Rediscovering Love - A Billionaire Romance Novel (Romance, Billionaire Romance, Life After Love Book 5)

by Nancy Adams

  Claire let out a soft groan and she felt herself tremble, tears filling her eyes.

  “I ain’t going to lie to you, Ma, he’s not good.”

  “I didn’t bring you up to cheat, Claire,” June suddenly announced.

  Claire shuddered at the sound of her name emerging from her mother’s lips. June never called Claire by her first name unless she was scolding her or disappointed. It had been so long since she’d heard it and it filled her with guilt.

  “Ma, it’s not as simple as that.”

  “Oh, it sounds pretty simple to me. You’ve decided—after five years of that boy showering love and devotion on you—to simply go off with someone else after only knowing them for a moment. He was too soft on you.”

  “Ma, don’t say that. It’s not as easy as all that.”

  “Then how easy is it?”

  “I love Sam.”

  “Sam!? So that’s his name. Do I know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s his second name?”

  Claire closed her eyes tight and said, “Burgess. It’s Sam Burgess.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line and Claire opened her eyes, tears beginning to drop from them, the great city spread out around her.

  “You mean the same Sam Burgess who’s the billionaire? The one whose wife you looked after when she was dying all those years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand. Is this a joke? When did you meet him? In New York?”

  “It was at the exhibition I went to.”

  “You met him at his exhibition and fell in love!?”

  “No, it’s not that simple. He recognized me from before and…”

  Claire trailed off at this point however. She was about to lie to her mother and she felt unable to do it in her current emotional state. The plan had been to tell her mother that Sam recognized her from before and invited her backstage where they talked and he gave her his number. It was semi-true, but still a lie as it failed to acknowledge the true reasons behind handing her his number.

  “But he’s with that Jenna woman,” June said. “The media will go crazy. There’ll be reporters turning up at the hospital.”

  “It won’t be all that bad.”

  “Yes it will,” her mother retorted stubbornly. “What have you done, Claire? You’ve started some sordid affair with a rich man that is doomed and given up true love.”

  “I haven’t done that,” Claire snapped down the phone to her mother. “This is real love. The love I feel with Sam is so real that it burns me up inside. This love is so strong it scares me, compels me to do this, to change my whole life, to upset you and hurt Paul. This love is so pure that I feel constant intoxication from it. I did—I mean, I do—love Paul and I do care for him, but the love I feel for Sam is so much stronger than that.”

  “And Sam Burgess feels the same.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about your career? Are you just gonna give that up so you can be some millionaire’s arm candy?”

  “Nothing will stop me being a doctor. I’m still in New York and I’m still going to hospital every day and doing my job. How could you accuse your own daughter of throwing her life away like that?”

  “That’s what you’re doing isn’t it? Do you think it’ll last with you and this guy? Well, let me tell you that it won’t. You had something with Paul but now you’ve thrown it all away for nothing. Sam Burgess will toss you away the moment he sees—”

  “MA!” Claire screamed down the phone.

  June stopped and there was silence for a moment as both women caught their breaths.

  “If I tell you something,” Claire began when her anger had abated, “do you promise me that you will never tell another soul in your life?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ma, just answer me that: that you’ll never tell another living soul.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  Once again Claire closed her eyes and began, “Back in 2000 when I was at the hospice in Denver I met and fell in love with Sam Burgess as his wife Marya lay dying.”

  “Oh my God!” her mother exclaimed.

  A rush of vindication struck through June as all her suspicions that something had been up were suddenly confirmed. It was as though someone had opened the lid of her coffin after so long and let in all the light. She felt justified that something had been up all along, and everything made so much more sense to her now.

  “That’s why you were so off for that year,” she commented.

  Claire opened her mouth to say the next part, but found something stopping her. Only seconds before, she’d decided to tell June the whole truth with the full intention of not stopping when it came to her pregnancy. But now she was about to go through with it, Claire found her tongue snagged in her mouth and she failed herself, choosing to stay quiet on the subject instead. Part of it was due to cowardice. But another part was the fact that she felt she would betray Sam somehow if she chose to tell her mother before she told him.

  “That’s why,” Claire confirmed for her mother.

  “And what makes you both suddenly want to start back up after all these years?”

  “I’ve never stopped loving Sam in all these years, and he’s never stopped loving me. Back then, we couldn’t continue. Not with him feeling the effects of Marya’s death and me having to go back to college. It was all a mess then.”

  “It’s all a mess now. He’s got that Jenna and you’ve got—well, you had—Paul. Is he going to split from his girlfriend?”

  “Yes. He flies back to L.A. tomorrow to tell her.”

  June remained speechless on the other end. She was in absolute shock over it all. She’d suspected something was up between Claire and Paul for sure, but she only expected it to be something small and easily worked out. Earlier that week she’d attempted to call Paul several times, but he hadn’t answered his phone. She was concerned for them both and now she felt very bad for the boy, as well as frustrated with her daughter’s actions.

  “I need a little time to get my head around this, Claire. You say you had an affair with Sam Burgess six years ago and now you’ve thrown Paul away to rekindle it. Everything is going around in circles at the moment and I need some time. It all seems so unreal to me.”

  “You’re not going to tell Dad are you?”

  “Huh! What would I tell him? It makes no sense to me, let alone having to explain it all to someone else. Anyway, you’ve always preferred for me to keep your father out of things and I consider this to be something that I would imagine you wouldn’t want him knowing. But there is one thing?”

  “And what’s that, Ma?”

  “Everyone’s gonna know pretty soon. Because the world watches Sam Burgess and eventually you’re going to have to deal with the fact that they’ll all be watching you. How are you going to handle that when it happens?”

  Claire sighed and felt extremely hollow as she did, the last of her limited self-esteem being blown out through her nostrils. All the optimism that had filled her these past days had been gradually blighted by the events of the day. She hadn’t imagined this would be easy, not by a long shot. But she hadn’t imagined how low it would all make her feel, how much guilt and shame would be involved in it all.

  “Ma, please believe me when I say that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone in all of this.”

  “But you have. How could you keep something like that a secret from me, Claire? I thought we were close, but now I don’t know. I feel so far from you right now.”

  “We are close, Ma. I was trying to protect you—”

  “No you weren’t,” June butted in. “You were being a coward. You knew I’d be upset with you and you were saving yourself the hassle of having to deal with it.”

  “Well, I’m dealing with it now, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, only because you have to. If you were still with Paul, I’d be none to wiser. Did he know about all of this?”

  “Yes. I told hi
m a long time ago.”

  “No wonder he went so quiet at dinner the other week when you mentioned you’d be going to that exhibition with him there. I bet he feels a fool now.”

  “Ma, please. This is hard enough.”

  “Oh! You’re wrong there. It’s not hard enough.”

  Claire didn’t know what to say. It had been years since her mom had been so scolding toward her. Not since she was a young teenager when they would argue over what she was wearing out had there been such scorn in her mother’s tone and words. Then it had been over such small matters, but now it was much larger. Now it was about something that truly mattered, and Claire felt her mother’s respect for her diminishing with each second. She realized then that there was no use in speaking further to June; the woman was too angry to even contemplate forgiveness at this present time.

  “Ma, I’m gonna go. I love you.”

  June said nothing and merely sighed down the telephone. Claire took this opportunity to put the phone down. It was then, out on that lonely balcony surrounded by the metropolis of New York, that Claire burst into tears of utter desolation. She had never gotten off of the phone to her mother in such a terrible state, and never had she heard such vitriol in her mother’s voice when speaking to her.

  But what had she expected? She had just shaken her mother’s world with not one but a whole host of revelations. She hoped with all her being that the next conversation between them would be much better and her mother would have had time to think about things.

  At the moment, however, Claire was feeling too miserable to even contemplate the possibility of her mother’s forgiveness. She was far too upset with the current state of their relationship.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  An hour after Claire got off the phone to her mother, Sam arrived home. The moment she heard his key in the lock, she leapt up off the couch and ran to the door. When he stepped inside the apartment, she instantly threw herself into his arms and began crying into his chest. Although surprised by the unexpected nature of the embrace, he had expected to find her in this type of state and immediately placed his arms delicately around her, enveloping her body within his own. In his arms, she trembled and sobbed, and this in turn made Sam feel inwardly terrible.

  With her body folded within his own, he sensed her pain as though it were emerging out of her and permeating through him like some type of gas, filling him with her own forlorn feelings. Closing his eyes, he hoped that he could absorb all her pain, desolation and suffering into himself, so that she no longer felt it.

  Soon his loving arms had pulled enough of the emotional sting out of Claire for her to finally stop crying and pull her head away from his chest. When she had, she shone her forlorn, tear-filled eyes up at him and he instantly flashed her a reassuring smile. In his own crystal blue eyes, she found such comfort shining back down at her that she didn’t feel the need to speak her pain to him in words, for she already knew that he somehow understood everything.

  Sam took his shoes off and hung his coat on the rail. Once he had, they both went to the lounge, and while Claire sat herself back down on the large couch, Sam lit the fireplace.

  Turning back to Claire as he was lighting it he said, “You look cold. You should have lit the fire.”

  “I was too sad to, I guess,” she said softly from the couch.

  “Too sad to light the fire!?” he mused loudly as he came and sat next to her, placing his arm around her as she automatically nestled herself into his flank.

  Once he had her at his side, he kissed her softly on the temple and whispered, “This will all be okay eventually, I promise you.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling. “It’s just I don’t want to hurt anyone and I am.”

  “This was always going to be painful. But it’s a test of our love. If we can ride this out, we can ride anything.”

  “I told my mother about our affair in 2000,” she suddenly put to him, stunning him slightly.

  “You did!?”

  “Don’t worry, my mom is completely safe with a secret. I just felt that I needed to explain things to her. She found it odd that we just started an affair from meeting at the show. Plus, I felt that I couldn’t lie to her.”

  “Well, you did what you felt you needed to do.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “Not at all. I’ll admit that I want to protect myself—that’s what comes with living for the past twenty-five years in front of cameras with the whole world watching my every move. But I would be selfish if I denied you the right to tell whoever you want. I’ve no right to think that I could ever ask you to keep things from people for my own sake.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” she said, grinning all over and moving herself closer to him.

  Her earlier darkness was gradually fading as the light that shone from him filled the empty spaces inside of her, giving her a moment of joyful respite from her melancholia and casting away all the shadows of her mind.

  “I love you so much, Sam,” she let out gleefully as she basked in that light.

  “I love you too,” he replied, kissing her once again.

  With his kiss, she felt her body fill with electric heat and her muscles flexed gently with lust as the warmth moved through her. She turned her head to face him and he instinctively lowered his own so that their lips met. She began moving her hands up his body and they wove their way into his shirt, popping open the buttons. She spread her fingers out and gripped his tight, muscular chest, pressing her lips further into him. He took ahold of her heavily by the hips and pulled her closer into him, an explosion of lust bursting open inside of him.

  But as they were about to fall into one another, Sam pulled back and said, “We shouldn’t do this. Not yet. Not until I’ve told Jenna.”

  Claire closed her eyes, forcing her desire back and replied, “I know. I know.”

  Sam took himself away from her and asked if she was hungry. She replied that she was, so he ordered them pizza as there was nothing in the kitchen and neither felt like cooking anyway. When the pizza arrived, Sam moved the TV so that they could watch it from in front of the fire on a large sheepskin rug that lay there, the pizza laid out beside them as they curled up together watching a movie.

  When the pizza was nothing but a few crusts in the box, they lay themselves down, Claire cuddled into his side, melting lazily into one another. It was then, when they least expected it, that they heard the ominous sound of a key in the lock.

  Both of them immediately darted their eyes over to the hallway entrance and awaited who it could be with fear rising up inside of them.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” Claire inquired.

  “No. Especially not with a key,” he said with terrified eyes fixed upon the hallway entrance.

  As they waited with growing anxiety, their hearts were dealt a blow when the figure of Jenna came strolling around the corner. Sam immediately leapt up from where he was and approached her. When she saw him, she immediately smiled. But her smile dropped the instant she looked past him and saw Claire sitting up on the rug.

  “Who is she?” Jenna asked indignantly.

  “That doesn’t matter,” was all Sam could offer in reply. “Jenna, what are you doing here?”

  Just at that moment, Jess walked in behind Jenna and Sam went white.

  “Surprise, Daddy,” she said the moment her eyes fixed upon the figure of her father.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said, instinctively glancing back over his shoulder at the frightened-looking Claire.

  Jenna meanwhile stood there with a look of fury on her face, her eyes stuck upon the figure of Claire, burning her glare into her.

  Without taking her look from off her enemy, Jenna asked again, this time with more authority, “Who is she?”

  “Please, Jenna, not now,” Sam said. “If we can all move into the next room and talk.”

  “Who is she, Sam? Who is that sitting on my sheepskin rug that I bought when we went to Morocco?”

  “P
lease, Jenna.”

  It was then that Jess looked past her father and saw Claire for the first time. Her expression gradually turned to one of confusion and she felt she recognized the woman with the glimmering eyes who looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  While Jess gazed incredulously at Claire, Sam placed his hands upon Jenna’s shoulders and tried to steer her away as she menacingly approached Claire. On feeling his hands upon her, Jenna violently shrugged him off, slapping him around the face as she did. She began marching determinedly toward Claire and the latter felt herself recoil back into the fireplace. Sam ran after Jenna and grabbed her again, and she instantly began fighting him, lashing out with fury, tears falling mercilessly from her eyes.

  “WHO IS SHE!?” she screamed out at him.

  Claire stood up and said, “Look, I should go.”

  “No, don’t,” Sam exclaimed as he struggled to contain Jenna.

  “No, Sam, you’ve got a lot of talking to do,” Claire returned.

  “No. Please, Claire, stay.”

  “Daddy, who is she?” Jess asked as she came up beside the struggling pair.

  “I’ll explain in a moment.”

  Jenna threw out an elbow, catching Sam in the jaw. The blow stunned him and he let go. Jenna moved from his grasp and cornered Claire against the fireplace, the younger woman merely looking at her with fright, wondering what the jealous lover would do.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Jenna growled as she came within a foot of her adversary.

  “My name’s Claire Prior,” she replied in a trembling voice, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry. I never meant—”

  But she got no further. Jenna slapped her around the face with all her fury, knocking Claire onto the floor. Sam immediately took ahold of Jenna with furious, vengeful anger, almost lifting her off her feet and throwing her across the room with all his might. Jess screamed out as Jenna crashed onto the floor, landing heavily on her elbow. Sam stood there for a moment, between Jenna and Claire, breathing deeply, his chest heaving in and out, his terrifying eyes fixed on Jenna.

  Jess came up to him, threw her arms around him and began crying. She had never seen such raw emotions and such violence in all her ten years and it made her both afraid and sad.