Single Mom for the Billionaire (Alpha Billionaire Romance Book)

by Davis, Alexa

  I couldn't picture Ashlee in New York, however hard I tried, and over the last few years, I’d attempted to do so many, many times. The city just seemed like a fast-paced, impersonal environment, and she was just the opposite of that. But she must have managed to make it work somehow; after all, she was there for ten years. I just couldn't imagine it suiting her.

  “Yeah, well this isn’t New York,” I heard Terri reply bitchily. “This is a small-ass town with very little need for specialty treatments, so I wouldn’t get too used to your position here.”

  I watched on in shock as she stood up, slammed the sandwich onto the table, and stormed out. I’d never seen Terri act like that before, and it was completely turning me away from her. I knew that she was going to be pissed when I cooled things off with her, but to speak to an innocent party in such an uncouth way was horrible to see. Embarrassing, too. I hoped that it wouldn’t put Ashlee off from working with me. I didn’t want to let her go now that I’d finally managed to win her back around somewhat.

  “Wow,” I gasped in a stunned manner. “That was something else.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she brushed it off quickly. “She doesn’t bother me, at all.”

  I sighed audibly with relief, glad she was taking it so well, before turning the subject back to the matter at hand: her and how well she was doing at her job. I didn’t want to focus on Terri’s outburst. It could raise far too many questions that I didn’t really want to answer.

  “Well, the kids seem to love you a lot, and their parents think that you’re the best thing in the world,” I grinned happily at her, glad to have some real, honest praise to give her.

  I couldn't help feeling proud at all that she’d achieved. At one of the most difficult times in her life, when she’d just lost her father and everything she held dear, she went off to college, right across the country, and got the grades she needed to make a life for herself there. She could have quite easily fallen apart, that would have been completely understandable, but she didn’t. She held strong, and she got through it, carving out a very decent existence for herself. I had to admire that, even if it did take her away from me.

  “Thank you,” she replied. As she sent me a smile, I started to get the impression she might just be warming up to me all over again. Maybe once she got to know me again, she would see I wasn't all bad. Yes, I’d done some stupid things and made some bad choices, but deep down, I meant well, and I was inherently a good person. “And thanks for lunch, too.”

  Almost immediately, I wanted to invite her over for dinner, to spend the night with me, but I forced myself to stop because I knew that it would be a terrible idea. She wasn't ready for that again, and neither was I. To be able to even slightly make this work, we needed to take things a little slower, to work out what we meant to one another, before we dove in once more. Maybe we would figure out that all we could be was friends; maybe we couldn't even manage that. Of course, I wanted to drag her back into my bed and do all kinds of crazy things, but I couldn't. Not yet.

  On top of the massive complications between us, there was still the huge issue that I hadn’t decided what to do about the money yet, and I knew for a fact that there were no major life changes I could facilitate until I had. Luckily, since no one knew, I could make that choice by myself, but the information had already been dropped that the winner lived in Florence, so there was a hushed tension hanging over the town, one where people weren’t quite sure where they stood.

  My mind kept flickering with indecision, bolting between the choices, and until I was certain, that was how it would stay.

  “Anyway,” she smiled at me, standing up. “I have to get back to work, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

  With that, she flounced from the room, taking my heart with her. A sadness crept through my body as I tried to accept just how difficult this was going to be for me, but by the time I got back to my own office, that had subsided slightly. I knew why I’d hired Ashlee, I knew the reasons why I was doing it; everything else was simply outside noise that I needed to do my best to ignore.

  I pushed the door open, trying to get myself back into the mindset of work, but when I saw Terri standing there with her back to me, my heart sunk all over again. Terri had her own work to be getting on with, so why the hell couldn't she just do that? Why did she always have to be bothering me? What more could I say to her to make her understand? It wasn't like I hadn’t told her from the start that we were only hooking up.

  “Terri, I have a lot to do,” I tried to tell her wearily, but almost the second those words left my lips, she spun around to face me with an ecstatic expression on her face. At first, I didn’t understand it, considering her attitude the last time I’d seen her, only a short while before, but then my eyes drifted down to the two items she was clutching tightly between her fingers...

  My wallet and the lottery ticket. Fuck! This was about to get messy.

  “Oh my God,” she squealed. “Why didn’t you tell me? And why are you so worried about work when you have a billion dollars coming your way soon?” She moved closer to me, wrapping her arms around my neck, and in my shocked state, I didn’t immediately throw her off. “This is going to be amazing; we can go on holiday, somewhere hot and sunny... Oh, we can swim with the dolphins! Then we can get a house together, start our lives. Can you imagine the sort of property we’ll be able to buy with this kind of money?”

  Would this be what my life was like if I had the money? A never-ending nightmare of needy wannabes? Would I face a whole range of people creeping out of the woodwork, determined to get a piece of what I now had? I didn’t like that prospect at all. I wasn't sure how I would cope with the limelight, that wasn't me at all.

  “Terri,” I said lightly, pulling her off me. “You and I will be doing nothing with the money.” I snatched the items from her before moving out of her reach. “Because there is no you and I, and there never has been.”

  “But...” she started, looking dumbfounded, but I had no intention of letting her get a word in edgeways. I wasn't in the mood for one of her crazy rants right now.

  “Yes, we’ve hooked up a few times, but that’s all it’s ever been. I made that very clear to you from the start and you said you understood.” I needed to be firm now, to make her see once and for all. There couldn't be any more beating around the bush. “I’m sorry if that upsets you now, but nothing’s changed just because you’ve seen some lottery ticket whilst snooping through my wallet.” I was pissed off about that, too, but I was choosing to pick my battles. “So, I think that you should get the hell out of my office, don’t you?”

  “This is because of Ashlee, isn’t it?” Nastiness dripped off her tongue. “I knew she was going to be trouble for us the second I laid eyes on her damn face.”

  “She was never going to be trouble for us, because there is no us,” I reiterated firmly. “Now, please will you just go?”

  She shot me one more nasty look, before racing from the room, slamming my door loudly in the process. How the hell was I going to keep this a secret now?

  Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Terri, apart from the way that she liked to be screwed, but I did know that a woman scorned wasn't something that you wanted – especially not if you had a secret this big to hide. Either way, it was likely to get out now; I just needed to decide what I was going to do with it. There were so many pros and cons that it was incredibly difficult to know what was best.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ashlee

  Wednesday

  It felt good to start settling into my brand-new role. In a weird way, I was already starting to feel like this was a job I’d been working in for a very long time, and that I’d never worked in any other office at all. All thoughts of my old life, the one that I’d been living in New York for a decade, simply fell away. This felt far more real to me than any of that ever had. Dan, Eileen, and the rest of the gang felt like invisible friends I’d had many moons ago.

  It was strange to think
that it had only been a few days.

  I swung the door open quickly, clicking my heels along the floor. My mind was already zoned in on work, on everything that lay out in front of me, and all the new plans I’d been creating for patients in my mind. It seemed like word had spread about my services, and I was quickly becoming inundated with new people. Just the way I liked it.

  “Hi,” a bitchy voice rang out, causing my head to snap up in shock. Of course, I knew that Terri was going to be there; she did work there, after all, but I didn’t expect her to be in first. As I glanced around, though, it quickly became clear that Matthew was nowhere to be found. “How’s it going?”

  “Erm...fine?” I replied anxiously, remembering how well our last conversation had gone. There was clearly something about me she didn’t like; she wasn't shy about letting me know that. “How are you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” she replied, with a sneer to her tone. My heart started to race a little, expecting the absolute worst, and I was right to be fearful. That was about to become very clear with the next words that fell past her lips. “I’ve heard about you and Matthew.”

  An icy chill ran through me, and I instantly felt my face heat up. How the hell had she heard anything? Did Matthew tell her? What the fuck was that all about? How embarrassing! “And I think that there are some things about him that you should know.”

  Really? I’d known Matthew for most of my life. Okay, so we hadn’t exactly been close for the past few years, but this crazy chick thought that she could tell me something about him? I almost exploded, unleashing a whole bunch of pent-up aggression on her, before I forced myself to stop. My brain stepped in and reminded me that the smart thing to do would be to just give her the opportunity, just in case.

  “You do, huh?” I tried to sound uncaring as I said this, but the wobble in my voice was evident. “Go on, then.” I folded my arms across my chest in a self-protective gesture while I waited.

  “Well, first off, I think that I should tell you that he’s a massive womanizer.” I rolled my eyes at that one; how damn predictable for her to throw that one out there. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't; it certainly didn’t matter to me. I highly doubted that he would wreck our lifetime bond by pulling any of that shit on me. “Which I wish someone had told me before I started hooking up with him.”

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, unsure of what I should say back to that. It was clear from the pain radiating from her eyes that there was at least some element of truth to that, which tied me all up in knots. Maybe he had been acting like the heartless bastard in this case. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, at all.

  “I mean, we’ve been screwing around with one another for a very long time now,” she shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant about it. “I always assumed that we would eventually become something more serious. I thought that we were heading that way.”

  God, was I about to hear some crazy break up story? Something to reveal her as the twisted, bitter bitch she might be? I took a step back, not wanting to deal with that right then. I had no idea what I would even say.

  “But I suppose I should have known better. I guess the fact that he’s never bothered with his own child should have been clue enough that he would never be in it for the long term.”

  My eyes snapped up at that, my heart stopping. Did she just say what I thought she did? That Matthew had a child? Holy fuck , I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that one. I wouldn’t even know what to do.

  Seeing that I was stunned by this news, a tiny smirk played on Terri’s lips. It was only for a split second, but it was long enough for me to see it. A sickness began to swirl around in my stomach, as I waited for her to speak out once more. But she remained silent, tormenting me with her eyes, forcing me to ask the one question I didn’t know the answer to.

  “He...he has a child?” My palms were sweating, my fingers trembling, my knees knocking together. I almost couldn’t bear the strained atmosphere that was circling us.

  Oh, my God, I wanted to scream. Just put me out of my misery already!

  “Oh yeah, didn’t you know? Everyone else does, I’m surprised you haven’t heard it yet, even if you have only been here for a while.” She stepped closer to me, tapping her fingers on her hips, making me look at her overtly sexy curves without even wanting to. Had Matthew really been hooking up with this girl? Why the hell would he go from her to me? She was so much hotter. “He has a kid with Kerri.”

  As soon as those words left her lips, any cool façade simply fell away. I felt the rug pulled out from beneath me, literally causing me to stagger backwards. Was that possible? Could that be the case?

  Kerri had certainly been very evasive when I asked her about who Grant’s dad was, almost weirdly so, which lined up with this story. Plus, if he was a womanizer, he could have easily charmed her into bed. Maybe it was on a night she was feeling lonely. Maybe they were drunk. By the time he came to her, we hadn’t spoken for many years, so it was unlikely that either of them would hold any loyalty to me anymore.

  Then I came back, and fucked up everything. It was unlikely that either of them would feel brave enough to tell me...especially after I drunkenly screwed Matthew again.

  Holy fuck!

  Was that why she hooked up with Willy? Someone she didn’t seem to like? Was it because Matthew had rejected her, and their son, so she wanted some revenge? Did she sense he was into me, so she went off with someone else?

  I thought I was about to throw up, so I pushed past a content Terri, making my excuses. I raced into the bathroom to give myself somewhere more discrete to throw up, should it come to that.

  I panted heavily, leaning over the toilet, but it quickly became clear that nothing was going to come up, so I slid backwards and allowed my butt to crash against the cold, tiled ground with a thud. My head pounded with heat, while my mind ran free with images of the pair of them together. It was possible, I knew it was; that was why Terri’s story cut so deep.

  If everything she’d just told me was the truth, then Matthew really wasn't the man that I thought he was. Maybe that nasty side I saw to him when my dad died was the truth of him after all; maybe that was the guy he’d become more of over time.

  I stood up, knowing I was going to have to get myself ready for work regardless of what I thought about Matthew. He might be a total dickhead, but he was my employer now, and I needed him to pay my wages. I couldn't ask him about any of this, especially not in the workplace, because I needed this job so damn badly.

  I was going to have to just avoid him at all costs, focusing only on the job at hand instead. No more cozy chats, no more lunches together: I was only there to work.

  I would have to speak to Kerri about her and Matthew, instead of him. I could trust her a whole lot more. I felt that if I went to her with this and asked her outright, I might stand a chance of getting the damn truth.

  *****

  The day that followed was absolutely exhausting. I was exhausted purely from having to actively avoid Matthew and Terri, so by the time I could get the hell out of the place, I stalked out without a second glance. Matthew was probably confused as to why I hadn’t even said goodbye, but I didn’t give a shit about that. He could think whatever he damn well pleased about me.

  I needed to get home quickly, to veg out and wallow in my own, negative emotions, but I couldn't just yet because I had to head to the pharmacy first. Mom needed a whole bunch of new meds, and while I was in high spirits in the morning, if I’d known how my day was going to go, I might not have been so kind as to pick them up.

  Actually, that was unfair. Mom was up and down a lot, so of course I would have unselfishly offered. It was just a pain in the ass when I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Oh my God, Ashlee Baker, is that you?” a vaguely familiar voice called out the second I stepped through the doors. “I mean, I knew that your mother had returned to town, but I didn’t realize it was a package deal.”

  I took me a second of staring
at him blankly to realize that it was Harry from my old school, the one who held the graduation party that caused everything to fall apart. I’d all but forgotten that his family owned this place; to be honest, I never thought that I would see him working there. Back in the older days, he was much too spoiled to ever get a job.

  But as my eyes travelled up and down his broader, more muscular body, drinking in the sexy goatee sitting on his chin, it was obvious to me that the over the last decade, the boy had done some serious growing up.

  “Oh, hi, Harry,” I smiled up at him. “It’s nice to see you again. How are things?”

  “Good, good. I take it that you’re here for your mother’s medication?” I nodded and watched him scurry off to sort it out. At least some people had changed since high school; it was a relief to see that I wasn't on my own with that one. “So, how long are you back for?” he asked me as he handed me the bag of stuff. “It would be nice to hang out with you while you’re here, catch up and stuff?”

  I looked into his eyes, wondering if this was a date or a friend thing...and did it really matter either way? Since it was obvious that things between me and Matthew were never going to become anything, why not see what else is out there?

  “I’m back for the foreseeable future,” I told him, my heart pounding with excitement at the snap decision that my brain had just made for me. “And a drink sounds lovely. When would you like to go?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Matthew

  Wednesday

  What the fuck is going on?

  That thought kept rolling over and over in my mind as the day went on. Why was Ashlee acting so weird around me? It didn’t make any sense. The last thing I could remember was us having an awesome lunch together, getting along well. What had happened between that moment and today? What could I have done in that time?

  I decided to ask her at the end of the day, once all the patients had gone home, to get everything out in the open before it festered and became a real issue. I wanted to resolve whatever I’d done to upset her as quickly as possible.