Page 44 of Her Billionaire Hero
“I love you too. Now, can you take me home?” She went limp in my arms and I picked her up, carrying her to the nearest ambulance.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sloan
“Here you go,” the nurse said as she started the morphine drip. “This isn’t enough to knock you out, but just enough to take the edge off the pain, Mrs. Rivers.”
“Sloan,” I said quickly. “I never want to be called Mrs. Rivers again.”
“Sorry.” Her lips formed a thin line. “Sloan, this will administer a tiny drip through your IV every half hour. If you begin to feel any pain before that, just buzz me and I’ll shorten the length between drips.”
Baldwyn came into my hospital room, carrying a crystal vase full of a variety of pink and yellow flowers. “I see you’ve been made comfortable.”
A warm feeling came over me and a smile formed on my newly stitched lips. “Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff right there, nursey-poo.” I looked at the tube beside me, thankful for the powerful drug that took away all my pain, angst, and worry. “I think you’re my new best friend.”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” the nurse said as she headed to the door. She stopped to talk to Baldwyn. “If you see her experiencing any pain, please push the nurses’ button on the right-side rail of her bed and I’ll come see what’s up.”
“Will do. Now that I’ve handled the paperwork and billing, I’m not leaving this lady’s side.” He patted her on the back. “Thanks for taking care of my girl. I’ve got Anne’s Pastries catering breakfast for the nurses’ station for you guys this morning as a thank you for taking such good care of Sloan and her father.”
The nurse turned to look at me with a wide grin on her face. “Now this one is a keeper, Sloan. Don’t let him slip through your fingers.” She looked back at Baldwyn. “Thank you, Mr. Nash. We all appreciate you thinking about us.”
She left us alone and Baldwyn stood there, looking at me with a smile. “Four stitches on your lips. Ten staples on the gashes on the back of your head. And remarkably no internal injuries. You are one tough cookie.” He came to sit on the bed next to me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “You look sleepy. Get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“No. I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t like what comes up when my mind rests.” I was chilled out with the morphine, but I wasn’t completely at ease. “It seems that my mother wants to come to me in my dreams lately. I’d rather not think of her as dead until I know for sure.”
“I understand that. But you need to rest so you’ll heal faster.” Caressing my cheek, he gazed into my eyes. “With the nutrients they’ve given you through the IV, your eyes already look a lot better.”
“I feel better.” When Baldwyn first put me into the back of the ambulance, I’d felt worse than I ever had before in my life. “I still can’t believe you were able to find us way out there in the boonies.”
“It was a team effort. I had Stone researching things for me. He’s great at that kind of thing.” Kissing my forehead, he sighed softly. “I’m just so thankful I found you in time.”
Cradling his face between my hands, I was grateful for more than just that. “I’m grateful for my father. I’d already accepted his death. You came along and miracles happened, Baldwyn Nash—my hero.”
“I’d do anything for you—anything and everything. I’m glad your dad made it too.” He pulled back, taking a seat on the edge of my bed. “I’m not so sure how happy I am about Preston making it though. If he somehow squirms out of this, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Even with the medication to soothe me, just thinking about what Preston had done to me and my entire family made me sick. “He’s an extremely disturbed man. And I’m sure that karma will deal with him fairly. He took my mother’s life and he took mine in a way too. He stole both of us from my father. The worst thing to me was that he’d planned it all. There was never love in anything he did. There was only some sick, twisted plan and everything he did was for that plan—not me, not my mother, just his horrifying plan to have us both.”
“I saw a cop sitting outside a door down the hallway,” Baldwyn said with a frown. “I guess that means he made it through the surgery to repair his shoulder. I have to admit I was hoping he wouldn’t make it.”
I didn’t know what I hoped for. “I’m just glad this is all over. I mean, except for knowing if that body is Mom’s or not. But Preston’s confession pretty much wraps that up.” Thinking of my mother’s neck being broken, then her body hacked into pieces, bothered me to no end. And so did the fact that I’d fallen for Preston and his lies. “I’m going to need help to get past what’s happened to me.”
Taking my hand, he held it to his heart. “And you will get all the help you need for as long as you need it. My treat.” He kissed the top of my hand. “I’ll be here for you forever, my love—forever and ever.”
“If you want to help me, don’t offer to take care of me.” I wasn’t sure if I could ever find it in me to trust anyone again. “I’ve got to do this on my own. I’ve got money. I’ve still got my career. He didn’t take away my ability to take care of myself. But he did take my ability to fully trust people.”
As he looked at the floor, I watched Baldwyn take the blow I hadn’t meant to deliver so harshly. “I can see why you feel that way and I don’t blame you for it. I won’t jump in and try to take away your independence. But I am here for you in any capacity that you need me to be. If you feel that you need to take time off to adjust to things, you can have it.”
“I’m not about to flake on my first job, Baldwyn. I can do my job. I can live my life. But there will be some changes.” How could there not be? “My mother wasn’t exactly the villain I made her out to be all these years. She was protecting me and that’s why he killed her. She came to me in a dream and told me that she’d made choices that led to her death. But did she really make them, or did Preston manipulate her into making them?” I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. “He certainly manipulated me into having a relationship with him, into getting married. Only I never saw it for what it was. I never even thought for a moment that I wasn’t in charge of the decisions I made. But I was wrong. And for all I know, I’ve been wrong about everything my entire life.”
Getting up, Baldwyn walked across the room to look out the window as the sun started to come up. “Well, yesterday is gone—thank God. This is a new day and you can start over again. You’ve got me in your corner, Sloan.” He turned to face me, pulling the curtain back to let the light stream into the room. “I know you’re thinking that you’ve been living a lie—at least the part of your life that you spent with him. This—what you and I have—this is no lie.”
How I wish I could believe that.
“Time, Baldwyn,” I whispered. I knew what I said hurt him. “I’ll need time, patience, and your word that you’ll do as I ask you to if I feel I need space.” I had no idea what I would need, but I wanted to be sure I didn’t have to fight him if I felt I needed to be alone for a while.
“Space,” he murmured. Nodding, he said, “I told you that I would give you anything and everything you want, and I meant that. If you need space, then I will give you that. Just promise not to shut me out completely. I do love you and I care about you. And maybe you’ll find that love you had for me buried underneath the rubble that man made out of your heart.”
My heart did feel like a pile of debris. “Thank you. It means a lot to me to have you understand what I’ve been through. What I’ll be going through for God knows how long.”
