IN LOVE WITH STARK-THE BILLIONAIRE

Isabella? Oh God. Talk to me, Isabella."

Stark dropped to her side and carefully lifted the side board that had tipped onto her when she'd clipped it failing down the steps.

She didn't move.

Yanking out his cell phone, he placed an emergency call. The connection phased in and out because of the storm, making it difficult got him to relay the necessary information. It soon became clear that it would be impossible to send in a Life Flight helicopter given the current whether condition.

During the endless minutes that followed, she didn't stir.

More frightened than he could ever remember being, he checked for a pulse. When he found it, he could have bawled like a baby.

He spared his half sister, Jennifer, a deadly glare. "Get out," he ordered.

He didn't bother watching to see if she had obeyed, instead returning to the call. Demanding. Pleading. Swearing.

The next half hour, as he waited for EMT to arrive, proved the longest of his life, driving him to very brink of despair. If Marie hadn't been there, her steady, reassuring voice a comforting balm, he'd have totally lost it.

He crouched above Isabella, more helpless than he'd ever been before in his life. The great Jack Stark couldn't buy or bargain or bribe his ways out of this disaster. There was only one thing he could do, something he didn't remember ever having tried before.

He prayed.

Once the emergency personnel arrived, they stabilized Isabella before whisking her out to the ambulance. He lost count of the number of times he told them she was pregnant. Or how many times he told that they were supposed to marry in less than seventy-two hours.

He offered everything he could think of in exchange for their help in saving her. None of it did any good. The event if that night leaked through his fingers on a course all their own, beyond his ability to direct or control.

It wasn't until the paramedics had loaded Isabella into the ambulance that he faced a truth he'd been dodging for weeks. He loved her. He loved her more than life itself. How could he have not recognized it sooner?

Maybe because he'd never experienced such depth of emotion before, not that it mattered now.

During the endless ride to the hospital, he made up for that lapses. He didn't know whether she heard. He could only hope that somehow, someway, his words skipped through to that realm of oblivion where she hid from him.

He'd been blind not to have recognized his feelings sooner, to have believed that what he felt for her could be anything less than love. The first chance he got, he'd correct that oversight. He just needed one more chance.

That was all. Just one.

He couldn't disguise his relief when they arrived at the hospital. He glanced down at Isabella. She lay on bed of white, her skin and face almost as pale. Only her flame-bright hair provided any color.

He took her hand in his as they barreled through the ER doors. It didn't occur to him that he wouldn't be able to stay with her, that they'd take her from him. But they did, overriding his furious protest with the case of long practice.

And in that moment, standing all alone in the middle of an antiseptic waiting room, Stark learned the true meaning of helplessness.

Over the space of the next two hours, Stark paced every inch of the waiting room. By the end of the first sixty minutes he'd memorized each stain on the rig and all the twemty-three nicks, holes and blemishes on the walls.

By the end of the second, he could have named eveyry cookie, candy and drink item offered for sale in the vending machines. And he could have done it blindfolded.

Still no one came to give him an update on Isabella's status. He couldn't think of anything except reuniting with her. Finally he'd had enough. He didn't care if he had to buy the d*mn hospital, someone was going to give him the information needed.

He started toward the door when Isabella's doctor appeared in the doorway.

"How is she?" Stark demanded. "Is she all right?

" Does Ms. Isabella have any family?" The doctor asked.

"I'm her family." He struggled to keep from shouting at the man, fought to keep his tone level.

" Please how is she?"

" She'll live. Cuts, bruises, and abrasions. The concussion has us a little worried, but all the scan are clear."

" And the baby?" He aksed.

The doctor checked his chart. " I gather she's very early in her pregnancy?"

"Six weeks." He commented instantly.

"She hasn't miscarried. But there's still that risk," the doctor warned. He gestured to the nurses standing behind him. " You can see her now, if you'd like. The next few days should tell the story."

When Isabella came to this time, the pain wasn't anywhere near as bad as the other half dozen occasions she'd regained consciousness. This time she took note of her surrounding, realizing she lay in a hospital bed. The air smelled sharp and cold with acrid scent of disinfectant and whatever medicines the doctors had dripping into her arm. Somewhere nearby machine beeped softly.

She struggled to focus, fighting the splitting headache that blurred her vision and made her want to retreat into oblivion. Someone had turned down the lights to dim the room, making it difficult to see clearly. But even so she could make out a familiar form holding up one of the walls of her room.

"Stark?"

He straightened at her whispered call and crossed to the bed. Muted midday sunshine filtered in from a shaded window and gilded the hospital room with the faintest golden glow, a glow that flowered over and around him like a halo and gave him the appearance of a fallen angel.

"I'm here, Isabella."

She asked the same question she'd asked every other time she'd awakened. "The baby? Did I lose our baby?"

And he gave her the exact same answer. " Our baby's safe."

In a city sprawled beneath a canvas of towering glass and steel, streetlights painted the streets in a warm, artificial glow, and the distant hum of traffic melded with the ambient sounds of laughter and conversation.

It's a lovely morning. Isabella had been on a spot for more than fifteen minutes without any hope of the light turning green. She felt so impatient, anxious, and frustrated.

The motel where Isabella passed the night was just a few kilometers from Stark's office.

Stark Juvenile was a young billionaire who was born in Denver and has all his companies in Denver as well.

He was so passionate and ready to do anything to obtain the ownership of Johnson Ranch, and the only Johnson still on earth is Isabella.

She rejected every offer placed before her by the Starks men. The ranch is located in the heart of Ohio. She sees the ranch as the only thing connecting her to her ancestors.

She is ready to do everything to prevent such a thi