Betrayed by My Husband, Taken by His Billionaire Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Lie Back
On the exam table, a cold masked doctor learns Juliet is a virgin after thirteen months of marriage, finds her eggs are fine and her donor is her husband's mistress; she withdraws consent in front of everyone, and the doctor turns out to be her husband's uncle, who tells her she was married for a deadline.
"Lower your pants and lie back on the table. This may hurt a little, so try to stay still."
The doctor said it without looking up.
I stayed by the paper screen, holding my purse in both hands.
"Is there any way I could see a woman instead?"
He was too tall for the little room, and his shoulders strained his navy scrubs.
A surgical mask covered his face from the nose down.
All I could see were cool gray eyes and the hard edge of a jaw.
He was laying instruments on a steel tray, one at a time, in a perfect row.
"Every female physician is booked today. The next opening is in three weeks."
My transfer was in eighteen days.
Chandler had booked this appointment himself and texted me the address twice.
I set my purse on the chair.
I stepped out of my shoes, then my jeans, then the rest, and folded them neatly.
The paper crackled under me when I lay back.
"Feet in the stirrups. Slide down to me. Further."
His voice came from the foot of the table now.
I heard the stool roll closer.
I stared at a water stain on the ceiling tile shaped like Florida.
Thirteen months married, and my husband had never once seen me like this.
A stranger in a mask was seeing all of it.
"Let your knees fall open."
I hadn't known I was squeezing them together.
Something cool touched me with no warning at all.
"Ah!"
It came out high and soft, nothing like a word.
I slapped a hand over my mouth.
The room went very quiet.
The stool didn't move.
"Did I hurt you?" His voice had dropped, lower and rougher than before.
"No." I kept my face turned to the wall. "It was cold. That's all."
"Breathe out. Don't tighten up on me."
After that his hands were slower, and every touch came with a warning first.
I could hear my own pulse.
I could hear the clock over the door and the snap of a fresh glove.
"You're more sensitive than most," he said.
Heat ran up my throat and into my face.
"Everything looks healthy. Any pain during sex?"
I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
"Mrs. Radford."
"I wouldn't know." I said it to the ceiling. "I'm still a virgin."
The stool creaked.
Then his gray eyes rose over my knees and looked straight at me for the first time.
"Your intake says you've been married thirteen months."
"My husband crashed his bike two weeks before the wedding. A nerve. The doctors say it might come back."
"And you're here for an embryo transfer."
"Donor eggs. My reserve is almost gone. His family's doctor tested me in May."
He didn't answer.
He pulled the ultrasound cart over and warned me before he touched me again.
Then he turned the screen so I could see it.
Gray static, and a cluster of small black circles.
"Those are follicles. Each one holds an egg." He touched the screen with one gloved finger. "I count eleven on this side."
"That's not possible. I saw the report."
"I'm looking at your ovary, Mrs. Radford. Not at a report."
He told me to dress and sat down at the computer by the door.
Behind the screen I pulled my jeans on with shaking hands.
His typing stopped.
"Who told you your donor was anonymous?"
"My husband. He picked her from a catalog. He said she had my coloring."
He turned the monitor toward me.
DONOR TYPE: DIRECTED (KNOWN).
DONOR: LAWSON, DAVINA M.
I read it three times.
"You know her," he said.
"She's my husband's assistant. I send her roses on her birthday."
Someone knocked, and the clinic coordinator leaned in with a clipboard and a bright smile.
"Mr. Radford's here for the consult. Room four, whenever you're ready."
Room four had a glass wall onto the hallway.
I saw them before they saw me.
Chandler was on the little sofa in his navy quarter-zip, golden hair falling in his eyes.
Davina sat beside him with her white blazer open.
His hand was flat on her stomach.
She laughed at something, and he leaned in and kissed the side of her neck, slow, with his eyes closed.
He had never kissed me there.
He had never kissed me anywhere for longer than a photo took.
I opened the door.
Chandler sprang up with his dimples ready. "Jules! Babe, how'd it go?"
Davina didn't even move his hand. He took it back himself.
"Your nerve healed," I said.
The dimples went away.
The coordinator stepped in behind me, and a nurse behind her.
"Mrs. Radford, I just need your signature on the transfer consent."
I took the clipboard and the pen.
Under my name I wrote, in capitals, I WITHDRAW CONSENT. NO TRANSFER. EVER.
I signed it and dated it and gave it back to her.
"The donor is his girlfriend," I told her. "He lied to me, and he lied to you."
The nurse put her hand over her mouth.
Chandler laughed, too loud. "She's emotional. The hormones. Juliet, sit down."
"I'm not on any hormones, Chandler. I'm on nothing. That's the point."
I twisted my wedding ring off.
It took two tries because my finger had swelled in the heat of that room.
I dropped it into his coffee.
Davina snorted into her phone.
Chandler's face went white, then ugly.
He leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
"You walk out that door, and you'll be selling flowers out of a bucket. My company owns your mother's building."
"Then evict me," I said, out loud, for everybody.
"Mr. Radford."
The doctor was in the doorway.
He pulled his mask down.
He was younger than I'd thought, maybe mid-thirties, with silver just starting at his temples.
Chandler stared at him.
"Uncle August?"
I knew the name.
The uncle who skipped our wedding.
The one Chandler called the family's sperm-bank king.
"You'll leave my clinic now," August Radford said. "Both of you."
I didn't stay to watch them go.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Annabeth Odom, from the shop: "Well?? Are we buying baby onesies or what??"
I couldn't answer her.
I took the stairs four flights down to the parking garage and found my van, BEXLEY FLOWERS painted on the side in my mother's handwriting.
My keys wouldn't go into the lock.
"Mrs. Radford."
He'd taken the stairs too.
He wasn't even out of breath.
"Don't," I said. "Whatever you're going to say about your family, I don't want it."
"Then just one thing." He stopped a few feet from me. "Do you know what my father promised in his lawyer's office last year?"
"Truman? He doesn't tell me anything but how the Panthers are doing."
"He promised his chair to whichever of us puts a Radford baby in his arms by his eightieth birthday."
The garage went silent around me.
"That was August twenty-fifth," he said. "Chandler proposed to you that Friday."
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