After Loss - A Billionaire Romance Novel (Romance, Billionaire Romance, Life After Love Book 2) Read online

  Copyright

  After Loss

  Copyright © 2016 by Nancy Adams.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Published by: Nancy Adams

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  Copyright

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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  About the Author

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jules rode the motorbike through the Colombian countryside with Juliette clinging to his back, the wind in their hair. That morning it had rained heavily, but the rain had ceased now, so there wasn’t much dust kicking up from the road. Because of this, they were free to enjoy the fresh air of the countryside as they sped forward, the jungle rushing past on either side of them and the rolling hills steadily approaching from ahead. The motorbike was an old 500cc Triumph Thunderbird that Claude had found him from God-knows where. Only days after arriving, Jules had stated to the Frenchman that he wanted a bike. Any bike. Who knows how it had ended up in Colombia, but it was in very good condition and the owner had parted company with it for a little over $500.

  The sky hurrying past overhead was a cloudy one, but the sun was out, bursting through small gaps in the blanket of cloud to light up the land below. Having spent a large proportion of their years together on a motorbike crossing the world in one direction or another, this occasion marked the first time since the dreadful episode in Louisiana sixteen years ago that they’d ridden together. It was a reunion of sorts, and Jules felt electric having his love gripping to his back once again as he throttled the bike forward. It felt like something was being returned to him; a limb that had been cut away long ago, but had now miraculously grown back after such a lengthy absence. It wasn’t so much the general thrill of the ride that had urged Jules to instruct Claude to find him a cheap bike. It had been the desire to feel Juliette at his back once again.

  In prison, he had often dreamt of the two of them flying around the world on a motorbike. When he’d awoken from his snooze, he had often sharply turned his head to see if she weren’t still there at his back. The disappointment that followed, finding naught but an empty space, was always such a terribly hollow feeling; the limb once again fading.

  But now it was back for real. This was no fantasy. It was four days since their reunion and two since Juliette had been cleared to leave the hospital after her suicide attempt. Her blood test had come back showing that no lasting damage had occurred, and this, the doctor stated, was a direct result of Jules and Margot reaching her in time and the former forcing her to eject the pills. If it hadn’t been for his sudden appearance in her life, Juliette would probably be dead. Her guardian angel had returned to her, and not one second after falling into her life, he had brought her back from death.

  These initial days of the lovers finding each other again had been slightly tentative, their souls slowly weaving into one another once again, feeling each other out in the dark and slowly fusing with each other once more, the old binds reemerging.

  In this time, Jules sensed that Juliette had much to say to him, and he saw this bike ride as a way to go somewhere synonymous with their love. Somewhere Juliette would be free to get what she needed off of her chest. Somewhere they could talk.

  They were soon winding their way up the hilly mountain roads, the whole valley lurching below them, the landscape changing rapidly into a series of dark green, veiny hills that reached out across the terrain, the two slowly snaking up one of the larger mountains that overlooked it all. Along the serpentine road there were collections of makeshift wooden huts gripping the sides, little tea stands or shops that looked as if they’d grown out of the road itself. Juliette remembered back to when they first came to this place twenty years before. Back then there wasn’t even the mountain road. To reach the top you had to hike the rest of the way from the main road along paths that wound up through jungle terrain, taking six hours. Now, however, a road carved its way up there, like a crooked scratch mark in the dark green hill. Their destination was a little village that they’d found all those years ago and in which they had spent two wonderful months living with a family and exploring the surrounding wilderness. They now planned to do the same.

  Eventually, they came around a corner and there, appearing before them, at the hill’s peak, was the small mountain village of Santa Maria. The most prominent symbol of the place, and the first thing they saw, was the large whitewashed church with its large black cross pointing upward from its roof, stuck, as it were, at the highest point of the village, so that it stood like a protector of the people, watching over them from up high. Only fifteen years previously there was no road at all to the small village. That meant that the people of the place still retained a little of their original culture. They were all goat and cattle herders. In the twenty years since Jules and Juliette had originally climbed for six hours through the jungle to reach it, however, the place had grown several guesthouses; a symptom of the tourist disease brought on by the new road.

  When they reached the collection of ten buildings that clung to the side of the mountain, making up the village, Jules parked the bike up outside a beautiful colonial two-story house with a wooden balcony going all the way around the orange-colored plaster walls; little red, purple and yellow flowers weaved in between the balcony’s wooden slats and bannisters and hung from baskets everywhere. Juliette got off the bike, careful not to snag her summer dress on the bike’s racking, which held their bags. Once she was off, sh
e took a small red bag from the rack, which contained a few items of clothing, along with their money, documents and toiletries. The moment she was off the bike, an old woman came wandering slowly out of the shadows of the house. The old Colombian was dressed in an ancient, dust-stained cotton gown that reached her feet and dragged in the dirt, swishing from side to side as she walked her plump frame out of the house. Underneath her crown of long, gray hair, she wore a face cracked by the incessant beating of both time and the sun.

  Speaking in Spanish, Juliette asked the old lady if she had rooms, to which the woman smiled, the cracks in her cheeks and around her eyes opening out, before saying that she did. It was the low season and, as the old lady showed them around the rooms of the house, Jules and Juliette quickly found that they would have the pleasure of being the only guests.

  Finding a room with a large window that looked out across the valley, Juliette smiled and said that it would be perfect. The old lady then asked them if they’d be eating, and Juliette said they would.

  “Now?” the woman asked in Spanish.

  “If we could,” Juliette replied in the native tongue. “The ride here was almost six hours.”

  “Then I shall prepare your food now, my dears. Please, make yourself at home.”

  With that, the old woman left them to it.

  “I wonder what dinner will be?” Jules asked Juliette.

  “A surprise!” she replied with a smile. “Probably beans, some beef or lamb, a nice salad, tortillas, a stew perhaps.”

  “Well, I’m starving. So as long as it’s food, it’ll do.”

  Juliette smiled. In all these years, he hadn’t lost that boyish enthusiasm that frequently flooded his voice. Feeling a tremor move through her, Juliette felt suddenly inclined to take him in her arms. She lurched forward and took him. A little surprised at first, Jules gradually put his arms around his love. The ride there had brought so much light rising up inside of Juliette’s soul, like a sea of celestial fire, and now it had erupted inside this little room with its cracked walls and beautiful view. She felt a part of her returning to life after such a long time dead.

  Holding on tightly to Jules, she wondered how on Earth she had been inclined only four days earlier to try to end this life which flourished so brightly now; to never allow herself the relief of that flood of light which enveloped her now.

  “Oh! How I love you, Jules,” she whispered into his ear. “I feel like I’m waking up from a terrible dream.”

  Jules simply held her tight, closed his eyes and thanked God that he had her back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sam lay in bed reading the newspaper. The news, of course, was still full of himself, Marya’s death and the crash—the world feeding off of his despair. He avoided those stories and plowed on with the rest of the paper. He needed something to catch his mind, to push it away from the melancholia that was developing in his head like a black storm. But each news story only epitomized his cold feelings—oil spills, wars in the Middle East, the general merry-go-round of poverty and chaos.

  He tossed the newspaper to the floor and let out a deep sigh. He had been thinking incessantly about his out-of-body experience. He’d told no one of it, of course. But then, in truth, he had no one to tell. Marya had always been his point of contact with the outside world. Other than that, he’d never really bonded with people on any real level. Those whom he could perhaps call his friends were only ever people whom he could talk science or economics with, or whom he’d worked with for a long time. Never had he been close enough to someone to discuss his feelings and emotions, or attempt to fathom his own mind with that other person. That was where Marya always came into things. She was his emotional crutch.

  And, you could say, Claire was too. Perhaps it had been that which drew him to her during those clandestine meetings in the empty rooms of the hospital. That she—like Marya—gave him emotional release. Was it a dream? he asked himself. The experience in the Emergency Room did have a fantastical feel to it, but on the other hand, it stuck in his head like a memory. And he had an almost photographic one, so should have been more than able to determine between a memory based on reality and one from a dream. It felt real to him now as he sat in bed. Every part of it. Him seeing Marya. Floating out of his body and joining her. Her whispering to him to go back and that she forgave him.

  Her forgiveness felt real.

  But this brought him to another thought: Was it a hallucination? A product of my heart stopping? And it was this thought that most put him off being totally convinced that he had seen the spirit of his dead wife or that he had left his body. Was her forgiveness the product of my mind wishing to absolve its own guilt? he mused. A trick, in other words. He was well aware that it was common for people to have out-of-body experiences when their hearts had stopped; it had been something reported for decades. Sam had also read several prominent books on the subject and knew that Native Americans often used narcotics to slow their hearts. When they awoke from these near-death trances, they would describe flying like eagles with their dead ancestors as their bodies remained unconscious back in the tepee. Other tribal peoples of the world’s rainforests described similar results from the consumption of certain forest vines.

  In the end, Sam decided that it had all felt too real to be dismissed. When he had stood by Marya, Sam had felt deep within his heart that it really was his wife standing next to him. And that meant that her forgiveness was real. In his swollen heart this was all the comfort that he could hold onto, and even that was faint. Because Sam had yet to fully forgive himself. And it wasn’t so much to Marya that he was burdened at this time. It was to Claire.

  Knowing what Claire’s father had done to her pained him. He felt as equally callous in his own eyes; a hunter who had snared his prey into an impossible relationship. An impossible love. He wondered how her own heart was feeling. He wondered how she had taken the news of his crash. And it had been this that brought him further pain. For he was sure that he held the girl’s heart within the palm of his hand and his reckless behavior had squeezed it painfully tight. He was sure of this.

  With these thoughts swirling in his head, the door to Sam’s room abruptly opened and his eyes darted to it. In walked one of the nurses. She wore a smile on her face, as did the rest of the staff whenever they came into contact with him. Happy to have the distraction of a famous patient bringing an element of color to their lives.

  “You have a guest,” the nurse beamed at him as she walked in.

  “Who is it?” Sam asked sharply.

  “It’s John Calloway. He says he’s a friend of yours. Your security guard okayed him.”

  “Yeah, he’s good. Let him in.”

  John Calloway was one of the few board members of Techsoft that Sam genuinely admired. Calloway had always supported Sam’s vision within the company and was one of the few that offered the company a more human touch. Sam had always thought of Calloway as a good candidate for the CEO position. But he apparently didn’t have the sway or support that Stan Bormann had garnered during his years within the company.

  The tall figure of Calloway stepped into the room and the nurse left.

  “Johnny,” Sam let out in greeting as the latter approached his bed and took a seat at its side.

  “Good to see you up and alive,” Calloway said as he sat down.

  They didn’t bother to shake hands. Calloway knew of Sam’s discomfort with naked human contact and always respected it, whereas Bormann would always insist on giving Sam’s hand a tight squeeze.

  “So Bormann’s in,” Sam said when Calloway was settled.

  “Yes—it would appear so. Unfortunately, we had to act without your vote.”

  “It’s okay—I would have supported his candidacy anyway. He had Marya’s support and that was good enough for me. We needed to act swiftly and I’m hardly in any state to do things myself.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Calloway conceded in a low tone. “Anyway, I came to see how you were. I hear you’re l
ooking at a full recovery.”

  “Well, after a few months of rehab.”

  “When do they say you can return home?”

  “I’ve got three more operations on my legs, so I won’t be heading back for at least another two weeks.”

  “You got a laptop?” Calloway inquired as he glanced around the room.

  “No,” Sam replied. “My personal assistant brought me in some newspapers and magazines. I got Time, National Geographic, The Economist and a couple of others. They’ll keep me busy for a day or two.”

  “I got a laptop in the car if you want one,” Calloway offered.

  Sam thought about it. But he wished to stay away from anything that offered him a point of contact with the outside world. It was the same reason he hadn’t wanted his phone with him. He was scared that he’d contact Claire. The night before, when he’d been unable to sleep, he’d almost asked the nurse for the ward telephone, so that he could call her. But he’d held firm in the end, asking the nurse instead for something to help him sleep.

  “No,” Sam said to Calloway’s offer. “It’s cool, but I wanna stay away from the internet for a while. Something to read is enough and if I get too bored there’s always the television.”

  Calloway smiled at him. But then his expression suffused into a slight frown.

  “You know, Sam,” he said in a voice oozing seriousness, “I haven’t just come here to see how you are. I wish it were like that, but it isn’t. You see, it’s Marya’s funeral arrangements. She’s still at the hospital morgue and they’re willing to keep her there for however long it takes. But we gotta make arrangements.”

  Sam let out a gentle groan and turned his head away from Calloway, so that he was gazing out the window on the other side of the room. Outside was a patch of daffodils bordering a large lawn, which had an old oak tree in the center. The tree instantly caught Sam’s eye. It was almost dead, probably the result of having been struck several times by lightning, its bark gray and its large branches stunted and broken. However, Sam saw that several fresh leaves were sprouting out of the withered tree on little branches, in patches. There was life in the scarred old oak yet.