The Plan: A Standalone Off-Limits Romance

by Ella James

  “Don’t wreck,” she cries.

  “Almost there. We’re almost there!” I can see the fucking hospital from here, its bright blue letters winking through the trees. “You keep her or him where they should stay, okay? No bean in the car.”

  She manages to laugh, and then a moan rips from her throat. I turn into the parking lot on two wheels, right as Marley screams—and as I come to a rough stop under the ER awning, she screams again.

  “Fuck.” I jump out of the car and shout for help, and somehow, there are people—two women in scrubs—and Marley’s being helped out of the car, onto a stretcher. I’m running behind it, down an empty corridor, when suddenly I hear a cry, and everybody stops.

  And then there’s just a baby… One of the women holds up a mewling, fat, pink baby.

  “Oh God,” Marley sobs. The baby wails, and I hear myself say, “It’s a boy.”

  Oh my God. Our little bean is a boy, and holy fuck, he’s really wailing now. Someone thrusts him toward Marley.

  “C’mon, daddy, walk beside her,” one of the nurses says. “Just like that…yeah, help her hold him. Holley, you do your thing and I’ll pull the bed from down here…”

  Fucking hell, we have a baby.

  “Black hair,” I hear Mar say weakly.

  Then we’re in the ER hub, and everyone is everywhere.

  “Mama had her baby in the hall,” one of the EMTs says, as we’re steered into a smaller room.

  “Wish it was that easy for everybody,” says the one who’s helping us hold baby.

  “Well, now, I’d say it’s a full moon, but I think it’s not,” says a blonde in a white coat, as she strolls in. “How’re you feeling, Mama?”

  “I don’t know.” Marley starts crying.

  “You’re some kind of champion,” the doctor says, and I agree: “She is.”

  The one named Holley laughs. “Baby’s rooting right off.”

  “I say just let him do it,” says the woman in the white coat. “Both of their oxygen saturation’s good.” I frown, confused, and someone points to something on the baby’s foot.

  “Well, Mama,” the doctor says after a moment underneath the blanket that’s covering Marley. She spreads it back down. “You seem like you’re doing pretty well. I’ll get you painkillers if you think you need them.”

  “No…” I look at Marley, and I realize she’s feeding our baby. She beams. “Not right now.”

  The doctor laughs. “I’d say you just had the ideal birth—except the hall part. Based on labor and delivery logic, this must mean you didn’t have a birth plan.”

  Marley smiles. I shake my head. “We’re not good at sticking to the plan.”

  The doctor shrugs. “That’s life. Holley is our on-call pediatrician.” I blink at the woman in scrubs right beside me.

  “You caught me as came back from my dinner break,” she says, smiling. “We’ll get some stats on baby boy in just a few more minutes, when he’s finished eating.”

  “Okay.” Marley’s voice is soft. Her eyes are wet.

  “How ya doing?” I ask softly, dropping down beside her.

  “Good.” She grins. I kiss her cheek.

  And then I take a take a long look at the critter in her arms: my son.

  She beams down at him. “Curly hair, just like you, Gabe.”

  I lift a hand to touch him, but it almost seems like sacrilege.

  “Do it,” she whispers.

  So I do. I stroke his wrinkled, reddish little forehead. It’s so soft. The baby opens his eyes slightly. Marley squeals. Then he closes them again, and keeps on eating.

  “Graham or Everett?” she whispers.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think he looks like someone else,” she murmurs. Her gaze shifts to mine. “He looks so much like you.” She blinks down at our baby boy, then back to me again. “What about Simon?”

  That’s my middle name.

  “I thought you didn’t like it.”

  “Now I do…” She kisses his curls. “Sweet Simon. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Simon,” she whispers. And it sounds like a secret. It sounds like the secret answer I’ve been waiting for.

  Later that night, when Mar and Simon are asleep, I write it down—in ink. There’s a tattoo place across the street that happens to be open at eleven. I ask for something basic. Classic, you might say.

  Marley. Gabe. Geneva. Simon.

  As I cross the street after, I notice a flashing sign on a small building beside the hospital. I look because at first I think it’s donuts. But when I stop to really look, I notice the sign says, “Diner.”

  When I get inside, I ask for pie. As it turns out, they’ve got seven flavors.

  “I’ll take one of each.” I can’t help grinning.

  “Someone’s lucky.”

  “Oh yes.”

  As it turns out, that someone is me.

  A preview of Mr. North

  by Callie Hart

  North is handsome and damaged--a terrible temptation--and he has his sights set on her.

  Beth is out of money and struggling hard. At the rate she's going she'll never complete her law degree. When she learns of an exciting opportunity--playing chess with New York's most elusive billionaire--the offer sounds too good to be true.

  On top of that, Raphael North has a... reputation. But rumors are just that.

  Then she sets foot into his luxurious penthouse and sees him.

  Captor.

  Enigma.

  Lover.

  He's all this and more.

  Beth should run from the devastatingly attractive blue-eyed devil, no job is worth dealing with a man who can create so much heat she forgets how to stand.

  But Mr North has a talent at keeping her off her feet... and he's about to make his next move.

  Available now—keep reading for your free preview!

  1

  Beth

  If you could go back and change a single moment in your past, what would it be? The most embarrassing moment of your childhood? The second you said fine, I don’t love you anymore, let’s call it quits? Perhaps a missed opportunity. That guy you passed on the street, the one who caught your eye. Maybe he smiled. Would you use your chance to go back and talk to him? Introduce yourself? Perhaps offer to buy him a drink in a bar? Maybe you’d take back a cruel string of words. Maybe you’d say something you left unspoken.

  Personally, I’d go back to the day shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday, when my best friend, Thalia Prestwick, shoved a brown manila folder into my hand, telling me she knew how I could make some easy money. I would slide that damn thing back at her across the café table as quick as you like, and I would get the hell out of there. I’d never step foot into the towering pillar of glass on Park Avenue. I’d never have the attention of an entire city focused solely on me. Things would turn out very differently for me if I could go back and change that moment in time.

  Instead, when Thalia hands me the manila folder in the Williamsburg café on a balmy, almost-springlike Thursday afternoon in April, I merely arch an eyebrow at the thing, and say, “What do you mean, extra money? I don’t need another job, Thalia. I barely have enough time to study as it is.”

  “This isn’t a job. Well, it is,” she follows up. “But not a real one. You play chess, right?”

  I frown at my friend. “Not since high school.”

  “I’m sure they haven’t changed the rules in the past seven years, Bee. And anyway, you don’t need to be good. You just have to be able to make conversation.” Thalia’s brunette hair is neatly brushed and immaculately braided, unlike my own crazy auburn mane. She reaches across the table, taking a strand of my hair in between her fingers, studying it closely. “And you’re not a blonde. That’s a huge help.”

  “I know plenty of excellent chess players who are blonde,” I say, swatting her hand away. “That’s a terrible stereotype.”

  “No. I mean, the guy who’s lookin
g for someone to play with has something against blondes. I’m not saying blonde women are too stupid to pl—” She rolls her eyes. “Never mind. Just listen.” She taps the folder with an expertly manicured index finger. “I’ve been running a little side line recently. I’ve been expanding on the whole Blizzard Buddy thing.” I’m about to ask her what the hell a Blizzard Buddy is, but she must see the question forming on my lips. She holds up a hand, cutting me off. “Blizzard Buddies are people who hang out with other people during storms. They come over to your place and eat pizza and drink beer while a snowstorm rolls across the city, and then they go home afterwards. No harm. No foul. And no funny business,” she stresses.

  “People pay other people to hang out with them in New York? That sounds dangerous, Thalia. Tell me you haven’t been doing that?”

  “Of course I have.” She shrugs a shoulder, taking a drink from her coffee cup. “The money’s good. And besides, I like meeting new people.”

  “Who needs to pay someone to come hang out with them? Jesus. Do I need to remind you how crazy people are in this town?”

  My friend tuts disapprovingly, tapping her finger against the folder again. “All of these men and women are thoroughly investigated before anyone goes over to their places. They have to provide a million forms of ID, have psychometric tests, and also undergo a criminal record check, girl. It’s safe as houses.”

  Houses fall down all the time. They get broken into. People are killed in their own damn beds on the regular. People are raped. Thalia steamrolls ahead, though, not giving me the opportunity to voice my concerns.

  “It’s a couple of hours in the afternoon, three times a week, Bee. And for six grand, I think you can clear your schedule.”

  I nearly spit my coffee across the table. “Six grand?” Like hell there’s no funny business if a guy’s willing to play six grand for a girl to go over to his place. I have to suppress my desire to reach over and slap Thalia upside the head. She can’t be this stupid. She just can’t. “You have plenty of money. Why the hell are you getting caught up in this kind of shit?”

  Thalia doesn’t bat an eyelid. “Look, just because I have money doesn’t mean I can’t have a job. You’re beginning to sound like my mother. I provide a legitimate service to lonely investment bankers who work too much to have a social life. I get to hang out in nice apartments, drink fine wine and eat gourmet meals, and I get paid to do it. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It was beer and pizza a minute ago.”

  “Sometimes it’s Budweiser. Sometimes it’s Moët. I’m not fussy. Look, this isn’t just some guy, Bee. This guy is—”

  “No. I’m not doing it, Thalia. I have too much on my plate already, and so do you. You realize we’re only months away from taking the bar exam, right? We’ve been studying for years for this moment. If I drop the ball now, it’ll all have been for nothing. I wanna be a lawyer, not a chess buddy for some socially awkward rich boy.”

  Thalia winks. “Can’t be a lawyer if you can’t pay your tuition fees.”

  She has a point there. Working part time at the library hasn’t exactly been bringing in a monster paycheck every week. I spent a while tutoring freshmen at the beginning of the year, but the pay was abysmal, and half the time the little shits didn’t even show up, let alone settle their bills. Thalia snaps off a piece of the biscotti we’re sharing and pops it into her mouth. “So what if this guy’s social skills aren’t the very best New York has to offer? He’s harmless. And he owns an entire floor of the Osiris Building on Park Avenue. The top floor. That’s the motherfucking penthouse, Beth,” she stresses, as if I might have misunderstood her. “Unless you wanna move into your brother’s dingy basement apartment and sleep on his couch, or worse, move back to Kansas,” she says, delicately wrinkling her nose. “This offer is too good to be true. You should be snatching this folder out of my hand and thanking the gods that this chess-playing weirdo has come along, Bee. Seriously.”

  I eye the folder once more, my brows pulling together, holding my breath. Thalia leans across the table and touches her fingers to the scar on the right side of my temple, making a pensive hmming sound. “How long have you had that?” she asks.

  I brush her hand away, scooting back into my chair, out of her reach. My heart is slamming around inside my chest cavity like a goddamn pinball. I can’t bear people pointing out my scar. Can’t bear them even looking at it, let alone touching it. “Always. Since I was a little kid.” I shake out my hair, making sure it’s covered up.

  “Huh. I’ve never noticed it before. I know a guy,” my friend tells me nonchalantly. “He could have that fixed for you in no time. You’d never even know it was there to begin with.”

  I feel sick to my stomach as I pick up Thalia’s file and slip it into my purse. She has no idea what she’s talking about. I’ll always know it’s there. The scar on the side of my head is small—barely visible, really. A tiny seven-millimetre line that only rears its ugly head when I get flushed and hot, or I scowl. It might as well be a mile wide and a mile deep, though. I see it every time I look in the mirror, and I’m transported back to the barn. I see my mother on the floor. I see that evil motherfucker with the snake tattoos groping around between her legs. And I feel the weight of my guilt crushing down on me from all sides, oppressive and inescapable. I should have helped her. I should have acted. I should have rescued her. I should have saved her.

  “Hey! C’mon, girl. Stay with me!” Thalia snaps her fingers in front of my face. She’s laughing, her gaze locked on the file that’s now sticking out of my purse. “Don’t you even want to look inside it?” she asks.

  “Oh…” I wasn’t even thinking just now. I picked up the file and put it away automatically, ready to get up and run if Thalia asked any further questions about my scar. I’ve inadvertently accepted her offer by collecting the file. Or at least that’s what she thinks. I should give it back to her right now, but honestly, I can do without the argument.

  “I should at least tell you the guy’s name,” Thalia says, dumping a healthy stream of sugar into her refilled coffee. The guy’s name in the file could be Prince Fucking William. It could be Brad Pitt, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t spend time with strange men. I don’t spend time with men, period. Not after what happened to my mom.

  Thalia lets out a frustrated groan when I don’t play into her game. You’d think she’d be used to my total disinterest in guys by now. I’ve never told her about that day at the farm, though, so she doesn’t realize she’s wasting her breath. She looks like the cat that got the cream as she sends me a mischievous sideways glance.

  “The guy’s name is Raph,” she says slowly. “Raphael North.”

  2

  Beth

  The name Raphael North is synonymous with many things.

  But first, let me clarify something: when Thalia spoke that name, I didn’t react the way she obviously expected me to—like a star struck teenager who’s just been told they’re about to meet One Direction live and in person. I kept my cool, blinked a bunch of times to make it look like I wasn’t in shock, then I downed the rest of my coffee, doing an admirable job of not choking on the biscotti mush at the bottom of the cup. With watering eyes, I told Thalia I’d see what I thought once I’d read her precious file and I would call her later on tonight to discuss the matter. Then, cool as you like, I got up, gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then turned around and walked away.

  Now, sitting on the subway, almost home, I’ve allowed myself a moment of…what? Alarm? Yeah, I guess you could call this alarm. I’m trying really hard not to sneak the envelope out of my bag and start reading the information inside.

  Back to the name.

  If I said the name Raphael North to someone on the street in New York, their eyes would light up with recognition. If I asked them what they knew about him, their responses would be varied.

  “He’s a philanthropist.”

  “He’s a womanizer.”

  “
He died on the stroke of midnight back on New Year’s Eve, 2014.”

  “He’s the guy who crashed his car into the side of the Waldorf Hotel.”

  “He’s this year’s most eligible bachelor, according to New City Style Magazine.”

  “He’s ranked fifth richest man in America.”

  “He lost his vision when he was sixteen. Now he has robotic retinal implants so he can see.”

  The exhaustive list would grow more and more ridiculous by the second. There are a few rumors that contain an element of truth to them, though. He was, and still is, a philanthropist and businessman. He’s responsible for the design and construction of numerous tech devices over the last ten years, from the automated one-man air ambulances that can navigate treacherously narrow spaces even regular helicopters just couldn’t dream of approaching, to AV headsets so convincing and lifelike that it feels like you really are five miles beneath the surface of the ocean, or walking suit-less on the surface of Mars. He’s behind a number of medical breakthroughs, too. An MRI imaging scanner so precise it can detect pre-cancerous cells in unborn fetuses. An EPI-pen designed from recycled materials, so easy and cheap to make that it almost bankrupted a number of big pharma companies.

  He gifted the patent and trademark of that last one to the American Hospital and Emergency Care Association, who were then able to produce thousands upon thousands of the pens to distribute to children of low-income households completely free of charge.

  And, yes. By all accounts, he is a womanizer. He sure as hell did crash his car into the side of the Waldorf on New Year’s Eve, 2014, and last but not least, he really is one of the richest men in the country.

  He might not have been papped by photographers in a restaurant or seen driving a fancy sports car through the city recently, but every so often an elusive shot will appear in the society pages of a newspaper, showing a grainy image of him from a distance. There really are those who believe he’s dead, and a lookalike is used to attend his board meetings in order to prevent share prices in North Industries from plummeting, but the people who spread rumors like that are the same people who are trying to convince people the Earth is flat. So…