An Heir At Any Price:
The Billionaire’s Obsession
By Holly Rayner
Copyright 2014 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
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Chapter One
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HOLLY
I smiled at the man with the hundred thousand dollar ring on his pinky and the three thousand dollar suit on his back as I poured him another cup of coffee. When I’m poised above him this way and the light hits him just right, I can see the tiny little black dots where his hair plugs had been put in recently. When he tilts his head up and smiles at me his upper lip pulls back so far that I can see where the tops of his veneers end along his gum line. If he turns to the right as the sun comes through the big picture window, I can see the loose skin along his neck that has slipped out of the knot the plastic surgeon has tied, likely more than once. His name is Bob Carlton and he is the CEO of some company or other and although he is at least fifty years older than me, he still seems to think that we’re hitting it off. Perhaps it’s because I’m nice to him, because I smile and ask about his day, but come on guy… I’m a waitress, that’s my job. It’s like being an actress. I look at it as working for my tips. Then again, I look around me and I can count at least three of my co-workers, one of them male, who would overlook the astronomical age difference if it involved early retirement and jet setting around the world.
It was Monday and it was passing slowly, as usual. I don’t understand why the days here always drag, it’s not like we’re standing around doing nothing. I don’t even have to go to the gym any longer; I get a great workout right here. Sometimes I think it’s because I feel like my life itself is just standing still. It never evolves or changes, it’s always the same.
I would love to be somewhere else, anywhere else. When I’m home at night, alone in the cocoon of my tidy little low rent apartment I dream about it, but there are bills to be paid and I’m the only one available to pay them. In other words, at twenty-four I’m taking care of my alcoholic mother as well as paying my own not so cheap rent. I don’t really dislike my job, but when you’re a little girl, no one ever says, “I want to be a waitress and spend my days kissing the asses of rich old men all day when I grow up.” I dream daily of a quick escape. I have a fantasy of a sudden opportunity presenting itself, but that dream never involves a Bob Carlton or a comfortable life in return for having to remove his withered old hand from my hip five times a day. So I work and I go home and I work some more and for the most part, I accept my lot in life. I was dealt a hand and I have to play it, or fold. I wasn’t ready to fold just yet.
I have to be grateful that I was able to get a job at this place. It’s an upscale café located in the heart of the business district. My customers are rich and most of the time their tips are big. It was the one area in my life where I could count myself truly lucky.
The lunch rush was beginning to subside and I was just starting to catch my breath when it was completely taken away again by the man who walked in the door. It was Aiden Scott. He came in almost every day at least once lately, sometimes twice. He was in his late twenties and tall, dark and dreamy, he added some color to my otherwise dark world. His dark hair was perfectly mussed at all times and his dark eyes were so intense that sometimes if I looked directly at them I felt like they were penetrating my very soul. My stomach fluttered just at the sight of him, but unlike Bob, when Mr. Scott smiles at me I swear my heart physically jumps up into my throat leaving my chest aching and my breaths shortened. The best part was that he would come in and make actual real conversation with me. I’d even started watching the news, a thing I hadn’t thought I had time for in the past, so that I could hold an intelligent conversation with him.
“There’s your boyfriend,” Myra, one of my co-workers whispered into my ear when he walked in the door. Myra was thirty-something and married to a man that she loved dearly and thought the rest of us should be married and as happy as she was. She was always trying to set me up, but since Aiden had been coming in for the past two months, she’d decided that he was the one for me.
“Yeah right,” I said with a laugh. I wasn’t sure what Aiden Scott’s background was, or what he did for a living, but I could tell just by the way he dressed and how he carried himself that he didn’t come from the same place I did. Unlike the other businessmen who came in, I never heard him talking about his business, or bragging about some big million dollar deal he closed. He made polite conversation with me, and occasionally others at the café, but it was never personal. Not about him anyways, he did seem interested in my life….not that I had much of one.
I had noticed that the other businessmen treated him differently than they did each other. There was no crass talk or backslapping. I wasn’t sure if that was because they didn’t really like him, or because they were for some reason, intimidated by him. Even the older wealthy guys are deferential to him. In the two months that he’s been coming in here to the coffee shop, and in all of the conversations that I’ve had with him I still had no idea if he was even married or not. I hadn’t asked him either. It wasn’t something a waitress should be asking her customers, and either way I was certain that he was way out of my league, I was okay with it. The last thing I had time for in my life was a relationship anyways.
“She’s not kidding,” Rose, another of my fellow wait staffers said. “He only comes in when you’re working, I swear. He’s memorized your schedule.”
“And he always sits in your section no matter how many other tables are open,” Myra added.
“And, he can’t take his eyes off of you. And he’s oh so dreamy…Now pick up your orders, all three of you and take your fine little butts out there on the floor and serve them before my food gets cold!”
That was Joe, our boss. He seems like an old grump and that’s probably good because that’s what he wants us and everyone else to believe, but the truth be told I have never worked for a better guy. He had a heart of gold, no matter how grumpy he likes to pretend to be. Joe was about fifty years old and built like a truck. Running a café for wealthy people is not something you’d think if you just saw him on the street. But he’d been successful, thanks in part to his baking and cooking skills and in part to his knack for hiring waiters and waitresses that fit in and stuck. His rate of turnover was very low.
To keep him from saying dreamy again, we did as we were told and picked up our orders. On the way to serve my table, I smiled at Aiden.
“I’ll be right back with you.” He smiled back and my heart lurched once again.
“No hurry, Holly.”
For some reason when he said my name it sounded so much prettier than when anyone else said it. It may have been my imagination, sparked by Rose and Myra’s goading, but I swear I could feel his eyes on me the entire time I was serving my table. When I turned back towards him, he was still looking at me. I wondered if he knew how he turned my insides to mush whenever he looked at me that way.
“Are you ready to order Mr. Scott or do you need a few minutes?” I asked him.
“How’s the special today?” he asked. Our special of the day was, ‘Blackened Tilapia with rice pilaf.’ It was pretty good and I told him so.
He handed me his menu and said, “I’ll trust you on the tilapia, Holly.” He smiled again, never taking his eyes off of mine. His intense eye contact made me a nervous wreck sometimes, but it was incredibly sexy too. I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat.
“Just water to drink?” He always just had water to drink. He never deviated, no coke or tea or coffee, always just water for the two straight months he’d been coming in here every day. He must have some awesomely healthy kidneys.
“Yes, Holly. Just water,” he said. The way he said my name with almost every sentence he spoke was incredibly sexy as well. It made my mind take little trips down a road where we were laying together and he was whispering my name into my ear right before he kissed me...I told him I’d be right back and laughed at myself as I walked away. That man is not interested in a meek little waitress. I needed to leave that notion where it belonged…in my co-workers heads.
I got two other tables while I was waiting for Aiden’s order to come up. Both of my tables were on the other side of his so each time I went over, I had to pass his table and each time I did, he would smile and run his eyes slowly from my head all the way down to my toes. That sort of thing from a man I didn’t know generally made me uncomfortable. In Aiden’s case, it made me nervous, and it made me shudder, but in a good way. It wasn’t creepy, it was more….appreciative.
AIDEN