by Alice Ward
To my surprise, I wasn’t. I held out my hand to check for shaking fingers, but I was steady there too. “I’m actually surprised at how calm I am.”
She sprayed a curl, trying to force my normally straight hair into some semblance of beachy waves. “I’m not surprised. You’ve worked hard for today.”
I had worked hard.
Zane had moved into my little D.C. apartment until we found a house we both loved. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was spacious with large rooms and wide doorways that gave me plenty of space to wheel around. A heated pool in the backyard was a place Zane would often find me when I wasn’t in the FBI crime lab, where I’d begun to work three days a week.
He built a gym and hired a therapist as promised. Over the months, I grew stronger, and my legs slowly began to move at my command. I wasn’t ready for a marathon, or even a ten-yard dash, but I could do what I’d strove to do today. I would walk down the aisle to my man.
Mom came out of the bedroom, turning in a circle. “So, how do I look?”
A slenderizing column dress in the palest blue had Mom looking like a fashion model. “Hey, now. You aren’t supposed to outshine the bride.”
She swept her hand down the dress and fluttered her eyelashes at me. “This old thing?” Then she sighed and the tip of her nose turned pink. “Sweetheart, you look so beautiful.”
Looking back into the mirror, I felt beautiful too.
Miranda swiped at her eyes. “Okay you two. Knock it off. No ruining of makeup until the ceremony at least.”
Dad stepped into the room, looking dashing in super trendy khaki suit I’d chosen for the occasion. Mom and I had gone round and round about the dress code for the wedding. She “envisioned” formal while I wanted comfort and ease during my paradise bound nuptials.
I won, and Dad looked wonderful. I couldn’t wait to see Zane in his suit too.
Miranda made the last curl. “There you go. You look gorgeous.”
I looked closer, impressed with my friend’s many talents. She’d even done my makeup, and I was glowing. I almost didn’t recognize myself.
The past year hadn’t been all rainbows and butterflies. Zane and I fought. Not knockdown, drag out like at the beginning of our relationship, but we still snarled and spat at each other at times. Fighting then making up.
The fighting mainly revolved around my work, and how, now that I was benched in the crime lab, it was me who didn’t want him to join the bureau. I didn’t want him to be in danger.
He found that pretty ironic. I guessed I found it ironic too.
He’d finally relented, and we’d come to a mutual agreement. I would work in the crime lab a couple days a week, and he would continue to be my beck-and-call playboy. So far, it was working out great for me, for obvious reasons. For Zane, taking care of me tapped into his naturally protective nature.
I’d learned to not take his hovering as proof that he didn’t think I could do things on my own. It was just his way. And it was a good way once I got used to it. He didn’t clip my wings. He just provided me a safe place to land if I fell.
As he and I grew closer, Zane began to show more interest in his family’s business. He didn’t want to work in the company full time, but he joined the board of directors, pleasing his parents to no end.
And speaking of his parents. I loved them. Adored them. They adored me too.
I was happy.
And more than anything, I was content.
I’d made my peace with Sloane, my friend. The girl who had become my alter ego. The girl to whom I always had something to prove.
Sloane Anderson was dead. The YouTube video that went viral was proof.
Charles Smith and his buddies were still battling it out in court, and they probably would for years. That was okay. The judge refused to grant him bail, believing him to be a flight risk.
Through the power of social media, I learned that Grace had dumped his ass and was now arm candy for another sleazy-looking man. It was too bad. I’d genuinely liked her, but she made her own choices. I silently wished her well.
Miranda clapped her hands together loudly, snapping me out of my memories. “Game time, people.”
I smiled at my friend. “Thank you for everything.”
She kissed my cheek. “You’re welcome. Now go out there and get this done. My vacation clock is ticking and I want to spend all the time I can with my man.”
I laughed. Miranda and her tall, dark, and handsome were going strong. In fact, she and Gavin had a neighboring bungalow, completing our small, intimate group.
“Ready, honey?” Dad came to me, extending his arm as Mom and Miranda went on ahead. “Time to give my beautiful daughter away.” He kissed my cheek, and we left the bungalow.
I froze. “What is that?”
I eyed the brightly decorated golf cart sitting on the dock.
Dad winked at me. “Your chariot, darling. I knew you didn’t want to be in your wheelchair today so…” he extended his arm in Vanna White fashion, “viola.”
Tears pricked my eyes. He was right. I didn’t want to be in my wheelchair, and refused to go down the aisle in one. I’d known I wouldn’t have the strength to navigate the island on my own and had mentally submitted to the idea that I wouldn’t be able to completely abandon it.
“It’s perfect.” I wrinkled my nose at the balloons and streamers. “Gaudy, but absolutely perfect.”
Off we went toward the gorgeous secluded section of the beach where we would exchange our vows. As we approached, the sky changed colors above us as the sun began its evening decline.
Knowing I might have trouble navigating over the sand, the wedding planner had a specially made bamboo runner brought in. Dad parked and squeezed my hand. “Ready, sweetheart?”
I took in the scene before me. Flower encrusted arches ran down the petal covered bamboo runner, at the end of which the most important part was standing.
Zane.
His eyes didn’t leave me as I took Dad’s arm and walked toward him.
Walked.
It was slow, but I was in no hurry as the cello’s soothing notes ushered me on.
Walked.
As the sky all around us burned with color.
Walked.
To my future. My family. My everything.
Then I was there, and Dad was kissing my cheek, and Zane’s hands were in mine.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, tears shimmering in his eyes.
“So are you.”
My last identity change was taking place today. In a few moments, I would be Lilly Boyd, and I’d hold on to that name for the rest of my life.
“Dearly beloved…”
The pastor began the official ceremony. I heard the words as clearly as I heard the background music of the waves washing back and forth over the sand.
“Do you, Slilly Carlyle take Zane Boyd to be…”
Really?
Very slowly, I turned my head to look the pastor in the eye. He grinned and sliced his eyes toward Zane, who was grinning too.
Instead of poking him in the chest, I just shrugged. What the hell did it matter?
“I do. I absolutely, positively do.”
And I did.
And we did.
And the ceremony was over with Zane sweeping me into his arms.
He kissed my nose. “I thought you were going to punch me back there.”
I pressed my lips close to his ear. “Paybacks are hell. I brought my vibrator for later. Bzzzz.”
He laughed and kissed me hard. “You’re joking, right?” Was that fear I saw in his eyes?
I could use that.
“Maybe I was,” I teased, running my hand through his hair. “Maybe I wasn’t.”
The thing was… we had the rest of our lives to find out.
THE END
Continue on to read a special sneak peek of my recent and most successful release so far, The Surprise. This book reached a rank of #4 in all of Amazon!
A Sneak Pe
ek
THE SURPRISE
Alice Ward
CHAPTER ONE
Scarlett
“We have two more coming up from ER!”
I stared at Melinda in disbelief, but the charge nurse just shot me a sympathetic look and kept running down the hall of the labor and delivery unit where I’d spent the past twelve hours. And where I’d possibly spend the next who knew how long. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly seven, nearly time for my shift to end, but one thing was for sure… from the looks of it, I wouldn’t be going home for the next couple hours at least.
A call bell rang, and I looked up to see that it was the birthing mother from hell — again. I sighed and ran an arm over my brow. I stuffed a peanut butter cracker into my mouth and downed two swallows of my Snapple Peach Tea before straightening my ponytail and heading to her room.
Plastering on a smile, I headed to the patient’s bedside, barely able to suppress the chuckle that wanted to burst from me each time I saw how ridiculous the woman looked. It didn’t matter how elegant our most sophisticated birthing room was decorated, nothing was good enough for this first-time mom. Upon arrival, she’d had her “people” change the sheets of the hospital bed from the practical white cotton-poly mix to ridiculously expensive — and slippery — pink silk.
“In honor of our precious daughter’s birth,” the primping diva told me when I first saw the room’s transformation as she smoothed the newly added furry white blanket with her bejeweled hand.
Of course, it wasn’t.
Mrs. Celine Harlington-Worthington, the Fifth — aka Cece-Gorgeous on Instagram — only thought of herself and hadn’t stopped taking selfies since her arrival ten hours ago. Her accoutrements for the glorious occasion had nothing to do with the baby in her womb. The decorations included pale pink twinkle lights that cast a soft glow around the woman — the better to selfie herself with, no doubt. The outrageously expensive looking silk gown that was going to be ruined in a few hours showed off super slim, tanned arms and breasts that were bigger than my ample ass cheeks. And silliest of all, the diamond encrusted tiara perched on the twenty-two-year-old’s head appeared to have real diamonds. The curling iron on the nearby nightstand was being carefully watched by her stylist, who checked her hair and makeup every few minutes, pulling from the suitcase of cosmetics by her side as needed.
Mrs. Harlington-Worthington, the Fifth wasn’t a queen. Or a princess. She was worse. One of those Instagram models who made money from showing off her tits and ass… and now her baby was going to be swept down that money track too. Not that she needed it. She’d snagged an older billionaire dude who called her precious and sweedums. She was semi seriously on my list for a psych eval, but my smile stayed in place as I asked the soon-to-be momster, “How may I serve you?”
Crap. I hadn’t meant for it to come out exactly that way.
Mrs. HW5 didn’t seem to mind. “I think you should check me again. I’m quite certain I’m at ten. I just can’t imagine my body taking so long. I’ve been preparing for this moment for weeks, and I’m quite behind schedule.”
I suppressed a sigh and headed over to the monitor to look at her strip. Baby looked good. Mom looked good — on paper. “I checked you just a half hour ago. I doubt there has been much change.” Not with these wimpy ass contractions, I wanted to add but didn’t. Her doctor needed to be shot for admitting her this early in labor. Especially on an evening like this.
She raised her chin, and the reflection from one of the diamonds in the tiara nearly blinded me as it refracted the light. Her perfectly glossed pink lips pursed together. “I’m quite sure you’re mistaken. I can feel my body opening in glorious anticipation of Marie Claire’s entrance into our world.”
This poor baby.
I glanced at Mr. Worthington, the Fifth, who was still tapping away at his laptop. He hadn’t even lifted his head since I entered the room, his thick silver-streaked black hair shining in the pink ambiance of the lighting. He was at least forty years her senior and was “very busy with his important work” as Mrs. HW5 told me several times.
“Celine, I—” I stopped when she raised an eyebrow, then cleared my throat, forgetting about my earlier instructions to use her formal married name. “Mrs. Harlington-Worthington, the Fifth, I—” Another call bell sounded at the nurses’ station, drawing my attention. “I’ll be right back.”
Her overly drawn smoky cat eyes blinked rapidly at me, the long fake lashes reminding me of spider legs as they swept her bronzed and highlighted cheeks. “But, I want to be checked now.” Her cool blue eyes dropped to my shoes and crawled their way back up my pink and chocolate-brown scrubs. “And please do change before the baby’s born.” She glanced at her stylist, who jumped to attention, reminding me of what a soldier would do for a general. “Can you do something with her? Makeup, hair.” She gave a tight smile as her cool blue eyes assessed me. “Something more, um, photo friendly.” Her eyes grew large and she inhaled a great gasp, and I wondered if she was finally feeling a contraction. When she thrust a finger into the air, I realized she’d just had an idea. A terrible idea by the way she was eyeing me. “We’ll do a makeover for her! Won’t that be delightful? We’ll call it Ambush Makeover, Nurse Edition, and it—”
I held up my hands as if warding off a slap. “Um, no. Thank you for the kind offer, but no.”
Mrs. HW5 thrusted her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout, and I was nearly overjoyed to see the pink smear of her gloss create a semicircle on her chin. My delight lasted only an instant before the stylist swept in and whisked the gooey flaw away, then pressed some powder to her already unshiny nose.
Heat flooded my face. I could feel it scorch its way up my neck and to my cheeks. Not from embarrassment of how I knew I looked at the moment, but from the sheer audacity of this woman. This was New York. I had divas aplenty on this ward. But this was the diva of all divas, and I wanted to slap the stupid tiara off her hair extensions and thrust her curling iron up her tight ass.
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted her to know that all twelve of our birthing room beds were full and that we had patients vying for an open one downstairs. I wanted to chide that she shouldn’t even be admitted yet, but because her husband pretty much owned half of New York City, her every wish had been granted by a suck-ass doctor who refused to say no when the very first contraction hit.
I wanted her to know that, in the room next to hers, a woman was going through labor too, but would be pushing out a baby who had already died from profound anencephalies, and she and her family knew they’d never hear that first precious cry. I wanted her to know that we’d already had another fetal death earlier this week. And I’d been the one who washed the vernix from the little boy’s limbs and swaddled him like I’d swaddle any newborn, handing him over to his sobbing mother and the father who looked like a feather would knock him off his chair.
I wanted to shout at her about the dejected thirteen-year-old down the hall, who’d be handing her baby over to the overjoyed adoptive parents also in the room—and who would be going to live at a friend’s house after discharge because her parents had kicked her out when they learned she was pregnant.
I wanted to shout at this pampered princess that, three doors down, a mother had sacrificed her life for the sake of her child. The thirty-one-year-old woman had been diagnosed with brain cancer when she was nine weeks pregnant. She’d foregone chemotherapy and treatment so that the baby could be born healthy. She might get to spend three months with him, but probably less. She and her son would go home tomorrow morning, and her family would wait for the cruel reality of her painful death.
But I didn’t shout any of those things, because I also knew just how much this mom deserved her special day too. Yeah, she might be over the top, by a lot. She might be annoying as hell. She might even deserve to have that damn tiara yanked from her golden head... but today was precious. And I’d do whatever it took to make sure her baby came into this world safely.
And I
don’t get my ass sued or Instagramed into the Nursing Hall of Shame.
As an L&D nurse, I loved my job, no matter how horrible the mom or the situation. It had been what I wanted to do since I was young and pretended my first Barbie was in labor with Ken holding her hand. Of course, at that time, I thought babies came from their mother’s belly buttons. It wasn’t until I went to live on my aunt and uncle’s farm in upstate New York when I was nearly eight that I learned the truth by witnessing a black and white calf come into the world. Yes, it was messy, but I’d been hypnotized by the process. I’d loved it. From that moment on, I watched almost all the farm animals give birth. I rubbed bellies, and when I was older, the vet would let me help, guiding me through every step while answering my plethora of questions.
Excusing myself from the room, I ran to the nurses’ station and hit the button to answer the call button for room ten, wondering where everyone was. “How can I help you?” I asked, keeping my voice as courteous as possible.
“Can my wife have more ice chips, please?”
I rolled my eyes but forced a bright smile on my face, hoping the action would come across in my voice. I checked the wife’s name on the board to confirm she was allowed this bit of comfort. She was. “Absolutely. Just a moment.”
Squirting out a hand full of antibacterial foam and vigorously rubbing it into my palms and between my fingers, I rushed to the pantry and scooped up a cup of ice, still wondering where everyone was. Today had been crazy, and the night didn’t seem to be getting much better.
There was a full moon, and I didn’t care how many people said it was an old wives’ tale, the change in moon did seem to affect amniotic fluid as much as it did the waves in the ocean. In addition to that, a significant barometric pressure shift had pressed down on the entire east coast from an incoming strain of storms. My sinuses felt it, and it seemed pregnant women near their due dates were feeling it too. Plus, it was September, one of our busiest months. Apparently, it was too cold in December and January to do anything but have sex in this town, so we always had a slew of late summer and early fall babies. And today, we were swamped with them.
