Alpha Billionaire Series

ALICIA

I tried to roll out of bed. Christopher's arms tightened around me and pulled me back against him.

I wiggled to get free.

“Are you trying to escape me?” His voice was thick with sleep. It sounded even sexier than normal.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Come back soon.” He reluctantly let me go.

The sheets were warm, and I snuggled into his embrace when I crawled back in. “Wow! You came back.”

“Of course, I did, silly. Where else would I go?” It was the middle of the night.

His whole body shifted as he shrugged. “I didn't want you to leave”

“We're here for three more days”

“I don't think that will be enough time.” He nuzzled his face against my hair and spooned around me.

“I think it's more than enough time for Print-Tech.”

“I don't give a fuck about the show. I meant you, here with me?”

It was nice, okay, better than nice, to be in his arms and to know that we would be together again tonight. “We can't stay in bed the entire weekend.”

“Why not? We can tell everyone we're sick, they don’t need to know the truth.”

As tempting as that thought was, I knew we couldn't do that.

“sh, the alarm goes off soon enough. Let's enjoy this while we can.” I wanted to stay wrapped in his warmth for as long as I could. We only had three more nights. Once back in Atlanta, we wouldn't be able to do this. There wouldn't be staying the night together. Maybe his idea of calling in sick wasn't such a bad idea.

No, thinking logically, it was a bad idea, a gloriously bad idea.

I drifted back to sleep only to be rudely awakened a few hours later by the alarm on my phone, immediately followed by the phone ringing with our wake-up call. I rolled one direction to shut my phone up, and Christopher rolled the other to catch the phone.

Isat up with a groan once the alarms were off. I didn't want to get up. Christopher caught me in his arms and pulled me bac] down. He kissed me and tried to pin me down. I squirmed out of his grasp. If we started fooling around, he would miss his panel discussion.

I wasn't about to be the reason he missed something important. I knew that fooling around with my boss was already skatin a fine line. One wrong move and I could be fired. I could easily become the scapegoat for anything that went wrong. He had responsibilities. So did I. I wasn't about to let my feelings for him get in the way of his success.

“Why don't you take your shower first and I'll order breakfast? Get some coffee delivered. What do you like?"

He lowered his lids and smoldered at me. There was so much heat in his gaze that it transferred immediately between my thighs and tightened my core.

“If you had stayed before, maybe you would know.”

All moisture left my mouth and went elsewhere. “Stop trying to seduce me. And I did stay, remember?”

“Oh yeah, I remember you tried to get away without telling me your name.”

I blushed. He wasn't supposed to find out my name because I wasn't supposed to matter. What we did that night was supposed to stay then and there. “What happens in Nashville, stays.’ He was never supposed to think of me again. We certainly weren't ever to meet again. It was supposed to be fun and done.

We were never going to have anything to do with each other ever again. I certainly wasn't supposed to end up working for him. And he certainly wasn't supposed to be the father of my child.

I looked away before returning my gaze to meet his eyes. “Yeah, but you left first”

“m not leaving this time, Alicia”

He stepped close to me. Towering over me. I couldn't tell if he thought he was being sexy or intimidating. He was a little of both.

I leaned against him, spinning him around. “You are leaving for the bathroom right now.”

I placed my hands on his back and pushed him in the direction of the bathroom. I had to be insane trying to get him away from me. But I think I was being responsible. What a horrible thing to have to be.

Not certain what he wanted for breakfast; I ordered a little bit of everything. He was still grooming his beard when room service arrived.

He stepped out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his hips. Damn, he was sexy. It was hard for me to keep my focus on doing the right thing. I had to remind myself that we just had to make it through the day and then we could fall back into bed.

I left him eating breakfast for my turn in the bathroom. When I finished and stepped back into the room, Christopher was mostly dressed. He wore dress slacks with a button-down. He looked professional and sexy.

I ended up in a weird combination of skirt and tennis shoes. Even with Hannah's help, I hadn't packed properly.

“Okay, I have your schedule for the day. I've sent it to your phone.”Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

I began scrolling through his schedule on my tablet as we headed down the elevator to the conference. I wanted to make sure he had adequate time to get from one commitment to the other, now that I knew how big the center was.

“You'll have enough time to grab a sandwich, assuming the food kiosks are opened today before you are expected in the booth. I can order something from the deli across the street again and meet you. That would maximise your time.”

“You are thinking of everything, aren't you?”

“I'm trying. You brought me here to do a job, and I don’t want to disappoint you."

He leaned in close so he could whisper in my ear. “I brought you here so that we could do what we did last night. But I do appreciate the diligence.”

This time I really blushed, convinced that everyone else in the elevator knew exactly what he had said and what he meant. He straightened and cleared his throat. “I don't need a keeper or a gopher. What I do need is for you to attend the sessions I can't make and take good notes. Not all of those presentations will be filmed, so I can't rely on being able to watch them afterward”

What I didn’t realize at that moment is that I would actually spend very little time with Christopher for the rest of the conference. I didn't get to have lunch with him, and I didn’t get a chance to see him again until late, and we were both dragging our tired bodies back to the room.

That night, Christopher helped me to forget reality. But the next morning we had to do it all over again. I thought conference were supposed to be fun. I felt like I was constantly shifting my focus and running late.

On the last night of the conference, I ditched out of the closing party, just as I had ditched out of all the previous parties. When I got back to the room, I expected Christopher to show up at any minute. I didn't own sexy lingerie, but I did have a cute shorty pajama set. Hopefully, Christopher would think it was sexy.

He didn’t show up. I ordered room service and texted him. Had he gotten roped into going to the party, and not told me? I finished my salad and order of chicken wings and changed into a more comfortable sweatshirt. I sat with my legs crossed in the middle of the bed. I pulled out my notes and began trying to make sense of everything I had spent the last three days scribbling down. I pulled my portable keyboard out of my bag and started transcribing.

I noticed there was a pattern in my notes. A lot of people I introduced myself to immediately asked me about Christopher's mother. At some point, I had started keeping track, and it seemed excessive.

“Have you been working up here this entire time?"

I looked up, startled at Christopher's entrance.

“Yeah. By the time I figured you weren't coming, I had already changed and was too tired to go find the party.”

He sat on the end of the bed and then flopped back. He threw one arm out wide and began petting the skin of my exposed leg with the other.

“You are an asset to Hayes Imaging Solutions; I hope you realize that. I think you are the only person actually working tonight”

I chuckled. I didn't want to be working.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He responded with a grunt.

“How afraid of your mother am I supposed to be?”

He sat up and lifted his brows. “What?”

I'showed him the tick marks under the name Agatha in my notebook. “An awful lot of people asked how I liked working for your mother and gave me knowing nods when I mentioned that I hadn't yet encountered her. One person even insinuated that I probably wouldn't be around next year. Like your mother would fire me or something”

He groaned and ran his hand over his face. I knew he had a long day, and this probably wasn't the best time to spring this of him, but Agatha Hayes was going to return from her extended trip at some point.

“I really like working for you, Christopher. Do I need to be concerned if your mother finds out about us?”

“You don't need to worry about my mother. And as far as work goes, I think keeping us hush-hush isn’t such a bad idea.”