EPILOGUE
Lia
A few months later…
I stood in the entrance to the living room, wondering how in the world I was ever going to break the news I had to Zeke.
Not that I didn’t know that he wouldn’t be angry.
But it was pretty unexpected, and I wasn’t quite sure I completely absorbed the information myself.
He was on the phone, and I listened to his conversation unabashedly since he was discussing a wedding.
“Do you really think he’s actually going to get married this time?” Zeke asked, sounding bemused.
He listened to whoever was on the other end of the conversation, and then he looked up, smiling broadly as he saw me step into the living room.
My heart skittered just like it always did every single time I saw my handsome husband. I was pretty sure I’d never see him shoot that grin at me without my heart speeding up.
There was no getting used to this man who loved me, and there was no way I was ever not going to feel like the luckiest woman in the world every time he looked at me like I was the most important person in the world to him.
I’d waited too long for him to be mine to ever take him for granted.
“Okay,” Zeke said into his cell. “I’ll let you know when he calls. And yeah, I’ll be there. Hopefully Lia can come with me.”
He said his good-byes and turned his phone off.
“What was that about? Is somebody getting married?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “One of my friends from Harvard. That was my buddy, Barrett. He just called to let me know that we’d be getting an invitation from our mutual friend, Paul.”
I hadn’t met any of Zeke’s old friends from Harvard since they were out of state, but I knew he maintained those relationships as often as he could. “That’s good, right?” I asked because he didn’t look like he was thrilled with the news.
“It will be great if he finally finds the right woman,” he said thoughtfully. “Paul is kind of the male version of the Runaway Bride. He’s tried this a couple of times and never went through with it. Barrett and I are hoping that he finally ties the knot.”
“Are we going?” I asked as I sat next to him on the couch.
He smirked. “Up to you. It might all be for nothing. But he’s doing a destination wedding somewhere tropical.”
“We’ll go,” I said immediately. “I want you to be able to keep in touch with your friends. And I’m not going to object to going somewhere exotic and tropical with you. When is the wedding?”
“I’m not sure. But pretty soon, according to Barrett. Why? Are you planning on leaving me?” he joked.
“No,” I said hesitantly. “I asked because I want to make sure I can travel. Oh, damn. I don’t know exactly how to say this, Zeke.”
He lifted a brow. “What? Are you okay, baby?”
“I’m pregnant,” I said in a rush before I could stop myself. “I know we didn’t plan this, but I know we both want to have kids someday. My body just jumped the gun. Maybe the Pill is ninety-nine percent effective, but I guess I’m the other one percent. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said as he pulled me into his lap. “Don’t ever be sorry about getting pregnant. I was there, too, and it wasn’t your fault. I’m happy, sweetheart. I guess I’m just…stunned.”
I wrapped my arms around him. “Me, too.”
“How far along?” he asked, his voice getting more serious. “Is everything okay? Are you and the baby okay?”
“God, I love you,” I said with a groan.
I should have known that Zeke’s first concern would be for me and our unborn baby’s health.
He rocked me like I was a child, and the motion felt so good. “Both of us are fine,” I informed him. “And I’m only about a month and a half along. I get a little queasy at times, which is why I finally went and got checked out. I guess we celebrated a little too hard on your birthday.”
I’d given Zeke anything and everything he’d wanted for his birthday, and almost every item had involved some kind of sex. Not that I’d had any complaints about his dirty mind.
“I think we should buy a house so we have a yard, and we need to get a room ready. Are we going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl? Not that I really care, but it would be nice to know in advance—unless you want to be surprised.”
I smiled at his harried expression and frantic tone. “I’m not delivering tomorrow, Zeke. We have at least seven months. And the baby isn’t going to care if we live in a condo or a house. We’ll figure everything out as we go along.”
“Are you happy?” he questioned in an uncharacteristically vulnerable voice.
I nodded. “Very. I mean, I wouldn’t have planned it this way. I’m getting ready to open another store, but we’re doing so well that I can get another manager, so yeah, I’m ecstatic.”
Knowing that my body was sheltering a baby that Zeke and I created with love could never be a bad thing for me. It was a miracle. And I couldn’t see it any other way.
Zeke stopped rocking and just held me. I put my head on his shoulder as he said, “I’ll take good care of you, sweetheart. Never feel like you’re doing this alone. I love this baby already.”
He put a gentle hand on my still-flat belly, and my heart almost exploded.
I put my hand on top of his and sighed.
It was going to take some time for us to get used to the fact that we were going to be parents, but very little scared me anymore.
I felt like Zeke and I had gone full circle together, and there wasn’t much we couldn’t handle in the future as long as we did it together.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “You should eat.”
I shifted on his lap and straddled him. “I’m not hungry for food. I’m afraid that pregnancy seems to make me crave sex and not dinner right now.”
My hormones seemed to be raging, and the only thing I really thought about was getting down and dirty with my husband.
He lifted a brow. “You sure?”
I nodded, amused by his uncertainty, something that I never saw on his face. “It’s perfectly safe to have as much sex as we want.”
“Then I’m your man,” he told me in a sexy baritone that made all of my hormones stand up and pay attention.
“Yes, you are,” I said right before I leaned down and kissed him.
Zeke Conner was always going to be my man, and as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me protectively, I was pretty damn glad I’d gotten dumped at the altar.
It wasn’t the wedding itself that had really mattered.
Happiness was all about just marrying the right guy.
~ The End ~
Please continue for a sample of Jett & Ruby’s story, Billionaire Unloved
Jett
Over Two Years Ago…
“I can’t believe you did this to me,” my fiancée screamed at me. “I can’t marry you like this. I can’t even look at you, much less have sex with you. You’re…disfigured.”
Lisette’s face was almost purple as she backed away from my hospital bed, an imperfection I knew she’d hate if she knew her face was that color.
Her words hit home, but I was fucking hurting, and it wasn’t my heart that was causing me excruciating pain. It was my messed-up body and leg that were causing me so much agony that I wished I could be put out of my damn misery.
“I can’t have this discussion with you right now, Lisette,” I said through gritted teeth.
“There’s nothing to discuss. I can’t be married to a man who is never going to be able to go to social events and dance with me. Instead of being envious of me, my friends will feel sorry for me because I’m married to somebody who’s disabled. I can’t stand being pitied. You know I want to be revered. I deserve it,” she said with a small huff of displeasure.
Jesus! How had I never noticed what a superficial woman my own fiancée was, or how petty?
Probably because I haven’t had much time for anything other than work.
Lisette and I got together for sex and parties.
Generally, I wanted the sex, so I took her wherever she wanted to go.
She hadn’t demanded anything more of me than that, and I hadn’t needed anything else. Sure, we had talked about setting a date for our wedding, but Lisette had been pretty happy about the expensive diamond I’d put on her finger, and the date hadn’t seemed all that important to either one of us. I was starting to think she loved the idea of the expensive ring more than she wanted to be married to me.
Maybe the delay had been a blessing since she was in the process of dumping me while I was still trying to recover from my last surgery.
According to my two brothers, she hadn’t been able to come see me earlier because she couldn’t tolerate sick people. But she’d run her ass up here in a hurry as soon as I was conscious to break our engagement.
Okay. Yeah. Maybe I’d known that she wasn’t exactly an intellectual, but I wondered why I’d never realized how narcissistic she was.
Maybe because I’d never done something she didn’t approve of before.
I’d never told Lisette about PRO, the volunteer organization that my best friend, Marcus Colter, headed up to rescue kidnapped victims and political prisoners in hostile countries.
Maybe the fact that I’d never trusted her enough to tell her about PRO should have been a big red flag, but I’d told myself that she didn’t need to know, and that PRO was a secret group. The team had all kept a low profile.
Honestly, I’d pretty much known that she just didn’t give a damn, but I’d never admitted it to myself. Funny what nearly dying will do to a guy. I was thinking about all kinds of shit I never had before.
Strangely, Lisette had never even asked how I’d gotten into a helicopter crash in a foreign country. Obviously, the only thing that mattered was how my injuries affected her.
“I suppose I should return the ring,” she said in a nicer tone.
“Like I said, we can discuss it later.”
“I want this over,” she said. “I don’t want to marry you.”
Yeah, I’d pretty much gotten that point, but I couldn’t say that her words didn’t still hurt. I was in a pretty vulnerable position, and the fact that my fiancée couldn’t stand to be with me was a bitter pill to swallow right now.
I looked bad. I knew that. When our helicopter had gone down, I’d been on the side that hit the ground, and my whole body was torn up from one end to the other. My leg had gotten mangled, and the doctors were still trying to put it back together.
“Keep the ring,” I rasped. All I wanted right now was to suffer in silence without her irritatingly shrill voice lamenting about how I’d ruined everything for her.
Honestly, since I’d been in the accident, I hadn’t really thought about how my injuries were going to affect the rest of my life. Hell, I’d just been trying to make it through the day.
I’d been looking forward to finally seeing my fiancée, hoping that she would make me remember how much I had to live for and that I had a future to look forward to.
But I’d been wrong.
Right now, I’d do just about anything to get rid of her.
“I think you owe me the diamond after everything you put me through,” she mused.
“Other than getting injured, what in the hell did I ever do to you? I bought you everything you wanted, exactly when you wanted it. I’ve sent you on expensive vacations with all of your friends. What else did you want?”
I didn’t mention that I’d spent a small fortune on her jewelry collection, and the expensive sports car I’d purchased for her. With Lisette, it was always about material things, but since I could well afford anything she wanted, I’d seen no reason to deny her anything.
“I wanted you to stay one of the hottest, richest, most wanted bachelors in the world so that everybody envied me,” she said with a pout.
“I’m so fucking sorry that I disappointed you,” I answered with cold sarcasm.
All I wanted was for her to get the fuck out of my room.
“Good-bye, Jett,” she said dramatically as she sailed out the door.
“Happy trails, bitch,” I said aloud after she’d gone.
I looked at the clock and noticed I had another hour before I could get something for pain. It seemed like my whole damn life revolved around my medication schedule.
I tried to relax, but my entire body was tense with pain and irritation.
And maybe there was some hurt in there somewhere, too.
The woman I’d thought I loved and was going to spend the rest of my life with had just walked out on me because I was going to be covered with scars and quite honestly, my dancing days were over. But I hadn’t even contemplated any of those things since I’d just been trying to get through another day staring at the four walls that were beginning to make me feel closed in. But Lisette’s harsh comments were beginning to make me think about my future, and it didn’t look quite as good as it had before the helicopter crash.
Nothing will ever be the same. I might walk again, but my day-to-day life was going to be different.
I knew that if the positions were reversed, I never would have walked away from Lisette. I might be kind of a dick in some ways, but that took a meanness that I didn’t know existed inside her.
“What in the fuck happened to me?” I grumbled.
When had I ever been okay with somebody like Lisette, much less been engaged to her?
I’d grown up wealthier than most people in the world, but my deceased parents had raised every one of their kids to be decent individuals. My mom and dad had never put money and success before morals and values.
I wondered what else I’d been ignoring while I’d been wrapped up in growing one of the biggest tech companies in the world with my brothers Mason and Carter.
Somehow, if I ever got out of this damn hospital and out of the pain that was tearing my wounded body apart, I was going to pay attention to what was happening in the world around me again. And I was never fucking letting myself get sucked in by a woman who had no substance because I was busy.
The engagement had been Lisette’s idea, and I’d felt like I owed her the respect of giving her a ring since we’d been dating for over a year. It just seemed like a natural progression, and I wasn’t averse to being married. And since I’d never seen her nasty side, I thought we’d be happy together.
Now, I was doubting the decisions I’d made while my brothers and I were trying to send our company into the stratosphere. I had to wonder where the hell my brain and my heart had been while I was working twelve hour days in my office. We’d achieved our goal, but at what price? I’d almost married a woman with no heart.
I’ll find somebody someday who doesn’t care that my body has a considerable number of scars, and that I can’t dance.
The prognosis on my leg wasn’t good. I’d need more surgeries, and even after they were done, I’d never have the same mobility I’d had before the accident.
In my world, finding a woman who’d accept my appearance and limitations was highly unlikely. If they did, they’d be in it for the money.
Since I’d been born wealthy, I knew how superficial my world could be sometimes. Maybe that was my motivation to be part of Marcus’s team. I wanted to make some kind of difference in the world, and not by donating money that was tax deductible.
Now that I’d had my come-to-Jesus moment, I knew I was never going to go down the same road as I’d been on most of my adult life.
Life was finite, and nobody knew that more than a guy who had cheated death.
I had no idea if there was a woman who could see more than my money when she looked at me. A woman who thought scars and a bum leg were no big deal. But if I did run into her somewhere, I sure as hell wouldn’t let her get away. I’d ask her to marry me on the spot.