Amanda Cinelli – Reunited For The Billionaire's Legacy (страница 9)

“Coburn—”

“Save it.” His razor-sharp words cut through the air like a knife. “Learn what it’s like to wait and wonder, Diana. Learn what it’s like to be stuck in purgatory like I was. I can tell you from experience it isn’t pretty.”

He turned and yanked open the door. Diana set a hand on his shoulder. “I am going. Jerry will find another way to make this happen, and it will be done. Do it the easy way without dragging us all through that.”

He turned around, never feeling so cold and emotionless in his entire life. “Enjoy your self-exploration, Diana. I hope you get your answers.”

He walked out of the conference room and away from the closure he’d wanted so desperately. If it added another complication to his already convoluted life? So be it. That had been far, far more satisfying than what he’d walked in there to do.

CHAPTER FOUR

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, he wouldn’t sign?”

Her father’s enraged voice boomed in Diana’s ear, intensifying the dull throb in her temples. She put down her spoon and pushed her half-eaten bowl of soup away as the ache in her head mixed with the uneasy sensation in her stomach to inspire a distinctly unwell feeling.

“He said he needed more time.” She fixed her gaze on Wilbur Taylor’s flinty, gray-eyed one and the expression he reserved solely for conversations about her ex-husband.

“More time for what?” her father huffed. “So he can add another socialite to his list of fame?”

Her mouth tightened. “I have no idea, and frankly I’m over it. I’m leaving on Friday. It can wait until he sees reason.”

Her father waved a hand at her. “Never mind. I’ll sic David Price on it.”

She put her spoon down, her blood pressure rising. “Jerry is perfectly capable of taking care of it. It’s my business, Father. Stay out of it.”

“Jerry Simmons is a fine lawyer, but he isn’t a pit bull like David. David will have you divorced in minutes.”

“No.” She cut the idea off at the pass. Although she couldn’t say she didn’t have her doubts about Jerry’s ability to handle Coburn after her husband had walked all over him two weeks ago in that conference room, this was her decision to make, and she didn’t want her father anywhere near it.

“Fine.” Her father shrugged his broad shoulders. “But I don’t think you’re handling this very well. You shouldn’t be giving him any choice.”

Diana picked up her wine and took a sip. What did he think she handled well, beyond her patients? She’d spent her life trying to live up to her world-renowned orthopedic surgeon of a father, who overshadowed everything in his wake with his big personality and impossible standards. But measuring up had become a fruitless pursuit she’d finally abandoned for her own sanity.

“Your father is only considering what’s best for you, Diana.” Her mother, ever the peacekeeper, attempted to smooth the waters.

And pursuing his own witch hunt of her husband... Her father had never liked Coburn from the minute he’d laid eyes on him. She’d always wondered if it was because he saw too much of himself in Coburn—a man who viewed the world as his oyster and took his pick of it as if it was his divine right. That was what her father had done in marrying her mother, his secretary at the time, then carrying on a five-year-long affair with a brilliant fellow doctor whose brain apparently turned him on more than his society wife.

At least Coburn had never cheated on her. She sat back as the maid came to clear her soup bowl. He’d waited until they’d ended their marriage to drink his fill. Which satisfied his code of honor. As long as he was in a relationship, he never strayed, even if, as Rory had joked to her about his friend’s philandering ways when they’d first met, it was only one night. Not once during their turbulent union had he ever indicated interest in another woman, despite the way they’d shamelessly thrown themselves at him.

It should have quieted her insecurities, but they’d been far too deeply ingrained to elude.

Her mother scrunched up her angularly attractive face. “I don’t like the idea of you over there in that wild country, Diana. Anything could happen to you and we are so far away. I wish you’d reconsider.”

“I am needed there.” She gave her mother a pained look. “We’ve been over this.”

“The situation was never this bad,” her father broke in, a bullish look on his face. “Yes, the city is more stable now, but the rebels have still been conducting raids, and conditions could deteriorate overnight.”

Diana was well aware of the situation she was walking into. She’d come to terms with the danger when she’d made the decision to commit. And although her nerves were growing every day at the thought of what she was about to face—a mental and physical challenge that would surely change her life—she was determined to follow through.

“I’m not changing my mind.”

“I rather thought so.” Her father grimaced at her from across the solid, ornately carved mahogany table. “So I reached out to a contact of mine there and arranged for you to stay in the Lione Hotel instead of the usual accommodations. It’s minutes to the hospital and has the best security you can hope for right now. Someone will walk you back and forth each day.”

Diana stared at him in disbelief as the maid set the steaming main course down in front of her. “Dammit, Father, this is my life. You can’t just do things like that.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t being so foolhardy.”

“Part of this experience is bonding with the other doctors I’m working with. I want to stay with them.”

“There is another doctor staying at the Lione. Bond with him.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “You have to stop interfering in my life.”

Her father picked up his fork and pointed it at her. “Do you know how many foreign-aid workers have been kidnapped from that area in the past six months? It is staggering, Diana. If you won’t do this for yourself, do it for your mother and me so we don’t spend every day and night worrying about you.”

Worrying about your half-a-million-dollar investment in your only child, she corrected flippantly to herself. But the real hint of concern in her father’s voice made her soften. It wasn’t fair to make them worry.

“Fine.” She picked up her fork and matched his aggressive joust with one of her own. “But do not make one more phone call, one more inquiry on my behalf to anyone, or I will stay with the others.”

“Fine.” Her father dug into his beef with a satisfied nod. Diana looked down at hers, her stomach doing a slow roll at the smell of the spicy dish. She cut a piece of the meat. A wave of perspiration swept over her, blanketing her forehead in a thin layer of sweat.

Oh, no. Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it back down, pushed her chair out and ran for the bathroom. She barely made it inside and to the toilet before she was brutally, gut-wrenchingly sick. Her insides heaving until there was nothing left inside her, she remained kneeling on the bathroom floor draped over the toilet until finally, her head stopped spinning and she could sit up.

What bloody bad timing. She grabbed some toilet paper and wiped it over her brow. She never got sick, never got the flu. Coburn used to call her stomach cast-iron, which made it all the more ironic her succumbing to it now with days to go before she had to get on a plane for a multiday trip.

Deciding she was in the safe zone, she got to her feet and washed her hands. The fact that this was the third day in a row she’d suffered a low-grade and now acute nausea penetrated her consciousness. Her uninhibited encounter with Coburn filled her head.

They’d used a condom. They’d always used condoms because she couldn’t tolerate the birth control pill and the last thing she and Coburn had needed was a baby at this point in their careers. To complicate their marriage.

It must be the flu.

She went back to the dining room, where her parents insisted she stay the night. But a sixth sense told her she couldn’t be here right now. She asked them to call her a cab instead and went home, where Beth fussed over her and made her a cup of tea, then put her to bed.

She tried to sleep but her head was spinning as if a circus was going on inside it. What if it wasn’t the flu? What if she was pregnant?

A giant knot formed in her stomach. She stared out the window at the big oak tree swaying back and forth in the darkness, high winds signaling the imminent arrival of a classic East Coast electrical storm. If she’d thought what had happened upon seeing her ex again had been a disaster, that was nothing compared with the possibilities raging through her head. Nothing.

She spent two days in denial. On the third, she had a scheduled appointment with her doctor to receive a final shot she needed for her trip. Joanne Gibson, her GP and a former colleague, gave her a frown as she entered the examining room.

“You look thin. Have you been ill?”

Diana sat down in a chair, the tiny room seeming to close in on her at the question. “Could you add a—” she could barely get the words out “—pregnancy test to the list?”

Joanne’s face lit up. “Really? Are you and Coburn back to—?” The look on Diana’s face stopped her cold. “What a stupid thing to say,” her doctor mumbled. “Of course we can do that.”