Protecting Her: A Billionaire Secret Baby Romance

by Kira Blakely

  “Yeah, you go first and then we’ll fill you in on our story,” Lily said with a laugh. I was staring at them, looking from Lily to Bonnie and back to Lily again. What did they even mean by that? What story did they want to hear? Also, what story did they have to tell me?

  “Oh, I see Vincent has told you nothing. The three of us have one thing in common, Gemma,” Bonnie said, grabbing my hand in hers. She was patting my hand like she was about to give me some bad news. Uh oh, here it comes. She’s going to disclose something about Vincent that is going to ruin everything for me. Am I his mistress? Are we three mistresses to these three men? Does Vincent have a wife who I don’t know about? My nervousness didn’t put anything past the man I was in love with. I was ready to expect the worst.

  “We were all in the same boat once, not very long ago,” Bonnie added, and the smile on her face put me at ease, somewhat.

  “Yeah, we were each bad for their business,” Lily said with a loud magnetic laugh.

  ***

  “So, Saturday brunch at my place?” Bonnie said, giving me a hug before she leaned over to hug Lily.

  “See you then.” I smiled at her, before hugging Lily myself.

  It was two in the morning, and we were all a little drunk, but nobody had wanted the party to end.

  “It was great meeting you, Gemma,” Casper said and I turned to find him engulfing me in a tight bear hug. Nash came over to hug me at the same time, and I was squashed between both men now.

  “Yeah, glad we all got to know each other. Vincent has been hiding you from us for too long,” Nash added.

  “I tried, for as long as I could. Keeping Gemma’s best interests in mind, of course.” Vincent had come over and placed a hand on the small of my back. When the other two released me, I snuggled into Vincent’s arm.

  The two couples had come with their own chauffeur-driven cars, and now they were waving as they got into their respective ones. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have ever imagined that I would have friends like these. That people like them could be nice people. Down to Earth, warm and so welcoming.

  Vincent and I waved back as the two cars drove away, and he drew me closer to him.

  “Alone at last,” he said, wrapping his long muscular arms around me. I placed my head on his chest, a smile appearing on my face. I was tired, my feet hurt from wearing heels for so long, but I had never felt happier than I did tonight. Six months, and it had finally sunk in; this was actually my life. All of this was happening to me, for real.

  “Your friends are lovely, and Lily and Bonnie are terrific,” I said, my voice muffled by his chest as he held me close to himself.

  “They are, aren’t they? I could tell that they like you. Their little girl gang is strengthened in number now,” Vincent said, moving his hands down to my waist now.

  Soft tunes were floating outside through the open window of the living room. Someone had turned on the vintage gramophone in the room, and now Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” was on. Vincent had started swaying gently, forcing me to sway with him.

  “Kick off those heels,” he said when I looked up at him, my face shining and bright with utter happiness.

  I was only too pleased to take my shoes off. Now, barefoot, I stepped on Vincent’s polished black shoes as he led me in a slow dance to the love song. He looked handsome, smelled great, and he made me feel warm and safe in his arms as we danced.

  “Do you think I’ll get into med school?” I asked.

  “If your college results are anything to go by, yes, you will,” Vincent said.

  I smiled, proud of what I had achieved. I couldn’t have achieved any of that without Vincent’s help or his support. My job at his company was good; it helped me learn and feel more passionately about medicine. Also, importantly, it had helped me pay off all my family’s debts and now I was in the process of helping my parents find a new house to rent in Carlow Ridge.

  No trailer park for them anymore; no tattered armchair either. Dad’s medical bills were all being taken care of by Vincent, and my family couldn’t be happier. Their daughter had done well for herself. I was working hard, and I had the support of a kind and generous man.

  I stroked Vincent’s arm with my cheek, and he gripped my waist tighter. I could feel the warmth of his body now, as our feet worked slowly with the rhythm of the song. This was what happiness looked like. Who would have imagined it?

  “Thank you for everything,” I said, suddenly breaking the silence and looking up at Vincent. He had been paying attention to the music, but now he turned his eyes on me.

  “I should be thanking you, Gem. You saved me from making the worst decision of my life, marrying someone for the sake of my parents. I chose you, and you chose to be with me, too. I have never been happier,” Vincent said, and he scooped me up for a kiss. He was holding me up by my waist and my feet weren’t touching his shoes any more. I was like a rag doll in his hands, and he could do as he pleased with me.

  I was laughing as he kissed me, uncontrollably, because I didn’t need to hold back my happiness any longer. There was no need to. It was okay to be happy.

  I would never have to work in a diner again. I would never have to build castles in the air. All my dreams were coming true, and then some. All because my tire blew and a handsome man offered to fix it for me. And especially because I didn’t let him.

  Billionaire Bad Boys

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  DAWSON

  I run my business like I fight and like I f*ck; deep. Savage. Made my first billion before I was 30. I want for nothing now. There’s nothing that walks through the doors of my building which I cannot possess—until Lexie. Sweet, shy Lexie. So innocent. She doesn’t want an office romance… but giving over her soft body right now is an order.

  ASHTON

  I’ve always had to fight. I fought my way into this wild life. I fought for every shingle on my roof, and I’ll never back down from my goddamn dreams. I met Laura in a bar fight, and I’ve shown her body love many times—but she has no idea how real and how deep that fire burns.

  JACKSON

  I know what people think about me. I don’t belong. Not to this world of glamour and riches… I just found a back door that wasn’t locked. But they’re wrong. I work hard and I work alone. That’s how I got here; talent and heart. I finally want to show that to the beautiful Hope, but she won’t have anything to do with me. She doesn’t see it yet. I belong right here.

  1

  AS HE WATCHED the woman get dressed, Dawson held back a sigh of frustration. He’d enjoyed the previous night; he’d have to be dead not to have enjoyed having sex with a beautiful woman, even if he couldn’t remember what her damn name was.

  But as he watched her getting ready to leave the warmth of his bed, he felt cold inside. She turned to face him as she started to put on her bra and flashed a smile that was all perfectly straight, white teeth and false eyelashes, and he knew what she was going to say even before she uttered a word.

  “So, gorgeous, when will I see you again?” Her voice was as fake as her tits were, and the coldness he felt inside quickly turned to a feeling of disgust. “And could you possibly give me some money to pay for a cab home? I seem to have misplaced my purse.”

  And there we have it, he thought. Another fucking gold digger out for what she could get off him. He was so sick and tired of being treated as a meal ticket by almost everyone he knew, especially women, that he was at the point where he could quite easily throw in the towel and move to a secluded island.

  There were just two flaws to his getaway plan: he loved money and the power it gave him over people, and he
loved sex with beautiful women, even if it meant he had to use his money in order to get it. Miss fake-sexy, whatever-her-name-was seemed oblivious to the fact that his expression had grown cold as he swung his legs off the bed and reached for his wallet on the nightstand. He withdrew a hundred-dollar bill and walked over to where she stood, ogling his muscular nakedness, before thrusting the money into her hand.

  “You won’t see me again, but thanks for a good night,” he said.

  The woman’s expression turned petulant, and he was reminded of a sulky child who had been told she couldn’t have any more candy, which, considering the things they’d done the night before, made him cringe.

  Thankfully, she took the not-so-subtle hint though, and a short time later he was alone in his penthouse apartment mulling over his life and where the hell it was taking him. He supposed that he had no one to blame for the way people treated him but himself, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. He knew that he’d been dealt a rough hand from the minute he’d been born, but he’d managed to make something of himself despite that – or maybe it was because of that – so why couldn’t he find someone decent to share his life with?

  Because you can be an asshole. Your mother was an asshole. Your father was probably an asshole, and you can definitely treat people like assholes, which is probably why you get treated like an asshole in return. What else can you expect? He knew that he wasn’t really an asshole – not in the grand scheme of things. Too many people had told him otherwise for it to be true. But sometimes it was hard to ignore the demons of his youth that reared their ugly head during times of self-doubt, and during his formative years, he’d been told so many times that he was a good-for-nothing waste of space.

  He shoved at the mental voice that had decided to answer his rhetorical question, pushing it resolutely back down into the recesses of his mind where it belonged. He refused to think about his parents or their effect on his life any more than he wanted to think about the ‘system’ he’d been raised in as a result of their non-parenting skills. That was a dark road that he really didn’t want to travel down – not if he could help it. At least he had one thing to thank them for; they’d made him determined not to turn out like them.

  Unfortunately, once he started to think about it, the thoughts were hard to shut off, no matter how hard he tried. As he took his shower and got ready for work, he couldn’t help but dwell on his past.

  He hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, despite what a lot of people thought when they found out that he was filthy rich. Hell, he hadn’t even been born with a plastic one either. If truth be told, he had no idea if his birth mother had known anything about spoons, other than to use them to do whatever drug users did with them to get the filth into their wasted bodies. He’d been born premature – tiny and suffering from the effects of his mother’s heroin addiction, and despite not being given much hope of surviving, he had recovered and thrived, thanks to the care he received from the neo-natal nurses.

  Of course, he couldn’t remember any of that. His earliest memory was probably when he was about three years old, and it was the memory of children crying in their cribs or playpens at the children’s home he’d been taken to when he’d been well enough to leave the hospital. Most of his memories since then were carefully tucked away in some dark recess of his mind where they couldn’t escape to haunt him.

  Occasionally, especially during adolescence, he hadn’t quite managed to keep them held back, and they would resurface when he least expected it, resulting in him being expelled from numerous schools and being labelled as a rebellious thug who would never amount to anything. Rather than adhere to everyone’s low expectations of him, he doggedly worked his way up the food chain until, eventually, he owned his own business. It felt good to actually employ those same people who’d said he’d never get anywhere in life except jail. As he thought about that, he smiled for the first time that day.

  2

  ALEXA HUNG UP THE PHONE with shaking hands and then gave a whoop of glee.

  “Woohoo!! I’ve got an interview, Laura!”

  She tried not to get too excited about it as she shouted through to the kitchen, but it was hard not to be, especially after the conversation she’d had with her best friend and roommate, Laura, earlier that day. Feeling disillusioned with city life in general and being unable to find a job in particular, she’d told Laura that she was just about ready to call it a day and move back home with her parents. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but if she couldn’t find a job before her meagre savings ran out, then she wouldn’t really have an option. Laura had told her that she needed to at least give it a couple more months, but she wasn’t sure that she could wait that long.

  Running in from the kitchen, Laura gave a cheer of her own and high-fived her friend. “See? I told you something would come along, didn’t I?” She ran around the room shaking imaginary pompoms and wiggling her hips, and Alexa couldn’t help laughing.

  “I don’t have the job yet, Laura. It’s just an interview, and there’s nothing to say I’ll get it.” But she hoped against hope that she would. She loved her parents, and they’d given her an amazing life, but she really didn’t want to move back to the small town she’d spent her whole life dreaming about escaping from. Working on the small family farm had kept her physically fit, but it wasn’t what she classified as a real job, and there sure as hell wasn’t any chance of her improving herself or her future there.

  “So where is it, and what will you be doing there?” Laura was acting as though the job was already hers, and Alexa had to admit that her excitement was more than a little infectious.

  “It’s just a temporary job at the Dawson James offices as a receptionist while their regular girl is on maternity leave. Nothing to get too excited about, but it’s better than what I have right now, right?” You don’t have anything right now, so of course it’s better, you dweeb, she thought to herself.

  Laura stopped jumping around and stared at her. “Dawson James? The Dawson James?” She sounded more than a little envious, and when Alexa shrugged her shoulders and looked at her as though she was speaking a foreign language, she also looked incredulous. “Alexa, please tell me that you’ve heard of Dawson James? I mean, how can you not have heard of him? He’s only the most eligible bachelor this side of the equator!”

  “I have absolutely no idea who or what you’re talking about.” And she really didn’t. “All I know is that the job is at the Dawson James offices.” What the hell is so special about the guy, she thought, unable to push away the curiosity that ran through her head.

  The next hour was spent with Laura, enthusing over the wonderful Dawson James and how he’d built his empire from nothing and was now one of the richest men the planet had ever seen, which Alexa was pretty sure was a complete and utter exaggeration.

  “So how did he build it up? What kind of business background does he have?” She would admit to being more than just a little curious, especially considering the way her friend was rambling on about him.

  Laura shook her head. “Nobody knows. In fact, nobody seems to know much of anything about him or his past. He stays out of the limelight as much as possible, it seems, so it kind of makes him even more mysterious, doesn’t it?” She threw a grin in Alexa’s direction. “I have heard that he’s incredibly handsome though, so that certainly adds to his allure.”

  It was Alexa’s turn to shake her head. Laura was an incorrigible flirt, and even though Alexa loved her dearly, she was under no false illusions as to her friend’s downfall, which happened to be men. She loved to party, and if the partying involved members of the opposite sex – and even better, sex itself – she was in her element.

  The two girls were almost total opposites, with Laura being outgoing and extroverted and usually having a string of men at her beck and call. Alexa was quieter, shy, and had only had two boyfriends in her life – neither of which were serious, even though she had indulged in sex a time or two. If
she was totally honest with herself, she thought she may be frigid, because she’d never really enjoyed the carnal part of either of her relationships, and the act itself had left her feeling rather cold. She really wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about, and sometimes she even wondered how she and Laura were so close, considering the differences between them.

  But close they were, and their friendship had lasted through thick and thin. They’d always had each other’s backs even during their school years, and Laura had done everything in her power to persuade Alexa to move to the city with her and for them to get a place together. Things had worked out well, apart from Alexa not being able to find a job. She was starting to feel as though she was sponging off her friend, regardless of how many times Laura reassured her otherwise.

  “So, what are you going to wear for the interview?”

  She was brought out of her reverie and back to the situation at hand by the question. Shit! What am I going to wear?

  The next hour was spent in her bedroom while the two women went through the contents of her wardrobe, with one item after another being discarded in disgust by Laura.

  “Alexa, do you really want to come across as a country bumpkin, or would you rather look professional and at least stand a glimmer of a chance at getting the job?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she got up from the bed where she’d been sitting and walked out of the room.

  Alexa heard her rummaging around in her own room, and a short while later, Laura returned, carrying a couple of outfits and throwing them on the bed decisively.

  “Choose one of these.” Alexa looked at the clothes in horror. There was no way she could wear a skirt that short or a blouse that didn’t button all the way up. Could she? Considering the only other option she had would be to wear her stuff, it didn’t look like she had much choice. So with Laura making her try the clothes on and persuading her that she looked perfectly acceptable for an interview, the decision was made.