A Billionaire's Redemption - By Cindy Dees Page 0,83

driveway in the Escalade. He drove to the hospital eager to see Willa. He felt like a twenty-year-old kid in love for the first time.

Come to think of it, this was the first time he’d ever really been in love. Melinda had fascinated him and posed an irresistible challenge, but he’d never felt this bubbling-over joy and complete sense of rightness before. Part of him wanted to shout his love to the rooftops, and another part had gone entirely still and quiet. At peace. It was miraculous.

He headed for the third floor of the hospital and was satisfied to see the security guard at Willa’s door nod alertly at him as he stepped out of the elevator. He stopped at the nurses’ station and asked, “Is Willa awake yet? How was her night?”

“She’s still sleeping, sir. I just came on duty, but I can check her chart for you. The night doctor and doctor coming on shift should be starting their rounds momentarily and will wake her up. You can ask Dr. Pitts how she did last night. He was her on-call physician.”

Gabe was amused that the nurse pointedly told him nothing about Melinda. But then, he had just as pointedly not asked. He spotted a pair of doctors in white lab coats coming down the hall and headed for them to check on Willa’s condition.

“Early for you to be here, Mr. Dawson,” the one with the name Felix Pitts, M.D., embroidered over his pocket said.

“I was worried about my girl. She was pretty rattled last night. Did she sleep all right?”

“Like a baby. Assuming her condition doesn’t change throughout the day today, we ought to be able to release her later. Will she be coming home with you? We’ll want someone with her to monitor her condition for a few days.”

“I hope she’ll come home with me. I plan to ask her to marry me. Almost losing her has shown me just how deeply I care for her.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Dawson,” Pitts said warmly.

Gabe took a step toward Willa’s room to peek in on her when a door across the hall swung open. Melinda gushed, “Gabe? Oh, my God. You want to marry me? That’s incredible! I knew you’d never gotten over me. I never got over you, either. Of course I’ll marry you again. This time for good. This time let’s have a big, gaudy wedding to make up for that dinky little thing we had last time.”

He stared at her, speechless. She thought he wanted to marry her? She’d never gotten over him? Huh?

The elevator slid open behind him, and Agent Delaney and the new sheriff stepped out of it. “Oh, good. You’re awake,” Agent Delaney said to Melinda. “Glad to see you’re here, Mr. Dawson. Saves us any more theatrics like last night’s.”

Melinda’s eyes narrowed at the FBI agent as she abruptly sagged against Gabe, forcing him to catch her body weight, lest she fall over.

“Why don’t we take this into Dr. Grayson’s room?” the sheriff suggested.

Cursing under his breath, Gabe was herded into Melinda’s room, his ex clinging to him like a barnacle, to endure another session of Weird Melinda Interrogation. He cast a longing look over his shoulder at Willa’s room before the door shut behind him.

* * *

Willa stared up at the ceiling of her room in utter shock. Gabe had proposed to Melinda? And she’d accepted? That didn’t make any sense, but she’d heard it with her own ears. No mistake about it.

Nothing in Willa’s life had prepared her for this sense of free fall. It was as if the entire planet had dropped away from beneath her feet. She was rushing through space toward oblivion and there was nothing to hold on to. No safety. No Gabe. Just blackness and falling. She’d been a fool to think that his attention was anything more than pity and guilt over what happened.

Sick to her stomach, she curled into a fetal ball, in too much agony even to cry. She breathed in jerky gasps as grief ripped her in two and then in two again, over and over until she was torn into tiny, scattered shreds.

He loved Melinda Grayson. Was going to re-marry his ex-wife.

Her life was over. No one was who they seemed. Not her father, her mother, the “good ladies” of her parents’ social circle, James Ward...or Gabe.

She’d lain there for several minutes when the phone next to her bed rang, causing her to jump sky-high. Automatically, she reached for it, pulling the