In Sickness and in Wealth

  In Sickness and In Wealth

  Switched at Marriage Part 6

  Gina Robinson

  Copyright © 2015 by Gina Robinson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Gina Robinson

  http://www.ginarobinson.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover photos and Design: Jeff Robinson

  In Sickness and In Wealth, Switched at Marriage Part 6/Gina Robinson. — 1st ed.

  Created with Vellum

  GinaRobinson.com

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  The Switched at Marriage Series

  Part 1—A Wedding to Remember

  Part 2—The Virgin Billionaire

  Part 3—To Have and To Hold

  Part 4—From This Day Forward

  Part 5—For Richer, For Richest

  Part 6—In Sickness and In Wealth

  Part 7—To Love and To Cherish

  Gina Robinson’s Contemporary New Adult Romance Series

  The Rushed Series

  These standalone romances can be read in any order. But it’s more fun to read them all!

  Book 1—Rushed, Zach and Alexis’ story

  Book 2—Crushed, Dakota and Morgan’s story

  Book 3—Hushed, Seth and Maddie’s story

  The Reckless Series

  Ellie and Logan’s love story begins one hot August night. This series should be read in order.

  Book 1—Reckless Longing—FREE!

  Book 2—Reckless Secrets

  Book 3—Reckless Together

  Chapter One

  Kayla

  Sticks and stones can break your bones, but pregnancy wands that read positive can absolutely ruin your life. And your phone conversations. Rule number one of stealth pregnancy test taking—never talk to the potential baby daddy while you're reading your results. Never.

  I was staring at the dark, and I do mean blatant, second pink line on my pregnancy test wand. It was so deep pink, for a second I hoped I had double vision. Sadly, I didn't recall being bumped on the head recently. Though I did feel faint.

  I cursed myself for not buying one of those tests that just tell you flat out "pregnant" in the little results window. Because even though I was clearly pregnant, my survival instincts had kicked in and I was in denial. Doubting the clear evidence before me.

  For some odd reason, I found myself shaking the stick in the way you shake an old-fashioned thermometer to get the mercury down. As if I could shake away that second pink line and be done with it.

  Don't you think pregnancy tests should be sold with more encouraging or sympathetic messages geared toward the test-taker? Like congrats with a zillion exclamation points for women who really want a baby. And another one that says, Hugs, you'll figure it out for those like me that really are only looking for peace of mind that they aren't pregnant.

  And what about colorblind women? How do they even read the results? However, my results were so deeply pink that even Jus could probably see those thin pink lines of impending fatherhood. Otherwise known as the twins "doom" and "deep trouble."

  "Kay? Kay, are you there? Have I lost you?"

  Oh, yeah, I was still talking to Jus. Theoretically, anyway. In reality I couldn't breathe. My stomach seized up. I felt sick. And now my breasts suddenly ached in pregnancy sympathy.

  I stared sideways at myself in the mirror. Were my breasts getting bigger? Was I looking fat? Did I have a faint baby bump already? The baby would be what, the size of a few cells? Maybe the tip of a pencil? I could be a real hypochondriac when the need arose.

  "Yeah, I'm here." My voice shook, tremulous and thin as an old lady's.

  If I retook this test in a few days, would that second pink line disappear? The test had to have a certain percentage failure rate, right? It couldn't be one hundred percent accurate. I dumped the instruction sheet out of the box, looking for hope in the form of statistics of just how incredibly unreliable these home test kits were.

  I was skimming the fine print, Jus nearly forgotten, when the sound of his voice startled me back to reality.

  "What's happened? Has something upset you?" His voice was deep with concern.

  "What? No. What would have upset me?" My laugh was nervous. "Just suddenly got a frog in my throat." And a baby in my belly. Put there by you, buddy. I cleared my throat to make the point about the frog.

  What was I going to do? I had a fake husband I was falling in love with and a scheduled divorce. Would Jus be a pretend daddy, too? If only the baby could be as fake as the marriage.

  We'd been talking about Justin's mom and our trip to Italy. And how she wanted me to meet his brothers and dad.

  The pregnancy test kit instructions—written in tiny, not easy to skim print—said the tests were inaccurate. Hah!

  Oops! Only in the reverse of my situation. False negatives were much more common than false positives. If you got a negative result, but still believed you might be pregnant, retest in a few days. Your preggo hormones might not have fully kicked in enough to register yet.

  If you got a positive and wanted a negative? You were out of luck, sister. You had pregnancy hormones galore floating through your system. They didn't just appear out of nowhere for no reason. A positive was pretty much as accurate as things got.

  "Is this a bad time?" Jus was beginning to sound annoyed with me.

  And to be honest, I was beginning to be angry with him. My current situation was all his fault. Him and his convincing story about needing the cover of not being a virgin to really sell this phony marriage had conned me into having sex with him in the first place. And look at the mess it had made.

  Eric, for all his horniness, had never knocked me up. Jus probably had overachieving sperm, just like the rest of him. Why hadn't I thought of that before? Damn him! You'd think athletic guys would have the stronger sperm. But Justin's must have had some kind of superior intellect that foiled my birth control system. I'd taken my pills faithfully. What had happened? How had I fallen victim to their less than one percent failure rate with perfect use? I would win this kind of lottery. Just my stupid luck.

  I had to soothe Jus and put him off guard until I could get over the initial shock and think. Just think. There had to be options. There were always options, even if I couldn't see them right now.

  "As far as Naples, whatever Diana wants. I'm fine with anything." I couldn't make myself call his mother "Mom." Yet. Maybe I never would. I thought doing whatever she wanted would please him.

  "Not whatever she wants." He laughed. "You obviously don't know Mom. She can be demanding. And overbearing. Never fear," he said in a knight-in-shining-armor voice. "I know how to handle her. I'll rein her in."

  "Don't get cocky," I said, trying to sound like my normal self, though I was horribly distracted and having trouble concentrating on anything but that wand of motherhood before me. "Your mom has proven she can be incredibly wily."

  Like popping in on us unexpectedly from halfway around the world. Crap, if she did that in Italy and inadvertently walked in on m
e in the middle of exhibiting a compromising pregnancy symptom, then what?

  I was too distracted to properly concentrate on anything Jus was saying. Suddenly Italy seemed like a bad, bad idea. Was Diana one of those women with a knack for sniffing out pregnancy with the skill of a psychic? The pregnancy whisperer?

  I made a mental note to avoid my own mom until I figured this out. She was so determined to have a grandchild, she'd been inspecting me for signs of giving her one since I first introduced Jus to her as my beloved hubs. She was so determined to imagine a pregnancy where there wasn't one, I shuddered at the thought of her getting hold of a genuine symptom.

  I needed a strategy. I needed…a real husband. A partner I could actually confide my troubles in.

  "Kay, are you sure you're all right? You sound like you're shaken up about something." There was that concern in his voice again.

  Damn! I never did have a good poker face. Evidently I didn't have a good poker voice, either. "Sorry?"

  He let out an exasperated sigh. As if I was hiding something from him. Which, of course, I was. He was a dangerous man. Too smart and intuitive. Funny how the two of us could hide things from the world, but I was already having trouble hiding this from him.

  "Should I call back later?" He sounded tentative. As if he was just tossing the suggestion out there, hoping I would refuse.

  "Yes!" I seized on the opportunity to escape before he changed his mind. Realizing too late I sounded way too eager and grateful for the suggestion.

  "Sorry. I am distracted. So much to do before Italy!" I rattled off a list of meetings and tasks. "And I promised Sophia I'd bring Data by to play with her today. I really should go. Sophia will be expecting Data to be in one of her Doggy and Me outfits—"

  "I miss you."

  His words stopped me short as my heart tripped all over itself. If anything, I'd been expecting a rebuff. Another one of his admonitions not to girl up his dog.

  I laughed, a nervous titter, really, because what else could I do? Was I going to be one of those emotional preggo girls, totally driven by hormones, who laughed and cried at all the inappropriate times? I felt like crying now. What was the correct response? An automatic I miss you wouldn't come off as genuine, even though it would have been.

  I deflected. "I think you're missing sex."

  I caught myself and laughed again, that same inane chirp. It was plaguing me like a nervous twitch and was just about as attractive. And then I ran on at the mouth, which was par for the course when I was anxious.

  "Although we're not exclusive, are we? Don't we have one of those open fake marriages that are so popular now?" I didn't know why the thought of him with someone else irritated me so badly. Probably because now that I had a positive pregnancy test in front of me, I was getting irrationally possessive. "Now that I've initiated you—"

  "I only want you." He paused.

  And I thought, This is as close to a declaration of love as I've gotten from him in private. If you love me, say it, Jus. Just say it. Because missing and loving aren't the same thing.

  "You've completely ruined me for any other woman." He hesitated again, getting my hopes up. "Kay, I don't want one of those open fake marriages."

  Suddenly I had a lump in my throat. He could say the sweetest things at the oddest times. And still not go all the way. But maybe baby steps were safer, anyway. "Are you asking me to be exclusive?"

  He laughed, almost a snort, as if he was laughing at himself. "Yeah. I've done it backwards. Marry you—"

  "Well, not exactly marry. Fake a marriage."

  "Semantics," he said. "You get the gist. Marriage and then ask you to go steady."

  Tears formed in my eyes. Crappy pregnancy hormones. It was convenient now to blame everything on them. I laughed again and brushed the tears away with the back of my hand. "Jus, you're so old-fashioned. Go steady! What kind of crap is that?"

  "Are you going to keep me in agony? Or is that a yes?"

  I leaned back against the cool granite of the countertop and fought to swallow the lump. "Yes, that's a yes. And I miss you, too. And I really do have to run now."

  "Me too." There was a huge smile in his voice. "Talk to you soon."

  I turned around and stared at the pregnancy test again. A smart, cunning woman would destroy the evidence. I was smart, wasn't I? I grabbed it and wrapped it in a facial tissue. I was about to toss it in the wastebasket when I realized I couldn't throw it away in the penthouse. What if Magda, or the maid, found it in the trash?

  I shuddered at the thought of them going through our garbage. Not that I thought they did. But one could never be too careful. I would have to take it outside and toss it in the garbage in the lobby or on the street.

  I unwrapped it and stared at it again. If I threw the evidence away, would I convince myself I'd hallucinated the whole pregnancy? Probably. And this was one time I had to face reality.

  I wrapped it up again and took it to the closet, where I hid it in one of my shoeboxes at the bottom of a stack. No one would ever find it there. I had so many shoes, sometimes I couldn't even find things in that pile of boxes.

  I went back into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. What was I going to do? Under ordinary circumstances, I'd call Britt. But she would only gloat and congratulate me for following her advice and hooking Jus for life. Since she didn't know my marriage was fake, she really wouldn't be any help.

  I couldn't tell my parents, who would be ecstatic. I couldn't tell Jus. I shuddered at the thought. What was he going to think when I started waddling around? Would he still think I was hot? Would he revoke the recently agreed upon exclusivity clause?

  My heart constricted. This wasn't how I wanted to catch Jus. I was startled at the thought. Did I want to catch Jus? When had I even begun considering it?

  I made some quick mental calculations and looked at the calendar on my phone. This baby would just be a few weeks old when we divorced.

  I took a deep breath and looked up the stats on miscarriages. It was an awful thought, but maybe I would spontaneously miscarry. It happened. Though only about ten to twenty percent of the time, according to my Google search.

  One in ten wasn't such bad odds. Another article reported that doctors suspected that as many as fifty percent of pregnancies may end in miscarriage. But no one knew for sure. It was hard to authenticate or track because so many of them ended before the woman knew she was pregnant. Well, I knew. Did that mean I didn't still have that fifty percent chance?

  I weighed my super-sucky options. As a "married" woman, I couldn't very well have the baby and give it up for adoption. Society frowned on that kind of thing unless I had a very good reason. And being filthy rich and married to one of Seattle's hottest nerds wasn't one of them.

  I could terminate before anyone knew. But I would have to go through it all by myself. And keep it from everyone. I didn't think I could do it.

  Or I could have it. And be connected to Jus, his family, and his money, money, money for the rest of my life. And, yes, that was what everyone would think, that I'd gotten pregnant as soon as possible in case Jus regretted his hasty, ill-conceived marriage. His quickie Reno wedding. And my reputation as a gold-digging, money-grubbing bitch would be sealed forever. So what? Let them think what they would. But I did care what Jus thought. If he thought the same, it would kill me.

  Even so, why not just have the baby? Door number three was the option any sane, logical girl would take. Except…except I didn't want Jus for his money. I wanted a man who loved me madly. I wanted a great love, not a marriage of convenience. And more and more, I just wanted Jus. And was scared beyond reason that he wouldn't see this pregnancy in a positive light and as completely accidental as it really was.

  Yes, he'd asked me to be exclusive. I was absolutely thrilled about that. And, as an aside, feeling supremely less guilty about kissing Lazer. Because that had definitely happened in our now defined pre-exclusive period.

  I was also falling in love with Jus. But falling
in love with someone and spending the rest of your life tied to someone and sharing custody, every other weekend and holidays, weren't the same thing.

  I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to love me. Not because of any sense of obligation. Or because I was the mother of the heir to his billion-dollar Flashionista empire. I wanted him to fall in love with me. And I was running out of time. How could I balance all these plates of secrets I was suddenly spinning? Fool the world. Fool Jus. Maybe I was simply fooling myself.

  Obviously, I couldn't keep the pregnancy a secret from him forever. There was a point when he would probably notice. Ha! But it was reasonable for a girl to wait to tell anyone until she was pretty sure the pregnancy would stick, right? And, okay, I was letting myself talk myself into things and deluding myself. That several-month deal was probably for back in the old days when you had to miss two or three periods and kill a rabbit before you could be certain you were pregnant. But what would it hurt to sit on this and see what happened before I, maybe unnecessarily, upset our delicate, budding relationship?

  My phone buzzed in my hand. A text from Jus. A link to a YouTube video. When I clicked on it, it linked to Patrizio Buanne singing "Luna Mezza Mare."

  Chapter Two

  Justin

  I had a ridiculous smile on my face. The kind of smile a guy should have on his wedding day. The never-ending, brilliant beam of a groom as he stares at his bride at the altar and thinks, How the hell did I get so lucky? How did I win that beautiful girl?

  Slowly, one small step at a time, I was conquering Kay's heart. Maybe more in the manner of a court jester than a dashing knight. But the style and means didn't matter. Only the end. It was like the old adage of boiling a frog—you turn up the heat so gradually, the frog doesn't realize it's being boiled until it's too late to jump out of the pot.

  I was turning up the heat, the passion, and the emotion until it boiled over and Kay was mine. And damn if I'd stop until I won. Kay was the girl for me. I was the guy for her. By the time our year together was up, she'd have no thought of leaving. We'd tear up that crazy postnup, laughing that we ever entertained the idea of divorcing. In the eyes of the law, from what it knew, in the eyes of everyone, we would be man and wife. Most importantly, in our own minds.