Chương 2
Gwen tightened both hands around his jacket.
A sharp contraction crossed her face.
Lucas felt her body stiffen against him.
“What is it?”
“I’m fine.”
Her knees bent slightly.
He caught her before she slipped.
Two security officers entered from the hall, both in dark suits. Marcus Cole took in the fallen table, the guests, Brenda’s expression, and Gwen’s bare feet. Theo Brennan looked toward the plastic plate beneath the table. Neither man asked what had happened.
“Remove everyone,” Lucas said. “Call the hospital now.”
“I have a car ready,” Marcus said.
“No. An ambulance.”
Brenda stepped around the spilled glass. “Do not turn this into theater.”
Lucas looked at Gwen. Her eyes had closed. One hand pressed low against her abdomen while she tried to breathe without making a sound.
His anger disappeared so completely that it frightened him.
“Call them now,” he said.
The ambulance arrived in less than twelve minutes, though Lucas would later remember the wait as a long room with no doors.
Marcus cleared the guests into the front salon and ordered staff members to stay away from the dining room. Theo brought a blanket and placed it over Gwen’s legs while she sat on a bench near the entry hall. Lucas knelt in front of her, still holding his phone, though he had stopped recording.
Brenda followed them from the dining room.
“Gwen has been emotional for weeks,” she told Marcus. “The pregnancy has been difficult. She became overwhelmed during lunch.”
Marcus did not answer.
“I was trying to calm her.”
Gwen stared at the black-and-white marble beneath her feet.
Lucas turned toward his mother. “Stop talking.”
“You are in my house.”
“You assaulted my wife.”
Brenda’s mouth compressed. “That is a dangerous word.”
“So is mother.”
Gwen touched his shoulder. The pressure was faint but deliberate.
“Please,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Not now.”
The paramedics came through the front doors with equipment bags and a wheeled stretcher. Their questions were brief and practical. How many weeks pregnant? Any bleeding? Fluid? Previous complications? Where was the pain? How long had she been on the floor?
Gwen answered everything except the final question.
“I don’t know.”
One paramedic, a woman with gray streaks in her dark braid, looked at the marks on Gwen’s knees and then at Lucas.
“Were you injured during an altercation?”
Gwen’s fingers closed around the edge of the blanket. “I knelt down.”
“Did someone force you?”
“No.”
Lucas opened his mouth.
Gwen looked at him.
The silent plea in her face stopped him.
The paramedic did not challenge the answer. She helped Gwen onto the stretcher, attached a monitor, and asked Lucas whether he was riding with them.
He nodded.
Behind him, Brenda said, “Lucas, we need five minutes before you leave.”
He picked up the navy folder from the floor. One corner had landed in spilled wine, leaving a dark stain across the fabric.
“No,” he said.
The ambulance doors closed with Brenda standing on the front steps of the mansion, one hand resting against the diamond necklace at her throat.
Inside, Gwen lay strapped to the stretcher. The paramedic adjusted a cuff around her arm while the vehicle moved through Buckhead traffic. Lucas sat on a narrow bench with the folder between his shoes.
Gwen watched the ceiling.
“Are you bleeding?” he asked.
“They already asked me.”
“I know.”
“No.”
“Did she hit you?”
Gwen closed her eyes.
“Did she do anything to your stomach?”
“No.”
“How long were you under the table?”
“Lucas.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said that.”
“Because I don’t know.”
The paramedic glanced toward him. Not disapprovingly. Just enough to remind him that the ambulance was not a courtroom and Gwen was not a witness he had the right to interrogate.
He looked down at his hands.
His right cuff had a smear of sauce on it. He rubbed the stain with his thumb until it spread.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Gwen opened her eyes but did not turn toward him.
At Piedmont, the staff took her through a set of secured doors and told Lucas to wait while they assessed her. He remained in the hallway holding his folder and her purse, which Theo had retrieved from the upstairs bedroom. The purse was unusually light. When Lucas checked the outer pocket for her phone, he found only a packet of tissues and a peppermint wrapped in green foil.
A nurse came out ten minutes later.
“Her vital signs are stable. The baby’s heart rate is being monitored. She’s having contractions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s in labor. The physician will speak with you after the examination.”
“Can I see her?”
“She asked for a few minutes alone.”
Lucas nodded.
The nurse started to leave.
“Did she say why?”
The woman studied him for half a second. “She asked for privacy.”
He sat in a molded plastic chair beneath a television broadcasting a muted home-renovation program. On the screen, a cheerful couple discovered mold behind a wall and reacted with theatrical disappointment. Lucas stared until the images blurred.
He called his assistant, canceled the board meeting he had been returning to attend, and said there had been a medical emergency. He did not mention Gwen. Within three minutes, two executives texted him. One asked whether Brenda would chair the meeting in his absence.
Lucas put his phone facedown.
The navy folder had been the reason he went back to the mansion. He had left it on the console outside the library after breakfast. The folder contained revised financing projections, an unsigned governance resolution, and notes for a negotiation that had occupied him for six months.
If he had remembered it the first time, he would have been in Midtown when the luncheon ended.
He pictured the tablecloth falling back into place.
The thought made him stand so quickly that the folder slid to the floor.
May you like
A hospital security officer looked over from the elevator.
Lucas retrieved it and sat again.
