The Boy Toy - Nicola Marsh Page 0,97
smooth skin. It would’ve been better if he’d sprouted nose hairs and had a wart or two on his nose. But once again, she was giving him more thought than he deserved.
“Goodbye, Avi.”
His eyebrows arched in surprise, and as she sidestepped him, this time he let her go.
“Samira?”
She sighed and gritted her teeth against the urge to flip him her middle finger. “What?”
“I behaved deplorably when we were married, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
She accepted his long-overdue apology with a gracious nod and kept walking.
Forty-Five
If Rory’s first eight weeks in the outback had dragged, it had nothing on the next sixteen. Four long months where he spent endless days in front of the camera, reading off cues, trying to appear enthusiastic about a bunch of wannabe models and B-grade celebrities following clues toward the ultimate prize.
Not that the Renegades concept was bad; it wasn’t. It was his attitude that stank. Faking it all day every day for the cameras was tough, so when he reached the confines of his tent at night, he dropped the pretense and crawled into bed with his cell for company.
He’d grown damn attached to the thing, considering it was the only way he stayed connected to his kid. Samira sent him regular updates, texts with test results or growth charts. He liked the one comparing his kid to various fruit and his or her corresponding size. From pea to lemon to avocado and beyond. It made him smile, when little did these days.
He hated how hope blossomed every time his cell pinged with a message from Samira. What did he expect, that she’d say, Surprise, I’ve changed my mind, I want you, I love you, come back?
Thankfully, the updates were only about the baby, and she didn’t mention anything to do with her. Then again, he could imagine exactly what she was up to, in excruciating detail: she’d be planning a wedding, something low-key, being embraced by one big, happy Indian family, while his child grew in her belly. Wrong on so many levels. Not the part about her being surrounded by a support network that would care for her, but the marriage part to M.D. Manish. What made the guy better than him? A few degrees on a wall and a plethora of initials after his name?
Though that was petty. Samira wasn’t impressed by that kind of stuff. She’d made it more than clear how into him she’d been, even when he was nothing more than a stuntman.
No, his own insecurities blamed Manish and fate and whatever else he could come up with for ruining the best thing to ever happen to him. Though that was the kicker; he didn’t really know what he’d done wrong. One minute she’d introduced him to her mom and the aunties; the next she’d told him she’d be marrying Manish.
He hadn’t seen any spark between them at her mom’s house. He’d looked for it too, especially when Manish mentioned being there for her during the miscarriage scare. But there’d been nothing more than friendship between them, and Rory could almost like the guy given half a chance. Manish had a sense of humor, and in any other circumstance Rory could see the two of them sharing a beer and a laugh. Ironic, considering that may well happen if Samira married the guy and he’d be forced to see him every time he went to pick up his kid during access visits.
The thought made him grab his cell. He needed to get grounded, fast, and seeing a pic of his kid would do that better than anything. His favorite picture was the snapshot of the five-month scan, where he could actually see the baby’s fingers raised toward its mouth. It looked like a wave, and he loved tracing the outline of his child, wondering what he or she would look like. They didn’t know the sex; they wanted a surprise. But he could imagine a gorgeous little girl with hazel eyes like her mom or a cheeky boy with her smile.
“Hey, Radcliffe, you in there?”
“Yeah,” he called out, sitting up in bed and shoving his cell back in his pocket as Sherman Rix stuck his head through the tent opening. “There’s a call for you.”
Fear gripped him. The few people he knew would call him on his cell, which meant this call came from official channels.
“Do you know who it is?”
Sherman hesitated before saying, “Some hospital in Melbourne. I didn’t catch the name.”
Fear morphed into full-blown panic