An Heir At Any Price: The Billionaire's Obsession - Contemporary Romance

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

~

Chapter One

~

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

Holly knew I was watching her. I could
tell by the way she would nervously tuck a piece of hair behind her
ear as she walked by, or act like she was looking at someone or
something on the other side of the room so she didn’t have to make
eye contact with me. I didn’t want to make her nervous, that was
not my intention, but I honestly couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
This girl had no idea how pretty she is. I know this because when
you make eye contact with a beautiful woman who knows that she’s
beautiful she’ll hold your gaze and dare you to ask her out. A
woman that doesn’t know she’s beautiful will get nervous and
flustered when you look her in the eyes. Holly was definitely the
latter, but that may work to my advantage.

I’d been coming in this little coffee
shop every day for the past two months for the sole purpose of
getting to know her. I know that simply asking her out might be a
quicker approach, but if she accepted, and because of her meekness
I’m not convinced that she would, people aren’t always themselves
on the first few dozen dates. I figured that in her workplace when
she was in her own element, she was more likely to be
herself.

I was testing her, bringing up current
events to see what she would say. So far, she was doing very well.
Holly showed me time and time again that she was not only reading
the news, but she was also using her brain to form her own opinions
about it. She was definitely starting to look like she might be
just who I’ve been looking for.