DOMINIC (Dragon Security Book 3) (51 page)

Cassidy

“I should be doing this for you, you know.”

“Soon,” Brianna said as she finished adjusting my veil. “I just have to meet the guy.”

“You will.”

She stepped back and smiled, her eyes dancing with joy.

“You look absolutely amazing.”

I turned and studied myself in the mirror. The dress was barely down to my knees, an off-white that seemed more appropriate than the startling white dresses the shop had to offer for younger brides. But this one hugged my curves and made me look much fitter than I really was. And the veil made my dark halo of hair shine.

I did look good. I guess that’s what love does for you.

“He makes you happy. And all this flying around in private planes is pretty awesome.”

I laughed. “Then you like him?”

“Love him.”

I hugged her tight. “I’m sorry I never told you the truth.”

“You had to have known I’d figure it out myself eventually.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

I stepped back and studied my daughter. She was dressed in red, a color that shouldn’t have worked on her, but did. Her skin glowed, her face beginning to round out again after a few weeks of good food. She had nightmares at night sometimes. I would wake and hear her call out. I’d go to her and we’d talk for a time, sometimes the rest of the night. But she rarely talked about what had happened to her while those men were holding her.

Just as I hadn’t told her what I’d done while they were holding me.

We hugged again, then she gestured to the hotel room door. “We should go.”

The car was waiting for us outside the casino. We held hands all the way to the small chapel. It was decorated with lilies and carnations, my favorite flowers. And Brian was waiting, four of his sons standing beside him at the altar.

Brianna took my arm and slid it through her arm. She walked me down the aisle, a vision in her dress, a contrast to mine. There was a photographer and witnesses, but I only saw Brian. He watched us, a smile that was so big and beautiful that I couldn’t imagine anything better.

I was marrying the man I loved. Who could possibly ask for more than that?

It wasn’t a cheesy, awkward ceremony. It was very simple and perfect. The pastor was respectful, the witnesses kind. And our children, smiling as they watched us commit ourselves to one another for the rest of our lives.

It was more than I’d expected a Vegas wedding to be.

But I was pretty sure my mother was spinning in her grave.

“To happiness!” Brian lifted his glass, as we sat around a table at an Italian restaurant in the lobby of his casino. “May we all find the one person who makes us want to have a Vegas wedding.”

The boys laughed and Brianna made a face, but they all understood Brian’s sentiment. And when he kissed me, they all looked away, then, as if on cue, made faces and groaned.

“Yuk!”

I laughed. Brian threw ice at them from the wine bucket, crying, “Disrespect!”

But, all in all, it was a beautiful evening.

We were nearly done with our reception when Ian moved away from the table. I felt the tension come over Brian as he watched him go. I took his hand and squeezed it, trying to reassure him.

We’d all been on pins and needles these last few weeks. We had no idea when, or if, the men behind Brianna’s kidnapping would return to hurt us again. We couldn’t go to the police now, not after the fact. And there was likely nothing the police could do, anyway. And Jack had basically told Brian all of this was his problem, so he was unwilling to put his men on it. Ian did as much as he could with the camera the kidnappers left behind at the warehouse where they held me. But there wasn’t much on it.

All we could do was live our lives and hope it was over.

I looked at my daughter and hoped it was over.

“To Pops and Cassidy,” Kevin suddenly said, holding up his glass of wine. “May you find happiness in your future and forget the pain of your past.”

“Amen,” Brian said.

“May you spend your glory years together in bliss,” Sean added.

“May you always find warmth in your bed, not coldness,” Kyle said.

Brianna looked around, a little confused. But then she stood and held up her glass. “I guess this is an Irish thing. I’m not good with toasts.” She studied Brian and me. “May you always love each other no matter what the future might bring.”

I inclined my head, touched by her words.

We tapped glasses and drank the last of the champagne, as Ian came back to the table. There was tightness in his expression. I didn’t know him well. He came to the house a few times a week, but it was usually to take his father into another room and speak to him, sometimes for hours. But I could always tell by his expression when he had bad news.

“Not now,” Brian said as Ian approached him, also warned by the look on his face. But Ian ignored the admonition.

Ian whispered something in Brian’s ear that made his shoulders slump and the joy leave his face.

“Fuck,” he whispered softly under his breath.

“What?”

Everyone was watching the two of them now.

“Stacy’s fiancé,” Ian said, glancing at Brian. Brian simply nodded. Ian continued. “Stacy’s fiancé was killed this morning. It looks like a mugging gone wrong, but there are no details to be had just yet.”

An uneasy silence settled over the table.

It was clearly not over yet.

~~~

*** HIS is the first book in my first boxed set

BILLIONAIRES IN LOVE

What do you say when you see your nemesis standing right outside your door?

“Hi,” I croaked and wrapped my arms around my middle.

I didn’t want to croak. Croaking was the last thing I needed to do when I faced this man. So I tried again. “What are you doing here?”

Oh,God! Was that my voice? That breathless ‘I’m about to swoon’ version?

This was too much.

“You knew I was going to find you,” he said quite flatly.

“Why on earth would you want to do that?”

That was better. Still croaking, but not as bad. Instead of sounding like a geriatric toad, I sounded more like a teenage toad. That was better, right?That gave me some confidence.

I straightened up and pushed my chest out. His eyes immediately dropped to my boobs, and it felt as though some high voltage laser had singed them. My brain was a little muddled, and I could feel my nipples hardening to pebbles right before his eyes. This was crazy.

“Maybe because of that.”

He flicked his hand toward my chest in reply to the question I had forgotten I’d asked. But then, as his eyes widened a little, I realized he wasn’t pointing to my chest. He was actually gesturing toward the small, round bump that my belly had become over the last few weeks.

I was fifteen weeks pregnant. And he was the father.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“You’re here because of the baby.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What else? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I’d let you walk away with my flesh and blood?” There was no amusement in his eyes. They were chilly and staring at me quite dispassionately.

So he was angry. I got that.

But he was being unreasonable.

“I did what I thought I had to do. Can’t you see that?” I asked him, trying to appeal to his better nature. I hadn’t seen any evidence of it, but it had to be there. Any man who wanted a child as fiercely as this man wanted the baby in my womb has to have a better nature, right? I had to believe that.

“All I can see is that we are not going to have this conversation on your doorstep.”

His tone said it was not up for debate. Yet, I hovered there, trying to look for a way to stall him. I did not want him in my apartment. I did not want him in my space. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt me or anything. Nicolas Costa was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man who went around hurting women. I wouldn’t have agreed to this insane arrangement if he was.

I couldn’t believe I was here, standing with Nicolas Costa, about to have his baby. I put myself in a difficult situation, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Dear God…if only my mom were here, she would tell me everything would be alright. Actually, no.First, she would chew my ass out and tell me what an irresponsible, thoughtless thing it was I’d done, and then she would wrap her arms around me and tell me she understood why I’d done it and that she loved me.

I felt my throat grow tight and scratchy, and I had to blink really hard to push back the tears. My chest hurt. I rubbed it absently…not like it did any good. I missed my mother so much. It had only been three months since she’d died, and I’d not yet gotten used to being without her.

I sighed again and stepped back.

“Come in Mr. Costa.” I kept my voice cool and polite, hoping if I projected that image, I would actually begin to feel it.

It was time I stopped running away from the facts—no matter how much I disliked them. The truth was, I was pregnant with this man’s baby and I had signed some legal documents saying that I would give him the babywhen it came. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I even collected a partial payment.

God, that really does sound bad, like I sold the baby in my womb. But it was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. The baby wasn’t really mine…not really.

The fertilized egg was not mine. I was merely a carrier, a human incubator. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was this baby’s mother in every sense that mattered. And that was the crux of my problem. I loved it with a fierceness that amazed me. And I didn’t care what this huge hulk of a man said.He would have to go over my dead body to get to the baby, and I intended to let him know that.

It all began fairly innocuously.

My mom was a maid in Los Angeles, working for a couple of well-known actors, some politicians, and a few rich, but not so famous, business moguls. She’d done it for as long as I could remember in an attempt to keep us off the streets. Her best friend, Constance,was in the same line of work. In fact, they used to work for the same agency. But then Constance got a full-time position with Nicolas Costa, who just happened to be one the hottest Hollywood directors the world had seen since Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock. She talked about him constantly those first ten years or so. Sometimes I felt like I knew him just from the things Constance said about him. He seemed human. Kind. That is, of course, until he got married. Constance didn’t have much to say about his wife, actress Aurora Parker, or him, really, after their wedding five years ago. It was like her kindly, honest employer had disappeared and was replaced with something out of that old movie,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Then, one day, I went to visit my mom and Constance was talking about the Costas needing a surrogate for their baby. When she mentioned the insane amount they were offering to the right woman, I knew I had to give it a shot.I needed the money. Not too long before then, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and there was just no way her insurance would cover the amount of chemo she would need. Not only that, but the chemo would make her too sick to work, and that would mean losing her insurance all together. So the burden fell on me, but I couldn’t afford the treatments she needed—not on a teacher’s salary. After everything my mom had given up for me…being a single mother is never easy, but being an uneducated immigrant only made it that much harder. I hated the thought of my first pregnancy being a surrogacy. And the idea of giving up a child that I would carry for nine monthswas overwhelming. But I was willing to do anything for her. She was all I had, and she’d given everything just to make sure I had everything she never did. I would never know my father, but I was okay with that because my mom loved me so fiercely that I never felt anything was missing from my life.

And the idea of doing something that amazing for another couple was exciting. I love kids. I’ve taught kindergarten since I graduated college three years ago. Most of my fellow teachers walk into the school looking like they’d rather be almost anywhere else but there. I’m not like that. I look forward to each and every day with my kids, even when they’re being difficult. So, giving the gift of a child to someone else was another motivation. To give life where none had existed before is miraculous.

I filled out some paperwork through the Costas’ attorney and waited, spending all my free time going to the doctor with my mom to find out what could be done for her stage 3 lung cancer. Lung cancer. I found it so ironic that a woman who never smoked a day in her life and always yelled at people who dared to smoke anywhere near me would be the one who would get it. The doctors thought she might have gotten it from exposure to all the cleaning chemicals she’d used over the years. They said some of the stuff she used was highly toxic if used in huge quantities, which, of course, my mother had always done. Who would’ve thought?

I’d almost forgotten about the whole surrogacy thing when I got this phone call one Saturday afternoon. Aurora Parker wanted to know if I’d be willing to come to her house for lunch. I was…there is no word for what I was. Shocked just doesn’t seem to cover it. I expected her husband to be there, too, but she explained that he was scouting locations for a movie he was set to film in Ireland and couldn’t make it back, but I’d meet him at our next meeting.

Next meeting?

Aurora—this beautiful, perfect blond woman who I’d watched in half a dozen movies over the last few years—chose me to carry her child. She said it was because I was a kindergarten teacher. She giggled and said that she knew I wouldn’t be biologically related to the child, but she liked the idea that the baby would be exposed to an academic setting during gestation. I wanted to explain that kindergarten wasn’t exactly an academic setting, but she seemed so excited by the idea that I couldn’t argue with her.

We met two more times after that initial meeting—once at her country club while she was waiting for a tennis date to arrive, and once more at the house. Nicolas Costa wasn’t at those meetings either. I didn’t actually meet him until after all the medical stuff was done—the exam and whole battery of blood and urine tests they made me take. I felt like I was preparing to go into space or something. The doctor they had working on me even asked for details about my sex life. On the one hand, I could see how it was his business whether or not I had ever had a sexually transmitted disease. But did he really need to know when I lost my virginity and whether or not I was into what he termed ‘rough sex’? At one point, about a month into the process, I began to wonder if it was all worth it.

After a month of meetings and medical exams and whatever else, I finally met Nicolas Costa. I already knew what he looked like. You couldn’t live in Los Angeles and
not
know what he looked like. His face was constantly on billboards and magazines and those placards on the side of buses all through the city. Yet, meeting him face-to-face was so intimidating I almost lost my lunch on his toes. And those toes were covered in Prada shoes that were probably worth more than all my belongings put together.

“So, you’re the famous Ana Martinez I’ve been hearing so much about,” he’d said, approaching me with his hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to finally put a face to the name.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I’d managed to mumble.

And that was the extent of our first meeting. He ducked out a few minutes later, blaming an urgent business matter. However, I met him a few more times after that, particularly the day they did the first implantation procedure. However, the day after that, everything went to hell.

My mom was set to begin chemo the Monday after. Aurora gave me a check the day I signed the contracts, another when I passed the health exams, and a huge check the day of the implantation. That was why we had to wait. I was waiting on that check to pay the enormous payment the hospital would want the moment mom checked in for the chemo procedure. The doctor had wanted to admit her the day he found the cancer, then again two weeks later when a CT scan showed that it was more invasive than he had originally thought. But, even with my modest savings and what little my mom had, we couldn’t swing that initial payment. So we waited.

I wonder now if that had been a mistake.

That Sunday, just twelve hours before she was to check into the hospital, my mom died. It wasn’t even the cancer that got her—it was a heart attack. She was joking about making enough meals to feed me while she was gone when she suddenly grabbed her chest and fell over. I tried to do CPR, tried to bring her back, but nothing I did helped. The paramedics said she died instantly, that there was nothing I could do. But I still felt like I’d let her down somehow.

The funeral was a dark, somber affair. It was all so sudden that even her friends couldn’t wrap their minds around it. At least the funeral gave me something else to think about. That lasted until the last mourner walked out of the little house my mom and I had shared. All that was left then was…nothing.

I was devastated. I didn’t know how I was going to face life without my mother. I was alone. No mom. No dad. No cousins or aunts or uncles—at least, none that I knew. My mom’s family was all back in Mexico, and she’d never really made an effort to reach out to them—something about what made her come to the U.S. in the first place. My best friend moved to Texas for college and never came back. As a flight attendant, she was always gone, anyway. I was completely alone.

And then Aurora died. I remember Constance pounding on the door—as she had done for the past week, trying to get me out of bed—and she yelled through the thin wood that Aurora was found dead that morning, but thankfully it wasn’t at the house, she said. Apparently, Aurora was in New York by herself to attend some fashion show. She was found unconscious in the back of her limo after she was picked up at a restaurant in Manhattan. A drug overdose was the suspected cause.

So my mom was dead. And now the prospective mother of my surrogate child was dead.

As that thought crossed my mind, I realized with my mom’s death and the funeral and the week-long, self-imposed isolation, I had forgotten to go to the doctor to find out if the implantation of Nicolas and Aurora’s embryo had resulted in a pregnancy. I slipped out of the house after a long overdue shower and bought a test at a local pharmacy. And, of course, it was positive.

The moment I knew, a wave of absolute unconditional love washed through me. I had a life growing inside of me. And that led to the realization that this baby was all mine. At least, for the moment. I had something to live for, something to get out of bed for. The thought of giving the baby up after delivery tore me apart.

Then there was Aurora’s death. How could I give the baby up when its mother died of a drug overdose and its father was potentially another junky, or a hard personality who pushed Aurora to her death? How could I sentence a child to live a life without a mother? Without a mother’s love? To have such a powerful father and a full stable of nannies—because that’s how I imagined Nicolas would raise a child as a single father—but no mother to wipe snotty noses and kiss boo-boos? That wasn’t happening if I had anything to say about it. Not even if I had to face the wrath of the great Nicolas Costa himself.

I sent a check to his address for the money I received from him and his wife, every red cent, with a letter of condolence that said nothing about the existence of the baby.

I took off the next day with no intention of ever telling Nicolas Costa about his child. In fact, I never wanted to see him again. After some of the things that had happened between us at the few meetings we had…things I didn’t want to think about, especially now that Aurora was dead. All I knew was that Nicolas Costa was not a good man and I didn’t want anything to do with him now or in the future. So, when he showed up at my house, it was downright frightening.