The Alpha Billionaire's Unexpected Baby: A Billionaire BWWM Pregnancy Romance

by Joanna Jacobs

  ***

  As she studied herself in the mirror Monica tried not to think about the last person she’d worked for, because that was a situation that had gone terribly wrong in ways she could never have expected. Working with Jonny Houston would not fall apart in the same way her last job had. She brushed a hand through her hair, turning her mind to other things, preparing herself for the day ahead. Like normal she felt she was as ready as she could be for whatever being his P.A. might throw at her, but then she’d thought that before… far too many times. Breathing deeply, she turned away from the mirror, telling herself things wouldn’t work out the same way they had before. They couldn’t. Fate couldn’t be that cruel to her and for the first time in a very long time she felt comfortable. Finding a small apartment had been much easier than she thought it would be. Everything was the way she wanted it to be.

  Nodding, she grabbed her bag and her files, knowing she needed to leave, because once she was working she’d be able to stop thinking. Working was something that always stopped Monica from thinking. Not thinking was the reason she’d thrown herself into becoming a P.A. in the first place. She pushed that thought away too, putting both her bag and file on the passenger seat while she got comfortable. From what she’d seen Jonny was relatively sorted, for someone in his position, but he, from what his previous P.A. said, was being torn in more directions than he had been before. His parents were wondering why he wasn’t married. There was a woman who seemed to think she was going to be the next Mrs Houston. Part of Monica’s job was to deal with both his family and the woman in question in such a way they didn’t realise Jonny was avoiding them, at least for the moment.

  She was ready for that. It was something she’d done before, for various reasons, because there were always people her employers had issues with. One of the things Monica knew she was good at was diplomacy… except when it came to the times she found herself prepositioned by the men she was hired by. It was obvious to her what they saw. She was a beautiful woman, but the one thing she’d promised herself when she started the job was that she wouldn’t get into a personal relationship with anyone she was working for. That was asking for trouble. Being black didn’t help. She knew what people would say about her, because she’d heard it before, until the person in question realised she was in the position she should be. Racism was still an issue, but she’d learnt to deal with it in the best way possible - she ignored it. They didn’t matter to her. They never had done and they never would do, no matter what they said about her. They had no idea who she was. All they saw was what she was.

  ***

  Jonny smiled at her. “Good morning, Monica.”

  Smiling back, Monica felt a sense of relief that he didn’t seem to be hitting on her. “Good morning, Mr. Houston.”

  “Call me Jonny.”

  “It’s better that we stay professional, at least for now.” Did he see the way her hands were shaking? Monica hoped he couldn’t. “Once the three months is up I might feel comfortable enough to call you by your first name.”

  The way he looked at her made her think he might ask questions she couldn’t answer, but, after far too long, he nodded. “I understand.”

  Of course he couldn’t possibly understand, but she wasn’t going to tell him. “Thank you.” She glanced down at the floor, trying to pull herself together, and then looked back at Jonny. “I’ve gone over the information on all the property information you gave me and I booked in viewings tomorrow for three of them. They’re the ones that should make you the most. Viewings for the others are booked in Wednesday, but they can easily be cancelled. This morning you’re already down to inspect three of your properties.”

  “Yes, I am.” He smiled. “It’s good that you seem to be finding your feet quickly.”

  “My job is easy. I just need to make certain you get from one place to the other on time, and don’t forget anything you’re supposed to be doing. It’s far too easy for someone in your position to make plans that collide with something else.” She glanced down at the agenda she’d scribbled down. “You have a free afternoon, for the moment.”

  “That’s not going to last long. When I took over the position from my father I knew what I was getting into, but there’s nothing that can truly prepare you for becoming the person in charge of all of these properties.”

  “Your father still takes money out of the business.”

  “It was part of the agreement he made. He gets to retire early, I get the majority of the income from now, and he still takes a million dollars out every couple of months.” Jonny shrugged. “It’s not as though we don’t make enough for him to be able to do it. We have properties all over the state.”

  “While I was moving I took the time to get to know them, to contact the managers in each of the towns, so they know they’re going to be dealing with me now.”

  “Good. I made the right choice hiring you.”

  “I’m one of the best in the business, Mr. Houston, and that’s why you came to me. Beginners… dealing with something this big would be impossible for them. I’ve been dealing with things like this for years, so I know what needs to be done and I know how to do it well.”

  “Which is exactly what I need.” Their eyes met. “I’d like you to come with me on the viewings. Having another pair of eyes always helps.”

  ***

  “There’s something…” Monica looked around the room. “I don’t know why, but this place feels wrong.” She looked down at the information she had on the house. “I looked into the history of the place and I can’t find any reason for this feeling. There haven’t been any strange occurrences, or murders, or even flooding.” She shook her head. “I’m just being weird.”

  “Maybe, but one of the things I believe in is listening to your gut. If you feel like there’s something wrong with this place it might well be for a reason.” Jonny smiled. “Whenever I brought Anna with me I always listened if she had a feeling about a place. If you have a feeling it’s likely other people will too, and I want to own properties that feel like home. It’s one of the things we’re known for.”

  “Yes, but I’m just one person. There might be others who’d feel differently. One person’s rubbish is another’s treasure.” Their eyes met. “If I knew why there was an issue with this place I’d be more likely to say it might be worth walking away. This… it’s just a feeling.”

  “Often there are reasons for those feelings. You might not have found anything when you were learning more about this place, but that doesn’t mean there was nothing to find.” He shrugged. “Dad spent a lot of time teaching me about the business, so I’m not stupid when it comes to what I’m doing, and you’ll learn to work with me.”

  “I never once thought you were stupid.”

  “A lot of people underestimate me. They know I’m a cowboy as well as a property tycoon, and they think Dad was the brains. To be honest, when I was younger, he very much was the brains, but as I got older I realised the time would come when I’d have to take on his business. After that I started taking things far more seriously than I had done before. This is important to me. It’s always been important to me.” Jonny shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know I’m probably going on a bit much here. I just had a bad experience at the weekend. Being in this business means spending far more of my time than I would like around people who see me as nothing more than an idiot who got lucky.”

  “Trust me, I know what it’s like, although people don’t assume I’m an idiot.”

  He made a face. “They see the colour of your skin and think things about you that simply aren’t true. I hate people like that and yet there are so many of them in my business. Know that I see you as a person, Monica, and that’s why I’m listening to your feelings on this place. Not knowing why you feel the way you do isn’t going to stop me from doing what I think is right and I’ve made the decision to walk away from this place.”

  ***

  After spending her morning walking around three very large
houses all Monica really wanted to do was kick her shoes off, but she knew she couldn’t. The next thing on the list was a luncheon with a number of property developers who were all interested in working for Houston Houses. Sighing, she brushed a hand through her hair, before checking that everything was set up the way it was supposed to be. When she was certain no one has made any mistakes she felt a little more comfortable and started pouring glasses of wine for everyone. Once that was done she walked around the room once more. Dealing with something like that was never much fun, but everything was ready. When the first of the developers walked into the room she couldn’t help wishing Jonny was there.

  “Good afternoon.” Monica plastered on her professional smile. “Mr. Houston will be arriving shortly. Help yourself to a drink and something to eat.”

  “Thank you.” He looked her over in a way that she knew meant he was seeing what she was first. “Who might you be?”

  “Monica Banks, Mr. Houston’s new personal assistant.” The wine was very tempting, but she never drank any alcohol when she was working. “He asked me to be here to greet you while he freshened himself up.”

  The developer nodded and made his way over to the glasses. She didn’t need him to say anything for her to know exactly what was going through his head. Fortunately that was when Jonny walked through the door. He was by the side of the developer in seconds, which gave Monica a chance to disappear into the corner of the room, her chair already set up, because she had work to do. After sipping her water she went through the diary for the next couple of weeks, telling herself again she could do the job. That didn’t mean it was something she wanted to do any longer. She was fed up with people looking at her like she was nothing, or treating her like it, and being the P.A. of one of the richest men in the state was always going to lead to that. Her job was all she knew, though, so if she did leave it all behind she’d have to start from the beginning, and she wasn’t certain she was capable of doing that.

  “Monica?” Jonny’s voice had her looking over at him. “Are you doing okay?”

  Plastering her professional smile back on was hard than it had been. “Absolutely fine, Mr. Houston.” There was that look in his eyes again, but she ignored it. “Was there something you needed?”

  “Not right now, but I’d like your opinion on the men in this room when this is done. Would you be comfortable spending some time talking with them?”

  It would have been far simpler to say no, but she didn’t. “Of course I would.” It didn’t matter if she was comfortable or not. “I can go through your schedule later.”

  ***

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Honestly, there isn’t much to tell.” Monica shrugged. “I talked with the men you wanted me to talk to.” Their eyes met. “I didn’t have any real issues with any of them.”

  “Are you sure about that?” It was entirely possible he’d been watching her interactions with the developers, so he would have seen more than she wanted him to, because she didn’t want him to feel like she needed to be protected from anyone. She was entirely capable of looking after herself and always had been. “I know this probably seems quite strange to you, but this is the way I get to know people. How they treat the people who are, in their minds, beneath them, is very important to me, and it always has been. Didn’t Anna tell you about this?”

  “I think she mentioned it, but we were talking about so much I didn’t think to ask anything more.” For a moment Monica thought about what he was saying, and then she smiled. “There were a couple of them I wouldn’t have been comfortable working with myself, if I was in the position you are now. I couldn’t tell you why they were treating me the way they were. It could be due to my gender, my race, or the fact I’m your P.A.” He nodded. “As it’s likely I’m going to be the one contacting them to arrange meetings in the future I think it could end up being an issue, although I can’t be certain.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “Anna and I used to work well as a team. It was her who taught me some of these tricks, because they were tricks Dad used too, and I think we can do the same. All you have to do is understand why I need someone like you to tell me what’s happening when I’m not around. There were a couple of people I could have ended up working with who were incredibly rude to Anna. She told me about it and I made the choice to keep my distance. In the end it turned out that it was the right choice to make, because there’s always a reason people treat others badly.”

  “Why did you hire me, Mr. Houston?”

  “You are someone I heard very good things about. Replacing Anna wasn’t going to be easy, and I wanted to find the right person. When she called me to say you’d been in contact with her after I offered you the job I knew I had. By talking to her, and learning what I need from you, you made my job much easier than it would have been had you not bothered.”

  “I’m not Anna.”

  “No, you aren’t, and that’s not a bad thing. We can learn our own ways of doing things, Monica. We can make this work.” He smiled. “Fancy going horse riding with me?”

  “Do you think I know one end of a horse from the other?”

  “You grew up not far from here and I can’t imagine you wouldn’t have gone riding at some point in the past.”

  ***

  “I haven’t been on a horse in years, Mr. Houston.” Monica studied the creature in front of her. She’d been taught to ride by her older brothers, who both thought it was important for her to know, but she’d never have done it if it hadn’t been for them. “Going riding by yourself would probably be the better option.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  She looked at Jonny. “I left it in New York.”

  He laughed. “Are you scared of the horse or are you scared of making a fool of yourself?”

  “Neither.” She shook her head. “I know how to ride. I just made the choice not to, because I’ve never much enjoyed it.”

  “Then why did you learn?”

  “Stubborn brothers. They still think I made the wrong choice by moving to New York, but then they’ve never been comfortable in cities.” She shrugged. “We always have been very different people. My brothers were country boys, and I… moving to the city was the right decision for me to make, and I never have regretted it, even though there is a part of me that’s missed this.” She gestured at the open space in front of her. “It’s so different and I’m glad I had a chance to return to the country. I just don’t think I want to go riding.”

  “Come on. We’ll do a short ride, talk about the plans for tomorrow, and then we’ll come back. I always think better when I’m on horseback. When Dad asked me if I wanted to take over the business I spent hours out riding, trying to work out if it was what I wanted, because I have cousins who could have taken this position if I hadn’t. Then I realised I would feel guilty if I didn’t. Dad had done so much for me over the years I wanted to pay him back.” Jonny mounted his horse. “Now I can do what needs to be done, take the company in different directions, and make certain he’s going to be looked after until the day he dies.”

  For a few seconds Monica thought about walking back to the house, but then she mounted her horse, the same way she had done hundreds of times before, and it felt as though she’d never left the saddle. “What, exactly, did you want to talk about?”

  They started walking in the direction of the open space. “We’ve got a busy few weeks ahead of us. This is always one of the busiest times of the years, because this is when most property is bought and sold, and I wanted to talk to you about getting into the hotel business. I’ve been thinking about expanding in that direction for a while now and I’m going to need your help if that is to happen. Anna, before she made the decision to retire, was looking into whether or not it would be financially viable, and I was hoping you’d be willing to continue the work she started.”

  ***

  Anna’s files were very well kept. Monica couldn’t help smiling. They reminded her of the files her ment
or had, when she was learning from one of the best how to be one of the best. One of the things Elise had drummed into her, over and over again, was that everyone was different. Although the basics of being a personal assistant were the same for every employer they all wanted things done a little differently. Back then Monica had been young, and excited, but the excitement faded away when she realised how difficult things would be for someone in her position. If she’d know then what she’d come to understand later she wouldn’t have chosen to work for young men with lots of money. Jonny, fortunately, seemed like the was going to be one of the few men she’d worked for who wasn’t trying to get into her panties.

  Sighing, she opened the first of the files, which held all of the information she needed on the first of the hotels he was interested in. Even the numbers were there and it was easy to see why Anna was the one trusted to do the work. Obviously it something he was keeping from the rest of the company until he was certain everything would work out the way he wanted it to if he did make the job into the hotel business, to go along with the other property he owned. As she took the file over to her desk Monica couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him. He was the absolute opposite of who she thought he would be, but then being a cowboy didn’t mean he was an idiot and he could see why people would underestimate him. It helped that he was incredibly handsome, too, which was something she’d done her best to ignore, because his looks weren’t something that really mattered to her. They couldn’t matter to her.

  Cowboys, in her experience, were like everyone else. People who’d never met a cowboy would only see the stereotype, while she’d met enough to know a lot of them were very smart people. They just made the decision to do what make them happy - and that, to her, probably made them smarter than most of the people she’d come across in the city. In the city it was far too easy for people to get lost in the need to earn as much money as possible, to spend it one pointless things they’d never be able to take with them when they died, while looking down on those who followed their hearts. Monica never had. The people who did what they loved for a pittance were smarter than those who forced themselves to be in a job they hated for all the money they could possibly want. When she thought of those people sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if she was one of them.