Alphalicious Billionaires Box Set

by Lindsey Hart

  “They’ll quit sooner or later when they get sick of your ass. And I’m sure most of our vendors won’t be supplying your stores or patronizing it either.”

  “Funny, I had quite a few well-wishers stop by the store yesterday to welcome me. Almost all vendors are confirmed to keep selling.”

  Teela made sure that her face gave nothing away. None of the betrayal that she felt. None of the hurt. None of the irrational disappointment. It wasn’t about her co-workers not following suit and quitting on principle. It wasn’t about the vendors or the people of Nestor Falls.

  It was about Ross. Not wanting a thing to do with his child.

  What did I expect? It wasn’t like he actually wanted to create it. He did it for the money. He seriously probably has fifty kids out there already. Why should he care about one more brat?

  Her hand flew to her stomach and rested there. She imagined her child, healthy, tiny, growing. She promised her baby that she’d be worth more than a million of Ross. She’d move far away from Nestor Falls and her child would never know that its father was a bastard. The world’s worst. Heartless. Cold. Spiteful. Evil. The damn hairy, slimy, horrible troll-devil beast bastard.

  “You can leave now,” Teela breathed. “Show yourself the way out. And don’t worry. You’ll only get a brick through your store’s windows once a week. I’ll make sure I limit myself.”

  Ross shrugged. “If that’s the way you want to go, then so be it. Doesn’t change anything. Please do us both a favor and stay away from the store. Better yet, leave town. Don’t come back. It seems like it would be less painful for you. Fewer memories and all that.” He winked at her and flashed her a fake as fuck smile before he stalked out. A minute later, the front door slammed shut, betraying the fact that he was anything but calm and composed and put together. He was as pissed off as she was. He was seeing red too.

  “Don’t worry,” she breathed into the empty space where he’d been sitting. “I plan on doing just that. And you don’t know the first thing about memories, fuck you very much, Ross Day.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Ross

  A child.

  Ross stretched out on his living room couch. The TV blared on uselessly with some home show, but the sound didn’t register with him. He might be exhausted. He might have put in long hours at the new store, trying to stifle the raging chain of thoughts that ran on an endless loop through his brain.

  And up to now, he’d been so far from successful it was laughable. Except that it wasn’t funny. Not by a long shot.

  For all Ross knew, there were probably a few kids around by now, given that he’d donated sperm as many times as he could. He needed the money. Fast. He was working full time and it still wasn’t enough. He’d been willing to do whatever it took to get his stores off the ground. He wasn’t going to fail.

  He was pretty sure that women weren’t supposed to know who the donor was though. Someone had leaked it. Probably a friend Teela knew or someone who hated him. God, it could have been anyone. They might not even work at the clinic. They could have paid someone to give them the information then given it to Teela.

  Who was he kidding? This wasn’t some conspiracy theory. No one wanted to take him down. He hadn’t made many enemies if his exes didn’t count. He ran grocery stores for god sakes, not some hitman operation or a string of underground gambling operations. He was about as vanilla as it came and so was his business operation. He flew straight. Never fudged books to save taxes. He tried to be a fair boss, as fair as he could be.

  So of course, it was one of Teela’s friends who leaked the information. Someone she knew probably worked at the clinic and found out which sample she’d been given or however it worked. Or maybe they’d lied about it all. Maybe they’d just got wind that he’d donated sperm a while back and decided it would be a good way to scam money out of him. For Teela to tell him she was pregnant with his kid so he’d support her, and she could ask him for anything and he’d have to pay for a kid that wasn’t even his. Could that even happen? He was sure it probably could, someway, somehow.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  It probably wasn’t even real.

  Teela probably wasn’t even pregnant.

  So where did that leave him?

  What if she was? What if it really was his?

  The difference between her and all those other women that might have received his sperm was that she knew. If she was telling the truth, she knew. She knew that she was having his baby. Maybe, despite everything, she was just trying to put their differences aside and give him a chance to be a father. She clearly wasn’t pleased to tell him the news. She didn’t really look like she was going to ask him for a big fat paycheck on her next breath.

  He’d jumped to the worst conclusions, but then again, he was primed to do it.

  An image of Teela’s flushed cheeks materialized behind his closed lids. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled and other select spots felt a little tingly as well. Maybe more than a little. His dick hadn’t stood down all day. It was a wonder the bastard hadn’t fallen off from the lack of blood properly circulating through it since he’d finally had to make a fast exit into the staff washroom and tuck the bastard into the waistband of his boxers to keep it from making an embarrassing tent in his pants all day. And he absolutely could not understand why it was reacting that way, especially after hearing what Teela had to say.

  Teela’s face was uncertain in his mind. Her eyes were wide, as green as a lush meadow in spring. Her lips quivered like she was actually going to cry, but her eyes remained dry. And then she smiled. It was a dazzling smile, completely gorgeous. The kind of mega-watt smile that could power a small country for a generation.

  He recalled how gorgeous Teela looked in just a regular old pair of jeans and a t-shirt. How soft the fabric looked straining over the swell of her breasts and the way that old denim cupped her gently rounded hips. She was the kind of woman who looked good in a paper bag or a sack or however that saying went.

  Ross forced his eyes open and gave his head a shake before he actually started drooling all over himself. His pulse was racing, and his heart was beating out a ridiculously painful pattern behind his ribs.

  “God, how ridiculous is this?” he muttered over the sound of the TV. Too late, Ross realized that it was even more ridiculous that he was talking to himself. His voice was all wrong too. Raspy and weird and too deep. It was more than pathetic that merely the thought of Teela turned him into a teenage fool. He hadn’t felt that way in ages.

  That road was a whole lot of nope. It was the kind of road that was littered with booby traps and potholes, complete with signs and billboards that screamed DEAD END.

  Ross was forced to wipe his damp palms on his jeans. He’d changed after work and the stiffer denim helped a little to keep his erection where it belonged. Facing south. His chest tightened up and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

  He imagined Teela’s hands, small and delicate, those long, tapered fingers wrapping around his cock. He imagined her bow-shaped lips, so incredibly soft, sucking him into her mouth. He imagined how she’d look up at him with those sea-green eyes and how her perky nipples would peak through the thin fabric of her bra and t-shirt. He imagined stripping off her jeans and finding out she wasn’t wearing panties and finding her wet and slick and ready.

  Holy fucking hell. What is wrong with me? He wasn’t just thinking dirty thoughts about the most inappropriate woman, a woman who would just as soon tuck his balls into a vice and squeeze as she would take them into her hands and fondle them gently for his pleasure, a woman who would rather bite his cock off if he put it anywhere near her mouth. Yeah. That little fantasy he’d just had going on was never going to happen.

  Not only was Teela wrong for all the wrong and right reasons in the world. She was pregnant. Apparently with his child.

  He shouldn’t be thinking dirty thoughts about a pregnant lady. Or about doing anything to her mouth. He shouldn’t be thinking those t
houghts about anybody. Normally, he had all the self-control in the world.

  So, what the hell was going on when it came to Teela McDaniels?

  Ross let out a low frustrated groan and swiveled his legs off the couch. He felt hot and achy like he was coming down with something. The Teela virus. The Teela flu. She was like a disease that permeated every single part of him. She was in his bones.

  Since he obviously didn’t have a shred of common sense left, he made a fatal decision.

  There was a good chance she was lying, and he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life and that he’d regret it for years to come. That the remaining splinters of his heart would be shattered completely.

  Apparently, he’d never been an overly smart man. Apparently, that leather skin was getting thinner and thinner with every passing moment.

  There was a check sitting on the desk that was now his. A check with Teela McDaniels written on the front. He’d done something silly and given her a small severance package even though she’d threatened to set the hounds of hell on him and quit of her own accord. He’d asked that Sarah, the new admin, mail the stack in the morning.

  He wished he could wait, but he couldn’t. Come morning, it would be too late.

  CHAPTER 7

  Teela

  Apparently, people didn’t have manners anymore.

  Who the hell played doorbell ditch at just after midnight? The neighborhood kids were running wild, spray painting buildings and sticking knives in people’s tires, breaking windows and being a general nuisance, but no one had bothered to ring her bell in the middle of the night.

  Teela groaned and slammed her pillow over her face. She’d just started to drift off. She’d felt tired at nine and gone to bed but tossed and turned for hours. Fucking murphy’s law.

  The bell rang again and Teela threw her pillow back. “That’s fucking it,” she ground out. She threw back the quilt and even though she was wearing a faded nightgown with a huge cathead on the front, even though it rode up indecently high, she stomped down the hall, down the stairs, and to the door.

  She threw it open, doubting very much that there would be anyone there. She expected to see a few teenage punks hoofing it through the parking lot, laughing and yelling obscenities over their shoulder.

  She let out a gasp and had to throw a hand out to brace herself when she realized it wasn’t kids playing doorbell ditch at all. No. It was worse. So much worse. She’d take the spray paint, knife-wielding, rude-ass teens any day. Anything would have been better than The Troll. Apparently, he didn’t turn back into some other form at the stroke of twelve.

  Unfortunately, he was still just as deceptively handsome in a plaid button-down and a pair of faded jeans as he was in a suit. His soft dark hair had lost its stiff hold from during the day and fell in waves over his forehead. His crystal blue eyes sparkled like it wasn’t pitch black outside. He actually gave her a smile that was half-genuine, half-forced, but the genuine part of it tugged at parts of Teela. A strange ache developed in her chest and the hairs on the backs of her arms stood on end.

  “What- what are you doing here?” she managed to stammer.

  Was it wrong that her tongue was so tied in knots she couldn’t use it to form speech, but she imagined doing a hundred other things with it- to The Troll? It’s definitely wrong that I want to know what he tastes like. Probably like slime. He’d definitely taste like slime. Old, drippy, bridge slime.

  The Troll’s very un-hairy, very un-troll-like hand shot out and produced a white envelope. “I wanted to bring your cheque. I added a small severance package, even though you quit on your own accord. Call it my better nature or my poor judgment. I thought you could use it.”

  Teela’s lungs deflated. It was hard for her to form a coherent thought, she was so stunned. “I- uh- er- it’s midnight,” she stammered again. “After midnight. Kind of a weird time to be dropping off cheques. You could have just mailed it. Like everyone else.”

  Ross’ lids lowered over his incredible eyes- no, not his incredible eyes, his filthy, beady, troll eyes, like he was trying to find an ounce of patience. “Okay, okay, you got me,” he sighed. “I’m not here about the cheque. I could have just mailed it.”

  “Obviously.” Teela crossed her arms, but then aware that her nightgown was pretty much sheer and showing most of her legs including the tops of her thighs and that the motion was just pulling it upwards to make it shorter, she quickly dropped her arms back to her sides. She wanted to hightail it back upstairs and throw on a robe, but she swallowed hard and stood her ground.

  She wasn’t scared of The Troll. She certainly wasn’t unnerved by the way his eyes grazed her bare legs, then shot to her breasts, then rose to her face. She didn’t notice the slight redness flushing his cheeks.

  Okay, so she noticed. And it did strange, shivery, sinful things to her lady bits and her nipples.

  “Obviously,” Ross repeated. He shifted from one canvas shoe to another, which was a strangely human thing to do. Probably the most human thing she’d seen him do ever. And he was wearing canvas shoes. And jeans. And a plaid shirt. Not the expensive shoes and shirt that gave him the appearance of being completely untouchable.

  “So- uh- thanks. For the cheque.” Teela reached out and took it with a shaking hand. She quickly snapped it back to her side.

  She went to shut the door, but Ross’ foot shot out and he actually stopped it. No one had ever done that to her before and it caught her even further off guard. Her eyes flew to his face when she realized just how close he was. And that he smelled good. God, he smelled really good. He seemed bigger up close, broader, more sinful and sensual. A shiver skittered up her spine.

  “I didn’t just come to give you the cheque,” Ross said in a rush, so quick his words blended together. “I- I wanted to talk. About…” his eyes shifted to her stomach and Teela had to force a hard swallow.

  “About the thing I’m apparently lying about?” she said, too harshly. She couldn’t exactly regret it, even though Ross was there to extend an olive branch. Maybe. “Are you here to call a truce or was it more than my cheque in that envelope? Maybe you’re here to serve me. If that’s the case, I must say, you act fast.”

  “It’s just your cheque in there,” Ross confirmed. “No lawsuit. I promise.”

  “Oh?” Teela stared him down. He didn’t blink. She was very well aware that she could lose herself in those crazy blue eyes. That she wanted to. She took a fumbling step back. “In that case, let me get a robe. I’ll make some tea or something.”

  “I don’t need anything. I didn’t actually mean to bother you. I- maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

  “You definitely shouldn’t have come,” she said, wishing her voice was more standoffish. Wishing it was rougher, wishing it didn’t sound like a straight invitation up the stairs to her bedroom. Another shiver traced its way up her spine and her panties were probably wet. Who was she kidding? They were soaked. In another second, it would probably be very apparent. “But you’re here,” she rushed on. “So, go have a seat in the living room. You know where it is. Wait for me there. I’ll be- right back.”

  She turned and raced up the steps without a second glance. She really hoped Ross stayed by the door for a minute and didn’t watch her retreat up the stairs. Her nightgown probably exposed her boring granny panties and she’d die if he’d seen them.

  Of mortification. She’d die of mortification. Nothing else. Not desire. Not from the flames spontaneously combusting from said panties. Not from her ovaries just ovulating while she was already carrying a child and somehow getting immaculately pregnant with Ross’ child for a second time. Not from the shivers tracing their way up and down her spine. Not from the way her heart was thundering wildly in her chest.

  Because there was no way the devil was ever getting in her panties. He’d already made her pregnant. That was more than enough.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ross

  A meat and cheese plate complete with cracker
s and cups of soda was far more than he deserved. Especially at nearly one in the morning. After acting like a dick that morning. Ross knew that, but it materialized in front of him anyway.

  Teela, wrapped up in a huge fluffy pink robe that covered every single inch of her skin from her chin right down to her toes- somehow she still managed to look mysteriously sexy in- set everything up, and filled up a plate of her own, before she sat back down in the same chair she’d graced that morning.

  They were in the same spots. In the same position. Nothing had really changed, but everything felt different.

  Teela’s green eyes held a little less animosity and a little more hope. It mirrored what was going on in his own chest.

  Ross, heart thundering so hard he was afraid Teela could actually hear it, palms sweaty and body in chaos, helped himself to a few crackers, pieces of cheese, and slices of bologna. Nothing like a good midnight snack and a talk about them having a baby together when they were pretty much strangers. He had to use that term because they certainly weren’t friends or acquaintances.

  She might have started it, but he’d certainly finished it.

  Teela cleared her throat. “Uh- so- I guess we’re going to talk about- er- the baby, I guess. That’s why you really came, isn’t it?”

  Ross finished chewing, swallowed hard past the rock ledged in his throat, and nodded. “Yeah. I- I’m sorry about this morning. You caught me off guard. I don’t have the best history with ladies as of late- okay- ever, and I just thought- that uh- you were one more person who just wanted something from me. I went off the hook and it wasn’t your fault. I guess it’s just the easiest button I have to press.”

  Teela nodded. Her eyes remained locked with his. Her face held no hint of animosity and with every passing second, her eyes got softer and softer. He wished he could say the same thing for his damn happy little friend in his pants. Unfortunately, his cock liked the happier, softer version of Teela as much as he liked the angry spitfire from earlier.