Jilted Wife Returns As A Billionaire Heiress novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Top Floor
Darius moves Elsie and the twins to the private suite and asks her nothing; when Imogen arrives with flowers, Trent walks in behind her with a process server.
Darius Ames reached the ward in nine minutes, and he did not come alone.
Elsie heard him before she saw him.
The curtain around bed four was pulled back.
The charge nurse who had refused her stood in the doorway, holding her tablet against her chest.
Beside her was a gray-haired man in a suit and a hospital lanyard.
"This is the chief administrator," the charge nurse said, and her voice was a shade too bright. "He'd like to apologize for the mix-up."
"There was no mix-up," Darius said.
He came around the end of the bed.
He was taller than Elsie remembered, and he had a scar through his left thumbnail that had not been there six years ago.
He looked at her face first, and then at the two babies in the cart.
"Hello, Elsie," he said.
"Hello."
It was all she could manage.
Six years had gone by, and he stood in a hospital ward at midnight in a charcoal overcoat, and he had not asked her one question.
"Ms. Farragut was promised the top floor," Darius told the administrator. "She was put in a four-bed ward, and nobody here bothered to find out why."
"There's no deposit on file," the charge nurse said weakly.
"Then I'm putting one on file now."
Darius took a black card from his wallet and set it in the administrator's hand.
"Three nights. Open ended after that. Move her now, and bring a second crib."
The administrator nodded twice and left.
The charge nurse stayed where she was, and her face went pink.
"I'm so sorry, Ms. Farragut. I should have called upstairs."
"Yes," Elsie said. "You should have."
She had not meant it to sound so flat.
The woman flinched, and across the room one of the other mothers gave a small satisfied cough.
An orderly came with a wheelchair for her and a second cart for the babies.
Darius waved both of them aside.
"I've got him," he said, and he lifted Wyatt out of the cart with one hand under the head.
He held him easily.
Wyatt, who had been furious a minute ago, went quiet and looked up at him.
Elsie stared.
"I have a niece," Darius said, without turning around. "She's four."
In the elevator the orderly pushed the bed, and Darius stood against the back wall with the baby on his shoulder.
The doors opened on carpet.
The suite was at the end of a quiet hall.
It had a window over the lake, a sofa, a small kitchen and a bassinet in the corner.
Somebody had already put a vase of white lilies on the table.
Elsie let the orderlies settle her into the bed.
When the room was empty at last, she lay back and shut her eyes.
Nora slept on her chest, and Wyatt slept in Darius's arms.
"You didn't ask me anything," she said.
"No."
"It's been six years."
"I know how long it's been."
He said it quietly, and he laid Wyatt in the bassinet with a care that made her throat ache.
"You can tell me what you want to tell me, Elsie," he said. "Or nothing. I'll sit by the door either way."
She looked at the ceiling.
"Trent Rafferty owes me four hundred and ten thousand dollars," she said.
"I lent it to him from my mother's insurance money. He signed a note. He said it was for his firm."
"Is he the father?"
"Yes. We're divorced. He told me to take the ward and said he'd come when they were cleaner."
Darius's jaw moved once.
He did not say what he thought of that.
He took out his phone and typed something short, then put it away again.
"Does my father know you came?" Elsie asked.
"No. I didn't think you wanted him to."
"I don't."
"Then he doesn't."
It was the only thing anyone had said to her all night that she wanted to hear.
Her eyes closed by themselves.
When she woke, the window was gray and Darius was sitting by the door with his coat across his knees.
He had not slept.
He looked up at once.
A soft knock came at the door, then another, and she knew the knock.
It was quick and bright, two taps and a third.
"Elsie? It's me. Can I come in?"
It was Imogen.
She had said she was stuck at O'Hare.
Darius stood, and Elsie pushed herself higher against the pillows.
"Come in," she said.
Imogen came through the door with an armful of white tulips and her glossy hair slipping out of its clip.
"I took a cab straight from the airport. I've been so worried about you."
She dropped the flowers on the sofa and crossed the room in three steps.
She put her arms around Elsie, carefully, around the babies too.
"Look at them," she whispered. "Oh, Elsie. Look at them."
She smelled of airplane and the lemon soap she always used, and Elsie's eyes filled.
Then the door opened wider, and a man walked in behind her with a bunch of grocery-store roses.
It was Trent, in the navy suit he had worn to their wedding.
Behind him stood a stranger in a gray coat, holding a long envelope.
"Elsie Farragut?" the stranger said. "You've been served."
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