BOUGHT: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  “I think a man who loves that deeply is capable of many things when the woman he loves does not love him back.” She touched my cheek. “Please, think about what I’ve told you. Don’t let yourself become someone your mother would not be proud of.”

  I kissed her cheek lightly. “You’re wrong. And you will see that someday soon.”

  Chapter 32

  I went to settle in the living room, the baby monitor in my hand, thinking I’d do a little reading while the babies continued to sleep. But then I realized that the book I’d been reading in the hospital—the book I hadn’t had a chance to even pick up since the babies were born—was upstairs in my bedroom.

  I climbed the stairs, wondering if that counted as exercise, humming a song I’d heard early that morning on the radio under my breath. It was something about loving the same person until each was old and thinking out loud or something…I couldn’t remember all the words, so I was murdering the lyrics as I pushed through the bedroom door and came up short.

  Nicolas was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bag of drugs in his hands.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Why are you in here?”

  “It’s my house.” He got up and came toward me, the bag extended between two fingers. “Why is this in here?”

  His voice was low, steady, but there was anger dancing in his eyes. He looked at me the same way he did on Thanksgiving Day, the same way he looked at me just seconds before he grabbed me around my throat.

  “I found it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  I backed up a little, Constance’s words, so recently uttered, dancing through my mind.

  …bruises…on her wrists, her throat…if she’d lifted her shirt…

  “Did you hit her?” I asked before I even realized the words were on my tongue.

  That shocked Nicolas into stopping his forward progression. He stared at me, anger turning into confusion.

  “Did I hit who?”

  “Aurora.”

  “What?” He stared at me, disbelief in every line of his handsome face. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Constance saw bruises. She thinks…” I stopped, my eyes falling to the bag of drugs. Xanax. The same drug that killed Aurora.

  Did she take them willingly? Or did someone force her into it?

  “Constance thinks I beat Aurora?”

  There was genuine hurt in his voice. He stared at me and then something clicked. He opened his mouth, a sound like someone might make if they’d been punched in the gut slipping from between his perfect lips. He stared at me for a long time, his gaze unwavering, but the emotion rushing through them ever-changing.

  He turned away, balling up the bag of drugs and throwing them against the far wall. The bag hit with nothing more than a slight tap, falling to the floor undamaged.

  “Do you believe her?”

  “I don’t want to, but there are so many secrets between us still that I don’t know what to believe.”

  He nodded, his shoulders drooping as though a heavy weight were resting on them. “Then I guess it’s time we fix that.”

  He gestured for me to join him on the small couch pushed into a corner of the room, him on one end and me on the other. And then he just started talking.

  He told me about his mother, of the horrible things she made him do when she needed a fix and didn’t have the money to get it. The long days and nights she abandoned him on his own when he wasn’t even tall enough to see over the top of the stove. The things he heard and saw her do to survive.

  He told me about coming to Los Angeles on his own, only sixteen and with less than a hundred bucks to his name. He told me how he talked his way into a job on one of the studio lots, lying about his name, his age, and his experience.

  He told me how he convinced the studio to back an unknown director on a loser project that was bound to lose more money than it would cost to make it. And how he became a golden child over night when the project became a sleeper hit.

  He told me about the women, the drugs, and the will it took for him to resist falling prey to his mother’s disease.

  “I didn’t think alcohol was that big of a deal,” he said. “My mother’s drug of choice was heroin. I thought, as long as I stayed away from the hard stuff—heroin, cocaine, meth—I would be okay. It never occurred to me that something as innocuous and common as alcohol could be my downfall. Even when Adam told me I was making a fool of myself, when he warned me that I was walking down the same path we’d barely escaped, I didn’t see it.”

  I looked at me with honesty so painful I could hardly stand to look at it in his eyes.

  “I thought I could conquer everything. But alcohol got the better of me. So I went to rehab, got sober, and did everything I was supposed to do. I did it all right. And when I was sober, I was ready to have everything they promised you. I was ready for the beautiful wife, the perfect children, and the American dream. I had the money, the dream job. I wanted the rest.

  “That’s when I met Aurora.”

  I reached over and touched his knee. He took my hand between both of his.

  “I thought I loved her. She was the first woman I dated after rehab. I told her everything: my childhood, my drinking problem, my dreams for the future. And she swore she was right there with me, ready to settle down and have a good life together. I thought, hell, I’d made it through. I was that rare survivor of drug addiction. I was going to have everything my mother pissed away with her addiction.”

  He laughed as he thought about it, a bitter laugh that chilled me down to my soul.

  “All I did was marry my mother. I just jumped right back into the deep end of that shit hole.”

  He lifted my hand and kissed the palm lightly. “At first, it was little things. Comments she made, texts on her phone, weird looks from other men at parties. And the rumors. There were a lot of rumors, but I was so blind. I ignored them. Put it down to jealousy. And then, less than six months after the wedding, I caught her with that hors d’oeuvres plate, her cocaine lined out on it in perfect stripes. When I asked how she could do it to me, how she could do drugs in my house after everything I’d told her about my mother, you know what she said?”

  I shook my head, but I could imagine.

  “She told me I should get off my high horse. I’d be a better person if I did it too. And then she laughed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I called my lawyer right then and there, tried to file for divorce. But she told me if I went through with it, she would OD and I’d have to explain that to the press.”

  He dragged his fingers through his hair, exhaustion clear in his eyes. “I put up with it for two years, and she seemed to think she’d won some war between us because her behavior grew increasingly worse. She had open affairs. She showed up late to important dinners and parties, usually stoned out of her mind. She picked fights with me on the sets of my movies.” He shook his head. “She took every opportunity she could find to embarrass me until I had enough. I filed for divorce and she kept to her word. She OD’d on cocaine downstairs in my office. Adam found her passed out on top of the paperwork my attorney sent.”

  “Oh, wow…”

  Nicolas nodded. “So I couldn’t divorce her. I couldn’t do anything. She was unstable. So I stayed and tried to make it work. She moved into the guest room down the hall, continued to have her boyfriends over, continued to do whatever the hell she wanted to do. I managed to keep most of it under wraps, thanks to my loyal friends and staff. But, I guess, that turned out to be a mistake, too, because the public had no clue how bad things were when she died.” He ran his hand over my palm. “She would attack me. She’d come at me with her claws out, trying to tear out my eyes for some perceived slight. It could be almost anything that set her off. I wasn’t home on time. I gave an interview she didn’t know about. I didn’t tell her that her mother called. It didn’t matter. And she would attack me
, and I would grab her wrists to hold her off.”

  “And leave bruises.”

  He looked at me, his eyes sliding to my throat. “I tried not to hurt her, but sometimes I had no choice.”

  I slid closer to him, pressing my forehead to his shoulder. “And the night she died?”

  He stiffened a little, but his hands came around me and the tension slowly left his body.

  “I went to ask her for a divorce.” He kissed the top of my head. “I kissed you that night, and I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I had to get out. But she was belligerent, as usual. Told me she’d agreed to the surrogacy to keep me happy. That she was giving me a family just like I’d wanted when we got married. The least I could do was continue to play along. She said if I waited until the baby was born, she’d consider giving me a divorce then. But if I left before she was ready, she’d make sure I never saw the kid.”

  I nodded, almost aware of what he was going to say before the words were out of his mouth. It all made so much sense. Aurora needed Nicolas. She needed his name and his money to be someone in Hollywood. She had a few movies under her belt when she met him, but she never would have become the starlet she was if she hadn’t married him. It was his star that made hers shine brighter. She knew she couldn’t lose that if she had any hope of taking her career any further. So she used everything she could to keep him under control. His sense of decency, his kindness, and his desire for a family.

  No wonder she’d been so excited about the babies. She knew how he would respond to any threat against his child.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” He took my face in his hands and lifted it so he could see me. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

  “For doubting you, even briefly. I knew this couldn’t be true, that you would never—”

  He kissed me, cutting off my words. I moved closer to him, grateful he wasn’t angry with me, that he didn’t just get up and walk away from me. Grateful that we might have a chance to survive all of this. Grateful that Aurora’s schemes and deceit had brought us together.

  “I love you,” he whispered against my lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all of this before.”

  “The pills—”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “They’re not mine. I thought they were yours.”

  He pulled back. “What do you mean?”

  “They were in your bathroom, in the false bottom of a drawer.”

  He cursed, using words I don’t think I’d ever heard in English before. I’d heard them all my life in Spanish on the lips of the laborers who lived in our neighborhood, but never in English.

  “They’re Aurora’s, aren’t they?”

  He nodded. “She hid drugs all over the house. I hunted for them constantly, throwing them out whenever I found them. But I never thought to look in the bathroom.”

  “I hid them. I was afraid someone would think they were the ones used to kill her.”

  He groaned, running his hand over the top of my head. “I’m sorry you were in that position.”

  “I’d do anything to protect you.”

  “I know.” He kissed me again. And then he was reaching into his pocket and sliding to the floor. I must have paled because he hesitated, his hand reaching up to caress my cheek. “I wanted to do this at a more romantic time, but there never seems to be time for anything with the babies.” He opened his palm and a small, but perfect diamond solitaire on a gold band sparkled in the lamp light. “I looked at all these huge, ostentatious rings, and then I saw this one. And I knew it was perfect for you.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth. “Oh, Nico…”

  “Marry me. Be my wife. Be a mother to our children. Help me build our unique version of the American dream.”

  I just laughed through my tears, as I fell into his arms.

  Chapter 33

  “We’re just going to take a few cells from the inside of their cheeks,” the medical technician explained as she approached Vivienne with a swab in her hand. “It won’t hurt her.”

  I glanced at Nicolas. He nodded, a muscle in his jaw popping as he watched.

  Vivienne whimpered as the technician pressed the swab into her mouth, but she didn’t wake up. And then it was Cole’s turn. He wasn’t as cooperative, turning his face and screaming when the technician touched him. But in less than a minute, we were done.

  “Why?” I asked for the millionth time, as we slid the babies into their car seats under Adam’s protective glare.

  “I don’t know,” Nicolas said. “She just told the judge that she thought a DNA test proving the babies are Aurora’s was in order.”

  “But no one has ever denied that they’re Aurora’s.”

  Nicolas moved up behind me and slid his arms around me. “Let’s just be grateful that this is delaying the custody hearing. The last thing we need the weekend of our wedding is to get bogged down in some ridiculous legal case.”

  I turned in his arms and kissed him. “We’re really getting married in two days?”

  “We really are.”

  I pressed myself up against him and raised my face for a second kiss, but then Adam was pushing us into the SUV as a chorus of shouts surrounded us.

  The paparazzi had found us.

  They’d been relentless since the news got out. It was unrealistic to think that the press wouldn’t find out about the babies. But Nicolas’ staff—who consisted of a pretty impressive PR lady—managed to keep it all under wraps with sealed court records and protected medical records until someone in the NICU sold our story to a tabloid for ten thousand dollars. If, whoever it was, had just told Nicolas they needed money, he probably would have paid five times that to keep the story quiet a little longer. But that person didn’t, so now the press knew about the babies, about me, about the whole story—at least, the parts they’d bothered to learn about. The rest they just kind of made up.

  For that reason, when Nicolas arranged for us to get a marriage license, he didn’t do anything to keep it from the press. It was leaked within twelve hours, and the paparazzi had been relentless ever since, dying to find out when and where the happy day would take place.

  And then, of course, there was the whole custody thing with Virginia. Once the press found out about the babies, it didn’t take much for them to find the custody battle that was waging between Virginia and Nicolas. The case was supposed to go in front of the judge today but, instead, the court sent us to the hospital to have the babies DNA tested.

  It made little sense to me.

  I adjusted Vivienne’s cannula, smiling when she peeked at me from beneath long, dark lashes. I tried to imagine what Aurora looked like as a baby, but I couldn’t. She was a beautiful blonde with striking blue eyes and a perfectly square face. But both babies had round faces, dark eyes and hair. And their hair wasn’t falling out like I had assumed it would. There was nothing of their mother in their faces. But, there was enough of Nicolas to make that understandable.

  So why did this little spark of hope insist on sitting deep in my belly?

  ***

  Saturday dawned sunny and perfect. It was supposed to be warm for a California spring day. I crawled out of bed and peeked in on the babies, pleased to find them both sleeping peacefully. Then, I crawled into the shower, unable to believe that by this time tomorrow, I was going to be Mrs. Nicolas Costa.

  Today was our wedding day.

  The backyard was decked out with streamers, a lovely arch, and dozens of chairs for our dozens of expected guests. Nicolas wanted to keep the affair intimate, so he only invited two hundred of his closest friends and colleagues. I, of course, only invited Constance and Kelly. Constance’s family, however, would fill out at least fifty of those chairs, and Kelly would be standing up with me, so she didn’t need a chair. But her date—whomever that would be—would.

  I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in
a fluffy towel, thinking about Nicolas doing the same thing down the hall. I so wanted to go down there and see him, to crawl into his arms and never leave them again. Just a few more hours, I reminded myself. Very soon I would have the legal right to never sleep in a bed alone, to never leave him alone, and to never be without him again.

  I couldn’t wait.

  Kelly was waiting for me in the bedroom when I stepped out. She giggled when she saw me.

  “I can’t believe you’re getting married! When all this started, I thought I needed to have you committed. But now…”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  She lifted my dress off of the hook on the back of the closet door and danced around with it.

  “Getting married. Who’d believe it?”

  We fell onto the bed in a gale of giggles and reminisced about days gone by, high school and college, all the things we regretted and all the things we wished we could do again.

  “Guess what?” she finally asked.

  “What?”

  “I think I might be getting serious about someone.”

  I looked at her, surprised by the lack of amusement in her voice. In fact, rather than amusement, there was something like amazement lacing her words.

  That’s how I knew just how genuine she was.

  “Who?”

  She looked at me for a long minute. “Don’t get mad when I tell you.”

  “I won’t.”

  She bit her lip for a long second and then spit it out on one, long breath.

  “Daniel Davis.”

  I gasped and then laughed, as I threw my arms around her. “That’s great, Kelly.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He’s a great guy.”

  “But he’s Virginia’s stepson.”

  “Yes. But he’s not her.”

  Kelly nodded. “He really is a good guy, Ana. And he treats me like I’m a queen. And, you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “We haven’t had sex yet.”

  That was the real shocker. Kelly once had sex with a guy within ten minutes of meeting him. It wasn’t her usual behavior, but it wasn’t that far off, either. For her to not have sex with Daniel was a really big deal. I was quite impressed.