Chapter Six
All Freaking Day Long Sickness
Belle
As her mother drove Belle’s car, Belle watched The Point get closer and closer.
She felt like throwing up.
This was not unusual. For the past six weeks she’d been throwing up a lot.
Morning Sickness was a misnomer. All Freaking Day Long Sickness was more like it.
She hoped she got through this, whatever it was, with James without vomiting on some priceless rug.
That would be beyond humiliating. Not that he could humiliate her any more than he already had, both privately and very, very publicly.
Still, she hoped it didn’t happen.
It had been three days but Belle was still angry with her Mom and Gram.
She could not believe they’d gone to see James.
In all their crazy schemes, that was the craziest.
She had no idea what they were thinking (then again, she never did).
Six weeks ago, after finding out she was pregnant and allowing herself a week of temporary insanity (intensified by the lessening, but still present, media scrutiny), Belle had decided to keep the baby.
She was thirty-five and she was never, but never, going to get in another relationship even under torture. She’d die before she let another man muck up her life. So she decided this would be her only chance. Unless she was artificially inseminated. Or she adopted which would be difficult as she was single and although currently wildly famous (not for all good reasons), she wasn’t wildly rich and successful, like a pop star or an actress who could mosey down to Africa with her army of attorneys and have her pick of children on whom she could lavish her attention.
She’d gone home to tell her family and, like an idiot, in a misguided attempt at acquiring moral (and other) support, she’d brought them back.
She should have never done that.
She knew better.
Therefore for the first time in her life (or, since she’d become involved with Miles, then James), she had no idea what she was thinking.
With her behaviour of the last three plus months, she seriously needed to get her head examined.
Like today, letting her Mom (her Gram was staunchly against it) talk her into going to talk with James.
She knew she should just hire a solicitor and plan, fight, hope and do anything else she had to do to bring about the best for her child.
But no.
There she was in her car, her mother driving and The Point was looming huge and daunting in front of them.
She just hoped she didn’t look as bad as she felt.
She’d decided to wear jeans because she didn’t want to make it look as if she cared overly much about her appearance when seeing James again. Then she’d decided to wear slightly faded but not excessively faded jeans because she didn’t want James to think she was being in his face with her casual attire.
She’d paired this with a white camisole over which she wore a very feminine blouse she’d designed herself. White. Nearly see-through. Delicate pin-tucks at the front. Girlie gathered cap sleeves with a tiny ruffle at the edges. Buttons opened enough to show some cle**age but not enough cle**age to make her look like the hussy she felt she was the last time she’d visited The Point.
She’d put on a pair of silver ballet toe flats. Carried a big, poochy, black, expensive designer handbag that she’d purchased in a wild flight of fancy at duty free shopping on her way home to tell her family she was pregnant (this, she excused as still being in the throes of temporary insanity). And, last, she’d donned a black belt with enormous, square, silver rivets in it.
She’d worn silver hoops in her ears, a dozen silver bangles at her wrist and put her hair in a ponytail at the back of her head because James told her he liked her hair down. That she knew was being in his face but she didn’t think it was obvious so she cut herself some slack.