Big Bad Alpha: A Billionaire Romance

by Tia Siren

  Brad lived just outside of Chicago, in a massive home in the suburbs. He answered the door quickly.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said before he could say anything.

  “Is it mine?” he asked. He knew I was with Tyler.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I began to cry. I went inside and sat on the couch and told Brad what his brother had said. Everything overtook me. I rushed from Brad’s place the same way I had rushed from Tyler’s. I needed to be alone.

  I called off work the next day, and then it was the weekend. Tyler called me on Saturday. Brad had talked to him. He left me a message. He yelled at me, berated me. Brad came to my home on Sunday. I almost didn’t let him in, but I did. He held me. I cried. He kissed me. I cried. We made love and then lay together.

  “I love you, Josie,” Brad said. “I do.”

  I nodded. I knew he did, and I knew I loved him too.

  “It might be Tyler’s,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brad said, shaking his head as we lay naked together in the bed. He kissed me. I kissed him. I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew that with Brad by my side, I could be happy.

  And I was happy. Brad and I ended up moving from Chicago. His dad wanted to expand the business. We moved to California. A new building opened up in San Francisco. I headed up an ad team. Brad ran everything else. We married. I had my baby. Neither one of us spoke much to Tyler. I was related once more to Brad—not by blood, but by love.

  *****

  THE END

  BILLIONAIRE BOSS Romance – Bought by the Boss

  Tonya Campbell was late for work. The road was littered with branches after a violent thunderstorm the previous evening, and the fire department had partially closed the road. Tonya was glad it had rained, because it had been unbearably hot over the previous three weeks and the office had been littered with old people suffering from heat stroke.

  When she pulled into St. James Medical Facility, she waved at Jonnie, the gardener, and parked her battered old VW Beetle in her usual place.

  “Hi, Jonnie. How you doing?” she shouted across the parking lot. Jonnie was pruning a border of roses adjacent to the doctor’s office.

  “Great, Tonya. How's your mom?”

  “Not great,” Tonya replied.

  “Send her my love. She's a tough old thing. She'll be fine.” Tonya wished she shared Jonnie's optimism.

  The rain had brought the temperature down by a few degrees and everything smelled fresh again. The medical facility had been built about ten years previously and served the community of Sandpoint, Idaho. The town was situated on the Lake Pend Oreille just outside the Kaniksu National Forest, a major tourist attraction. The town was full of hikers in summer and skiers in winter. Tonya was grateful she had been born in such a picturesque place, and she had no intention of leaving.

  “Here she is,” Gretta said thankfully. “Tonya, Mrs. Bain here says she has an appointment this morning, but I can't find it anywhere in the system.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Bain. How are you?” Tonya asked.

  “I need to see the doctor about my you know what,” Mrs. Bain whispered.

  Tonya knew very well what Mrs. Bain was referring to. Mrs. Bain was a regular because she had the worst case of bunions any doctor at the office had ever seen.

  “No, Mrs. Bain. Your appointment is for tomorrow morning at eight o'clock.”

  “Does that mean I've got to come back again? It's such a nuisance. I can hardly walk.”

  “I'll see what I can do, Mrs. Bain. Bear with me a moment.”

  Mrs. Bain, who was around eighty and bent double, looked at Gretta. “She's a good receptionist, our Tonya. Without her this practice would collapse,” she said.

  Gretta was just eighteen, the daughter of the town's mayor. She'd decided to spend the summer getting some work experience by assisting Tonya at reception.

  “All right, Mrs. Bain, Dr. Aldroyd will see you. He can squeeze you in before morning surgery.”

  “Oh, but he's such a bore. Isn't there anybody else?” Mrs. Bain complained.

  “I'm afraid it's either Dr. Aldroyd or a trip back here tomorrow,” Tonya answered. “Hurry up, though. The waiting room will be filling up soon.” Mrs. Bain shuffled from the reception area and sat down in the waiting room next door.

  “Sorry I'm late, Gretta. Was she horrible to you?”

  “No. She was fine.”

  “We have a lot of patients and a few of them can be very awkward. But you'll get used to dealing with different kinds of people soon enough.”

  Tonya sat down behind the reception desk, which was made of wood and metal and painted a gaudy shade of green. It was seven minutes past seven in the morning. Surgery began at seven thirty, and Tonya looked to see which doctors were on duty that day: Dr. Aldroyd, Dr. Day, and Dr. Crosby. Five minutes later a steady stream of patients began to come into reception. She took their names and referred them to the waiting room.

  At ten Tonya's cell phone rang. On the display, she could see that it was her mother. She answered nervously.

  “Hi, honey,” her mom said. “I'm afraid it's not good news. It's cancer again.”

  Tonya felt herself welling up. Cancer was a word that drove into her heart like a rod of hot steel. “Oh, Mom. How can that be? Are they sure?”

  “I'm afraid so.”

  Tonya felt sick. Her mother had been in and out of the hospital for a couple of years with various complaints, but breast cancer was the most serious of them. She'd had a small operation to remove a lump six months ago, and now it appeared to have returned.

  “I don't know what to say, Mom. We'll just have to fight it again.”

  Tonya's mom wasn't old. She was only forty-five; Tonya was twenty-two. “Listen, I'll try and come home early, okay?”

  “All right, my love. See you later.”

  Tonya put her phone down and stood up. “Gretta, can you take over for a while? I need some fresh air.”

  Outside, she found a corner in the yard, crouched down, and let the tears flow. After a while, she felt in her skirt pocket for a tissue and was dismayed to find she didn't have one. As she walked back to the office door, Dr. Crosby came out, presumably on his way to see bed-bound patients.

  At just thirty-three, Dr. Crosby owned several medical facilities, many pieces of real estate, and a sixty-foot yacht. He was at a point in his life when he didn't have to work, but he enjoyed contact with patients and continued to work as a doctor at his facility. He also happened to be the best-looking doctor the ladies of Sandpoint had ever seen. He was tall and dark with tanned skin and a perfect body. He was always pleasant to Tonya, but she was wary of him. He liked his own way. Tonya didn't know, but he had the hots for her. She was exactly his type: leggy, slim and blond with large breasts.

  “Tonya, are you okay? You look dreadful,” he said when he saw her smeared mascara and blotchy skin. She tried to put on a brave face, but another wave of emotion enveloped her and she burst into tears again. He put his arm around her. He smelled lovely, and on any other occasion it would have turned her on. “Tell me, what's the matter?”

  “It's my mom. She's got cancer again.”

  “Has the breast cancer come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well don't despair. Dr. Andersen is a good doctor. Your mom's in the best hands. She's been having regular checks, so I assume they've caught this in time.”

  “I suppose. But it's not only that,” she said. She looked across the parking lot and saw Jonnie. A fat lot of good his prediction had been. “It's money. She's already got medical expenses of sixty thousand dollars. She can't work, and all my money goes to household expenses. We can't afford it.”

  “Come and talk to me tomorrow,” he said. “We'll see what we can do.”

  Tonya wondered what he meant. Perhaps he was going to offer her a raise, but it would have to be significant to pay off the mounting debt.

  *****

  Tonya found her mom in the backyard. Th
ey lived together on a quiet residential street just outside the center of town. Her mom enjoyed gardening, and they had the best-maintained borders in the street. The house was comfortable without being luxurious, but they still had a mortgage, and it was draining Tonya's finances. The last thing she wanted to do was sell the house she'd been born in.

  “Mom, you shouldn't be lifting such heavy things,” she said when she saw her carrying a large bag of compost.

  “It's okay. I'm fine.”

  “I wish Dad was here,” Tonya said as they walked back to the house. “I miss him every day.”

  “You and me both, honey. I really miss him.”

  Tonya's father had died in a car accident three years earlier. He'd been driving alone, minding his own business, when a man swerved across the road and collided with him. The man had been drinking and taking drugs, and of course he’d been uninsured, which meant Tonya's mom had gotten no compensation at all. Her dad wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box when it came to financing, and he'd failed to take out any life insurance. Tonya was still cross with him for neglecting his financial duty to his wife and daughter, but it was too late. Things were what they were.

  “How was work, love?” her mom asked.

  “Okay, until you called and told me your news.” Tonya ran the tap and filled the kettle. “I had to go out and cry.”

  “Oh, honey. Maybe I shouldn't have rung you.”

  Tonya looked at her mom. She looked tired and drained. In her youth, she'd been Miss Sandpoint and a regular in local fashion shows. She had the same golden hair as Tonya, but she'd put on a bit of weight and no longer looked her best. Tonya blamed the steroids she'd had to take the first time she’d had cancer.

  “Dr. Crosby saw me and asked me what the matter was.”

  “Oh, I like him.”

  “You and all the other women in the town. But he's a womanizer, and he's a very demanding man.”

  “I wouldn't mind being demanded by him.”

  “Mom, jeez. What a thought for your daughter to have: her mom with her boss.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  Tonya put two cups down on the kitchen table and opened the fridge. “He told me to go and see him tomorrow.”

  “What for?”

  “I told him about our financial situation.”

  “You what? You did what? Tonya, I asked you never to tell anybody about our finances. It’s nobody's business but ours.”

  Tonya cringed. She knew how her mother hated what she'd done, but she'd wanted to get it off her chest. “Sorry, Mom, but I sometimes need someone to talk to.”

  “You can talk to me. What do you think he wants?”

  “I have no idea. I'll see tomorrow.”

  The next morning Tonya wasn't late; she was ten minutes early. She was anxious to speak with Dr. Crosby. She hung her jacket over her chair and went through the waiting room to a corridor off which the doctors each had their own consulting rooms. She knocked on Dr. Crosby's door.

  “Come in,” he shouted. When she entered the room, there was an aroma of freshly showered male. He was, as always, impeccably dressed in a suit, white shirt, and red tie.

  “Dr. Crosby, you asked me to come and see you today.”

  “Ah, yes. Tonya. Please sit down.”

  He loved the way Tonya dressed. She always wore a modest skirt and a blouse. He liked it most when she wore a white blouse because he could, more often than not, see her bra.

  “You have some financial concerns, and I'd like to help you,” he said as he was filling out a form on his desk.

  “Any help would be much appreciated.”

  He stopped writing and looked in her eyes, Mediterranean blue and as honest as any eyes he'd ever seen. “I will pay off all your debts.”

  Tonya spluttered. “What? Did you say—”

  He nodded. “You heard me correctly.”

  “Wow. I don't know what to say. It will take me a lifetime to pay you back, though.”

  “No, it won't, because it's a gift. But I want something in return.” She looked at his face as it took on a stern appearance. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”

  Tonya began to wonder whether there was really something wrong with her hearing. What the hell was he playing at? His girlfriend?

  “Er...how exactly do imagine it working?”

  “|Simple. I pay your debts off in full, and you date me. I like you, and I think you're very beautiful indeed.”

  “But wouldn't that make me your whore?”

  He laughed. “How?”

  “You're paying me to be your girlfriend, and I assume that includes having sex with you,” Tonya said frankly.

  “I can't imagine anything better than having sex with you. Look at you. You are so beautiful.”

  “I...I don't know what to say. How do I know you would be faithful to me? I mean you have a bit of a reputation with the ladies.”

  “You would have my word.”

  Tonya smoothed her skirt and stood you. “Let me think. It's all a bit surreal, not to say a bit weird.”

  *****

  The same evening, Tonya paid a visit to Lucy, her best and only friend. Lucy lived in a large house with her new husband, Steve, who owned a trucking company.

  “It's so nice here,” Tonya said as they sat down on the terrace with a glass of wine.

  “I'm so lucky. Steve is great, and his business is doing really well,” Lucy said, running her hand over her brunette hair.

  “You two were lovers at sixteen, weren't you?”

  Lucy grinned. “I'd never seen a penis before I was sixteen. I hadn't a clue what to do, but Steve had seen enough of his elder brother's pornos to guide me. It was a great time.”

  Tonya had a rush of jealousy. She hadn't had a boyfriend in ages, only attention from men she didn't find attractive.

  “I've got something incredible to tell you. You won't believe it,” Tonya said.

  Lucy sipped her wine and looked at her friend with curiosity. “I'm all ears.”

  “You know Dr. Crosby?”

  “Oh my God, he's so hot. If I weren't married, I'd—”

  “Not you as well. My mom told me the same thing. Well anyway, he wants me to be his girlfriend.”

  Lucy spat her wine back into her glass. “You what? You lucky bitch.” Her eyes widened, and now she was the jealous one.

  “It's not as simple as you might think. You know Mom and I are finding it hard to make ends meet?” Lucy nodded. “Well I was upset the other day about Mom, and he noticed and asked me what was wrong. I told him about our financial troubles.” Lucy was now sitting on the edge of her seat, hanging onto every word. “He asked me to go and see him the next day, so I did. And guess what he told me?” Lucy was stunned and incapable of guessing. Her mouth fell open, and she slowly wiggled her head from side to side. “He told me if I were to consent to be his girlfriend, he would pay off all our debts.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Lucy said after a while. “Snap his hand off. You won't get another offer like that again, especially from a man like him.”

  “I asked him if being his girlfriend included having sex.”

  A look of dismay came over Lucy's face. “Of course it means having sex. That's the whole point of having a boyfriend. Really, when were you born, in the eighteen hundreds?”

  “I know. It was a stupid question. He said he wanted sex.”

  “Great. You'll have to tell me what he's like in bed. Doctors know all about female anatomy. I bet he makes you come so often you'll beg him to stop.”

  A bird flew overhead, and Tonya wished she could climb up on it and be carried away to a far off land. “But in my opinion, that's the same as prostitution. He pays me, and I have sex.”

  “My dear friend, what's the difference between that and what Steve does for me? It's his house, his money, and I give him sex.”

  “You're married. What Dr. Crosby wants is the same as in that film. What was it called? You know, with Robert Redford.”


  “Indecent Proposal.”

  “Yes. That's it. He's made me an indecent proposal.”

  Lucy finished her wine in one gulp and poured another glass. She was enjoying this conversation very much. “I'll admit it's a bit unusual, but if were you I would take it. Just imagine all your money worries, gone. And what's a bit of sex? If he turns out to be a lousy lover, which I'm sure he's not, just lay on your back and let him do it.”

  “Very helpful. Thanks,” Tonya said sarcastically.

  *****

  Gretta was talking to Mrs. Bain when Tonya arrived at the office.

  “Tonya, thank heavens you're here. I can't make head nor tail of this young lady. I need my prescription. Where is it?”

  “Mrs. Bain, don't you remember? You get your prescription at the dispensary in town, not from here. Gretta, take Mrs. Bain to the dispensary and make sure she gets her prescription please.”

  Gretta flashed Tonya a dirty look, as if to say she'd had enough of the old lady already, but Tonya didn't take any notice; she had other things on her mind. She walked through the empty waiting room and knocked on Dr. Crosby's door.

  The room smelled just as nice as the day before. Whatever shower gel he used, she liked it. “Dr. Crosby—” she began.

  “Call me Marcus, please,” he said.

  “Er...Marcus”—it seemed strange calling him Marcus—“I want to reply to our conversation yesterday.” He didn't say anything. “I think what you have offered is inappropriate. You have done nothing more than proposition me. Use me, in fact. You have used your superior wealth to try to get me to do something I don't want to do. And to be frank, I think you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Did I hear you correctly? That I should be ashamed of myself? Shall we look at the situation?” He looked her straight in the eyes with a glare that made her uneasy. “You are the one in need, not me, so perhaps you should be a bit more civil to me. In addition, this facility belongs to me, and you work for me. Think about that next time you insult me. I'm sure there are plenty of other jobs out there.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Tonya asked, her blood beginning to boil.

  “Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that I made you a reasonable offer, and you are being ungrateful.”