An Heir At Any Price: The Billionaire's Obsession - Contemporary Romance (17 page)

My mother could have been speaking in
Chinese and it would have been just as fascinating to me. It had
been so many years since I truly had a mother to offer me her
advice and support, and here she was offering it and soundly. It
was the best thing that could have happened, and at a time when I
needed it the most. I hugged her tight.

“For now, Mom, I’m resigned to doing
this on my own. I know that I can. Aiden is a man with a lot of
resources, and if he wants to find me, he can. If it’s meant to be,
he will. If not I will always have a part of him.”

“I believe you can do this too. And, I
hope that I can be of some help to you while you’re doing it. It’s
about time I started acting like the mom instead of the child.” She
took both of my hands in hers and looked me in the face and said,
“Holly, thank you for being there for me these past ten years. I’m
so sorry for all I put you through. I’m going to do anything from
now on forward to make it up to you.”

“Thank you, Mom. I love you, and I
always knew that you were worth standing by. I will never leave
you, no matter what.”

“I love you too, Holly. So very much.”
She cupped my chin in her hand and looked directly at me as she
said it.

Chapter Fifteen

~

AIDEN

I hung up the phone after talking to
Marley. She was the woman who would be carrying my child as long as
she passed the medical assessment. Marley is married to one of my
employees and I knew that she had been a surrogate three other
times. She and my employee Jeff have two healthy, very beautiful
children of their own. Jeff’s a highly paid executive so the money
is not a big draw for her or them as a family. She does it because
she says everyone has a right to have a child and it’s her way of
“giving back.” I would still pay her handsomely and take care of
all the expenses, but I decided this way would be a lot less
stressful than the old fashioned approach that I’d tried to take
with Holly. Women have a hard time with detaching the emotion from
sex. I had been a bachelor long enough that I should have
considered that before taking Holly into my house and going to her
bed every night.

Marley always did it the insemination
route. She was twenty-nine and from what she told me, she was in
excellent health. She would be going in for insemination weekly
until she conceived. All of her others had been conceived quickly
and I was really tired of waiting for this to happen. I am a
patient man, but the debacle with Holly had taken a lot of my
patience away. Marley did mention the possibility of multiple
births doing it the insemination route, but I didn’t even care
about that, as long as I got my heir.

I had waited two months with Holly
before she left, patiently, I thought. I could very well have taken
advantage of her and had sex a lot more often than late at night.
But I was a gentleman whether she believed it or not, and as
mind-blowing as the sex was, I just didn’t think that would be
right.

She had been gone a little over a
month now, and I had waited all of that time thinking she was going
to come back. I should have moved forward with Marley weeks ago,
but for some reason I couldn’t make myself believe that Holly was
gone for good. I called her every day and left messages. She never
called back. I talked to her friends and although I was sure they
had to know where to find her, no one would tell me where she was
staying. If this damned city wasn’t so big I would have gone hotel
to hotel looking for her. One thing that made Holly hard to track
was that she didn’t use credit at all. She paid for everything with
cash.

She never came back, nor did she even
call me but for some crazy reason even as I hung up the phone with
Marley, I was still holding out hope that she’d walk back in the
door. My head seemed to hurt all the time lately and my heart felt
like it was racing and I was also having a terrible time sleeping
at night too. It was all out of character for me and it actually
pissed me off to feel this way.

One night when I couldn’t sleep I went
into her room. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. It still
smelled like her perfume and the fragrance filled my senses and
lulled me to sleep. When I woke up later in the dark, I was
disoriented at first and I thought she was there with me. The
disappointment was bitter when I woke up enough to realize that she
wasn’t. I thought about her all the time and it was driving me
crazy. I realized that I’ve never felt this strongly about anyone,
not even my ex-wife. When my she left me, I was angry with her and
it hurt to find out that she hadn’t really loved me in a long time
before it was over. Mostly though I was devastated by the loss of
the boy that I thought was my son. But I still didn’t miss her like
this. It felt like when Holly left she took a part right out of me
with her and now I had this gaping hole in the center of my chest
that ached continuously. I think I was falling in love with her,
but that wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to be just any
other employee. I suppose the having sex with her part blew that,
but it still wasn’t supposed to involve love. Before she left, I
had begun to think she had those feelings for me as well. But you
don’t just walk out of someone’s life if you love them. You stay
and fight if you have to, but you don’t walk away.

I grabbed my aching head and sat down
on the sofa. I knew that I was contradicting myself. Her walking
away had actually been in our contract. I’d expected it to happen a
lot later than it did, after she’d had my child, but I was the one
who had planned for her to walk away in the first place. Now I was
the one whining because she did.

I had to find a way to put Holly in
the past where she belonged, and I thought the best way to do that
would be to move forward with my life and my plans for an heir. I
just needed something else to concentrate my energies on besides
work. I had talked to Jeff about it and he was happy to talk to his
wife. She was the one I’d been talking to the day Holly had
overheard me. At that time, I’d just been thinking of her as a
back-up plan and now, I’m glad I did. Like all of the other women
in my life, Holly had left me. Like all of the other times, I knew
that I would get over it and move forward, stronger than ever.
Marley had just told me she met with the lawyer and signed the
contracts today and I was ready to call the doctor to get things
moving on the medical end.

I dialed up Dr. Lewis. He came on the
line sounding very jovial.

“Well, Aiden! It’s been a long time. I
was actually just thinking of calling you today.”

“Really?” I asked, thinking it was
curious that he was going to call me. “I guess great minds do think
alike. Hey Doc, I need to arrange an assessment for a young lady
named Marley. She’s agreed to be my surrogate and she is willing to
do it by insemination. I believe that she is pretty healthy, and
she’s done this before, so she understands it all very well. I want
her assessed medically just to be sure though when you have the
time please.”

“You want a new woman assessed?” Dr.
Lewis sounded surprised, or concerned.

“Yes, is that a problem?” I asked him,
confused myself now.

“I’m sorry, I’m just a bit confused I
suppose. I was planning to call you today to ask if things were
okay with Holly. She was pretty excited about all of this the last
time she was here; I’m surprised that I haven’t at least heard from
her. She’s long overdue for her next appointment…”

“Holly’s gone, doctor.”

“Gone? Oh my, you mean
she…?”

He thought I was telling him that she
died. I had an actual sick feeling in my stomach just at the
thought.

“No, no she’s not dead. She’s gone…she
moved out, I have no idea how to contact her, and she’s changed her
phone number…”

“Oh, I see,” he said. I could tell
there was more to it. He was acting very strangely. I had to wonder
what he wasn’t telling me.

“Doctor, when was the last time you
saw Holly?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer because now that I
really thought about it, that was when she started acting strangely
as well.

“About six weeks ago,” he said. That
was the last appointment. The one when she told me that she still
wasn’t pregnant…

“And how was she? Was everything
normal?” I was starting to feel sick again. I didn’t want to
believe that she’d lied to me.

“She was…well, everything was…well,”
he said. He was confirming my suspicions with his
hesitancy.

“Doctor, if you look in that chart I
know you’re holding right now, you will see that she signed
consents for me to obtain medical information about her. It’s part
of the contract that she signed, and I was with her when she signed
those as well.” He was silent and I heard paper
shuffling.

“Yes, Aiden, they’re here.”

“Good, now, would you like to tell me
what’s going on?”

“Holly’s pregnant, Aiden. We’re you
not aware of that?”

“No, unfortunately she chose not to
share that fact with me. I guess we’ll put a hold on the other
assessment for now until I find out what’s going on. Doctor, how
far along is she?”

“About six weeks at that check-up so
that would put her at about eleven weeks now.”

I dropped the phone. My head was
suddenly pounding. I was immediately thrust back to the day when
Cecile, my ex-wife walked out with my son in her arms. He was
reaching for me and crying. My heart felt like it was going to
explode, my chest hurt so badly. It hurt all over again now. Holly
lied to me, just like Cecile had and then she stole my baby and I
just let her walk away.

I suddenly had to run to the bathroom
and vomit. I didn’t think I was going to stop. When my stomach was
finally completely empty of both food and stomach acid I pulled
myself up to the counter and looked at my face in the mirror. I
wondered what it was about me that made women lie to me and made
them think I would be such a terrible father. One was bad luck; two
meant that I was doing something wrong by choosing the women I
chose.

I stood there, holding onto the
counter until my breathing was back under control. Then I splashed
cold water on my face and brushed my teeth. I was beginning to not
even recognize myself. I had dark circles underneath my eyes and I
wasn’t taking care of myself the way I usually did. I finally tore
myself away from my sallow appearance and stopped wallowing in
self-pity. Action was what I needed now. Taking my cell phone into
my den I pulled up the name and number of a private investigator
I’d used once before and called him. I wished I’d thought to do it
sooner.

“Hey Zack, it’s Aiden
Scott.”

“Aiden, hello. How are
you?”

“I’m not great, Zack. I need your help
if you’re available?”

“I’m sure I have the time to help you
out. What do you need?”

I didn’t tell him the whole sordid
story, but I did tell him that Holly was pregnant with my child and
made sure he was aware that we’d had a contract so he didn’t just
think of me as a creepy stalker. He took as much information as I
had on her and told me he’d be back to me as soon as he
could.

HOLLY

I started working at the restaurant
not long after my meeting with Frank that day. I’d been there about
a month and a half now and I really liked it. The people I worked
with were becoming my friends and my bosses were great. I’d found a
cute little two-bedroom apartment not far from where I worked. Most
days if the weather was good, I would walk to work.

Mom was staying with me now. She’d
gotten discharged from her facility with a gold star. A week or so
before she discharged I was allowed to take her out on a day pass.
I took her to the Jersey shore. It made me a little sad,
remembering the day I’d spent there with Aiden. That was the first
day he had opened up to me about anything and I will always cherish
those memories no matter what happened. It would be one of the
stories I told his son or daughter about him when they got
older.

Mother hadn’t been there in decades
she said, and it was a beautiful day to just lie on the beach or
search for shells along the shore. We talked and bonded and I
didn’t feel like I had my mother back, I felt like I had the mother
I’d always wanted. As we sat and looked out at the water my
thoughts once again turned to Aiden. For some reason I said, “Aiden
has his own island.”

My mother smiled and said, “Wow,
that’s impressive. From what I’ve heard about him, it almost seems
that he is his own island.”