The Debt: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Kelly Favor

  Raven texted Skylar and let her know that she was on her way, and Skylar replied that it wasn’t necessary, but as Raven insisted, soon Skylar admitted that she wanted her there.

  Once they got on the highway, the traffic broke up and they were simply driving fast, and there was a quiet as they finally settled back and Raven put her phone away.

  She looked over at Jake, who was staring out the window, his expression thoughtful.

  “Thank you,” she said, breaking the silence.

  Jake turned and looked at her. “How’s your friend doing?”

  “She’s just waiting right now. She says the emergency room’s busy.”

  He shook his head. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Jake, you don’t have to do this,” Raven told him.

  “Do what?”

  “You don’t have to come with me and get police escorts…” but then Raven realized she didn’t want to discourage Jake from helping out.

  The truth was, his presence was helping to keep her calm.

  “Listen, if you’re worried about her then so am I,” Jake said, gazing evenly at her. “And if I’m worried about someone, I damn well pull strings wherever I can.”

  “You’re right,” Raven said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He smiled at her, but she could see that there was strain in his eyes, and then he went back to staring out his window.

  Eventually they arrived at the hospital and were dropped off right out in front of the Emergency Room entrance. Jake led the way inside, where people who noticed him went wide eyed, like they were seeing a ghost.

  Raven found Skylar sitting alone in the corner of the waiting room, reading a magazine, her face pale and harried.

  “Hey, Sky,” Raven said, and Skylar looked up and saw her.

  Skylar’s face transformed as a look of relief passed over her features. “Thank God you came,” she said, and then her expression crumpled. Quickly followed by tears.

  Raven went and hugged her, and held her tightly. “Shhh….it’s okay. It’s okay, Sky. I promise.” She rocked Skylar gently and whispered encouragement in her friend’s ear.

  Skylar sniffled and laid her cheek on Raven’s shoulder, and Raven stroked her hair, soothing her.

  “Ummm…Raven?” Skylar said.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s a guy standing here looking at me, and I could swear he’s a dead ringer for Jake Novak.”

  “Oh. That’s because it is Jake Novak,” Raven said, pulling back.

  Jake was standing in front of them with his arms folded. “Hey,” he said, flashing that million-dollar smile for a moment.

  “Hey,” Skylar said, and now her voice shook for a different reason.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I’m Skylar,” she told him. “Skylar Ward.”

  “Jake Novak,” he told her, extending his hand.

  “I know who you are.” She reached out and shook his hand. “I usually look much prettier than this,” she explained.

  “You look great,” Jake replied. Then he turned to Raven. “I’m going to have a word with these people and see if we can get her seen right away.”

  “Okay,” Raven said.

  “It’s like a two hour wait,” Skylar told them. “They told me there’s no helping it.”

  Raven looked around and she had to admit that the waiting room was busy, with most seats occupied. And some of the people waiting looked much worse off than Skylar.

  Jake shrugged. “It never hurts to try,” he said, and then turned and walked up to the admitting counter.

  As soon as he was gone, Skylar turned to Raven.

  “What the hell is going on?” she whispered about as loud as a whisper could be.

  Raven sighed. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “Maybe you should begin by explaining how the heck you end up bringing Jake Novak to visit me in the Emergency Room.”

  “Well, it’s kind of weird.”

  “Yeah, it must be really fucking weird.”

  Raven laughed and then Skylar joined her. It felt nice to see Skylar relaxed enough to laugh a little.

  “I kind of got…like…a temp job working for him,” Raven said, deciding that this was a close enough approximation to the truth.

  “Jake Novak hires temps now? To do what exactly?”

  “Ummm….social media?”

  Skylar stared hard at her. And then her mouth made the shape of a perfectly round circle. “Oh my God. Are you dating him? Are you dating Jake Novak?”

  “Shhh….quiet, Sky!” Raven said, grabbing her hand. “I’m not. We’re not.”

  “Come on, nothing else makes any sense.”

  “We aren’t dating, though. We aren’t.” She looked Skylar right in her eyes, showing that she was being truthful. “I work for him, he hired me to do some social media stuff.”

  “What the heck do you know about social media? Aren’t there, like, professionals for that? You’re a waitress,” Skylar reminded her. “A waitress that got fired.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I guess I got lucky.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Skylar was staring at Jake, and as Raven followed her gaze, she saw that he was now conversing with a doctor. The doctor was nodding with a very serious look on his face, and then glancing over at them. Suddenly, the doctor was heading towards them.

  He was a tall, thin man with very little hair on his head and a couple of large moles on his cheek and chin. Jake walked over with him.

  “Hi, I’m Doctor Stieglitz,” he said, holding out his hand, and Skylar shook it.

  “I’m Skylar.”

  “Why don’t you come with me, Skylar. We’ll get you looked at right away, okay?”

  “Really?”

  The doctor nodded. “Absolutely.” He turned to Jake. “Sound good?”

  “Sounds good, Dr. Steiglitz.” Jake smiled.

  “And maybe you can sign an autograph for my daughter,” Dr. Steiglitz said. “She’s going to be so excited when I tell her I met you.”

  Jake laughed. “I’ll do you one better. How does front row tickets to tomorrow night’s show sound?”

  The doctor’s jaw dropped open. “That’s too kind.”

  “My pleasure,” Jake said. “I’ll give you my manager’s number and he’ll set it up, okay?”

  The doctor was clearly pleased, as he gently led Skylar back to the examination room.

  They disappeared through a set of double doors.

  Raven sat there, stunned at the change that had come over Jake. He took a seat next to her, reclining, looking up at the television on the wall across the waiting room.

  He seemed oblivious to the unabashed staring and whispers from the staff and patients that all were catching on to the fact that he was sitting in their midst.

  “Jake…” she said, her voice catching in her throat.

  Jake looked at her. “Hey, I get it. I really do, Raven. You don’t need to even go there.”

  “I have to thank you.”

  And then he did the next most surprising thing he could have done, reaching out and touching her cheek softly. As his fingers grazed her cheek, she nearly broke down. It felt too good, too real—as if maybe the mean, selfish and untrusting Jake Novak that she’d been seeing up to that point wasn’t the real Jake at all.

  The way he was looking at her, the softness of his touch, it all told her that underneath that superficial version of him was another person altogether.

  “It’s going to be okay, Raven.” He whispered it softly to her. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

  They sat and waited together, and although a few girls came over and requested him to sign his autograph on various pieces of paper (one of them used a magazine straight off the emergency room table), mostly they were left alone.

  Jake was texting a little and then he would watch TV.

  His presence was calming, like a soothing balm. He just seemed so completely ab
le to handle whatever was thrown his way, and Raven was reminded of the fact that he’d done time fighting overseas, and after seeing combat, there probably wasn’t much that threw him for a loop anymore.

  But when the doctor emerged alone from the examination rooms and waved them over, Raven suddenly didn’t feel so calm anymore.

  “I feel sick,” she said under her breath, as she stood up, her legs weak.

  Jake grabbed her hand. “Remember what I said. Everything will be fine, Raven.”

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. She couldn’t believe Jake Novak was holding her hand, comforting her.

  What parallel universe was this?

  What was going on here?

  They met the doctor near the doors. “We should talk,” he said. “Come with me to the examination room.”

  “Is everything okay?” Raven asked.

  “Just come with me.” Dr. Stieglitz was no longer smiling or talking about tickets to Jake’s show.

  He led them to the examination room, where Skylar was waiting. She was dressed, looking pale and anxious, her eyes darting from side to side as she bit her thumbnail.

  The doctor closed the door and motioned them to have a seat. Raven sat next to Skylar and put her hand on her shoulder.

  “I performed a pelvic exam on Skylar,” he said, “and I did unfortunately find something—a mass on her cervix. It’s a fairly large mass, and I must say I’m concerned about the size of it.” The doctor stroked his chin and pursed his lips.

  “Well we need to get her in with a specialist,” Jake said.

  “I’ve already called over to a gynecologic oncologist and she has an appointment free the day after tomorrow—“

  “That’s not soon enough,” Jake interrupted. “She needs to be seen immediately.”

  Dr. Stieglitz seemed annoyed for the first time. Turning his attention directly to Jake, he said, “I understand that you’re very concerned, Mr. Novak. But despite your stature in the entertainment industry, I can’t simply force very busy specialists to take a patient on such short notice. It was actually very lucky that I was able to get her seen in a day’s time.”

  Raven would’ve wilted under the doctor’s withering stare, but Jake didn’t even move a muscle. “I’m assuming she’s going to need a biopsy,” Jake said.

  “Yes, they’ll need to biopsy the mass to check for malignancy.”

  “Then she needs to get in now so we can get results back yesterday,” Jake said. He was on his cell phone and walking out the door, leaving the doctor and Raven and Skylar alone in the exam room.

  Dr. Stieglitz sighed. “Sometimes people get a distorted notion of how things work when they’re so used to not having to wait. But this really is the best we can do.”

  Raven nodded. “Okay, thanks, Doctor Stieglitz.”

  “I’ve given Skylar the information about her gynecologist. All she needs to do is show up the day after tomorrow and the rest will take care of itself.”

  He ushered them out of the exam room and wished Skylar luck, but he didn’t tell her not to worry, he didn’t say that the mass was probably not malignant.

  In fact, Raven thought that he was very pessimistic about it—as if he already knew that Skylar had cancer.

  When they got out to the waiting room lobby, Jake was nowhere to be found. “Do you think he got mad and left?” Skylar asked.

  “Don’t worry about Jake,” Raven replied, but she was searching for him as well.

  There was no way he would just leave like that, would he?

  But then again, she didn’t really know anything about him. It seemed like Jake was capable of just about anything, and not all of it was good.

  “I’m not going to die, am I?” Skylar asked.

  Raven looked at her friend’s pale, frightened face. “Absolutely not.”

  “I have this awful feeling…”

  “You’re scared, that’s totally normal, Sky. But it doesn’t mean anything bad’s happening.”

  “I don’t have insurance,” Skylar told her. “If something’s wrong, how am I going to pay?”

  “Don’t worry about that right now. You need to take care of yourself, and that means not stressing out about things before they even happen.” Raven put an arm around her friend and hugged her tightly. “Let me worry about all of that.”

  “You don’t even have a real job, you’re a temp!”

  True, Raven thought, but that thirty grand might come in handy if Skylar really was sick and needed money for medical bills.

  She couldn’t tell Skylar any of that, though.

  Finally, they spotted Jake on the phone outside the front doors. He turned to the window and waved at them.

  Raven’s heart leapt as she saw that he hadn’t gone anywhere. He was staying right there, he hadn’t left in a fit of rage. He wasn’t just going to wash his hands of them like that.

  When they got outside, Jake seemed in good spirits. “Listen, I was able to get in touch with a friend of mine at Sloan Kettering in New York. We’ve got an earlier appointment, so you won’t need to wait until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh my God,” Skylar said, her eyes filling with tears. “You got me an appointment tomorrow?”

  “I’ll do you one better,” Jake said. “I got you an appointment tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Raven said, shaking her head. “I don’t get it. New York is hours away and its nighttime. Gynecologists don’t work in the middle of the night.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Jake said, glancing at Raven with a trace of a smirk.

  “Oh, Jake.” She felt the emotion welling up again and had to take a moment so as not to break down in tears.

  But Skylar threw her arms around him. “Thank you.”

  He hugged her back, looking at Raven all the while. “Come on,” he said. “We have a helicopter to catch.”

  Raven was flying in a helicopter high over Manhattan. She couldn’t believe it.

  She was strapped and buckled into her seat, wearing a helmet with a headset to communicate, because the noise volume of the motor, wind, and propeller was so loud that she wouldn’t have been able to hear anyone otherwise.

  Next to her in the back, Skylar sat looking out her window.

  In front, Jake sat beside the pilot, who occasionally told them about some of the landmarks they were passing as they flew through the night sky.

  It was absolutely beautiful, and the skyline was lit up like a million tiny stars sprinkling across the earth. They were getting closer and closer to landing, and the helicopter started to slowly descend.

  She was scared, as she’d always possessed a healthy fear of heights. But at the same time, seeing Jake up front and hearing his voice come through her headset seemed to calm her nerves yet again.

  He and the pilot had been trading jokes most of the way. “Okay, I’m going to bring ‘er in, folks,” the pilot drawled, and suddenly they were dropping rapidly enough for Raven’s stomach to feel like it went into her throat.

  She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the seat, trying not to panic.

  “Hey, looks like you bored Raven to tears,” Jake laughed through the microphone. “I just looked back and she’s knocked out asleep.”

  “Oh, well in that case,” the pilot said, “let’s wake her up!” And then he began taking them down even faster, so fast that Raven and Skylar both let out screams.

  Jake was laughing like this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  The pilot was chuckling too. “Okay, okay, that was some pilot humor,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “Yeah, I won’t be recommending you to my friends,” Skylar told him. But she was grinning now too.

  “We’re landing at Pier 6 right on the water,” the pilot stated. “I hope you had a nice flight.”

  “It was great up ‘til that last part,” Raven said.

  And then the pilot brought the helicopter down and landed it without further incident. They got unstrapped and got
out, and Jake spoke for a minute or two with the pilot before they left the heliport.

  There was a car waiting to take them to Sloan Kettering hospital nearby.

  As they got in the car and were whisked away from Pier 6 to the next destination, Raven couldn’t get over how lucky she felt. Maybe all of these horrible things that had happened—all the things that had gone on since being tricked into signing that contract with Club Alpha—maybe everything had been for a good reason.

  Now that it appeared as though Skylar might really be sick, having met Jake Novak seemed like just about the best thing that could’ve happened.

  And Skylar already seemed to be doing better. At one point during the car ride, she turned and whispered in Raven’s ear. “Jake Novak might just be the most amazing man I’ve ever met in my life. I feel like he’s somehow going to make this all okay, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Raven answered honestly, feeling a tingle in her belly as she looked at Jake, sitting in the front passenger seat, chatting with the driver of the car. Even the sound of Jake’s voice had the capacity to calm her frayed nerves.

  He was relaxed, at ease in his own skin, knew he could get things done. He refused to be backed down by someone else’s authority, like how he’d told that doctor in Boston that they needed to get Skylar seen sooner. And then he’d gone and made it happen.

  Jake didn’t even know Skylar and he hardly knew Raven, yet he was there taking time out of his schedule to help them. He’d been through a grinding concert performance and was likely exhausted, but you’d never have known it based on his actions.

  How had she misjudged him so badly? Why hadn’t she been able to see that there was much more to him then the little slice she’d seen at the party and in his hotel room?

  Well, the truth was that he’d kept that part of himself from her. Jake hadn’t seemed to want her to know that there was more to him. It was only this emergency that had brought it to the forefront.

  They pulled up to Sloan Kettering and were let off out front, where a shorter woman in an overcoat greeted them just outside the entrance. She had brown curly hair, a long, narrow nose, and her smile was genuine. “Jake?” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied, “and you must be Dr. Lara.”