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

by Nancy Adams

  With that, Jenna stormed out of the room, rejoined Jess in the hallway and took the girl home in her car.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sam was sitting on a sun lounger at the edge of his Olympic-sized outdoor swimming pool, thinking about his missing daughter and how he was to blame for it all. Perched forward at the lounger’s edge, his elbows on his knees and his chin cupped in his hands, he stared blankly out across the shimmering pool, the low, early-evening sun casting the place in a soft glowing light. He heard Maud call to him from the house and, glancing sharply toward her, he saw that she was standing by the back door waving.

  He instantly got up and began making his way to her.

  “They just called from the gate,” Maud said to him the moment he reached her. “Jenna has just arrived with Jess.”

  An instant smile lit up on his lips and he began jogging toward the hallway. When he reached the entrance of the house, he saw Jenna’s white Jeep pull up on the drive outside, a sorry-looking Jess in the passenger seat. Once the vehicle stopped, Sam stood several meters from Jess’s door, a nervous smile on his face. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure how his daughter would react.

  Jess sheepishly opened the door and got out. When she closed it behind her, she turned to face her father with a sad look. Sam instantly saw that her eyes were bloodshot from crying. For a moment she simply stood before him biting her lip, not sure what she should do, an apprehension inside of her. But suddenly something induced her to run forward and take her father in her arms and she went with it. Throwing herself into him, she began to gently weep and he took his daughter delicately in his arms. Just off to the side of them, Maud stood watching with a smile on her face.

  While the father and daughter embraced, Jenna got out of the car and came around to them. Glancing up from Jess, Sam thanked her.

  “It’s okay,” she replied in a gentle tone, a slight smile on her face.

  Having hugged her father, Jess ran up to Maud and enveloped the nanny in her arms. Maud’s face instantly opened out into a wide smile and she took the girl heartily.

  “I’m sorry for running off,” Jess apologized from within her arms.

  “You’re back now and that’s all that matters,” the old woman replied with full-hearted thanks in her voice.

  Having been reunited, the four of them went inside, Jess holding Maud’s hand, and sat together in the lounge. Once they were seated, Karl entered the room and Sam asked him to inform John Ryan that Jess was back safe and sound. When the assistant was gone, they sat in silence for a moment, Sam at one end of the large couch, Jenna at the other, and Jess cuddled up to Maud in the middle.

  “So…mmm…she came to see you at Donna’s?” Sam nervously asked Jenna, who sat with her hands upon her lap, gazing blankly in front of her.

  “Yes,” she answered, glancing up at him as she did.

  “She say how she got there?”

  “She walked.”

  “She walked!?” he burst out, before turning to Jess and adding, “You walked?”

  “Yes,” she replied from within Maud’s arms.

  “All the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God!”

  “Don’t be hard on her, Sam,” Jenna told him.

  “No, I wasn’t. I’m just amazed that she walked all that way. How long did it take?”

  “About eight hours I think,” Jess informed him.

  Sam began grinning and Jess looked up from Maud to see it. She couldn’t help but smile to see her father’s face.

  “An eight-hour urban hike across L.A. at the age of ten,” he went on proudly. “You were right when you said you could easily make it down to that creek in Colorado. Heck, you could make it there from here!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Jess remarked, beaming all over.

  Jenna grinned at Sam’s antics, before turning her face away so that he wouldn’t see.

  “So did anything happen on the way? Any dangers?” Sam inquired.

  Feeling a new confidence take hold of her with her father’s desire to hear the story of her adventure, Jess sat up from Maud.

  “Well, not much,” she began. “At first I was just walking along streets with houses like ours and it was a bit boring. But then when I reached the city, it all got really crazy with lots of tourists and people everywhere and I got lost. I started to get scared that someone would see that I was on my own and call the police, so I decided to take another street. But then I got even more lost and it was a really crazy place with graffiti everywhere, houses with rubbish in their yards and people sitting around. Then there were other houses with boards all over their windows but with people still living there. And then there were people driving around real slow on the streets, playing loud music and staring at you as they drove past.”

  “And no one talked to you?”

  “Yeah, several times. When I was walking in this really scary place with all these boarded-up buildings, these woman hanging around on a street corner started to ask me questions. They all sounded really drunk and their eyes were strange. They kept asking where my mommy was and I told them that she lived around there and that I was going home to see her, but they didn’t believe me.”

  “Where was that?” Sam asked his daughter.

  “Inglewood.”

  “Inglewood!?” he spluttered, his eyes widening.

  “Yeah. I got lost when I came through the city and ended up all the way there.”

  “And these woman, what happened there?”

  “They followed me and tried to make me stay, but I ran off. I was so scared, Dad.”

  “So would I be if I was walking around Inglewood! So what else happened?”

  “I met this boy there who helped me find my way out. He lived around there and he took me on the back of his BMX. He had pegs on the back wheels that I stood on.”

  “And what was this boy’s name?”

  “Tyrell.”

  “His age?” Sam asked worriedly.

  “He was nine.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” he said with relief.

  Jess smiled as she recollected her short time with the boy.

  “We ate hamburgers together,” she said smiling.

  “Oh, so while we’ve all been worried sick, you’ve been on an urban tour of L.A. and a hamburger date with the local BMX bandit!”

  “He was really nice. He said that I wasn’t the only one to run away from home. He told me that he and his brother ran away once. They went to see their dad who doesn’t live with their mom. He lives on the other side of the city. They got to his place but he didn’t want to see them, so he and his brother just called their mom and she came and got them. I felt sorry for him and it made me think of you.” She paused for a moment as she looked her father in the eyes. “You’d never turn me away would you?” she asked him.

  “Of course not,” Sam replied firmly. “Does that mean that you’ll never run away again?”

  “It might.”

  Sam grinned at her and then asked her what happened after the hamburger date.

  “Tyrell took me all the way past Santa Monica, but he’d never been further than that, so he dropped me there. After that I walked all the way along the beach until I got close to Jenna’s friend’s house. I was real tired so I sat there for a while.”

  “You’ve had an incredible adventure,” Sam remarked. “Are you hungry?”

  Jess turned and looked at Sam, a glittering little smile appearing on her mouth.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then go to the kitchen and get the chef to make you up something to eat.”

  Still smiling, Jess got up from the couch and went to the kitchen.

  “I’ll go with her,” Maud said as she got up and followed Jess into the kitchen.

  This, of course, left Jenna and Sam alone.

  “You’re not cross with her, are you?” she asked him once they were.

  “No, not at all. I’m only cross with myself.”

  They sat in silence aga
in for a little while, before Sam remarked, “I’ve made a right mess of things, haven’t I?”

  “You want my honest opinion?” she replied with a slight frown.

  “Not brutally honest. But honest enough.”

  “Then I think you need to restore your daughter’s faith in her father. And you need to start being more honest with yourself. You strung me along for five- and-a-half years and you needn’t have.”

  “It wasn’t that easy. I felt I owed you.”

  “You owed me nothing more than your honesty,” she put to him sharply.

  “Touché,” he acknowledged, before sighing and adding, “I am really sorry for what I’ve done to you, Jenna, and I fully acknowledged that I have no right to your forgiveness. My behavior toward you has been disgraceful.”

  Jenna’s body gave a little shudder and she sniffed at a tear.

  “You’ve hurt me terribly,” she started, her voice brimming with sorrow. “You took all of my love and you threw it to the side as though it were garbage.”

  “I know. I wish it hadn’t ended the way it did.”

  “Well, it did, Sam. You know I was so excited to come see you when I arrived in New York. I thought that you’d find it charming. I knew that we were in trouble, but never did I think you’d cheat on me.”

  “I meant to tell you.”

  “Yeah, so you said.”

  Again the room went dead and they sat shuffling their feet for a moment.

  “You know,” Sam eventually said, “I understand that I’ve caused you harm in a financial and professional sense.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve practically lived off of you these past years.”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t’ve had to. You had a career once and I caused it to be taken from you.”

  “I can still write. I was thinking of getting something together now. Although…I don’t know…Maybe I’ll go traveling on the last of my money. Try to find something out there in the world. Who knows, maybe I’ll discover some new purpose that will make me complete…But then…I don’t know.”

  “I’ve left you so lost, Jenna. I feel awful.”

  She looked over at him and he noticed the tears in her eyes.

  “Jenna, I owe you so much for what you’ve sacrificed. Please let me give you something. I mean, if you went to a good enough lawyer you’d be rightfully entitled to something anyway. You’ve been my live-in partner for over five years. You should get something.”

  “I’m not like that, Sam.”

  “I owe it to you, Jenna. Please. At least let me help you in some way.”

  “Please, Sam. I just want to be left alone.”

  She got up from where she sat and glanced sharply around the place, a confused look on her face, as though she were unsure of where she was.

  “I have to leave,” she said hurriedly. “I need to go back.”

  “Jenna, stay a moment more, please.”

  He got up from his chair as she dashed out of the room. Following her out of the house, Sam called after her, catching up with her at her car. As she attempted to open the door, he was behind her.

  “Jenna, come back inside.”

  “No, Sam. I need to leave.”

  “I want to help you. I want to give you what I owe you. Don’t let me feel guilty for the rest of my life that I left you broke.”

  She turned around sharply as she opened the door, flashing her furious eyes at him.

  “You should feel guilty. It’s a good feeling, Sam. Guilt teaches us lessons that life won’t. It tells us that no matter how much success we have and how much joy we get, we’re still inherently bad in some things. Guilt guides us toward the light of better behavior. Why should I rob you of that?”

  With the pronouncement of this last sentence, she turned back around, got in the car and drove out of there, leaving him stunned.

  Sam followed her car out through the gate with his eyes, sighed deeply and then went back inside to his daughter.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Claire was sitting in the back of a taxi on her way to Faith Hospital. She was on the phone with Beth and had been the whole time she was getting ready in the apartment, before leaving to hail the cab. They were deep in conversation about Claire and Sam and the still-untold secret of their child.

  “It’s like I said,” the friend was saying, “you gotta tell him as soon as possible. You say his daughter is back now?”

  “Yeah, she came back last night.”

  “Then now’s the time.”

  “But he won’t be back from L.A. until he’s sure that his daughter is okay.”

  “Then you gotta tell him over the phone.”

  Claire sat in silence for a few seconds, gazing nonchalantly at the passing buildings and the traffic of people walking along the Manhattan sidewalks. She wondered if any of those people’s lives were as complicated as her own. She wished that she could transport her spirit out of her body and into one of theirs. Then, when anyone tried to accuse her of anything concerning Claire Prior, she could just deny any knowledge of such a person and walk away.

  “I feel that doing it over the phone will somehow diminish it,” she said after a while.

  “It’s gonna be hard whichever way it’s told. However—and I know you shot me down when I suggested this earlier—you also have the option of not telling him.”

  “And like I said when I did shoot you down: I can’t do that. It will always haunt me that I lied to him, that I hold a secret from him. It will always hang over me like an axe, waiting to strike. Anything could happen.”

  “Well, there’s only three people in the world that know it’s his child. I certainly won’t say anything, and although Paul’s real upset, he swore to me over the phone that he’d never do it.”

  “You’ve spoken to him?”

  “Of course. Will spoke with him the other day and I asked to speak to him afterwards.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “He sounded better than he did when you first left him, when he was ringing me all those times. He hasn’t had a drink for almost a week and he’s been fixing up the apartment.”

  “That’s good that he’s looking after himself.”

  “Yeah. Will told me that he woke up with a head injury the other day and decided that enough was enough.”

  Claire felt a pang of worry for her ex-boyfriend, her heart still full of feeling for him.

  “Was he really hurt?”

  “Nah. He just woke up covered in blood with a nasty gash on the side of his head and some bruising all over his body. He fixed himself up.”

  “Did he say how it happened?”

  “That was the problem. He’d blacked out and couldn’t remember a thing.”

  “Oh, Paul!” Claire gently exclaimed to herself.

  “You heard he quit his residency too?”

  “Yeah. A friend of Annabel’s works at St. Pancras. I feel real bad about it.”

  “You were his first love. It’s hit him hard, but he’ll get over it and be stronger as a result.”

  “I hope so, B. I really hope so. Did he say anything else to you?”

  “Not much. Just that he was heading home to get his head straight with his family, and that he’d continue his career in a year or so.”

  “It’s so sad, B.”

  “What is?”

  “That his career has been damaged so much by me. First there was the year he took out before medical school, so he could stay with me in Maine while I finished college. Now he’s throwing another year away—maybe more. I just feel that he’s done nothing but support me, and I’ve done nothing but pull him down.”

  “Paul made his own decisions. You didn’t jump straight into a relationship with him, did you? You took it real slow with him, warned him that you’d been hurt—heck, he could see that by the large bulge in your abdomen! He knew that you were complicated and you never led him to believe that you weren’t. You can’t lay all the blame at your own feet. You have to understand that he’s n
ot a child—he’s a man. And as a man he made his own decisions to follow you. It’s a terrible shame that that road led to where it did; but hey, that’s life.”

  Halfway through saying all this, Beth’s voice had risen in intensity as she’d entered into a mini-rant and it had brought a smile to Claire’s face. She loved the righteous indignation that often began to spew out of her friend’s mouth. It had been the same at school. No one dared to take on the tongue of Beth McGuire—certainly not Claire. She had a habit of pulling her foe apart with a barrage of insults and chastisements. Better just to nod in agreement, rather than wilt under one of her powerful tirades.

  “I guess you’re right,” Claire replied. “But it doesn’t stop me feeling that I led him on.”

  “You were pretty straight with him in many ways. You didn’t accept his marriage proposal. That would have been really hard on him. You were straight up with him when he found Sam’s number in your handbag.”

  “Yeah, but that was deceitful.”

  “Yes, it was. But you hadn’t even met up with Sam at that point. When you eventually did, you’d already split up from Paul and the moment you knew it was serious with Sam, you broke it off for good.”

  Claire smiled at her friend’s reassuring words.

  “Thanks, B.”

  “For what?”

  “For just being there. I know you feel like I’m throwing a lot away by getting with Sam after all this time, but I’m glad I can still talk to you and you’re still on my side.”

  “I don’t think that following your heart is throwing things away. And I’ll always have your back. We’ve had each other since junior high and we’ll have each other until we’re old and wrinkly sitting in rocking chairs opposite one another pissing into catheter bags!”

  Claire giggled along with her friend and, as she did, she noticed that she was on the street she needed, the hospital only a block or two away.

  “Beth, I gotta go. I’m nearly there.”

  “Okay, sweetie. Love you.”

  “Love you too. And give my love to Will.”