Ridley dropped the oven mitt and raced to her side. “Oh no, sweetie, what’s wrong? I thought you wanted to learn to make cupcakes?”
“I did. But he’s not here. I finally got it right and he’s not here.” Somehow just the thought made her cry harder, in big gasping sobs that made her chest hurt.
Ridley enfolded her in a tight hug and rocked her back and forth. Raina felt like she was free falling off a cliff. Her sister was the only solid, stable thing in the avalanche of emotion and she held on with both hands.
“You miss your husband. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I love him,” Raina wailed. Part of her wanted to curse these damn pregnancy hormones but a tiny, smug part of her knew that what she was saying had nothing to do with her pregnancy and everything to do with her heart.
Ridley cupped her face and grinned. “You think I don’t know that? The two of you have been crazy in love with each other since you met. You just didn’t know what to do with it then.”
Raina shook her head. Just the thought of Nick made her simultaneously happy and sick to her stomach at the same time. It was a cruel fate that her last memory of him was watching him walk away.
She wondered if he was still working himself into the ground trying to find funding for the Alexander Foundation. Was he eating right and getting enough sleep?
Did he miss her?
“I don’t even know how he’s doing. What if something bad happened to him? I wouldn’t even know.”
“Nick is at our house right now,” Ridley said.
Raina gripped her sister’s arms. “He is?”
“Yeah. He’s been staying at his place in Virginia Beach. I’m not going to lie. He doesn’t look good. He looks about the same as you do.”
Raina sighed. “Then why did he leave? How could he do that? After everything we’ve been through I thought we would stick together through anything. But he never came back.”
“He did that for you. He thinks your relationship is too stressful for you to handle right now. You were really upset.” Ridley led her to one of the chairs at the kitchen island. “As a matter of fact, you should be sitting down. You’re supposed to stay off your feet.”
Raina sat and laid her head on her arms. “I just feel like everything is falling apart. Nick is gone. The network decided not to pick up any additional episodes of my show. I don’t know what to do.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my real sister?”
“Huh?”
Ridley crossed her arms. “I know you’re going through a hard time but this is not you.” She gestured at Raina. “Where’s the girl who told me to seduce Jackson? Where’s the girl who doesn’t care what anyone thinks and was brave enough to start her own fashion column when she couldn’t find work?”
“She’s gone,” Raina mumbled.
“I don’t believe that. If the network is balking at picking up more episodes, then shop it elsewhere. If no one else wants it, why can’t you produce it on your own? Put it on the Legs blog so people can watch online. I bet you’d attract enough advertisers to cover the cost.”
“I could do it myself,” Raina repeated absently. She sat up as she considered the idea.
Half of the reason she’d declined to film more episodes of the show was because she didn’t really like reality shows. There wasn’t much real about them. Just people with too much makeup on acting as outrageous as possible to attract viewers. That was what the networks wanted to see—drama and bad behavior.
She wasn’t interested.
But if she did it herself, she could take it back to her original vision. If she filmed some candid video herself, she wouldn’t even have to hire a camera crew. She could show her fans what her life was really like and share with them the things she was trying to do in the future.
A true behind-the-scenes look at her life.
“When did you get so smart?” she asked Ridley.
“I’m learning that sometimes if you take a chance, things will work out the way they’re supposed to. Before Jackson came to see me after I was shot, I was on my way to go get him. I just never made it past the door. But I was on my way. Nick isn’t going to come to you. He’s gotten this crazy notion that you can’t handle the stress of him being here. You have to fix this. This is real life. Strong women don’t wait to be saved. Sometimes we have to do the saving.”
Raina leaned against her sister and closed her eyes. “I am really proud of the woman you’ve become, Ri.”
Ridley beamed. “Good. Then take my advice and go get your man!”
* * * * *
THE NEXT DAY Nick logged onto the Alexander Foundation website. He’d been getting email confirmations all morning for new donations. Usually donations came in at a trickle. It was rare to get more than a few in a month unless he’d been speaking at an event or had paid for advertising.
The main webpage for the site showed that he’d received twenty donations in the last hour.
He hit the button for the speaker on his phone. “Kay? Did we run the advertising in the Virginia Chronicle yet?”
“No, that’s not slated to run until next week.”
He glanced back at the webpage. Twenty donations wasn’t anywhere near enough to get him out of the hole they were in, but it was quite a jump from the usual.
He went back to the investment plan he was working on but he left the website open so he could see if anymore donations came in during the day. Maybe one of the donators would leave a comment that would give him a clue where they’d learned about the foundation.