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

alcoholic you learn
at a young age how to cover what was going on at home.
     
    “No, no husband or boyfriend,” I told
him. I didn’t mention my mother, but I didn’t lie. “What about
you?”
     
    “No, no husband or boyfriend,” he said
with a smile. I laughed and then he said, “I’m divorced, from a
woman,” he grinned on the last part.
     
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. I never know
what the appropriate response was for, “I’m divorced.” Some people
were happy about it and some weren’t who knew?
     
    He smiled and said, “Don’t be sorry,
it’s much better this way. She wasn’t happy with me.”
     
    I couldn’t imagine that, not being
happy with him.
     
    “Do you have children?” I asked him.
He had a strange look on his face and it took him an inordinately
long time to answer the question.
     
    “No, no children,” he said, finally.
We ate in silence until we’d finished our meal. I was worried
because he’d stopped talking. I thought I’d said something wrong,
over-stepped somehow. He asked me if I wanted dessert and I
declined and then with that same strange look he said, “Holly, I
have a proposition for you.”
     
    Here it goes, he’s going
to tell me why a man like him would consider having a date with a
waitress like me…This should be good….Or not….
     
    “ Okay.”
     
    “First of all let me tell you about
myself. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m the CEO and owner of
Scotto Enterprises, have you heard of it?” I was hoping that my
mouth wasn’t hanging open at this point. Of course I’d heard of it.
It started as a computer software corporation and being no
financial expert, I’m not sure what it’s involved in now, but I do
work in a café surrounded by businessmen every day and I’d
definitely heard of it. The rumor was that the business was worth
billions.
     
    “Yes, I’ve heard of it,” I said,
trying to keep my voice steady.
     
    “I was married when I was twenty-three
to a woman that I thought was the love of my life. We were together
for about a year when she told me that she was pregnant. Words
can’t even describe how happy that made me. All I ever wanted was a
family of my own, and I thought we were well on the way. She had
the baby, a beautiful, healthy little boy. I was over the moon. I
did everything, I changed diapers, I fed him, and I bathed him. She
wanted to hire a nanny, so we did, but I still usually had him with
me. I only let the nanny take care of him when I was busy or at
work. It wasn’t much though I had arranged my schedule in advance
so that I could be home with him during the day. His name was
Mark.”
     
    I didn’t like the way he kept saying,
“was.” People with babies don’t generally say their child’s name,
“was.” If this story ends with a dead baby I might lose my dinner.
I didn’t interrupt him though and he continued.
     
    “Just after Mark’s second birthday my
wife came to me and said that we needed to talk. She told me that
she was having an affair, and had been for over three years. The
affair was with a man named Jake, a man I considered my best friend
since high school. I gave him a job….Anyways, that was upsetting,
what was devastating was what she told me next. She said that Mark
wasn’t mine and that she was leaving me, her and Jake intended to
move overseas with my child.”
     
    “Oh my God, Aiden that’s
horrible.”
     
    “Yes, it was. I didn’t take her word
for it of course. I had a DNA test done right away. It turned out
that she wasn’t lying. I thought about fighting it in court, but my
attorney said that since she was his biological mother and was not
considered, “unfit” that I would lose. I thought it was too much to
put the baby through if I was going to lose anyways, so I gave up
the fight. Sometimes I still feel like I gave up on my son. Then I
have to remind myself that he was never mine, and his mother and
bi-dad knew it.
     
    Jake moved his new little family