedding, but her nausea had disappeared completely. Wasn’t the abating of hers a sign that it could be something else?
Please, let this all be a false alarm.
A quick glance at the clock on the way to the bedroom showed she had half an hour before Thom returned from his scuba-diving excursion. She’d acted her ass off to get him to leave the villa. After her near freak-out last night, she’d been all but catatonic as she’d frantically recalculated dates and tried to recall when she’d had her last period.
By the time she realized that her silent freak-out was freaking Thom out, it’d almost been too late. He’d been all set to pack up and leave a day early until she’d managed to reassure him that she was okay.
She’d had a hard time just getting him to agree to go out for a last adventure before they left for the airport in a few hours.
She slammed the door to the bathroom in the master suite and locked it for good measure. Her hands shook as she ripped open the first package. Then she opened a second one just for the hell of it. It didn’t hurt to be doubly sure. She’d never taken a pregnancy test before, but she’d seen it done on TV enough times to get the general gist of it.
Although peeing on two sticks turned out to be surprisingly trickier than she’d imagined. Hell, it was even a touch hysteria inducing. Not that the hysteria wasn’t already threatening.
She’d spent the last twelve hours in her version of hell, after spending a considerable amount of time kicking her own ass for burying her head in the sand for this long.
Or she could just admit that ignoring it all had been the easiest option. She was scared out of her damned mind, because the consequence of a positive result wasn’t just a matter of telling her new husband she was pregnant. It was so much more.
Jesus.
She flushed the toilet, dropped the sticks on the vanity and washed her hands. Then, like a hamster caught on a wheel, she ran through dates again in her mind.
In hindsight the dozen or so duh moments that flashed through her mind made her grimace and cling weakly to the porcelain sink. She hadn’t always remembered to take her pill, had she? And the moment she’d told Jarrod she was on the pill when they’d first hooked up, he’d stopped us
ing condoms.
Stupid! Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Please, God, don’t let it be positive.
* * * * *
Is she or isn’t she? Elana’s about to find out if she’s got to tell Thom (or Jarrod!) that he’s going to be a daddy! Back at Casa Cat, Mariella is trying to do damage control as gossip about her million-dollar affair spirals out of control—and a new doctor takes over Harrison’s care. Can he bring her husband out of his coma—and what will that mean for her other affair—with Joe?
Read SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 10 of 12)
by USA TODAY Bestselling Author Dani Collins
to find out what happens next!
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SECRETS OF THE A-LIST series:
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 1 of 12)
by Joss Wood
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 2 of 12)
by Clare Connelly
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 3 of 12)
by Donna Hill
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 4 of 12)
by Reese Ryan
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 5 of 12)
by Helen Lacey
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 6 of 12)
by Michelle Major
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 7 of 12)
by Yahrah St. John
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 8 of 12)
by Cat Schield
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 9 of 12)
by Maya Blake
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 10 of 12)
by USA TODAY Bestselling Author Dani Collins
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 11 of 12)
by Maya Blake
SECRETS OF THE A-LIST (Episode 12 of 12)
