“Have a seat, boys,” George said in a grandfatherly sort of way. “Let’s talk funding.”
I was still hyperventilating when we reached the elevator.
“Five million,” I gasped. “Five m-million dollars!”
“Yes,” Nate said with barely-concealed annoyance. “Five million dollars. That’s not that much, Miles. This app is worth at least twice that. Startup costs could eat through that overnight.”
“Nope,” I said adamantly, shaking my head. “This baby’s working and ready to go. Branding won’t cost near that much. We’re in the money, Nate!”
“I’ve always been in the money,” Nate said with a sly quirk of his lips.
“Well, now I’m in the money,” I said, sticking my tongue out at him. “God, why aren’t you more excited? This is the first day of the rest of your life, Nate! You made something happen! We’re about to change the world!”
“It’s just business to me, man. Sure, I believe in your vision and I’m thrilled with your app and how you managed to make it work, but I’ve known this day would come since I was three. Maybe not with you, or with these investors, or whatever. But I always knew I’d make a million before twenty-five. I wouldn’t be a Dunn otherwise. It’s in our blood.”
I didn’t let his chill demeanor cool my excitement. I knew someone who would be just as blown away by my sudden success as I was. The second Nate and I parted ways in the parking lot, I called her.
“Shelley!”
“Miles! How did it go? I’ve been biting my nails for you all morning!”
“Well, bite no more, babe! I won their hearts and wallets in one fell swoop.”
She squealed, and though I had to pull the phone away from my ear, I was grinning like a fool.
“Oh my God, that’s wonderful!” she said, then added after a pause, “Even if it means you won’t be working at Finnegan’s anymore.”
“True, but I will be raking in loads of cash and doing something I actually enjoy doing. Not that I don’t enjoy watching you flirt with old men all night, but it’s not much of a career path.”
She laughed, adding a golden sparkle to my already sunny day.
“I’m so happy for you, Miles. I can’t believe you did it! You actually made it!”
“I can’t believe it either! I want to celebrate. Celebrate with me? Tonight. I’ll take you somewhere ridiculously expensive, a sort of preview of the life I’m about to have. What do you say?”
“Yes! Yes, yes, every time, yes.”
Her enthusiasm boosted my already-inflated ego, and I felt as if I were floating a hundred miles off the ground, soaking up sunshine. We set the time and threw around some ideas for places, punctuating the conversations with bouts of giddy laughter.
It was really happening. The girl, the gold, the glory; I had completed the hero’s quest, and it was time to soak up the rewards.
Chapter 4
Shelley
Nothing to Wear
“Don’t I have anything?” I asked my closet in despair.
The pile of clothes on the bed behind me seemed to be judging me. Of course I had things—nice things, even. But nice wasn’t really good enough for a fancy dinner with a millionaire, was it? I needed to be stunning. Mind-blowing.
“Just like he is,” I murmured through the hazy smile dancing around my lips. “Absolutely mind-blowing.”
Memories of the night before swept through my mind, making chills run over my body and turning my knees to jelly. I sat down among the clothes for a moment, staring into space as I replayed every touch and sensation from the night before. A deep ache built within me in response to the memory, a heat which would only be cooled with Miles’ talented body.
“It doesn’t matter too much what you wear,” I told my reflection in the mirror. “It’s only gonna be on long enough to get through dinner, anyway.”
At least, I hoped so. I would hate to think that he was less impressed with our chemistry than I was.
I stood and examined myself in the mirror in my bra and matching panties, turning this way and that under my critical eye. No, he’d been impressed. I took pride in my body; as a late bloomer, the womanly curves were still fairly new to me. Every time I saw myself naked or near it, I felt like I had just stepped out of the pages of a comic book.
“Can’t go wrong with a little black dress,” I decided.
I owned three of them, but only one of them was fancy enough for the evening. I shimmied into it, then began working on my makeup. Keep it simple, keep it clean. You know it’s just going to get smeared off on his face or his pillow. That thought sent another shiver of anticipation down my body.
“No appetizer, no dessert,” I decided. “Dinner, then round two.”
Butterflies stirred in my belly. Dinner was more intimidating than I had anticipated. If he was taking me somewhere fancy, it would be filled with the kinds of people I only dreamed of rubbing elbows with. Entertainers. Artists. The California elite. I swallowed hard as I realized that Miles was now one of those people.
“As if his movie-star looks weren’t intimidating enough,” I sighed to myself. “But then again, I’ve seen him naked. A person can only be so intimidating after you’ve seen them make an orgasm face. Right? Right.”
I blew out a breath, and the butterflies finally began to settle. They were immediately roused again as my phone went off with a text message from the man himself. I had to read the message three times before it made sense to my brain, and then, my veins turned to ice.
Gotta cancel, sorry.
“No reason? No nothing? Nice.” I swallowed my emotional reaction and replied.
That’s okay. Rain check for tomorrow?
Can’t, sorry. Taking the $$ to San Bravado to get startup going.
My hands began to shake and my belly seemed to turn to stone. He was leaving, probably forever.
After I’d taken a few steadying breaths, I realized that San Bravado wasn’t very far away at all. A half-hour drive outside of rush hour. That was nothing; we could totally make that work.
That sounds exciting! After you get settled we should celebrate?
He didn’t answer for a long time. Stress redoubled, clenching my chest. I swallowed against it, pacing my room, feeling foolish in my little black dress. My phone went off, nearly giving me a heart attack.
I don’t know yet. Maybe.
My breath caught in my chest as tears burned in my eyes.
“Well screw you too, Mr. Millionaire.”
The tremors in my hands moved to the rest of my body, leaving me feeling sick and miserable. How could he just toss me aside like that? I thought we’d had a fantastic time. I thought we were great together. More importantly, I thought we were friends. I re-read his texts again and again, and the more I did, the more obvious it was that he was distinctly and deliberately leaving me behind.
I tore the dress off and threw it to the floor in disgust. Hurt and angry, I turned my phone off. I didn’t expect him to write a long flowery apology, but if he did have anything else to say, I didn’t want to hear it. Let his money keep him warm at night.
I kicked my shoes into the closet with more force than necessary, then stormed to the bathroom to scrub the makeup off of my face.
“One night.” I pointed at myself in the bathroom mirror, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. “You get one night to cry over this jackass. Exactly one, you understand me?”
My voice was already wavering, and the tears which burned in my eyes escaped down my cheeks. I turned the shower on and stripped out of the rest of my things. There, under the hot stream, I let the sobs crash out of my body. It could have ended with a crush, two ships passing unawares in the night, but I’d had to go and cross that line. Now, it wasn’t a what-if. It was a what was, and I almost couldn’t bear it.
Nobody had ever touched me the way he had. In and out of bed. I had never felt such an immediate connection, or experienced such soul-shaking sex. I could still feel him, and I hated
it. His presence in my memory only underlined his absence in my reality.
I took full advantage of my one night. I mourned what was and what could have been until the sun began to wash its rays over the sky, then fell into a fitful sleep.
Chapter 5
Shelley
October at Stanford
“My name is Charlie Lease, and I’ll be your guest speaker today. Thank you all—wow, all of you—for showing up today. I gotta say, I’ve done a lot of lectures in the last couple months, and this is the biggest crowd I’ve ever had. Thank you, Stanford.
“Anyhow, on to the topic at hand. I’m here to teach you the day-to-day, nitty-gritty, nine-to-five—or six, or eight—grind of making a museum work. Now…”
My eyes suddenly couldn’t focus on the guest speaker. A case of tinnitus cropped up out of nowhere, giving me vertigo at the top of the slanted lecture hall. I had the overwhelming desire for flat floors and ice water.
Closing my eyes, I lay my head on the desk. I had been feeling a bit weak, a little tired, and a touch shaky over the last week or so, but nothing like this. I felt like I was on a boat in the middle of a choppy ocean.
“So, when curating, you have to know two things: first, who your customer base is. Are you going to have a bunch of middle-class parents trying to put their kid on an upward trajectory, or are you going to have a bunch of upper-class nannies going through the motions at the parents’ request, or are you going to have a bunch of lower-class couples looking for a cheap way to pass an afternoon? Are you going to be showing to journalists, art critics, or historians? What’s the local art or science scene like, who already has what you’re offering…”
This was gold. I needed all of this information. Can’t miss the lecture…can’t miss the lecture…
Hot chills coursing over my skin disagreed with me. I put it off as long as I could, barely gleaning anything from the man’s meticulously organized presentation, before my mouth began to fill with saliva. Abandoning my bag on the floor, I raced out of the room, down the long hallway, and into the bathroom. I barely made it.
“Hey!” a startled man shouted as I burst in.
Couldn’t be helped. The ladies’ room was three yards farther, and there was no way I could have got there without a very messy, very public sort of mortification. As it was, I was re-gifting my breakfast to the porcelain throne in front of a row of urinals.
Sweat poured into my eyes as my whole body shook. It had never been like this. It was worse than the flu. Worse than food poisoning. It was as if my body was trying to get rid of everything in it, whether it belonged there or not.
I don’t know how many men came into the bathroom in the ten minutes it took for me to stop heaving, but I do know that none of them stuck around to make sure I was all right. I heard two of them laughing about freshmen and their hangovers. I wanted to spin around and tell them they were wrong on both counts, but I was sort of incapacitated.
I took the time to wash my face. It was only polite. Deciding to leave my bag—complete with enough textbooks to take out a mortgage and my laptop—to the mercy of basic human decency, I turned left out the door and stumbled to the campus medical center. Sweat and saliva still flowed freely, making me afraid to open my mouth. Swallowing hard, I whispered to the receptionist that I needed to see a nurse.
“All right, honey, d’you have your student ID? Perfect. Have a seat; a nurse will be right out.”
The receptionist’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She looked like someone who was watching her child get their seventeenth piercing. Who disappointed you, receptionist? The question floated lazily back and forth through my head, unanswered and unanswerable, utterly inconsequential but a distraction all the same.
“Shelley Smith?” a short, pink woman called from the doorway.
I had never seen anyone so pink. Her skin was flushed pink, her hair was dyed electric pink, and she wore pink candy-striped scrubs. I wanted to make a witty comment, but I couldn’t seem to come up with one even if I’d been brave enough to open my mouth.
“Your intake slip says sudden vertigo and tinnitus followed by excessive vomiting. Are you still experiencing the vertigo and tinnitus?”
I shook my head.
“Nausea?”
I nodded, and immediately regretted it.
The nurse offered me a trash can. I made use of it, and felt better almost immediately. Not just better. I was starving.
“Better out than in,” she said kindly.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, you do speak! That’s wonderful. All right, Shelley, are you sexually active?”
“Not currently,” I said with a sigh.
I wanted to be over him; I really did. It had been a month and a half already, and he had been a one-night stand. I knew I should really go on a few palette-cleansing dates, but I couldn’t seem to work up the interest.
“When were you last sexually active?”
I could feel the flush creep up my neck to my cheeks, and reminded myself that hers was a purely professional interest.
“About six weeks ago.”
“And the date of your last menstrual cycle? The first day, or as near as you can remember.”
“Not too long ago, I don’t think. Let’s see…it was before school started, so it should be close…oh, wait.”
My heart thudded hard against my chest as it skipped a beat. I looked up at the pink nurse with a mortifying realization.
“August,” I said in stunned monotone.
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me.
“First things first, then.”
She handed me a cup and sent me off to fill it. I brought it back full, anxiety wracking my every nerve.
Silence fell thick and heavy in the room as she performed the test. She set the timer for three minutes, but the result came back in forty-five seconds.
“Well, that explains that,” she said decisively. “You’re pregnant, my dear.”
The room spun around me, sucking my oxygen away. I gripped the edge of the table to keep from tumbling off, sucking breath into my lungs as if I’d run a marathon. The nurse’s hands were on my shoulders and she was saying something, but I couldn’t process it.
Pregnant. I was pregnant. With a baby. A tiny human. Oh, God, I was growing a person.
“Inhale on three. One, two, three.”
I sucked in and my mouth filled with a chemical taste.
“Again. One, two, three.”
I inhaled again, and the room came back into focus. I could breathe.
“How long have you had asthma?” she asked.
“Asthma? I don’t have asthma.”
“You do now. Happens sometimes—bodies go wacky when you’re pregnant. I’ve seen girls develop allergies, diabetes, acne…you name it. I’m writing you a prescription for a rescue inhaler. Use it. Last thing you or the baby needs is to be deprived of oxygen.
“Now, we can manage your pregnancy here in the clinic in a pinch, but if you have insurance, I suggest getting yourself a good OB/GYN. First babies are wild cards; you don’t know what to expect and neither do your doctors.”
She tore off a slip of paper and handed it to me. “If the nausea gets debilitating—as in, you can’t keep down six meals in a row, you lose more than five pounds, or you can’t stomach water—come back and I’ll give you something for the nausea. I prefer not to, because those drugs always seem to get recalled ten years after they’re put out there, but I will if you absolutely cannot nourish yourself. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said, still dazed. “Thank you.”
She nodded briskly. “You’ll need to see someone as soon as you can for your initial ultrasound. You can make the appointment up front now, or with your regular doctor if you have one. Either way, make sure you get seen in a timely fashion. Most problems can be detected and accounted for so long as you catch them early. That is, of course, if you decide to keep the baby. The choice is yours; make a good one for you.”
“I will,” I promised.
Still dazed, I left the clinic to go retrieve my bag. To my surprise, it was still there in the bathroom, untouched. The lecture was wrapping up and I had missed all of the important points, but somehow, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Suddenly feeling that I couldn’t bear to be around so many people and their curious eyes, I collected my things and left.
It was a cool day. The briny breeze blowing off the bay calmed my nerves and woke my brain from its stunned trance. I walked figure eights around an abandoned pavilion, and I thought about my life. Up in the morning for class, school all day. Get off school, go to work, and work well into the night. That was it.
And I’m barely getting by, all by myself. Babies cost a ton of money. How am I going to afford this kid?
School would be out before the baby would. I could get a second job, I reasoned. But then, who would take care of the baby, and when would I see my child? No, that wouldn’t do. If I were going to go that route, I might as well just give the baby up for adoption.
The thought made me gasp as a shard of sheer pain pierced my heart. I couldn’t do that. Giving up the baby in any way, shape, or form was out of the question. I had already developed some kind of primal bond with it before I even knew it was there. I didn’t know how that was possible, but I knew it was true. This baby was mine, and I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way.
“Takes two to make a baby,” I told my anxious heart. “He has the right to know.”
I argued with myself for several minutes. He had never called again after the night he’d canceled the date. No calls, no texts; he’d ghosted me. Money had transformed Miles from a kind, humorous, rough-around-the-edges dreamer to a cold, distant, heartless drone overnight. I would hate to see him now…except that all I wanted was to see him.
“That’s your hormones talking,” I told myself wryly. “You don’t really want to see him. He ghosted you, remember?”
Accidental Triplets - A Secret Babies for the Billionaire Romance Page 19
