The Billionaire Author's Revenge

I collapsed on the floor of my husband's ER.

He's the attending. He looked down at me, then back at his charts, and told the room that family waits its turn like everyone else. Dozens of patients needed him more than I did. He believed that completely.

Then he walked to the elevator to go check on his intern.

Strangers closed in around me. Called me selfish for pulling strings. Said I was faking it to skip the line.

Not one of them knew the woman folding onto the tile out-earned the man stepping over her. The same man who called what I did "not a real job."

Him least of all.

I was newly pregnant. His. Not that he knew.

I stood there with the crumpled test stick cutting into my palm, watching his white coat disappear, and forgot how to breathe.

Chapter 1

"Who do you think you are, lady? Got connections, so the rules don't apply?"

Someone shoved my shoulder hard enough to turn me.

"Everybody here's in a hurry. You heard the doctor."

"Quit playing dead. Go. Wait. Your. Turn."

"People like her are what's wrong with the world. Cutting the line with favors and connections."

The voices climbed. In the middle of all of it stood Elliot, white coat crisp, the calmest thing in the building. My husband. He didn't even turn around.

I didn't argue. I'd stopped arguing with Elliot a long time ago. Somewhere in the last two years I'd become a woman who mostly just took notes.

I pressed my hand flat to my stomach. The pregnancy test was a soft, crumpled wad in my fist.

People think a marriage ends over one big thing. A lipstick. A name. It doesn't. It ends in a thousand small ones. The camisole in my bag was just the newest entry, not the reason. The reason was much older than that.

Two of his residents kept glancing back. One of the girls started toward me.

"She's not a child," Elliot said, not looking up from his charts. "She can take care of herself."

He turned a page. Almost bored.

"Every patient in that ER outranks her. What, you're all going to line up and pay her a visit? Or does she get to be different from everyone else?"

"But" one of them tried. "But that's Nora, she doesn't look"

He pushed his wire-rims up his nose and was done with all of us.

He turned the corner. The elevator swallowed him. His residents hovered, tugging at each other, then jogged after him anyway.

I sank onto a bench and looked at the thing in my bag.

A black lace camisole. Not mine.

An hour earlier I'd glanced at the passenger seat at a red light and found it tucked behind the headrest. Black. Lace. Someone's.

That's how I rear-ended the car in front of me.

And just now, watching him walk off like none of it had touched him, the floor came up to meet me.

When I opened my eyes, Elliot had taken off his coat.

"You're up."

"Mm."

His gaze caught on my mouth and stayed a second too long. Then he stood, unhurried, poured a cup of water, and held it to my lips.

"Nothing serious. You overreacted and passed out. The insurance company's handling the car. You can ride home with me in a bit."

He leaned in. Antiseptic and cedar, all at once.

I looked at the coat tossed over the foot of the bed and wet my cracked lips. "There's something I want to"

"Nora." Flat. Final. "You're almost thirty. Could you try to act like it."

The unfairness of it rose in my throat and stuck there.

I turned my face to the wall and held the blanket and didn't look at him.

He set the cup down and sighed. "I know you're anxious about the wedding. But you've seen how slammed I am. You can push all you want. I can't conjure time out of nothing."

I opened my mouth to explain.

Noelle walked in first.

She smiled, soft and warm. "Nora. You okay?"

Before I could answer, she glanced at the chart clipped to the bed and answered for me.

"Just shock oh good. Half a day's observation and she'll be fine."

Then she stopped looking at me entirely and crossed to Elliot. To let him see the book in her hands, she stepped in close, fit herself against his side, and tipped her face up.

"Dr. Cross. I don't really get this part."

He looked. He always had time to look.

I sat there with his baby inside me and a book deal in my inbox he didn't know existed, and watched my husband explain a chapter to another woman like I'd already left the room.

Maybe I had.

Chapter 2

One glance and Elliot had it.

He knocked his knuckles lightly against Noelle's head. "I keep telling you to cut the late nights. Good brain, sitting there unused. From now on I'll spot-check you after shifts too. Saves me the headache later."

Noelle ducked her chin, shy. "I'm back on the straight and narrow, aren't I?"

I watched the two of them, and something went sour and fine-grained under my ribs.

Sunlight came through the window and landed on them. They looked like the married ones. A clean, easy match.

Half an hour later he finished, rolled his sleeve back down, and looked at me.

"What were you going to say?"

My back was to him. My eyelids weighed a ton.

"Nothing," I said. "I just want my mom's fried chicken."

I leaned into the seat and watched the sun go down.

The car ate the road.

Elliot drove one-handed, sleeve pushed up, lean forearm bare. His throat moved. He was about to say something.

The screen lit on the console between us.

A charge from the jeweler's. A necklace, back in stock, paid in full.

He caught me looking. Something crossed his face, and he killed the notification.

I turned back to the window. Three days to my birthday. I'd spent weeks teasing him about a gift.

I already knew it wasn't mine.

"Why so quiet today?" He flicked on music. Patted my hand. "Still rattled? Come on. You've been like this since you were a kid. Can't sit still when something's eating you."

"Elliot. Do you actually want to marry me?"

I pulled my hand out of his and cut him off.

"We signed the papers. We never had the wedding. One quiet divorce and you'd still get to throw a big one for whoever it is you actually love."

I couldn't hold it in anymore. Part of me even wondered if the necklace was just a prop, something to keep me soft while he had her.

He studied me. Waited. When I didn't move, he pulled over.

He let out a long breath and looked at me, eyes hard.

"What are you making a scene about now?"

He pressed two fingers to his brow. Tired. Irritated.

"I'm not your personal physician. I have a job. If this is about that, I've got nothing to say to you."

He shrugged, reclined his seat, and shut his eyes.

"The Hippocratic Oath says this is exactly what I should be doing."

I almost laughed.

Every single time he blew off a plan and went dark for hours, he said that. Then came the silent treatment. And every time, I was the one who cracked first and came to smooth it over.

This was the same. He had that settled look. Waiting for me to come coax him out of it.

I opened the door. Pulled the camisole out of my bag and threw it at his chest.

"What? Don't tell me this" I let it slide down his shirt and into his lap. "This worn, secondhand little thing is my present."

His mouth opened. Nothing came out. For once the unflappable Dr. Cross just sat there, the lace pooled in his lap, looking at me like he didn't recognize the woman in his passenger seat.

I didn't wait for him to find the words. I got out, shut the door, and didn't look back.

I pulled myself together and went to the romance industry's awards night. A good excuse to disappear for a few days.

Him: [Pin something on me and bolt the second you're done. Real classy, Nora.]

Him: [When are you going to grow up? Feeling always beats reason with you.]

Him: [Running off was cute at fifteen. You're thirty. Still doing it?]

Him: [Tomorrow's your birthday. I booked the private room at Marlowe's.]

Him: [The kids keep begging to see you. Do whatever you want.]

Even through the flat gray bubbles, I could feel it. How calm he was. How easy all of this was for him.

Do whatever you want.

He'd never once worried I actually would.

Chapter 3

I walked the red carpet, signed my name at the table, and stood under the fireworks without really seeing them.

None of these people knew me as anyone's wife. Here, I was the name on the spine.

Elliot and I grew up two doors apart. Cold by nature, the exact opposite of me, and I fell for him anyway, back when he was seventeen and the best-looking thing in any room. Four years apart after our families moved, then his mother badgered us both to the courthouse.

Marriage didn't thaw him. Lukewarm as ever. With one exception.

Every few nights, behind a closed door, the cold cracked clean open. The man who wouldn't spare me a glance in daylight came apart slow in the dark, mouth at my pulse, like he'd spent the whole day hating how much he wanted to. That was the only place I ever got the whole of him. By morning he'd set the ice back in place like none of it had happened.

I used to think it was enough. That a man who reached for me like that in the dark would learn to want me in the light.

He didn't.

And one day, when I was gone, that would be the thing he couldn't replace. The one version of himself that had only ever belonged to me.

Six years of writing, and I'd done better than well. He never knew it.

"That's not a real job," he told me once. "How long can you keep this up? Ten years from now you'll still be making up stories for money? You got lucky. What happens when the luck runs out?"

I used to argue, chin up, talking too fast. Then I stopped.

I never told him the checks I cashed were bigger than his. That a publisher back home wanted my book in print, hardcover, my name down the spine. I kept meaning to. I kept getting busy planning a wedding he could never find the time for.

The private room was loud and warm when I walked in.

"Nora! You're okay?"

"Happy birthday, Nora!"

They swarmed me, all elbows and grins, and for a second it was easy.

Then a calm voice cut through it, wrong for the room.

"Nora. The clothes in Dr. Cross's car are mine."

I'd just sat down. I looked at Noelle. Then across the table at Elliot.

He'd dressed up tonight. His fingers tapped the table, slow, idle. He didn't look at me.

He was listening, though. I knew that much.

"Mm," I said, and let her keep going.

She let her hair fall across half her face. Her voice did a small, trembling thing.

"I forgot to change after my shift. I got warm at dinner, and home's so far, so Dr. Cross said I could change in the car I must have left it. I'm sorry, Nora. I never meant to make you think"

She bowed her head. The room went very quiet.

Then, soft and careful, she started to cry.

Everyone looked at me like they were waiting for a verdict.

I didn't give one.

Because when she bowed her head, I saw it. The necklace on her pale throat.

The one Elliot had paid a small fortune for, days ago.

On the drive over, I'd actually let myself wonder if I had it all wrong. Hormones. A first-trimester brain making monsters out of shadows. He'd faced it head-on, hadn't he. He'd bought me a gift.

Elliot was always so steady. So calm. For him, this counted as trying.

I'd folded my pregnancy test into neat quarters and tucked it into a little wrapped box, ready to give back to him tonight.

"Nora." His voice dropped, low and warning. "Don't make this ugly."

I laughed, soft and cold.

Chapter 4

I dropped the photo on the table.

"I don't think it's that simple."

The picture made it obvious. Black lace, cut to be seen, nothing to it that would keep a person warm. "I got hot" didn't survive contact with it.

A few gasps went around the table.

"Wow. Noelle always seems so sweet and shy. Who knew she ran that hot."

Noelle didn't even get to react.

Elliot slapped the table first.

"I have spoiled you," he said. "I really have."

The anger came out of nowhere. It caught me flat.

He crossed the room, put a tissue in Noelle's hand, and stepped in front of her like a shield.

"I work myself to the bone, and you turn up at my hospital over nothing. You think I don't know your own body? You don't even have low blood sugar. I genuinely don't understand. Is there nothing else in your life?"

He went down the list, item by item, the way he reads a chart.

"The night before we signed, I told you. I'm busy. Patients come first. You're the one who insisted on marrying me. And now there's no time for a wedding, so you pick fights, you make scenes."

He didn't stop.

"The wounded act. The pretty-girl act. Playing hard to get. I've had your whole playbook memorized since you were fifteen."

The room sucked in a breath.

His residents were too scared of him to make a sound. They drifted in behind me, tugged at my sleeve, tried to walk me out.

I breathed through my mouth and held my face together.

He wasn't finished.

"Noelle is my intern. She did nothing to you, and she still lowered herself to explain. And you?"

He pressed his fingers to his brow.

A balloon drifted down and settled by his shoe.

He stepped on it.

The pop went through the whole room.

"Everyone here is busy. Studying. Working. Not all of us have the luxury of nothing to do all day." A beat. "Unlike you."

The woman with nothing to do all day out-earned him, and he had no idea by how much. None of them did. He least of all.

He gentled his voice for Noelle.

"You all enjoy yourselves. I'll take Noelle home."

I wanted to explain. I wanted to scream. Nothing came out.

The numbness started in my fingers. Then my hands. Then somewhere behind my face, until the air stopped going where I sent it.

By the time I understood I couldn't breathe, there were people all around me.

Then someone screamed.

"Norablood"

"She's bleeding, there's blood, you you're pregnant"

"Talia, go, stop Dr. Cross, he can't be downstairs yet"

I'd never seen them like that. Two years of these kids hanging off my arm, teasing me, talking trash about Elliot under their breath. Now their faces had gone white.

In the ambulance, I looked at how young they were, and couldn't remember when I'd stopped being that loud, that free, and turned into something quiet and careful instead.

"Where's Dr. Cross? Did he go ahead to the hospital?"

"How far along is she? Why didn't he say anything when she fainted last week?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came.

"Talia. What's taking so long. Is Dr. Cross with you?"

I don't know what I was still hoping for. Whatever it was, it dragged my eyes open under the oxygen mask. Made me listen.

Birdie had been gripping my hand the whole time.

Her grip went slack.

And through the phone at her ear, I heard him.

That voice. So familiar.

Chapter 5