An Heir At Any Price: The Billionaire's Obsession - Contemporary Romance (11 page)

I went down the hall to her room. The
door was left open a crack so I peeked inside. I could see her in
the moonlight and the lights of the city coming in through her
windows. She was lying on top of the bed with her long hair fanned
out around her. She was wearing a night shirt that came to her
knees and I could see the gentle rise and fall of her chest. I felt
something stirring in my stomach; it was more than just desire…I
ignored it. I’d had those feelings before, once. I’d acted on them
and given away my whole heart, only to have it trampled and broken.
I wouldn’t go through that again, for anyone. I wasn’t looking for
a permanent hookup or even a long-term lover. The last thing I want
now or likely ever again in my life is a permanent hook up with
someone. I don’t want to give someone that much power and control
over me…ever again, and most especially, I don’t want anyone to
have the power to walk away with my child.

I had spent a significant amount of
time searching for the right woman. She had to be beautiful,
intelligent, kind and of course, healthy. When I first saw Holly I
was instantly aroused by her beauty and I hoped that she fit all of
the other bills. I sat in that café for two months, finding out
what I could, but the selection of my child’s biology required more
than I could learn about her in an hour or two at the café. So of
course, I had an extensive background check done on her. That was
how I found out that she’d turned down several offers to colleges
because of her high GPA in high school. That seemed curious so I
delved deeper and found out about her mother’s alcoholism and how
many times dear Holly had to bail her out over the years. Holly
seemed to drink very little, have sex only when in a relationship,
and only visited the doctor once yearly presumably for an annual
check-up. I hadn’t cared about her mother’s problems once I had all
of the facts.

The fact that I was extremely
attracted to her was going to help as well. She was not only
gorgeous, but something about her just drew me in to the point of
where I just had to have her. Even if she had said no to the
proposition I would have still tried to bed her. I’m so glad she
said yes, and that she wanted to try and conceive the old fashioned
way. It’s exciting to me to know each time we could be creating
life…my child’s life, not to mention how fabulous the sex
is.

I’ve done my best other than the sex
to keep this relationship strictly business. I hope I’ve succeeded.
I try to view her as just another of my thousands of employees. She
has the most important job of course, so I want to reward her
handsomely. I need to remember when I’m feeling overwhelmed with
emotion, if we’re not fucking…to get the hell out of
there.

HOLLY

I had just gotten a clean bill of
health from my new doctor, but was unsurprisingly told that the
pregnancy test was negative. It had only been three weeks, so
neither Aiden nor I had even considered it a possibility yet. The
good news was that he and I had fallen into a rhythm. We had a
familiar routine that had begun one morning not long after the
night I’d gone to bed without him and he’d stood at my door and
stared at me for the longest time, watching me sleep. I hadn’t been
asleep, I’d known he was there, but I’d made up my mind that any
moves beyond the stipulations of our contract would be up to him
from now on. I had emotions running rampant through my heart and my
brain. It was likely if I acted on them, other than late at night
when we were both in the throes of passion, that I would regret it.
So I’d forced myself to pretend like this was only a job and that I
was fine with it only being temporary.

I think Aiden had noticed my retreat
and I don’t know if it was due to emotions of his own, or a fear
that I was going to give up and leave, but he’d begun being more
attentive on his own. He wasn’t overly so, he didn’t whisper terms
of endearment in my ear when we shared a meal or took a walk, but
he started not leaving so early in the mornings, having coffee or
breakfast with me on the terrace, sometimes having his driver bring
me to different restaurants to meet him for lunch, and almost
always making it home in time for dinner, or taking me out to
eat.

I was enjoying my new life. It was
definitely the polar opposite of my old one. But the truth be told,
I’d begun to feel so strongly about him that I’d gladly trade the
luxuries for him to feel the same way about me. The fact that I
still had so much time and he was beginning to open up and talk to
me about things gave me hope.

As I took my walk this morning I
thought back on the conversation we’d had the night before. We were
watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel about beaches and
conservation and out of the blue he said, “I haven’t seen the beach
or felt the sand since I was in high school.”

I thought that was strange. He was
obviously wealthy enough to go anywhere in the world that he wanted
to. Didn’t wealthy people take regular vacations and wouldn’t some
of those vacations inevitably land him on a beach or an island
somewhere?

“Why not?” I’d asked him.

“Too busy with work,” he
said.

“Why do you work so hard?” I had asked
him. “So many hours that you have no time for yourself?” Then
without thinking about how it might sound I added, “When is enough
money enough?”

He looked at me with a hard
expression. I was afraid that I’d made him angry. The silence was
awkward and when he broke it he said, “When I was a kid, we lived
like normal, middle-class people. My father worked on Wall Street
and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. I had no idea what our
financial status was really, but I would have never guessed rich.
After my parents were killed, and I was staying with my aunt she
told me that her father, who was also my mother’s father was a
billionaire. She said that he had accounts set up for me all over
the world, and that it was likely I was a multi-millionaire myself.
I asked her why I never met him and why my parents never told me
about the money. I guess when my mother and her sister were kids,
my grandfather left them and his wife for an eighteen year old girl
that he married and began a new family with. Out of his guilt, the
girls and my grandmother were all given a large amount of money. My
grandmother refused to touch hers so my mother and aunt did as
well. They didn’t want anything from him since he’d been incapable
of giving them what they had needed the most before he’d walked
out. My mother didn’t have any further contact with him, as far as
I knew. She never talked about him in front of me anyways. My aunt
says he never tried to contact them. It was as if he thought giving
them money was sufficient to make them disappear. My mother died
with all of her money in an account and it reverted to me. She and
my father weren’t poor in their own right. I didn’t realize how
wealthy I was for a long time. When I was 25, the rest of the
accounts my grandfather secretly set up became mine
too.”

“So that’s what you used to start your
business?”

“No,” he said. “Like my mother, I
didn’t want anything from that man. When she died, he didn’t even
come to the funeral. He called me and said he was out of the
country and wouldn’t be able to make it. That was the last time
that I spoke to him. I tried to arrange for my attorney to return
all of the money to him, but he refused it. I only used the money
my parents left me to live on while I started my business on my
own. That’s a big part of why I work so hard to keep it
flourishing. It means something to me, not the money but the fact
that I succeeded on my own. I also want the old man to know that I
don’t want anything from him. I want that to be his last thought
before he dies old and alone.”

“Wow.” I hadn’t known what to say
other than that. It helped explain a lot of his quirks like his
emotional unavailability, his strong hold on his private issues and
his fear of any kind of commitment. It also made me a little
concerned about what his views on family bonds might be
like.

“Let’s go to the beach, Holly,” Aiden
said, out of the blue.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. How long has it been
since you’ve gone to the beach?”

“Quite a long time,” I
admitted.

“Then we both need to get away. I can
only go for the day but let’s say we’ll leave around ten tomorrow
and go out to the Jersey shore.”

“That sounds great,” I told him,
trying not to sound quite as excited as I felt.

“I’d take you to my Island but we’d
have to take a boat and it’s not really doable in a
day.”

I had to remind myself to close my
mouth.

“You have an Island?”

“Yeah, it was a guilt present from the
old man. He deeded it to me the day of her funeral. Another thing I
wasn’t aware of until years later.”

“A whole island?” I was having trouble
wrapping my head around it. Who owns an entire island? I wondered
if even Aiden knew how wealthy he actually was.

Chapter Eleven

~

So here I was getting ready for a trip
to the Jersey shore with a man who owned an entire Island. It was
somewhat surreal.

“Are you ready?” he asked me around
ten.

“I’m ready,” I told him, still trying
to contain my excitement. I hadn’t been on any kind of vacation
since my father died over ten years ago. The thought of a simple
trip to Jersey was thrilling to me.

The driver took us to a place called
Avalon. I had never been there of course, but I had also never
heard of it. Aiden told me that King James I granted it as a
Province in 1584 and that it was fishing and hunting area for those
first two hundred and fifty years. In the 1800’s a developer had a
vision to turn it into a resort destination. Since then it has
become a tourist hotspot, but more of an upscale one than others
that surround it.

We were at a place called Seven Mile
Beach. As soon as I stepped out of the car I could feel the cool
ocean breeze against my face and taste the salty air on my tongue.
The wind was blowing slightly and the waves were crashing in
beautiful, serene arcs. We were surrounded by tall dunes and miles
of pure, clean white sand. There was no commercial boardwalk and
although the city of Avalon boasted a number of small boutique
stores and several upscale restaurants, the beach was quiet and
looked almost untouched. I could actually see whole seashells just
lying out on the beach. I would have loved this place as a kid. I
remember coming out with my father when I was little. We went to
the boardwalk though and the seashells that hadn’t been crushed or
picked over were few and far between.

Aiden took my hand like we were
lovers, or at least friends. I guess we were, in a way. We began to
walk along the beach, stopping occasionally to look into a tide
pool or to inspect an indigenous plant. I couldn’t remember when
I’d ever felt so relaxed, and I knew that since I’d met Aiden I had
never seen him so happy.

AIDEN

I don’t remember the last time I took
the time to do something so relaxing. Maybe I never have. My
ex-wife told me that was why she’d turned to my best friend. She
said that I worked too much and made everything about business and
money. She said that I didn’t know how to have fun and that’s what
life was supposed to be about.

I do remember that my life was fast
paced while she and I were together, but I had taken time with the
baby. I actually took a two week vacation when he was born and for
the next two years…before she took him away from me, I made time to
see him every day. I’m sure that if I had been given the chance, I
would have continued to find time to spend with him, I could have
learned a new way of life.

But if I was being honest, she was
right about me not taking time for her. I was under the assumption
that she understood that I was doing what I needed to do for our
family. She was an adult she should have been able to understand,
right? I was creating a legacy that our son and his children and
their children could live off of for generations. She didn’t
understand though apparently. Instead, she hooked up with my best
friend and had a baby she considered passing off as mine. Well, she
did pass off as mine, at least long enough for her and her new man
to save some money from the job I had given him. I still thought it
was important to leave something for your family when you’re gone,
I think never remarrying, and the contract that I have with Holly
are my best bets. I will have my child and no one will be able to
take him or her away.

I stopped and sat on a rock while
Holly explored, oohing and aahing at everything she saw. It was fun
to look at things through her eyes. There was so much of life she
had never experienced that it was almost like being with a child
when she did. I slipped off my shoes and socks which was something
else I hadn’t done before, at least not since I was a kid, and as I
followed her along the sparkling white beach with the scent of the
ocean in my nostrils, I realized that I liked it. The feel of the
warm sand beneath my feet was somehow relaxing in itself. I looked
at Holly, splashing barefoot along the edge of the blue-green ocean
and I realized I liked her too, probably too much. But I understood
that this was a business deal, a contracted arrangement. I was able
to separate my emotions from my business. She looked at me then
with one of her dazzling smiles and I found myself hoping that she
truly understood it as well. Sometimes I was a little bit worried
that she was getting too attached.