Whatever The Price. Jules Bennett

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      So much swirled through her mind. With all the problems of their marriage, having a crisis in private was nearly impossible. There was just so much worry and fear filling her.

      And just because her period was five days late, didn’t mean she needed to jump to conclusions. She’d been stressed lately and had a lot going on in her life. There was no reason to panic. Didn’t she have enough on her plate without borrowing trouble?

      In the morning, if there was still no sign, she’d go get a home test. Then when Anthony returned, she’d know whether or not they’d need to talk about more than Lily and their separation.

      Wouldn’t that just be the icing on the cake? Another baby.

      Make that icing, sprinkles and a cherry on top.

      Charlotte jostled a fussy Lily, replaying the life-changing events of her morning.

      What a way to start off her day.

      She’d woken after a fitful night of sleep and asked Monique to keep an eye on the baby while she ran a quick errand. No way was she going to ask anyone else to get the over-the-counter test. This was Hollywood. The last thing she needed was reporters getting wind of this.

      This being the pregnancy test she’d taken in the drugstore restroom, because she couldn’t wait until she was home. It was positive.

      Who knew your life could change in the bathroom of a drugstore? It had taken some deep breathing and a shaky hand supporting her against the sink for several minutes before she could pull her gaze away from the two pink lines that had stared back at her.

      She knew taking a pregnancy test in a drugstore bathroom was not the classiest of moves, but she hadn’t wanted to risk anyone on her staff seeing it, or worse, the paparazzi. Juicy stories made for big bucks, so Dumpster diving wasn’t above the paparazzi.

      There was no privacy when you were married to Hollywood’s hottest director, which was how she’d found herself huddled away in a one-room drugstore bathroom. Bad enough she’d had to wear a hat and oversized sunglasses, and use cash so she didn’t have to flash her name on her credit card, but then she’d looked at the stick.

      Once she could speak and not risk hyperventilating, Charlotte called her doctor, who assured her they did walk-in blood tests and to come on in.

      Three hours later she was back home, waiting for the doctor’s office to call with those results, but she knew what they would say. The same thing both drugstore pregnancy tests had said—because she’d bought the box of two just to be sure.

      And now she swayed back and forth with a fussy Lily, wondering how she would tell Anthony when he returned from his trip. Which should be anytime now if he kept his word and came straight home.

      Good Lord. She sounded like his mother, not his wife. Make that soon-to-be ex. What did it matter what he did with his time now? It was all the time before she’d left him that had mattered. All those years before she’d visited her attorney that Anthony couldn’t give back to her.

      Tears pricked her eyes and there was nothing she could do to prevent them from falling. Might as well join in with Lily.

      “Shh,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay. Everything will work itself out.”

      Charlotte didn’t know if she was consoling the baby or herself, but everything would be okay … she hoped.

      Now she had a marriage not just on the rocks, but on the verge of falling off the cliff. In addition, she would become Lily’s legal guardian in ninety days, she still had the Children’s Hospital wing dedication and charity dinner to finish planning, and if all of that weren’t enough to make her run straight out of the Hollywood Hills, now she was having a baby of her own with a man she loved but couldn’t stay with.

      Would Anthony even want another child? How would he handle two when for years he hadn’t wanted any at all?

      “Charlotte?”

      Anthony’s questioning tone came from downstairs and pulled her from all the thoughts bouncing around in her head.

      “I’ll be down in a minute,” she called back.

      Charlotte stared at herself in the mirror. She may be the same woman she had been this morning, but she certainly didn’t feel the same. Her life had just taken another major come-out-of-nowhere blow and now she had to figure out how to deal with not one, but two babies and a possible divorce.

      Or an even worse possibility—what if she miscarried again? How could she cope with another stab to the heart and loss like the last time? How much could one person truly handle before breaking?

      Could her life be more of a mess?

      She couldn’t tell Anthony about the baby yet. Fear of losing the baby and fear of their future held her back.

      She’d obviously conceived when Anthony had come to “talk” last month, so that would make her four weeks along. Her miscarriage had occurred at seven weeks.

      To keep Lily’s life as stable as possible and to see how seriously Anthony took his paternal responsibilities, she wouldn’t say anything yet. There were so many reasons to keep this baby a secret, but most of all to keep her own sanity. She just couldn’t pile another emotional issue on and give Anthony more leverage to make her stay. She wanted, needed him to stay for the right reasons.

      Lily gave up fussing and moved straight into a full-throated cry with actual tears. Charlotte had the overwhelming urge to sit on the bed and join in, but that would solve nothing. And because Charlotte had never been one to sit around and cry when action needed to be taken, she straightened her shoulders and gave Lily an extra hug.

      “Let’s go get you a bottle, sweetheart.”

      Shifting the baby onto her hip, Charlotte padded out of her room and ran right into Anthony, who was standing outside her door.

      “Oh.” She stepped back. “I didn’t know you were out here waiting for us.”

      He hadn’t slept, or if he had, it was only for a few hours on his flight from New York to L.A. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair a bit mussed and he still had on the dress pants and shirt he’d worn for the awards. He’d lost the tie and jacket and unbuttoned the top two buttons, the sleeves folded taut over his muscular forearms. Why he didn’t change on his plane was beyond her.

      Charlotte couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the man who was going to try to do it all in an attempt to prove to her that he could do it all.

      Lily let out a loud wail.

      “I need to feed her,” Charlotte explained, moving past Anthony.

      “I’ll do it.” He slid the baby from her grasp and started toward the stairs. “I haven’t been spit up on for a couple days. I almost missed the smell.”

      No matter what life threw at him, Anthony always kept his sense of humor. As she followed him down the wide staircase, she recalled that his humor had been one of the traits that had led her to fall in love with him in the first place.

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