Jennie Lucas - To Love, Honour and Betray

He sucked in his breath, searching her gaze. “Labor?”

Wheezing, she nodded. As the pain built, her knees went weak beneath her and she felt herself start to collapse toward the sidewalk.

Then she felt Eduardo’s strong arms around her as he lifted her against his chest. It felt good, so good, to be cradled in his arms that she nearly wept. He looked down at her, his jaw tight.

“How long?” he demanded.

Her body was starting to shake with the pain and she saw from his expression that he could feel it, too. “All … day … I—I think …”

“Damn you, Callie!” he said hoarsely. “Why do you hide everything?”

She was in too much agony to answer. His jaw clenched and he turned away, racing to the curb. “Sanchez! Door!” he shouted, and his driver sprang into action. Seconds later, she was in the backseat of the black sedan. Eduardo took her hands in his own as he asked urgently, “Which hospital, Callie? The name of your doctor?”

She told him, as Eduardo turned to shout the information at his driver, growling at him to drive faster, faster .

“Just hold on, querida ,” Eduardo said softly to her, stroking her hair. “We’re almost there.”

But Callie was lost in pain as the car flew down the streets of New York, taking sharp turns and honking wildly until the car sharply stopped. The car door flung open, and she was dimly aware of Eduardo shouting that his wife needed help, help now dammit!

“But I’m not your wife,” Callie breathed as she was wheeled into the hospital. She looked up at him, blinking back tears even as the pain started to recede. “We only have a license. We’re not married.”

Callie heard him gasp before she was whisked away by a nurse to a private examination room. As the contraction eased, she changed into a hospital gown. When the nurse came back through the door, Callie got a single glimpse of Eduardo pacing in the hallway, barking madly into a phone at his ear. Then the door closed, and the round-faced, smiling nurse came to check her. She straightened. “Six centimeters dilated. Oh, my goodness. This baby is on the way. We’ll notify the doctor and get you to your room. I’m afraid it might be too late for anesthesia …”

“Don’t—care—just want my baby to—be all right …” But before Callie had even been wheeled to her private labor and delivery room, the new contraction had already begun. Each one was worse than the last, and this one hit her so badly it made her whole body shake. Rising to her feet, reaching toward her bed, Callie covered her mouth as nausea suddenly roiled through her.

Quickly Eduardo came behind her. He snatched up the trash can and gave it to her just in time for her to be sick in it. Afterward, as the pain receded, Callie sat down on her hospital bed and cried. She cried from pain, from fear, and most of all from knowing that she’d just been vulnerable in front of Eduardo Cruz … and was about to be even more vulnerable.

But there was no way out now.

Only one way through.

“Help her!” Eduardo bit out at the nurse, who gave him an understanding smile.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s time for meds. But don’t worry. The doctor is on his way….”

Eduardo snarled a curse that involved the doctor’s lacking moral qualities, intelligence and bloodline. Growling, he went to the door and peered out into the hallway for the third time before Callie heard him mutter, “Thank God. What took so long?”

“All good things take time.” A smiling, white-haired man in a suit followed him back into the private delivery suite. Eduardo went to Callie, who was stretched out across the hospital bed with her feet in stirrups, taking deep breaths and trying to relax before the next contraction.

“That’s not my doctor!” she cried.

Eduardo knelt beside the bed. “He’s going to marry us, Callie.”

She looked between them in shock. “Right now?”

He gave her a crooked half smile, pushing sweaty tendrils of hair off her face. “Why? Are you busy?”

Callie looked at the trim man with the white beard and bow tie. “Is he authorized to just randomly marry people?”

The corners of his lips quirked. “He’s a justice of the New York Supreme Court. So yes.”

“There’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period after the license—”

“He’s waived it.”

“And my previous license—”

“Handled.”

“Everything always goes your way, doesn’t it?” she grumbled.

Leaning over the hospital bed, he kissed her sweaty forehead. “No,” he said in a low voice. “But this time it will.” He turned back to the judge. “We are ready.”

“The doctor will be here any second,” the nurse warned.

“I’ll do the express version, then.” The judge stood in front of the beeping, flashing displays that monitored both Callie’s heart rate and the baby’s, and gave the plump nurse a wink. “Will you be my witness?”

“All right,” the nurse said with a girlish blush. “But make it quick.”

“Quicker ‘n quick. So. We’re gathered here in this hospital room to marry this man and this woman.” The judge peered down at Callie’s huge belly. “And none too soon, I’d say …”

“Just get on with it, Leland,” Eduardo snapped.

“Do you, Eduardo Jorge Cruz, take this woman—what’s your name, my dear?”

“It’s Calliope,” Eduardo answered for her through clenched teeth. “Calliope Marlena Woodville.”

“Is it really?” The judge looked at her sympathetically through wire-rimmed glasses. “How very unfortunate for you.”

“From my mother’s—favorite soap opera,” she panted.

“Right. So do you, Eduardo, take this woman, Calliope Marlena Woodville, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

Callie felt the pain starting to build again, and grabbed Eduardo’s shirt. Looking at her, he put his hand over hers, then said angrily to the judge, “Hurry, damn you!”

“And do you, Calliope Woodville, promise to love Eduardo Jorge Cruz, forsaking all others, till death do you part?”

Eduardo looked down at her with his dark eyes. Once, this had been all Callie ever wanted, to promise her love and fidelity to him forever. And now it was happening. She was promising to love him forever, though she knew it was a lie.

It was a lie, wasn’t it?

“Callie?” Eduardo said in a low voice.

“I do,” she choked out.

Eduardo exhaled. Had he wondered, for a brief instant, if she might refuse? No, impossible. He was too arrogant, too sure of his control over women, to ever doubt….

“I see you already have the ring,” the judge said, then blinked in surprise at the tiny diamond on Callie’s hand. “I must say, Eduardo,” he murmured, “that’s unusually restrained for you.”

She was still wearing Brandon’s engagement ring! Horrified, Callie tried to pull it off her swollen finger, but it was stuck. “I’m sorry—I … forgot …”

Without a word, Eduardo eased the ring from her finger and tossed it in the trash. “I will buy you a ring,” he said flatly. “One worthy of my wife.”

“Don’t worry.” She gave him a weak smile as she felt the pain start to build again. She panted, “Our marriage will be so short it really doesn’t matter …”

“That’s the spirit,” the judge said jovially. “Ring can come later. Or not. Well, kids, we’ll just skip through and assume the part about forsaking all others and staying together for better or worse. And since with Eduardo I already know it’ll be for richer, not poorer, I reckon that’s about it.”

Callie stared at the judge, then Eduardo. The wedding ceremony had passed by in a flash. Just a few words spoken, and two lives—soon, three—forever changed. How could something so life-changing be so fast?