Page 25 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)

The limousine stopped in front of the emergency room entrance and Vincent jumped out of the front passenger seat and opened the back passenger door.

Harrison rushed out and ran toward the entrance.

Vincent could barely keep up with the man ten years his senior as they hurried into the emergency room.

Then they hurried up to the nurse’s station. “I was told Jayda Robinson is here,” Harrison said to the first nurse he came upon.

“Take a number and have a seat.”

“Just tell me where I can find Jayda Robinson.”

The woman looked at him angrily. “I said take a number and take a seat!”

Her anger only spurred Harrison’s. “Now you listen to me,” he said with his voice rising. “My name is Harrison Bainbridge. Where can I find Jayda Robinson?!”

When he said his name, everybody behind that desk stopped and looked at him. They didn’t know his face, but every single one of them knew that name. And the power to destroy them that such a name carried.

That was why the charge nurse didn’t hesitate. She hurried forward. “Right this way, sir,” she said and escorted Harrison, with Vincent at his side, to the back of the emergency room. They had to go around two corridors before they got to Jayda’s room.

When they opened the door, he was so relieved to see her sitting upright on her hospital bed that he had to take a moment just to catch up with his hammering heart. Then he hurried to her side. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, although he could see the terror that was still in her eyes. “I’m okay. I’m so sorry to disturb you like that, Harrison, but I didn’t have anybody else I could call and I wanted somebody to know I was in this hospital. I hate hospitals.”

Harrison understood exactly what she meant. “As do I,” he said. “How long have you been here?”

“For three or four hours. They’ve been running a lot of tests.”

“Have you spoken with the doctor?”

“Not yet, no. I’ve asked repeatedly, but they said he was busy.”

Harrison exhaled. It was a shame what people without means had to put up with. He looked at Vincent. “Go back to that nurse’s station. Tell that nurse I want to see whichever doctor is treating Miss Robinson and I want to see him now.”

“Yes sir,” Vincent said and left the room.

Harrison saw her close her eyes and then open them again, as if she was reliving the horror.

He sat on the bed beside her, which did comfort her.

“What happened?” he asked her in a soft voice, as if she only had to tell him and no one else.

He was looking over her body as he spoke, but she was in a hospital gown and there was little he could see.

“I was riding my bike down this alley.”

“An alley?” Harrison was concerned. “Why would you ride in an alley?”

“It’s faster. No traffic. At least it’s not supposed to be traffic.”

“Go on.”

“I just dropped off some chicken to this church youth camp like I do every Saturday, and so I’m on my way to pick up a couple orders from IHOP. That’s when this car comes racing through the alley like it’s coming straight for me.”

Harrison’s body tensed.

“I decided it was best if I jump off my bike and protect myself, that’s how fast it was coming, but I didn’t get a chance. That car slammed into the back of my bike and threw me so far that I ended up outside of the alley.”

Harrison wanted to die where he sat. A car hit her bike? And threw her off of her bike?

“But the car kept coming for me,” she continued.

“I tried to get up and run but I couldn’t get my body to move fast enough.

So the car came out of the alley and stopped, and then the door opened like the driver was gonna get out and do I-don’t-know-what to me.

But then these black guys that were playing basketball over on a court saw what was happening and they came running to help me, thank God.

The driver of that car got scared when he saw them coming, and so he closed that car door and took off. ”

Harrison was thankful too. But he was still so anguished by what she’d said about the way she was hit from behind and thrown from that bike that he couldn’t get a word out.

“Then I guess I passed out because the last thing I remembered is being here at this hospital.” Then tears appeared in her eyes. “I also remember, when I saw that car door open, that I was gonna die right in that pile of trash and nobody would . . .”

She couldn’t finish her sentence and Harrison understood why.

He removed his handkerchief and handed it to her.

Then he placed his arm around her and she leaned against him.

“You’re going to be just fine,” he said as the burden of his responsibility to her began to weigh on him heavily again.

Where was her family, he wondered. Who took care of her?

She called him because she had nobody else?

Was that true??? And in that moment he realized how little he knew about her.

She wiped her tear-stained eyes and leaned up from him.

“Did you see who was driving that car?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “It was a white guy, but that’s all I know. I don’t even know what kind of car it was or even the color of that car. It all happened so fast. I’m still kind of shaky.”

Harrison pulled her closer. “Do you have any family, Jayda?”

“I have my mother and three half-siblings on my mother’s side, but they all live in Kentucky and we aren’t close at all.”

“Why not?” His phone began ringing.

Jayda noticed how he looked at his Caller ID but didn’t answer it. She also noticed that a woman’s name, Marilyn she believed, was on his phone screen.

“Why aren’t you and your family close?” he asked her again as he turned his phone downward in his hand.

“It’s just not the life I want for myself.

They’re hardworking people, don’t get me wrong.

But after work all they wanna do is drink and party and always have a lot of drama going on.

Not my mama so much, but my half-siblings, although my mama can party with the best of’em too.

I remember how every single weekend it seemed as if everything was on the verge of collapse in our household, and how somebody was going to fight somebody else and it was always a big mess.

But somehow they always survived to live another day.

But that’s how they rolled. It was as if they lived for drama.

It was like the highlight of life to them. I wanted more out of life than that.”

“So you left home?”

“My Dad left and took me with him. He said they weren’t corrupting me, whatever he meant by that.

But he divorced my mama because he wanted a better life too.

The court gave him full custody because I was his only child in that household and mama had her hands full with my half-siblings.

I was ten when we left Kentucky and he brought me to Harlem to live. ”

“Did it turn out to be a better life?”

“With him it was. We were like best friends. It was great. But he had a stroke and died when I was sixteen.”

“Ah. Sorry to hear that.”

She felt he meant it, as his phone rang again. He glanced at the Caller ID again. But because he turned it back over quickly, Jayda couldn’t see who was calling that time.

So she kept on talking. “Thankfully I was old enough to work and take care of myself by the time he passed away,” she said.

“But I haven’t seen my mama or my half-siblings since I was ten years old, which was eighteen years ago.

And whenever I talk to them on the phone they don’t be all that thrilled about talking to me or seeing me either.

I think I was dead to them,” she said with a smile.

Then her look turned serious again. “But they were always in some mess every time we spoke.”

He considered her. “You’ve been on your own since you were sixteen, and came out on the other side a wonderful young lady. That’s impressive, Jayda.”

Jayda looked at him. Nobody had ever given her a compliment like that before. “Thank you.”

He smiled and pulled her closer against him. “What about now,” he asked her. “Is it a better life now?”

She had to think about that. “It’s a different life. That’s for sure. The jury’s still out on better.”

She and Harrison glanced at each other, as if they both understood what she meant, and then his phone rang again. He looked at the Caller ID and turned it back over quickly again, without answering it. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“Who keeps calling you?” Jayda decided to ask. That same Marilyn person ? she wanted to add. “Who’s blowing up your phone like that?” she added instead.

“I stopped by the office for a last-minute meeting a Canadian group requested. And then I got the message and came here. Now I’m late for a date,” he said before he realized he had let it slip. Or was it a slip? He looked at Jayda.

Jayda was astounded that he would have a date after what they did last night, but she realized she shouldn’t have been astounded at all.

She was nothing more than a business proposition to him.

A piece of meat just like Kenny said. “You don’t have to stay around here,” she said to him, trying hard not to show her true feelings.

“Thank you for coming, but I’m okay. You can go on your date now. ”

He could hear her saying the words, but he could see that her eyes weren’t saying the same thing. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said to her.

But then a depressed look appeared in her eyes that bordered on sadness.

And she laid back on the bed with her feet clinging down off the bed.

He looked back at her. She had all ten of her fingers together in a tent formation and seemed as if she was inwardly holding a heavy conversation with herself.

She looked so young and so beautiful and so innocent to Harrison.

His heart was just aching to be with her. But why? Why ???