Page 51 of Billionaire Hunt

“It is quite beautiful.”

“Yeah. She was a beautiful person inside and out, so it’s fitting.” He stopped in his tracks then and patted his pocket. “I guess we’re going to just have to beg for coffee from the nurses because I don’t know where my wallet is.”

“You probably just left it in your car. I can run out and check for you.”

“No, no, you go upstairs...”

I shook my head and said, “Between you and me, I’m sort of hoping the baby is already here before I go back up there. Labor creeps me out.” Not that I would ever experience it, I thought not for the first time since my encounter with Erik. It had been two weeks since we made love. He hadn’t called or tried to contact me that first week, but once he hadn’t heard from me that second week, he had called, emailed, showed up at my apartment, but I had refused to see him, let alone talk to him.

He laughed. “Me too. That’s why we, Ophelia and I, stopped at one,” he chuckled. “I was hiding down here when I came across the memorial.”

“Yeah, I volunteered to come find you because I felt I would just be in the way up there.”

“I feel the same too. You would think that in the year 2017 scientists would have come up with a way to make this whole labor thing...well, just less painful and less messy for women.”

“Tell me about it. My heart started to race when we got off the elevator on that floor and I’m not even the one in labor.” I couldn’t believe I had ever agreed to be a surrogate.

He laughed and handed me the keys. “It’s the Tesla out front.”

“Of course, it is.”

I glanced at the memorial as I walked past it, wondering if anyone would love me as much as Oliver clearly had loved Ophelia. And at that moment, I accidentally dropped his keys. I reached down to pick them up when I heard a horn blare and felt an impact that ripped a scream from my throat as my body went flying through the air and I landed with a thud. A sharp pain so horrendous pierced my lower body. The pain was so bad that I felt myself losing consciousness. My head, my lower body, my hand...everything hurt. I saw Oliver standing over me with other strangers, they were talking to me. Telling me that everything was okay. Telling me to hold on, but it was too late.