After Leaving You, My World Has No More Storms

After the miscarriage I lay awake till dawn most nights, and I only got worse.

My husband took me to see a psychiatrist. The doctor said it was postpartum depression after a pregnancy loss.

"How is it treated?"

"Plenty of time with family—"

The doctor hadn't finished before Burton Gilbert's phone started ringing.

I saw the little secretary's photo pop up on the screen.

Burton was on his feet before he thought about it.

"Admit her. Use your best equipment, your best machines, whatever it takes. I want her mental illness cured."

Then he turned and explained to me,

"If I weren't here taking care of you, I'd never have sent the girl off to handle things on her own."

"Lorraine's stuck out at the golf club in the rain. I have to go get her right now."

"You stay here and get better. The minute you're well, I'll be the first one here to bring you home."

He left in such a hurry he didn't give me a chance to say a word.

He seemed to have forgotten that I'd fallen and lost the baby because Lorraine spilled chicken soup at my feet.

And now, for her sake, he was leaving me here to be treated like a mental patient.

In that moment I finally understood. The child I had nearly killed myself to carry mattered far less to him than bringing his secretary an umbrella.

1

"Ms. Pruitt, there's really no need to admit you. I'll write you a prescription so you're not up all night."

"Once your body's recovered, you can go back to the IVF."

The doctor had watched Burton brush me aside, and the kindness in the suggestion was genuine.

"No prescription. And I'm done with the IVF."

The doctor looked startled.

"Done? Then you and Mr. Gilbert may never manage to have a child in this lifetime—"

"Then we won't."

I had plenty of ways to have a child if I wanted one. After all, the one who couldn't have children wasn't me. It was Burton, with his severe male infertility.

For the sake of his face, to help him hold on to his place as the Gilbert heir, I had never told him the truth.

I'd even paid off a doctor to collect a sample from him under cover of a routine checkup.

After more than two hundred stimulation injections, the doctors finally managed to give us one viable embryo.

And then the child I'd fought so hard to carry was gone the day after we confirmed the pregnancy, taken from me by his secretary, Lorraine Galloway.

The doctors said producing even that one embryo from Burton had been a miracle, and no one could promise the miracle would ever happen again.

So the child I'd lost was, in all likelihood, the only one we would ever have had.

And what he was about to lose was his place as the Gilbert heir.

To him, that would be a fatal blow.

The joke of it was that I'd worried myself into depression over him, while he slept soundly through every night.

And still had it in him to run an umbrella out to his little secretary.

If he wasn't the least bit worried about the seat under him, why should I be the eunuch fretting while the emperor stayed calm.

Once I saw all of it clearly, the knot of anger that had been pressing on my chest dissolved for good.

Outside the hospital, I called a lawyer and asked him to draft a divorce agreement.

I'd barely walked in the door when my mother-in-law grabbed my hand, furious.

"Your father-in-law has actually had a lawyer draw up a contract to sign thirty percent of the shares over to that bastard's name! All because his woman is pregnant with twins!"

"You give me a straight answer, right now, when are you and Burton going to have another baby?"

"Otherwise the Gilbert seat goes straight to that bastard!"

The bastard she meant was Colin's illegitimate son, Randolph Gilbert.

I smiled a little and told her, softly,

"Mom, he and I can't have children anymore—"

Before I could get out that I wanted a divorce, her face went hard.

"Well, if you can't have them, then let the one who can!"

I froze for a beat, then let out a soft laugh.

"Fine. Whatever makes you happy."

The rage drained out of her all at once, and she was suddenly bright and cheerful.

"Becca, I knew I hadn't misjudged you!"

"Once Lorraine has the baby, we'll give it to you to raise! Call it a reward for being so gracious about all this!"

It took me a moment to catch up. Lorraine was pregnant.

I quickly opened my email.

After I lost the baby, Randolph had sent me a message, telling me to take a good look at what kind of scumbag Burton really was.

At the time I was still in the middle of the miscarriage, and we were on opposite sides, so I assumed he was just trying to drive a wedge between us. I never even opened the attachment.

Now, with shaking hands, I clicked it open.

The attachment was a record of hotels Lorraine had expensed under the company's name over the past year.

More than half of them lined up with the dates Burton had been away on business.

So while I was putting myself through hell to give Burton a child, he'd been busy carrying on with his secretary behind my back.

Only, was the child in Lorraine's belly really Burton's?