Sin-Jin hung up. His face was ashen as he looked at Mrs. Farley. “Have my car waiting by the time I get to the lobby,” he requested, hurrying out the door. “And tell Carver to take over.”
He’s back, Mrs. Farley thought, dialing. She crossed her fingers that everything was all right.
Sin-Jin didn’t remember driving. He remembered getting into his car and then arriving at Blair. The way to the hospital was a blur of twists and turns and yellow lights he just barely squeaked through.
There was something wrong with the baby and she hadn’t called him.
Damn it, didn’t she know he’d be there for her? For the baby?
How the hell could she? he upbraided himself. The last thing he’d done was threaten her with a lawsuit. You didn’t turn to people like that in your time of need. You did your best to avoid them. He knew that.
He cursed himself savagely.
Not bothering to search through the lot for a space, Sin-Jin surrendered his Mercedes to the parking valet at the hospital’s entrance. Tossing the keys toward the attendant, he raced through the electronic doors.
He’d barely made it inside when he heard the valet calling after him. “Hey, mister. Mister! You forgot your ticket.”
The attendant ran after him. Sin-Jin paused only long enough to grab the ticket that the red-vested man thrust at him. “Thanks.” The valet looked a little wary of him as he stepped back.
Sin-Jin caught sight of his reflection in the glass doors. He looked like a madman. He did his best to pull himself together. Frightening hospital personnel wouldn’t help him find Sherry and the baby.
The information desk was immediately to his left. “I’m looking for a Sherry Campbell,” he told the woman behind the desk. “No, wait, I mean John Campbell. He would have been admitted sometime today, yesterday, I’m not sure,” he confessed.
“What for?” the woman asked kindly.
“He’s an infant,” Sin-Jin began, realizing that his thoughts were scattered like so many raindrops in a storm. “Heart trouble,” he clarified. “I’m sorry, I really don’t—”
“Right here,” the woman informed him softly, her finger isolating the baby’s name on her screen. “He’s in the neonatal section. Admitted last night.”
Last night. While he had been calling her. Guilt twisted inside of him.
“That’s on the—”
“I know where it is,” he said, cutting her off, then adding, “Thank you,” before he turned on his heel.
As he began to hurry down the corridor that eventually led to the tower elevators, something made him look toward his right, toward the small, serene room that served as the hospital’s chapel.
She was there.
His heart stood still. Walking to the entrance of the small room on someone else’s feet, he called out to her, his voice throbbing with emotion.
“Sherry.”
At first she thought she only imagined his voice. Kneeling, her head bowed, Sherry had been praying so hard that she’d lost track of her surroundings and the time. She’d left her parents upstairs with the baby and had come down here to ask for help.
Almost afraid, she turned away from the cross on the wall. He was standing in the entrance.
Sin-Jin.
He looked like an answer to a prayer.
She rose to her feet in slow motion. Her first impulse was to throw herself into his arms, to sob her heart out and somehow have him take the pain away.
But she’d been so hurt, felt so abandoned when he’d left, she couldn’t bring herself to risk being rebuffed again. When Drew had walked out on her, she’d been devastated, but that feeling didn’t begin to compare with the way she’d felt when Sin-Jin had left her that morning. Like there was no reason to go on.
But there was a reason, there was Johnny. She needed to go on, to be strong for him. And now her baby was ill. She didn’t know if she could bear it.
“What are you doing here?”
Her voice was cold, distant. He knew he deserved it, but it still hurt to hear her like that. Hurt to think that she was going through this without him. “More important, what are you doing here without me?”
Feeling lost. She tossed her head, trying hard to look strong, to look as if what he had done to her hadn’t gutted the very foundations of her world. “Doing the very best I can.”
He made his way into the room slowly, invading her space an inch at a time. “Why didn’t you call me?”
How could he even ask her that question? “Why?” she echoed incredulously. “Because you made it perfectly clear that you didn’t want me in your life.”
“I was an ass.”
The bluntness of his admission took the wind out of her sails. Her hastily newly reconstructed defenses slipped. “Nobody’s arguing.”
“Look.” Taking her hand, Sin-Jin sat down with her in the pew. “It doesn’t really justify anything, but there’s a lot of baggage in my life, a lot of emotional scarring. I was afraid to get involved, afraid to allow myself to love someone because I didn’t want to get on that merry-go-round that my parents were on.” He looked into her eyes, praying she could understand. “Didn’t want to have my heart ripped out of me.”
She shook her head. She understood in theory, but not in practice. How could he think that of her? “Did I look like the kind of person who goes around ripping people’s hearts out for a hobby?”
He couldn’t help smiling at the ludicrousness of the image. “No.”
Sherry threw up her hands helplessly. “Well then?”
He could only resort to the simple phrase, meaning it from the bottom of his heart. “I’m sorry.”
Her world had been tipped over in the past twenty-four hours, ever since she’d taken Johnny in to his pediatrician, her mother’s instinct telling her that something was wrong with her baby. He’d been too listless lately.
She hated being right.
Sherry shrugged, looking away. “Doesn’t matter, anyway.”
Sin-Jin took hold of her hand, forcing her to look at him.
“Yes, it does,” he insisted. “It matters a great deal. It matters to me. For what it’s worth, Sherry, I love you and I want to take care of you.” He’d never meant anything more in his life. “You and Johnny.”
She drew herself up, unconsciously still leaving her hands in his. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.” Didn’t he understand? “I need someone to be there, that’s all.”
He intended to do whatever it took. “Then I’ll be there,” he swore. “And I’ll help take care of Johnny.”
Emotions warred within her. She was afraid to believe him. Afraid and, oh, so tired. She felt as if the past twenty-four hours had been an eternity. “Don’t put yourself out.”
“I’m not, damn it. I want to.” He struggled to contain his temper. “I will do whatever it takes to make you forgive me.” He was pleading now, fighting for his very life. She had to forgive him. “You want me in a hair shirt, you got it. You want it in skywriting, you got it.” His voice became deadly serious. “You want to publish that article, you got it. I’ll even give you details. It’ll be your exclusive.”
The article didn’t matter. It’d stopped mattering the night of her son’s christening, when he had let her into his life, however briefly. She knew she couldn’t betray that trust, no matter the professional cost.
She shook her head. “All I want is for my son to be all right.”
He felt his heart twisting in his chest, wishing he could take the burden off her shoulders. “What’s wrong with him?”
There was a long, technical name for the condition. Dr. DuCane had been very patient, very kind as she had explained it to her. She’d called in a heart surgeon, a Dr. Lukas Graywolf, and between the two of them, they had gone over everything with her and her parents. It had all boiled down to one thing for her: Johnny’s heart had a slight tear and needed to be operated on. If it wasn’t, he might not make it to his fifth birthday.
“He needs cor
rective heart surgery. He’s in surgery right now.” She looked up at him. “And I am so scared.”
He took her into his arms. “So am I.” She looked at him, stunned by the admission. “But he’ll be all right. I swear to you he’ll be all right. He’ll have the finest doctors in the world. Whatever it takes. And when he gets through this—and he will—he can be our ring bearer.”
“Ring bearer?” Her mind felt like a vast wasteland. She tried to focus and make sense of what he was saying to her. “He’s only two months old.”
He had that covered. “Mrs. Farley can push him in a carriage. We’ll run a string through the ring and attach it to his hand. Greta will even trot at his side. It’ll work.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you—are you proposing to me?”
He knew he was making a mess of it, but this wasn’t an area he had any experience in. “Badly—but this is my first time. My only time,” he amended. “Unless you say no, then I plan to ask you every day of your life until you say yes.”
And suddenly she knew. It was going to be all right. Everything was going to be all right. She smiled at him. “I guess it would save us a lot of time if I said yes, then.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Definitely more efficient.”
She pressed her lips together, suppressing a giddy laugh. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”
Twice in one day. “Mrs. Farley already beat you to that description. Not in so many words, but the general gist was there.”
She allowed herself a moment longer in his arms. “Why, did you ask her to marry you, too?”
“No, only you.” He rose from the pew. “I know that I probably don’t deserve you two, but I want the three of us to be a family. You, me and that wonderful son of yours. I want him to be my son, too.” A part of him thought that he probably had all along.
“I guess, since you were the first one to hold him, it’s only fair.”
“That’s all I want, my fair share of you.” He kissed her and she clung to him. It took them both a moment to realize that they weren’t alone.
Sherry’s eyes widened with fear as she looked at her son’s heart surgeon. “Is he—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Her heart wouldn’t let her.
Tall, stately Lukas Graywolf was quick to set her at ease. “Your son pulled through with flying colors. He’s going to be fine.” He smiled. “Your mother told me where to find you. Whatever you two said in here—” he nodded toward the altar “—obviously worked. He’s in recovery right now, but you’ll be able to see him when they bring him back to the intensive care unit—just a precaution,” he explained when he saw the look on her face. “I’ll be by later.”
She clasped his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Just doing my job.” He hurried away.
Sherry took the handkerchief Sin-Jin held out and dried her eyes. “I guess you brought us luck.”
He took her into his arms again. “That goes double for me.”
As he kissed her, Sin-Jin knew he wasn’t alone anymore.
Epilogue
“My God, Sheila, there’s enough food here to feed the city of San Francisco.” Walking into the kitchen, Connor Campbell shook his head at the wealth of plates spread out on the kitchen table. His wife had added two extra leaves to it just to accommodate all the various items.
Sheila continued arranging the various trays. “Better too much than too little. We don’t want to run out on your grandson’s first birthday party, do you?”
Connor came up behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist, hugging her to him. “So, you’re finally okay with ‘Grandma’?”
“As long as it’s Johnny who’s calling me that, yes. But don’t you be getting no ideas that you’ll be referring to me that way.” She turned around to face her husband, a look of warning in her eye. “Or you’ll find yourself sleeping on the couch, Connor Francis Campbell.”
“Uh-uh.” Sin-Jin walked in to join them. “Three names, sounds like she means it, Connor,” he teased.
Connor locked his arms around Sheila again. “Go tend to your own wife,” he said to his son-in-law. “I’ll handle mine.”
Sin-Jin was the soul of innocence. He indicated the empty bowl he was carrying. “Just came in to refill the pasta salad bowl. They’re eating as if they’ve been starved for three days.”
Sheila was looking at her husband, her hands on her hips as she wrestled out of his hold. “‘Handle’ now is it?”
Connor raised his hands in abject surrender. “Just an expression, love, just an expression.”
Sin-Jin laughed as, bowl refilled, he made his exit from his in-laws’ kitchen to the living room.
Sherry saw him laughing as she approached. “What’s going on in there?” She nodded toward the kitchen.
“Just your parents clearing up some semantics.” Putting the bowl down on the buffet table, he looked at the crowded room. Between Sherry’s friends, the people his in-laws had invited and the selected few he’d asked from his office, there was hardly any space to move about. His son, the guest of honor, was in the middle of a group of loving admirers. He’d recovered with remarkable speed from his surgery and was the picture of health. Mrs. Farley was holding him, beaming. It was a nice look for her, Sin-Jin thought.
He nuzzled Sherry. “Think we have enough people?”
She laughed, loving the feel of his arms around her. It was something she knew she would never take for granted. Her son was healthy and happy, and Owen had just told her that he was promoting her to investigative reporter, even though the article on Sin-Jin had never materialized. Life just couldn’t get any better. “We could always send out for more.”
“Actually—” he brushed a kiss against her hair “—I was thinking of slipping away myself.”
“Not before the cake,” she warned. “Mom worked on it all day.”
Sin-Jin smiled down at his wife. “I’ve already got my cake. And I’m thinking of nibbling on it, too.” He kissed her ear.
“I’ll hold you to that.” Taking his wrist in her hand, she looked at his battered watch, marking the time. “At twenty-two hundred hours…bedroom.”
He looked down at his watch. It was only four in the afternoon. An eternity away.
“You’re on, Mrs. Adair.”
Sin-Jin began counting down the minutes.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7035-4
A BILLIONAIRE AND A BABY
Copyright © 2003 by Marie Rydzynski-Ferrarella
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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* Unflashed series
* Unflashed series
* Unflashed series
* Unflashed series
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