Laney’s body went still.
“What is it, honey?” he asked, cupping her peachy cheek, the heat thrilling him.
“I was there.” She breathed heavily. “I saw you.”
“Saw me?”
“At the hotel. I came by. Two days after Christmas.”
“You did?” he responded elated, but then dread seeped in. “Wait. No.”
“I just need to know if it’s over with her. I didn’t leave you with any promises. You had the right to sleep with whoever you want.”
He gaped at her, amazed. Laney would forgive him one last tumble with Cass and his ex. “Really? You’d let that go?”
“We need to start fresh.” She swallowed with corded throat muscles. “Get to know the people we really are.”
Where did this woman come from?
“I agree. Except, I don’t agree with one thing.”
“Okay. What?” She folded her arms like they were negotiating.
“I didn’t sleep with Beth,” he said firmly. “Yes, she came into town. It was an unexpected trip for her. The minute I saw her, I ached for you so bad, Laney. I just started spilling my guts to her. Telling her how much I love you.”
Laney’s eyes slipped closed. She’s human after all, he thought. “I’m sorry I left you so unsure.” She sniffed. “I love you, too. And I’m not just saying that to make this neat and clean and pretty. I was so empty every minute we’ve been apart. I just didn’t believe it could happen so fast and still be real.”
“It happened.” Tristan held her close and drank in her scent. “Get in, you.”
“Ordering me around?” Laney stretched up on her tippy toes, trying but failing, to meet his towering height. “I’m in charge, remember?”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever forget.”
Laney owned his body on the cruise and then captured his heart, too. She could be in charge of all of him, now, forever, and always.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two months later...
The Sterling Hotel
Penthouse Apartment B
Laney
LANEY LEANED OVER THE dining room table running her fingers across a set of blueprints. That ole geek flag raised and high in the sky. Also on the table were stacks of papers. Contracts. Samples. Sketches. Photos. Proposals.
She’d never been so happy.
Almost.
A body pressed into her from behind and warm wet lips slid down the back of her neck. “You get up way too early for me.”
Her cheeks flamed hot like the rest of her body whenever this man touched her.
She turned in Tristan’s arms, breathing in his morning scent of laundered bedsheets. “If we start our day this way, we’ll never get out of bed.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he said and kissed her mouth, his morning breath sweet and pleasant. “That’s what’s great about the penthouse apartment. No one can bother us.”
“Except we share this floor with your brothers.” She’d crossed paths with Luke in the elevator and finally met Grayson. Like Tristan had predicted, he’d broken up with his girlfriend. Gray now trudged around the hotel, sullen and a bit pissed off. But he did it looking freaking hot and dressed very well.
“I don’t share. Remember?” Tristan lifted her on the table, reminding her also how insatiable he was.
She’d lost her head for a moment indulging in Tristan’s warm wet mouth, his hands gliding into her satin nightshirt until papers crinkled under her ass.
“Hey stop,” she giggled, pushing him away.
“You’re mine now. You shouldn’t want to stop.” He breathed into her hair and rested his head in the curve of her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“I decided. I want it,” Laney said, brushing her hands through his messy bed-head. Damn Adonis looked perfect every morning.
“Of course, you do, I give it to you so good.”
“Not you. Well, yes of course, you.” She twisted around and pointed to the wrinkled plans of the ten-thousand-square-foot mill she wanted to buy for her textile business. “I meant this.”
“Oh.” Tristan straightened his spine as the businessman woke up. Nodding, he said simply, “Okay, book a flight. Let’s go check it out. Use the credit card I gave you.”
“About the credit card.”
“What about the credit card?” He peered at her like he was waiting for another argument because he wanted to completely support her while she got her business up and running.
Laney simply smirked and handed him a receipt from a folder on the table. “I broke the card in, yesterday.”
Tristan snagged the smooth slip of paper. “You used my fifty-thousand-dollar fee black card for a ten-dollar manicure?”
“Look at the signature.” She pointed with a sparkly pink nail.
His face fell. “Laney Hart,” he said with a ragged edge to his voice. “Is this your way of agreeing to marry me finally?”
He’d been asking since New Year’s Eve.
“It’s my way of saying, I’m getting used to the idea of marrying into a family of billionaires.” She dropped a kiss on his perfect nose.
“You’ve done a number on my brothers.” A wolfish grin spread across Tristan’s gorgeous mouth. “They adore you almost as much as I do.”
Grayson had been slow to let Laney in, and Luke finally stopped complaining about the blown ten-billion-dollar deal. He seemed to like being just a CEO, minus the playboy.
Tristan may have been the Hart middle child, but he was the alpha in Penthouse B.
Laney’s alpha billionaire.
Thank you for reading Alpha Billionaire. Please leave a review if you enjoyed it.
Now, how about that brother of Tristan’s, huh? Luke’s not looking for love. But it’s coming right for him.
Check out a free preview of Bossy Billionaire, Lords of Gotham, Book 3, A Grumpy Boss Romance.
No job is worth this kind of grump...
When Luke, the CEO of a NYC luxury hotel, can’t hold on to an assistant or a girlfriend, he gives up on both. To keep from being distracted by luscious curves at work, he tells his brother, the COO, to hire him a dude. But a name mix-up leaves Luke with a new female assistant.
And she’s his recent hot, intense, and dirty one-night stand. Lexi’s the 9 to 5 temptation he can’t afford right now. The hotel’s in trouble and his relationship with his brothers is on the line.
Luke has no choice but to keep his distance, emotionally. Physically...he’s still working on that. His latest plan...make her quit. Luke turns brutal, bossy, and determined to come out on top.
Lexi may be young, but she’s no quitter. She needs this job to pay her law school tuition, so she’ll endure whatever Luke throws at her. And indulge in a little sabotage as payback.
But bringing Luke to his knees and getting him to fall in love with Lexi turns out to be a lot more fun...
Turn the page for Chapter One of Bossy Billionaire...
BOSSY BILLIONAIRE
Book Three in the Lords of Gotham series
Luke
The skirling of bagpipes vibrated against the windows behind Luke’s desk. His late father’s ornately carved antique was appropriate for the look of his hotel, but lacked functionality. Like Luke.
Flashy. Handsome. Useless.
The blinking message light on his desk phone held his attention far greater than his youngest brother, Grayson, grinding on and on about yet another issue with his penthouse apartment.
Luke broke into the rant, “How do I access my voicemail?” He slapped every button on the phone’s console. “My assistant quit this morning.” He made a mockery of his CEO role at The Sterling for three years after he and his two brothers inherited the hotel.
But he vowed to put more of his heart into the job he didn’t want. Watching yet another assistant quit on him suggested getting his shit together was off to an awful start.
Grayson huffed from being interrupted. “Lucy quit?” He hauled his enormous feet on Lu
ke’s desk. “She was hot.”
“Lucy quit two months ago.” Tristan, the middle brother, glanced out the window at the parade marching down New York’s Fifth Avenue below them. With his arms crossed, he added, “This one was Carly. And she didn’t look so hot staggering away with mascara stains running down her face.”
“What are you doing to these women?” Grayson nagged Luke.
He didn’t need a Hart family tribunal at the moment. “Seriously, my light is flashing, that means I have a message, right?”
“If it’s important, they’ll call back.” Grayson waved his hand.
“Would you say that if you were expecting a call from your agent?” Luke shot back, his ire hitting below the belt because Grayson’s acting career was in the toilet and the guy hadn’t heard from his agent in months.
“Asshole.” Gray yanked his feet down, knocking Luke’s CEO nameplate, a picture of them with their mom, and the rest of his cold coffee to the carpet.
“Watch it.” He jumped to snatch the mug, for once grateful for the ugly latte-colored carpeting.
Tristan rolled amber eyes at Gray and took out his phone. “Jessie, can you please come to Luke’s office? Yes, he’s wearing pants.” He sent a scrunched what the fuck glare at him. “Never mind.”
One damn time he got caught in his office without pants while changing for his nightly VIP parties and suddenly he was known as The pantless CEO all throughout the hotel.
“And he calls me a train wreck.” Grayson grabbed his leather jacket and he and his torn jeans stomped out of the Luke’s office, slamming the door behind him.
What the hell he was so angry about baffled Luke. He and Tristan worked twelve-hour days running The Sterling. Grayson was an equal owner, but he rarely made it past the lobby bar. He’d only climbed their out-of-order escalator to the executive offices that afternoon to bitch about his housekeeper.
Luke dragged Tristan into that screwed-up conversation, because as the COO, housekeeping was under his brother’s jurisdiction.
“So, what happened with Carly?” Tristan asked in his accusing voice.
Luke rose from his chair and buttoned the jacket of his favorite jet-black suit. Damn, he’d forgotten to wear a green tie for St. Patrick’s Day. “Let’s get one thing straight. I am the CEO around here. I answer to no one, Tristan. That includes you.”
Absolute power corrupted absolutely.
Tristan spun on his Prada Oxfords. “Good luck figuring out how to get into your voicemail, asshole.”
“Wait,” Luke called out and slumped back in his tufted executive swivel. “I’m sorry. I’m...not sleeping well. I’m exhausted. I’m snapping at everyone. That’s what happened with Carly, okay? Happy?”
“No.” Tristan removed his dark-rimmed glasses. As usual, his brother dressed for the occasion with a striking jade tie against a light gray suit cut perfectly for his towering frame. “What can I do?” he asked, sounding so damn hospitable. Fitting, they were in the hospitality business. Whether they liked it or not.
“Can Jessie cover my shit for a while?” he asked, lacking the strength to discuss hiring another assistant.
“Done.” Tristan smiled down at his phone after a beep. “The jet’s back with Laney. The trip to her textile mill didn’t take as long as expected.”
Luke loved that Tristan found a woman he adored. Seeing him so happy was a slow-moving inspiration heading right for him. If he let it. Laney had a magic about her, all right. She’d enchanted Luke into agreeing to do a complete renovation of the hotel instead of selling it for ten billion dollars a few months back.
Not that Luke needed the money. Before assuming the CEO job at the hotel, his law practice kept him flush with cash. Sure, The Sterling’s monthly revenues busted the seams of his bank account, too. With minimal effort on his part. Tristan did most of the work.
For the first three years, he’d spent most days hungover after endless nights of partying, promoting the hotel with his showboating and whoring around Manhattan. The Sterling had to be a great hot spot. Look how fun the CEO was!
That’s a horrible marketing strategy, Tristan, who was a branding expert before assuming the COO title, liked to remind Luke.
With his wolfish days and nights behind him, and his busy law career on hold, Luke faced a mountain of time alone with nothing to do. To the point it irritated the hell out of him. He needed a distraction.
“It’s almost five pm.” Tristan knocked him out of his self-pity party. “Why don’t you get out of here. I want to go get Laney. We think...”
“You think, what?” Luke asked, conscious of the muffled voices drifting back and forth outside his office.
Tristan smirked. “Laney might be pregnant.”
Luke’s throat tightened. Somewhere in his dominant brain he assumed he was responsible to produce the first Hart baby. Being the oldest, and all. “Might?”
“She missed her period.” Tristan ran a hand through his thick reddish-brown hair, full in the front and cropped in the back. “We’re worried because she’s been working non-stop converting the textile designs with her new software and she hasn’t been eating enough. Now her iron levels are low. A pregnancy would be high risk for her. We just got engaged. She wanted to work on this project and plan a wedding. Her doctor could put her on bedrest.”
Luke soaked in his brother’s troubled voice. “How do you feel about all this?” Despite the bickering, Tristan was his best friend.
“I want whatever she wants, but I also want her healthy. We haven’t even thought about kids.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. Odd for his brother to be so short-sighted since Luke heard those two going at it all hours of the night from his apartment next door. He, Tristan, and Grayson each had their own penthouse villas right there in The Sterling. “Either way, I’ll be happy, but I want her to be happy and not stressed.”
“Happy wife, happy life.” Luke nodded, repeating what the divorce lawyers at his old firm used to coach their clients. He missed working as a lawyer. But when his dad died and left them the hotel, he took a leave of absence to deal with this place. “Keep me posted.”
“Definitely. And I’ll tell HR to get you someone else soon,” he said then added, “Since you keep scaring away all the women I hire you, how about we try a guy this time?”
“For what?” Luke thought he missed a pivot in the conversation.
“To be your secretary? Why are you laughing?”
“A dude secretary?” He didn’t mean to sound like a reverse-sexist, he was just being real. “What guy wants to be a secretary?”
“Someone who needs a paycheck.” Tristan was really good at cutting through the bullshit.
“Good point.” Luke exhaled and glared at his messy desk. The overflowing stack of contracts he had to review since he was a lawyer and The Sterling didn’t have a general counsel at the moment added to his daily crabbiness. “What if we create a business intern position?” he suggested.
“Interesting.” Tristan nodded, but fidgeted like he wanted to get the hell out of there. “I’ll wrap my head around this and figure out—”
“I can manage this one, Tristan. I have some clue about what the hell is going on around here. Who do you think runs this place while you were off on your sex cruises?”
His brother’s smile disappeared, and a sheen of sweat glazed across his forehead. “Don’t bring that up anymore, okay? Laney got a front-row seat to the worst side of me and I’m a lucky bastard that she still wanted me.”
“Sorry, man.” Luke stood and rounded his desk. “But that’s where you found the love of your life.”
Tristan narrowed angry eyes at him. “Do not even think about going on that cruise.”
Luke guffawed a laugh. “I don’t need an easy fling.”
His brother shook his head and strode to his office door. “Have a good weekend, Luke.”
“Hey, it’s Friday. Why don’t we meet up somewhere after you pick up Laney?” he asked, wanting to make sure Trist
an stayed on his side since Gray won’t be talking to him for a while.
“I’ll let you know.” His brother swept out of the office.
“Wait!” he called out to Tristan, but he’d hiked right for the executive suites’ double doors leading to the mezzanine level of the hotel.
That damn message light on his phone was still blinking.
Then it went out. That really summed up his week.
Running this hotel utterly exhausted Luke. He’d been walking around way too irritated. He needed something, anything to kill the loneliness coursing through him. He needed sex, but without a gala or a fundraiser he could waltz into and leave with a woman on his arm, he had a feeling he’d end tonight much like the others over the past few months.
Alone.
Lexi
THE STENCH OF SHELLAC thickly layered on the wood surfaces all around the financial aid offices of NYU made Lexi’s nose twitch. The entire office smelled old. Waiting on a plastic chair, she pinched the hem of her red dress, the color out of place considering all the green around her. With her pink hair and heavy eyeliner, she didn’t look like a typical law school student, either.
“Alex Markham?” an admin in the bursar’s office rasped from behind the counter.
A fat-finger typo at Fordham University had knocked the ‘is’ off her name Alexis, six years ago and still crept into the most random of school records. It’d followed her to this today, even though she was in her third year and final semester at the NYU School of Law.
“Coming,” she said, gathering her book bag.
When Lexi’s mother painfully admitted at Christmas she didn’t have the money to pay Lexi’s tuition bill, she’d made a last-ditch effort to graduate and applied for several emergency student loans. Applying allowed her to start the semester, but one by one, rejections had rolled in because her Fordham University records listed her as Alex Markham!
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