Page 40 of The Billionaire's Fortunate Accident
“That sounds so sad, baby.” My heart ached for the poor kid. “How could a woman do that to her unborn child?” I couldn’t wrap my head around that.
“It happens more than it should, that’s for sure.” One tear rolled down her cheek, and I wiped it away. She took my hand and kissed the palm. “That baby was the first and only baby that actually liked me. She liked me over everyone else too. And, to be honest, I gave a lot of thought into seeing if I could adopt her.”
“Wouldn’t caring for a child with such problems be incredibly difficult?” I had no real idea what happened to a baby born with an addiction of any kind. But I knew people who’d gone through hell with addictions.
“Yes, it would. There could be issues for the rest of her life. But, for a while, I thought about making her mine.” She wiped another tear away. “But when I went to go hold her and feed her this morning, another woman was already there. She’d been sent by the Department of Human Services.”
“Did she take the baby?” I knew she had. I could see the sorrow on her face.
Nodding, she wiped away more tears. “I’m happy for the baby. I really am. This woman and her husband have taken in two other babies who were born with the same addiction. She’s got almost ten years of experience with them. She is what’s best for that poor baby girl, and I know that. But knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
Pulling her to me, I hugged her, kissing the side of her head. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I’m sure it does hurt. But you know that you don’t have time to be what that baby needs. You have the heart — you most definitely have the heart — but you’ve got a great goal to accomplish. Once you become a doctor, you can help thousands, maybe even millions of people. People with all sorts of problems.”
“I know,” she said with a whimpering voice. “But she liked me. She. Liked. Me. None of the babies I’ve tried to comfort have.”
“Maybe they will start liking you now. Maybe now there’s something different about you. And maybe it’s because we met that you have a calmness about you that you might not have had before.” Wrinkling my nose, I realized I was sort of taking credit for something she’d done. “But that’s all you, baby. For sure, it’s all you.”
“No, it’s not all me. I think you might be right. I’ve been closed off for such a long time. Until you came along and started stalking me, I didn’t even have anyone to think about.”
“Stalking you?” I did not like how she'd put it.
Her brows rose as she wore a questioning expression, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “What would you call it?”
Lifting her to get her moving again, I thought about what one would call what I’d done. “Is it stalking if you think you might like someone and the only place you’re sure to see them again is at the place you met?”
“I think that’s the exact definition of stalking, Stone.” She smiled, arching her back while running her hands through her hair. “But I’m glad you did it.”
“Well, we are not going to call it stalking. We can call it being persistent. I like the sound of that.” I liked that much better, actually. “So, when anyone asks you how we ended up together, you can say that I was persistent in my endeavors to make you mine.”
“You have been that.” Leaning in, she kissed my neck. “Now it’s my turn to be persistent. Only I’m going to persistently please you, my hunky lover.”
I wanted to be so much more than just her lover. I wanted to be her one true love, the way she was mine. Not that I was about to tell her anything like that on our first date and first time having sex. That would just be stupid, although we’d spoken rather clearly about seeing love in each other’s eyes. But still, it was too soon to start saying the words I love you. Yet, it would’ve been a nice thing to hear — for me at least.
Women had told me that they loved me, but most of them had been drunk, and many of them had just been trying to win my heart. Jessa hadn’t even seemed to be trying to win my heart, but she sure as hell had.
Jessa hadn’t been kidding about pleasing me, and she got to work sucking on my neck until I was so turned on that I rolled over, pinning her beneath me. “Get ready to come as close to Heaven as you’ll ever get, baby.”
Our mouths crashed together as I went for the finish line. When I made it, I felt a wave of something unusual bowl me over. For a minute, I couldn’t even see. But when the blackness faded, there was Jessa’s pretty face, red with the heat our bodies had created. “Wow,” she said as she smiled. “Just wow, Stone.”
“Yeah?” I was glad she seemed to have gotten a lot out of it too. “I thought it was pretty wow myself. I’m glad the blackness went away. I thought I might’ve gone blind there for a minute.”
“You really put your all into it.” She pulled me down to her, kissing me softly before she asked, “What if you and I find that we want to do this more often?”
“I can assure you that I will want to do this as often as you’ll let me.”
Every night sounds great to me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jessa
Three weeks had passed since our one night together. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend more nights with Stone. The timing just wasn’t right for either of us. He was busy getting things in order to open the bistro in the hospital, and that meant there was a hell of a lot of hoops he had to figure out how to jump through. And I had my usual hellish schedule. Midterms had me spending every available moment I had studying so that I could pass them.
In a rare moment, I saw Stone coming into the cafeteria as I was just about to finish the Italian burrito he’d sent samples of that afternoon. I’d come to the cafeteria to get a bottle of water to drink while eating, but I could see from the furrowed brow he was wearing that he’d assumed I’d eaten something from there. “What are you doing in here, young lady?”
Holding up the empty paper wrapper the burrito had been in, I smiled. “Not what you think.”
The wrinkles along his forehead disappeared as he realized that I wasn’t cheating on his food. “Good.”
