Alpha Billionaire Series

MADII

“Now stand here.” I positioned the four-year-old’s shoulders, so he would face my camera, his tiny hand clenching tightly to his mother’s skirt. “Great job.”

He beamed with pride, his little chin jutting out as his mother ruffled his shaggy hair. They wore matching, blue- checked attire and denim sneakers. Their blond hair and blue eyes gave them away as mother and son. And the way her belly bulged a little, I could tell she was pregnant, though without the presence of a partner, I hesitated to ask many questions.

“Alright, you guys ready?” I positioned myself behind the camera as Meredith, my client, posed and smiled.

“Ready when you are.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

She was radiant. I snapped at least a dozen photos of her, but all I could think about was how much I wanted children one day. Drew and I had planned to have a gaggle of them, fill our house with noise and toys and love. Each pose I put them in only made me crave it more.

I had her sit on the park bench, sun shining from behind me for the best lighting. Her little guy stood next to her, hand resting on her knee. She peered down at him, and he looked up at her. I could see the love between them, the warmth. It stirred something inside of me.

As we wrapped up the shoot, I pulled a sucker from my camera bag and handed it to the little boy, Todd. His eyes lit up as he peeled the wrapper away and plunged it into his mouth. I packed my camera equipment up and Meredith hovered nearby.

“So how does this work now? You mail me pictures?” She rubbed her belly a circle, watching Todd run off toward the playground a few hundred yards away.

“I will email you the proofs, and you can make your selections. There are a few different packages to choose from. I can't do the prints for you, or you can have them compiled onto a drive and have them printed yourself” I wiped a lens clean before capping it and putting it away.

“Thanks. I just really wish Josh were here to help me make these decisions. It's so difficult with him gone.” There was a sadness in her eyes as she spoke.

“What happened?” My heart sank a little as I asked the question. I had gotten sick of people asking me about Drew, and I wondered if it were the same for her.

“Oh, he’s not gone gone. Josh is in the military. He's deployed overseas right now. Sometimes it feels like he's gone though.” Meredith sat at the small picnic table and rubbed her lower back. If I had to guess I would have said she wa nearing birth, her stomach so large.

I sank down onto the bench next to her, tucking my legs beneath the table. Meredith and I weren't that different afte all. Although, she was a big farther along in her journey than I was when Drew left. She must have seen the sadness in my eyes because she offered a concerned look.

“You lost someone you love?” She angled her body to see me better.

“Sort of?” I sighed. “My fiancé and I were scuba diving for our bachelor/ bachelorette party and his tank malfunctioned somehow. He nearly drowned. He's in a coma.”

“Oh, God. I'm so sorry to hear that. It must be heartbreaking.” Meredith's eyes flicked to the playground for a second, then back to my face.

“It's easier now. It happened almost I8 months ago.”

Her eyes grew wide. “You've been waiting for him for I8 months? He's still in a coma?”

I nodded. “Yeah, he is. But I'm not waiting anymore. His parents, my parents, all our friends tell me to move on. It's tough some days because I know how close we were and what our dreams together were. But the odds are he won't wake up, and he will just live the rest of his life in a coma or a vegetative state.”

Meredith frowned and took my hand. I was glad she was one of those strangers that didn’t mind lending an ear. I hac overshared, which wasn't typical of me, but the emotion of watching her with her children just got to me.

“I'm so sorry to hear that. I think your family is right. You should move on, but at your own pace. If something ever happened to Josh, I'd have a hard time moving on, that's for sure. But there is a time for it”

I smiled, thinking of Gavin and the special connection we had. Drew and I might have no hope for a future, but I did have a future in front of me, and I wanted it to be with Gavin. I wanted it to be with children, and a home, and memories, and love.

“Thank you for doing the shoot for us today. I'll look forward to your email with the proofs.” Meredith stood and patted me on the shoulder. “And good luck. It's a great big world out there. You'll need an extra ounce of patience in searching for the next Mr. Right.”

With a wink, she headed toward the playground, waddling as she walked. I splayed my fingers on my stomach thinking of how amazing it must be to grow a human life inside of your womb. Drew and I had planned to have kids, and the few pregnancy scares we had hadn't really been scares to me. The only thing I'd miss out on was some of my riskier adventure seeking. But wasn’t parenthood an adventure too? Drew had insisted on birth control until we were both settled on the notion, so I took it religiously to respect him.

I began to wonder what Gavin thought about kids. He had never asked why I was on the pill. When we had sex, he mentioned how he didn't want me to have any surprises. That was probably a code for how he had no desire for children. He was older than me, with an established career. He probably never wanted kids, or else he would have been married, and would have kids a long time ago.

Part of me wanted to call and ask him right away what he wanted, because if he wanted no kids, then we were not going to work out. But another part of me wanted to call him just to tell him I loved him. Because the more I spent time away from him, the more I realized how empty my life was without him. And I wanted him there.

I rifled through my camera bag to find my phone and dialed his number. It rang several times and went through to voicemail, so I ended the call. I didn’t know what to say in a voicemail. Exactly how did you approach the topic of kids with someone you just started dating? I didn’t want to scare him off, though if the idea of me pining over my almost-dead ex-fiancé didn’t scare him away, what would?

I watched Meredith and Todd play on the playground for a while, swinging and going down the slide. I was a bit lonely, so I called Lexi and she picked up right away.

“Hey, girl. What you up to?” Her voice was bubbly as usual.

“Just finished a shoot and wondered what you were up to.”

The breeze picked up, cooling my skin a bit. I wished I had sat at a table in the shade rather than the direct sun, but felt too lazy to stand up and move.

“Just eating some ice cream. You want to come hang?” I heard the clatter of a spoon in a bowl in the background. Ice cream did sound good, but I didn’t want to drive all the way across town for that.

“Well, I would but I have another shoot later today. Just wanted to talk for a while I guess.”

“Cool, so what's new?” There was soft music playing in Lexi’s house too, like she was bummed out or something and shoving her face full of sugary treats to distract herself.

“Well, I had dinner with Gavin.”

Lexi squealed. “Dish!”

I chuckled. “We went to this fancy place and talked for a while. Dinner was good. He took me home and walked me tc my door and I invited him in." I left the ending open so she could assume what we had done.

“Oh, god, you didn't”

“I did.” I smiled. She knew me.

“So, does this mean you're ready to move on? That you're going to really take a shot on the doctor?” Her voice rose a notch in pitch and volume as she spoke.

“Yeah, we actually talked about it. I'm ready, Lex. I want to see where this goes. After Drew took that turn for the worse, I kinda lost hope that he’s going to come back to me. And I don’t want to end up some middle-aged cat lady with no life”

Lexi laughed at me. “You? A cat lady? You're more likely to end up as a cougar”

I rolled my eyes at the insult. “Hardly. I don’t even want to date guys that aren't my age, let alone chase ones I0 year younger.”

“But isn’t the good doctor like I0 years older than you?” Her question smarted. I loathed those couples where the guy was in his 40s and the lady in her 20s and they acted like it was normal. Age-gap relationships just weren't my thing.

But Gavin was.

“Yeah, he is, but it's different.” I bit my lower lip. I didn't know why it was different for him, but it was.

“Different because you let your heart get involved, huh?” Lexi spoke with a mouthful of food, and I sighed.

“Yeah, I have!” She didn’t even realize how much I'd let my heart get involved. It hadn't just gotten involved; it had run away without me and already bound itself to him.

“You're in love, aren't you?” The squeal that followed drowned out my answer, though she didn’t need to hear it. She already knew.

“Yes.

We spent the next 20 minutes talking about all the amazing qualities Gavin had. She loved his dark luscious locks. She asked about his body, if he was as chiseled as she imagined him. I kept the conversation above the belt, but she insisted she had to know if his dick was big enough to satisfy me. That was where I drew the line.

“You're nosy.” I chuckled at her. “I should go. Okay? Do me a favor and don't tell Crystal. I don’t want her to think that I'm rushing”

“Sure, no problem, girl. I got your back. You tell her when you're ready.”

“Thanks, Lexi. I'll talk to you later”

We hung up, but my phone lingered there. I just wanted to hear his voice, but for all I knew he was in surgery at the moment. So instead of calling him, I typed out a nice text message.

Madii II:I4 AM: Hey... So, I just finished a shoot and I'm thinking of you. I want to do something fun with you... maybe go dancing? There is this rave on I2th street, maybe we can hit it up on Saturday? LMK

I hit send and shoved my phone back into my camera bag. It was time to head to the next location and get out of the heat for a while. Louisiana summers were the bane of my existence, but the thought of the bitter cold moving farthel north was worse. I'd visited the cold, but I didn't want to live there. Drew and I'd had our share of adventures around the US, but now it was time for a new adventure for me. I just hoped Gavin was up for it.