Everybody thought she was pregnant. I would make it all right. I would show the world how much I really loved her. I would let them know how happy I was we were having a baby.
I paced around my office until I calmed down. I retrieved my phone and put the pieces together. I didn’t care. I could get a new phone any day of the week. A broken phone only meant I wouldn’t have to field any more calls from those louts—at least not until I got this business worked out.
I snapped open the box one more time to take a look at the ring. It really was stunning, far nicer than the one I gave her at the wedding. I sat down in my office chair. I couldn’t face her angry about this. I had to make this the happiest day of her life. I couldn’t let her know I ever even thought about breaking up with her.
I calmed myself down the rest of the way by imagining the look on her face when she saw me on my knee at her feet. She would try to smile, she was so happy, but her mouth would twist up with pent-up sobs, sobs of joy. She would put her arms around me, and I would sweep her off her feet.
18
Gabriela
I listened to Gray’s office door. I listened right up until I heard him say, “I’ll be the one to handle this situation.”
I didn’t need to hear any more. So, he wanted to handle this situation. I was the situation, and he would handle it. If anybody was going to kick me to the curb, it better be him. Well, I wouldn’t stick around to give him a chance.
I staggered across the living room to the bedroom. I couldn’t look at those roses now. I couldn’t look at anything without a pang of regret stabbing my heart. I had to get out of here. He would end the contract. No matter what he said about caring for me, his bottom line came first. I always understood that.
He must have told his team I got pregnant. What an idiot I was for not using some kind of birth control. How could I have been so stupid? I only cared about hopping in the sack with a hot guy. I never gave a thought to the consequences.
Everything in that room made me want to cry, but the roses made me mad. He shouldn’t have done that. That was a low blow. He shouldn’t have filled my head with a bunch of nonsense about caring about me, either. That and the roses and the jewelry and everything else were just his ways of flattering the pants of a girl. He’d done it a million times before. He figured out what I most wanted to hear and see and feel, and he gave them to me. In exchange, I gave him my body, and I got exactly what I deserved.
I didn’t want anything in that room. I sloughed off the bathrobe and pulled on the same suit I wore for my first job interview. I showed up here with nothing, and I would walk out with nothing. I refused to take anything Gray or his team gave me.
They wanted to get rid of me? I was happy to go. I didn’t need this. I would make a life for myself somewhere else. I could get a job as an accountant just about anywhere but here. I would go somewhere no one ever heard of J P Johnson. Someplace like that must exist on this planet.
I kicked my Manolos into the closet and brought out my own scuffed old pumps. I didn’t put them on, though. They would make too much noise on the tile floor. I would sneak out, so Gray didn’t hear me. If he heard me leaving, he would want to talk about it. The last thing I needed was a big, ugly scene.
Why talk about it? It was over. He wanted me gone, and I wanted to be gone. I would make it simple for everybody. They could find some other stupid girl to be Gray Donovan’s bride.
In the last moments of my desperation, I tugged the diamond rings off my fingers and laid them on the bedside table. I choked down the lump in my throat, but I forced myself to turn my back on them. I didn’t want them if they didn’t mean anything. If he didn’t really want me, I didn’t want him, either.
I dangled my shoes in two fingers and tiptoed to the foyer. Even now, the place seemed too huge and empty. How did I ever spend four months of my life in this place? It echoed like a mausoleum now. It listened to every footstep on the stairs and never left me in peace.
No sound came from the office. I had to get out of here before he came out. He would find the rings, and he would understand I left by myself. I would spare him the ordeal of breaking up with me, and I would never see him again.
I would get as far away from him and New York and this whole sordid affair as possible. I would file for divorce in another town in the middle of nowhere.
I cringed when the elevator dinged. I ducked inside and pushed the button to the ground floor. The car dropped underneath me, and my heart pounded in my chest.
I put on my shoes at the front door, strode outside, and hailed a cab. I gave the driver the address and sailed away to the rest of my life.
Once outside, the fresh air brought me back to my senses. What rock had I been living under all these months? I didn’t recognize myself. Addison was right. I had changed, and not necessarily for the better. I forgot my roots. I forgot my real self. I wasn’t supposed to be some glitzy celebrity with diamonds dripping off every finger. I wasn’t supposed to be fodder for the tabloids. I was just an average girl. That’s all I ever really wanted to be.
Addison. She would help me. She would take me in. At least I could crash on her couch until I decided what to do with myself. I didn’t want to show up barefoot and pregnant on my parents’ doorstep. They would encourage me to patch it up with my husband.
I did too good a job convincing them Gray was the real thing. They wouldn’t understand the whole business arrangement thing. They cared about the sanctity of marriage. They thought he was the man I fell deeply in love with. Isn’t that what I thought, too, when I took him home to meet them?
The cab parked in front of my old apartment building, and I dashed up the steps. I pounded on the door. “Addison! Addison! Let me in!”
It took a lot longer than I expected for her to answer. Then I remembered. It was early Saturday morning. She would be sound asleep, just like the rest of the world. What in God’s name was I thinking? I should have planned this better.
When she did come, she shuffled over the carpet in her shaggy bunny slippers. Her hair stuck out at odd angles to her head, and she squinted into the morning sunshine. She crossed her arms over her the stomach of her tattered old lavender bathrobe. “Gabi is everything ok?”
“I left Gray,” I blurted out. “I had to, Addison. I’m pregnant, and I….”
She didn’t budge. She didn’t pry her scrunched-up eyelids apart. She went very still and quiet. “You what?”
I took a deep breath. Better make a clean breast of it. “I’m pregnant, Addison. I didn’t realize until you showed me that magazine. I took a pregnancy test, and it’s positive. I told Gray last night and I...”
“Don’t tell me,” she interrupted as she pulled me inside. “He got pissed and broke it off. I always knew he would let you down in the long run.”
“He didn’t get pissed, and he didn’t break it off. He was actually really happy.”
“So, what’s the problem? What are you doing here?”
I hung my head. How could I ever tell her? “It’s his PR team. They said I would be out on my ass if I did anything to paint him in a bad light.”
“So…. you’re pregnant. You’re married. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you get married?”
I wrung my hands in anguish. None of this made sense. “Please, Addison. I have nowhere else to go. I need your help.”
She let out a heavy sigh and let her arms drop to her sides. “Oh, all right. Just don’t think you’re going to drink all my coffee without replacing it.”
She shuffled over to the couch and plopped down. I turned around and locked her door and then walked over to the couch.
Addison was already back asleep. That was my cue to make the coffee, even though I gave up drinking it since I found out I was really pregnant. I went to the kitchen and found everything in the same places. I might as well have never left—except for one small thing hidden inside me.
I was just as hopeless and planless as when I left, but now I had a
mission. I also had an iron-clad reason to leave New York. My family wouldn’t understand, but I did. That was the important thing.
The smell of coffee brewing got Addison to open one eye. “You haven’t lost your touch. Okay, you can stay.”
I carried the cup to the couch and sat down next to her. “I won’t stay long. I promise you that.”
19
Gray
I guess I must have sat in that office longer than I realized. Without my phone telling me the time, I let the minutes tick away. The longer I stayed, the more collected I got, the better I could present when I finally popped the question.
I got out of my chair and stuck my hand in my pocket. I could concentrate on the outcome if I kept that ring in front of my mind at all times. None of this other crap mattered. Only she mattered. Once I got her on board, we could face the world together. No more doubts. No more questions. Just her and me, the way it always should have been.
I got out of the office, but I hesitated at the bedroom door. No sound came from inside. She must be still asleep. How should I do it? Should I slip into bed next to her and wake her up? Or should I wait until she woke up so I could propose on bended knee in front of her by the bed?
How does a guy decide who to propose to the woman of his dreams? Well, I couldn’t hang around out here all day. I pushed the door open….and stopped. The comforter lay tossed aside and that big beautiful bed, the bed where I spent the happiest months of my life—empty.
The minute I saw it, I knew something was wrong. No splash of water or spray shower from the bathroom. No one wandering around in the walk-in closet. At that moment, the sun peeked over the horizon. Shafts of golden rays streamed through the windows and glistened on something on the bedside table.
I rushed across the room, but my instincts told me what it was even before I got there. Her rings. The giant solitaire I got her for the engagement. The diamond-studded wedding band—even the pendant I got her for our three-month anniversary.
I dashed around the room, but the truth stared me in the face everywhere. Her new clothes tossed on the floor. Her old clothes missing from the closet. Her shoes—she was gone. Not just gone, but GONE. Gone for real. Gone with extreme prejudice, but why? Why would she just up and vaporize after a night of the best sex of our lives?
She broke the news and made me the happiest man alive. Then we tumbled onto the couch and fucked like rabbits. She swooned into a pleasure-fueled coma, and I carried her to the bedroom where she passed out. Where in that sequence of familiar events did she see or hear….?
My heart dropped my chest. She heard me. She must have. She must have heard me shouting at Jason. She said the team threatened to throw her out if she made a mistake, and she thought this pregnancy was a mistake. She must have put two and two together. She must have realized the team wanted to end the contract. She must have thought I was going to break it off with her. That’s the only reason she would have left like that.
I started running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I had to find her. I had to get her back if it was the last thing I ever did in life. That ring burned a hole in my pocket. That ring would never grace another woman’s hand. I had to get her to see it somehow. I had to get her to accept it.
I planned this whole thing down to the last detail. I had to follow through on it. I had to go down on one knee in front of her while she brushed away happy tears. I had to ask her to marry me—really marry me. I had to show her that diamond and hear her answer. I wouldn’t accept anything else. I refused to believe it was over until I did that. It couldn’t be over. It couldn’t, not as long as I held that ring in my hand.
I raced out of the penthouse with no hat, no coat, no phone, no nothing. I didn’t call the limo. Screw the limo. I barreled down to the parking garage under the building and go out the Jag. I gunned the motor and hit Madison Avenue going full force.
The car purred down the street, all the way to the south side. I prowled down Mulberry Street, but when I saw the first vendors opening their shops to tourists, I realized. She wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t come running to her parents. She couldn’t tell them she was pregnant and running away from her husband.
So, I wasn’t her real husband, but they didn’t know that. We convinced them. We convinced ourselves. We were as married as anybody else, and now we had a baby on the way. Her parents would tell her one thing: Go home.
So where did she go? Where would she go where they wouldn’t tell her that? I rifled everything I ever knew about her but came up with nothing. I cast my mind back to her first interview. Her application form flashed before my eyes. I trained myself to remember details like that.
I flipped a U-turn at the next intersection and drove to the cheap apartment she listed as her previous address. I jerked the parking brake in place and took the stairs two at a time. I pounded on the door with his fist.
No one answered. I pounded again and shouted. “Open up and let me in.”
After what seemed like hours, the door opened. A disheveled girl in a threadbare bathrobe from the 80s glared at me. “What do you want?”
“I want to see Gabi.”
She pooched out her lips and shook her matted head. “There’s no Gabi here. Take off before I call the police.”
She tried to shut the door, but I stuck his foot in it to block it open. “Please…. I have to see her. It’s important. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Her eyes shot open. “A matter of life and death! That’s a good one.”
I shoved the door further open. “It’s a matter of my life. I can’t live without her. I have to see her. Please, help me. I just want to talk to her.”
The girl glanced over her shoulder. So, it was true. Gabi was here.
I pressed my advantage while I could. “Please. Just once.”
She let go of the door. “You can talk to her. Nothing more, but if she tells you to leave, you have to go with no questions asked. Understand?”
I let out a shaky breath. “All right.”
The door sagged the rest of the way open, and she led me into her living room. There was Gabi on the couch in her old suit with her hair uncombed and bags under her eyes. She was tired. She hadn’t had enough sleep lately. That was my fault. I had to stop being such a selfish, horny asshole all the time. I had to think of her more.
I slowed when I saw her, but she wouldn’t look at me. She picked some fabric off the fraying couch arm. Then she flicked dust off her skirt. She sat perfectly straight and never relaxed an inch.
The girl waved her hand. “You better get this over with.”
She flopped into a nearby chair and curled into a ball to watch. I regarded Gabi from across the room and gauged my strategy. How could I approach this cold, distant creature? How could I ever explain how I really felt?
I took a step closer. “I guess you overheard my conversation with Jason. I guess that’s why you left. But it is not what you think it is. The paparazzi caught us in the coat closet. They’re trying to paint me as a bad boy again, and my brother and my team want me to get rid of you, but I told them no, Gabi. I told them I wouldn’t do it. I told them I would stand behind you, no matter what.”
Ever so slowly, her eyes swiveled around to my face. She was listening. I had her on the hook. Just a little bit more, and I would be able to get through to her.
I took the last little step. I stuck my hand in my pocket. It was still there. I still had a chance. The words rushed out of me faster than I wanted them to. I couldn’t stop them. “I love you, Gabi. I want to make it all okay again, the way it used to be. Come home. Come home with me. I’m begging you.”
Her face remained as impassive as stone, but her pupils dilated just the smallest amount. This was it. I had to do it now or die trying. I pulled out the velvet box and snapped it open. I dropped on one knee in front of her and held out the ring. “Marry me, Gabi. Marry me for real and make me the happiest man in the world. I love you. I love you more than life itself. I ca
n’t stand you leaving me now. I can’t face the future without you by my side. Say you love me, too. Say you’ll be mine forever and we’ll raise our baby together and be a real family. Please, Gabi. Please marry me. Love me. I need you.”
She stared at the ring so long my heart ached. Then she lifted her eyes to my face, tears brimmed against her eyelids. Her mouth contorted when she tried to smile. She raised her hand, but she wouldn’t let it touch my cheek.
“Yes. I love you more than anything. I never wanted anything but to love you and share your life. I love you.”
20
Gabriela
I checked my lipstick in the dressing room mirror. Gray paced back and forth and shrugged his big shoulders inside his coat. “You look fine. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
I straightened up and turned around to face him. “I know. I’m just checking.”
He put out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go knock ‘em dead.”
I had to smile. We could always knock ‘em dead as long as we did it together.
After Gray had proposed to me, he called his PR team and fired every single one of them. He was sick of how they were dictating his life, and I couldn’t blame him for it. A week later he had an entirely new team in place, a team that he trusted and understood how important I was to him. The team worked tirelessly to spin the gala in our favor.
Gray also had worked everything out with his brother. He explained to him that I was pregnant and how this would only help his re-election campaign. After some thought, his brother had finally backed off as well.
Gray strode down the hall and out from behind the partition. A long table spread out on the other side, and floodlights glared down on the microphones set there. He pulled out my chair until I got settled into place. Then he took the chair next to me.
Cameras clicked, and microphones whined in the sea of indistinct silhouettes beyond the floodlights. Voices boiled out of the crowd. “Can you confirm you were messing around in the gala coat room? Are you pregnant or not? When’s the big day?”
Triplets Make Five Page 33
