by Mia Carson
Contents
TITLE: BILLIONAIRE BABY PROJECT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PRINCESS AND THE BODYGUARD
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
CONNECT
BILLIONAIRE
BABY PROJECT
(A Bad Boy
Romance)
By
Mia Carson
COPYRIGHT © 2016
All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1
Finally, it was hers. After months of waiting, Evelyn held the key to the new house. She’d been trying to rent a place after searching for over four months. Standing on her front porch, she wanted to savor the moment, to breathe it in.
“Are you going to open the damn door or take it out for dinner first?”
Evelyn’s martyred sigh made the brusque man behind her chuckle as she slid the key home into the lock. “I was enjoying that moment, thank you very much,” she grumbled as the door swung in.
“Yeah, well, my arms are starting to hurt,” Ajay muttered as he hurried past her and deposited a stack of boxes on the floor.
She followed him in and set her purse on top of the boxes as she looked around. “Finally, my own house! Can you believe it?” A few random boxes had been left behind by the previous owner, but other than that, the house was perfect—and the best part was, she now no longer had to live with her best friend and foster brother, Ajay.
“It’s not bad, I guess,” he said, walking to stand beside her. “Little lonely, don’t you think?”
Evelyn glanced at him, worried he was being serious, but he smirked and she smacked his arm. “You’ve been trying to get me out of your place for months. Just help me with the rest of the boxes.”
“You do realize you have no furniture, right?” he threw over his shoulder. “Besides your bed?”
She tied her brown hair with red lowlights into a braid as they left the house and headed to the curb where his truck and her car were parked. “I don’t need furniture right away. The goal right now is to get my clothes unpacked so I can go to work tomorrow.”
“Agency found you another job already? That was quick,” he said, though he didn’t sound too pleased.
When she turned him around to face her, she frowned at his wrinkled brow. “Ajay, what’s the problem? I need this job, you know that.”
“You also need to live—you know, enjoy yourself once in a while,” he argued, hopping up into the back of his truck to scoot the boxes to the edge. “You’re barely twenty-five, and I would like to know that my sister is… I don’t know, making new friends? God, when was the last time you went on a date?”
Evelyn's hands twitched as she struggled not to pick at her nails. “Last month, but that issue has nothing to do with me working too much, and you know it,” she snapped.
His brow went up at her sudden anger, but he didn’t say anything. She picked up two boxes and carried them into the house, nearly dropping them when she reached the others, muttering about her stupidity. She knew he meant well, but he knew how hard it was for her to move on and start dating people like a normal person. She wasn’t normal—far from it—and neither was he. They were both foster kids and had been through their own versions of hell. Evelyn wasn’t sure she had an idea of what normal could be like.
Ajay came in behind her and set a few more boxes down. “Evie, listen, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No, I know,” she said and leaned against his shoulder. “Just wish it was that easy, you know?”
“Sadly, I do,” he said as he put his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get the rest of your stuff inside. Looks like that storm we saw earlier isn’t going to hold off like we thought.” He walked towards the door, Evelyn right behind him. She frowned as she pulled out her cell to check the radar.
“Hell, they’re calling for snow already.”
“What did you expect?” he said with a laugh. “It’s October.”
“Yeah, well, I was hoping it would hold off longer,” she grumbled. “I hope they fixed the furnace.”
“You don’t have heat? Evie, why the hell did you agree to rent the place?” he said, glaring at the house. “Mom would have a fit if she knew that little tidbit of information.”
Evelyn shot him a glare. “You wouldn’t dare. She’s worried enough about me as it is.”
Ajay shrugged and climbed up into the truck again. The last thing in the bed was her mattress and box spring. He slid one end down to her, and they maneuvered it inside the small house and back into one of the two bedrooms. They hurried back for the mattress and let it drop on top. The bed covered most of the floor space, but she didn’t care. For the last year, it had been on the floor of Ajay’s living room in his tiny hole-in-the-wall. At least here, she had a door and her own bathroom. That and a kitchen she knew would have decent food in it the majority of the time, instead of the crap Ajay insisted on eating daily.
Being on her own was a good thing. That’s what she told herself over and over as Ajay helped her get the rest of her things unloaded and safely inside the house. He asked her if she wanted him to stay for dinner, but she hugged him tightly and proceeded to shove him out the door.
“Wait! At least turn the furnace on first. If it doesn’t work, I might be able to fix it temporarily,” he said and refused to budge until she did it.
She laughed but walked to the thermostat in the hall and flipped it up to heat. “You didn’t finish your training,” she muttered under her breath and smirked when he tapped his foot in annoyance. “I’m just saying.”
“I learned enough to fix the damn furnace for a few nights,” he declared, sticking his chest out.
“Right, or blow up the house I was finally able to rent,” she said under her breath. “There, see? It’s working just fine.” She put her hand over the nearest vent. “Warm and everything. Really, Ajay, you can go. If I need anything, I’ll call you.”
He left, muttering about how empty his apartment was going to be without his little sister’s nagging, but she gave him one final shove and closed the door behind him. She turned around, leaning her back against it, and sucked in a deep breath as a smile lit up her face.
The tiny house didn’t quite feel like her home yet, not with remnants of the previous owner stacked in the corner of the living room and another few piles of papers on the kitchen counter, but she knew it would be perfect. Her boxes mostly had books and clothes, but the few decorative things she did have were from her foster mom and dad. They’d adorned her room as she’d gone through her teenage years, and she was unable to part with them. Carefully, she set each little glass polar bear figurine on the lone shelf in the living room and straightened them until they were perfect.
Evelyn unlocked her cell, turned on the app for music, and placed it on the counter so the music could echo throughout the em
pty house. The heavy beat of rock filled her, and she hummed along to the song, her hips moving as she went to work, unpacking the boxes. If she was going to work two jobs again, she didn’t want to have to deal with any of this tomorrow if she could help it. She knew Ajay was right about working too much, but she had good reason—besides trying to stay afloat. The old run-down mansion she’d bought for a steal along with the land was costing her a pretty penny each month, and she hadn’t been able to start the renovations. Back then, the idea had been to buy the house, her job stable and nearly twice the salary she’d hoped for starting out, and open it up as a foster home. If only her first job out of college had panned out, she wouldn’t be so far in the hole. She couldn’t get rid of a home filled with so much promise, though.
The music on her cell cut out for a second as a text came through, and Evelyn left the box she’d finished emptying of her pots and pans to see the message. Diana, her foster mom, always worried about her kids after they left the house. Evelyn had moved out right after college, landing a job in one of the bigger cities in Maine. The job had paid well for an office job, and she’d thought she’d been on her way. But the company went bankrupt, and she’d had to move back home with her parents. She only moved out a year ago, and she didn’t go very far this time. Not that Bangor, Maine, was that big to begin with, but still, her mom worried, and now that she was on her own again, she received texts at least three times a day.
The fact that she had someone care so much about her well-being lifted her spirits. The message said that snow was on the way and to be careful tomorrow. Evelyn replied and set her cell down next to one of the stacks of papers left on the kitchen counter.
“Let’s see what you are,” she muttered out loud as she sifted through them.
The house had belonged to a young woman around her age. When Evelyn started her search for a place to live months ago, this house had come up. The woman who lived there had been looking for a roommate and was charging super cheap rent for reasons unknown, and Evelyn hadn’t cared to ask. Before Evelyn had a chance to officially move, the woman died in a tragic car accident and the state of the house was up in the air.
For a month, Evelyn waited for a reply from the woman’s mother about what she was going to do with the house. Finally, after she was able to come out of her grief, she agreed to rent it. The cost each month was more than before but still cheap enough for Evelyn to get by as long as she held down two jobs.
She frowned when she reached some unopened envelopes at the bottom of the stack. “I guess I should send them back,” she mused, reading the return addresses. Most of them were bills, but there were four together from the same person. “Viktor Hartmann. Who are you?”
Evelyn tapped the letters on the counter, biting her lip. She shouldn’t read them. Should just set the mail aside and call the woman’s mom about it, but the woman had told her to do what she wanted with what was left behind. She’d taken everything she wanted of her daughter’s… But it was still her mail. A dead person’s mail. Evelyn was sure some taboo existed about opening a dead person’s mail.
Sighing, she set them aside and tried to distract herself with the loud rock songs as she put away her dishes, but the letters drew her gaze. At the third time, she cursed and hurried to them.
“No one writes letters anymore,” she mumbled as she picked them up, excited. “I just want to know what type of guy takes the time to write letters.”
They were probably nothing more than handwritten advertisements or something else that just looked like a letter, but when she tore open the first envelope and started to read, she reached over and shut off her music quickly. Her eyes rushed through the first letter, the jagged handwriting making it hard to read at first. With each sentence, her eyes opened wider.
“What the hell?” she whispered in surprise when she reached the end of the first letter and ripped open the second.
Evelyn took the letters into her bedroom and plopped down on her bed to read them. Several were older and opened, the pages worn from being handled so much, and she could understand why. This Viktor guy was one of the Hartmann’s of the logging company that had been around since the town was founded in the 1800s. Their money was old, and their name was practically all over town. They owned a lot of it, and he was writing to this woman about having his baby. Not have sex with him to have it, but the letters stated clearly enough that she would be taken care of for life for providing him with a baby, and their relationship would be strictly business.
She couldn’t believe the nerve of this guy who thought he could ask someone to pop out a baby for him! The letters were worded nicely and filled with promises of no worries for the rest of her days, but still! To give up her one chance at love because she was tied to this man by a kid?
Hating that she thought it was a good idea to read someone else’s mail, Evelyn set the letters aside and returned to unpacking her few things. She tried not to think about the letters, but the man’s words crept into her mind until she gave up and decided she should get some sleep. A night owl by nature, she usually avoided working early shifts, but the job the temp agency found for her started bright and early. She had no choice but to take it. Bills were coming in faster than she could keep up with them lately, and for a split second, she wondered if moving out was the right thing to do.
***
When her alarm screamed at her the next morning, Evelyn reached out a freezing hand to shut it off, cursing the cold filling the house. She tugged the quilt around her body and squinted in the dim sunlight.
“Damn it,” she cursed, her teeth chattering as she forced her body to get up and check the thermostat in the hall. The second her feet hit the floor, she shrieked and hopped around, trying to warm them up. “Forty-five degrees! Oh, come on. You were supposed to be fixed.” She smacked the thermostat out of desperation, but nothing happened.
She grabbed her cell and called the woman in charge of the rental, but she didn’t answer. Evelyn left her the politest message she could, and the woman called her back almost immediately, irate and fuming.
“I had it fixed,” the woman argued. “If it’s not working you must have broken it.”
“All I did was turn it on,” Evelyn told her, wondering why the woman who had been so cordial the past few weeks was suddenly biting her head off. “Just call them back and tell them it’s not working.”
“You will have to pay for it. I only agreed to get the house up to code and ready for move in. All other maintenance is on you, remember? To keep your monthly rent down, as you requested.”
Evelyn remembered, but she hadn’t thought the damn furnace would go out on her first night. “Please, I’m sure they have a warranty or something?”
“I am a very busy woman with more important things to deal with. You’re a grown woman, act like one,” she snapped and hung up on her.
“Seriously?” Evelyn glared at her cell in disbelief, but she didn’t have time to take care of it. The office where she was a temp assistant needed her there in an hour, and she needed to hold onto this job as long as she could.
As she dressed after a steaming hot shower that lasted a whole three minutes before the water lost its heat, Evelyn glanced around her room to make sure she had everything when her gaze landed on the letters. For one crazy moment, she pictured a life of luxury and high-class living where she didn’t have to work two jobs and live in a place that was clearly falling down around her.
However, she remembered the terms of such an arrangement and shook her head. “Nope, not going to happen,” she muttered as she grabbed her keys and left for work.
***
“What do you mean I’m delinquent on the payments?” Evelyn yelled into the phone before the woman at the desk next to her glared. She mouthed an apology and turned away. “I sent that payment in. It came out of my account!”
The man sighed on the other end of the line as his finger tapped at a keyboard. “Yes, but it went just to the interest. You didn’t send a
full payment, so now you’re late.”
“No, I sent the right amount. You guys screwed it up on your end.”
“I’m afraid that’s not how this works, ma’am.”
“Well, it should be,” she snapped. “Listen, I don’t have the money right now. I just started a new job so it’s going to take a few weeks.”
“As long as you can pay it by next month, but that will include the penalty for this month’s late payment,” he informed her, sounding bored. Evelyn gripped the phone tighter and tried not to curse him out. “If we do not receive the required amount, we will have to take severe action against your loan. This is not the first late payment you’ve had on the property.”
Pain blooming behind her eyes, she told the man she understood and hung up before he could make her feel any worse than she already did. That property was her dream, and she was not going to lose it. Somehow, she’d get the money together.
After she hung up, she worked the last two hours of her shift and drove home to her new house. The heat still wasn’t working, and the gas technician said he couldn’t make it out until the next day, so she had called Ajay. He had an extra key and said he’d go take a look at it. He was waiting on the front porch when she pulled up, and the look on his face made her want to hop right back in her car and drive away.
“That bad?” she asked as she opened the door and dumped her purse.
“You need a new one,” he said. “I tinkered with it and it’ll work for the night, but it’s so old, everything’s falling part. Honestly, you’re lucky it hasn’t caught fire yet.”
“Comforting. Thanks for that,” she quipped.
“And I looked at your water heater. It’s busted, too. I’m surprised you managed a shower this morning. Are you sure you had this place looked at before you signed the contract?”
Evelyn didn’t look at him, too busy considering banging her head against the closest wall to help the headache go away. She sifted through the mail he’d brought in for her, and with each bill she saw, several with ‘past due’ notices on them, her dreams crumbled around the edges. Money. She always needed money. No matter how many damn hours she worked, she never earned enough.
