Utterly Yours (Book One) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)
Read Utterly Yours (Book One) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Online
Authors: Alexa Brookes
Utterly Yours
Book One
An Alpha Billionaire Romance
By
Alexa Brookes
Copyright © 2016 Alexa Brookes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
Table of Contents
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Nathaniel Lynch was seated across from what was most likely the world’s most uptight, stereotypical daddy’s little girl turned adult he had ever met. The woman was gorgeous; he wasn’t going to deny that, but if he had to listen to her tell one more story about makeup, shopping, or something she did with her father or “gal-pals” from high school, he was going to stab himself in the eye with the salad fork.
Oh God, we’re still just on salads
, he thought, realizing they had only just placed their order for their entrees a few minutes ago. The woman’s name was Eliza Hordon. Eliza came from what Gatsby would have called old money, and for that reason, Nathaniel’s mother had set up this lovely date on his behalf.
His phone buzzed, and while normally he would never check his phone during a date, it wasn’t as though Eliza would notice. She hadn’t bothered taking her eyes off of her phone for more than five seconds at a time. He glanced down, and it was a text from his mother.
Hope it’s going well! She’d make pretty grand-babies
;)
He cringed, and decided he was definitely not going to answer that text message. He had gone into this date rather optimistic, despite the fact that it was his mother who had set it up; his mother normally had fabulous taste in pretty much everything, but obviously they shared vastly different tastes in spousal appeal –not that Nathaniel was looking to get married anytime soon. He was still enjoying the single life. He looked at Eliza and forced himself to find something he liked about her if only for his mother’s sake. She was pretty –sexy even. She had ridiculously long brunette hair, and not a single hair was out of place. She had one of those long faces that made herself look thin and poise. Her fingers were perfectly manicured, and she wore what could possibly be a thousand-dollar designer dress. She was definitely the kind of woman people would expect a self-made billionaire like himself to marry. It was just that personality of hers that was so daunting.
“Oh, wow,” she said suddenly and her face turns red. “I’ve been sitting here talking about myself this whole time. Tell me about Lynch Industries. I’m actually really curious as to what it is you do.”
A large sigh escaped from his lips. He was actually very grateful she was done yammering on and on about herself like she was trying to sell a piece of merchandise to him. Normally, he wouldn’t mind if a woman talked about herself, but it was the way she did it that was so incredibly off-putting. “Well,” he began, “Lynch Industries is a tech start-up company. We do a lot of investing in projects that could do well in the modern market.”
“Anything I’d recognize?” she asked.
“I bet you have a few of our apps on your phone,” he said. “We do a little of everything, though, not just apps. We’re leading the way in software engineering, and we’re starting to even dabble in the astrological field. We’re designing some things for NASA now too.”
“Impressive,” she said and leaned forward slightly to stare at him. “I remember I had a roommate in college who wanted to work for NASA as an engineer.”
“That’s an impressive achievement –did she do it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. We lost touch after I dropped out,” she said as she pulled out a compact of makeup to re-powder her nose.
Of course, you dropped out
, Nathaniel thought. Soon they were back on talking about her brief days at the University. She had been part of a sorority, of course, and she had many stories to tell there. His phone went off again, and he chose to ignore it. He definitely was going to have to disappoint his mother later by vetoing her choice in potential daughter-in-law. This woman was a joke. At the very least, she was boring. She was a daddy’s girl who had been spoiled her whole life and was now looking for a substitute man to continue to spoil her, and Nathaniel wasn’t buying it.
At long last, the entrees arrived, and he rolled his eyes to see that she had ordered this petite little dish; she might as well have just eaten a larger salad. She picked at her plate, while Nathaniel dug into his food, just so his mouth would be full and he would not have to talk too much –it wasn’t like he was getting a word in edge-wise. She was just getting started on a tale about when her father took her sailing as a kid, and she had apparently loved it and this was why she had gotten her own boat on her thirteenth birthday. “So, can you sail?” Nathaniel asked, thinking that that would at least be a more interesting topic of conversation –plus he thought that perhaps if they went sailing together it would be a much more interesting date than this.
“Oh, no, of course not. My daddy hired someone to take me sailing when I wanted to go out on the bay,” she said, and Nathaniel had to open his eyes wide and stare to avoid rolling them at her. One of her fingers pointed down at his phone. “Your phone is blinking.”
Yes, to her, not immediately answering a text message probably seemed like absolute madness. He looked at his phone, and he saw that it was not his mother who had texted him, but it was instead Tony Ramirez, his youthful intern turned assistant. Tony had been an intern at Lynch Industries, and he had killed it. Nathaniel hired the kid his junior year of college as a part-time assistant and the kid went to full-time after graduating two years before. The text read:
Do you need a rescue?
Nathaniel smiled. He liked this kid. He quickly texted back:
Save me if you can.
Tony responded:
Make sure your phone’s turned up so she can hear you –this is going to be good.
Nathaniel bit his tongue to keep from laughing, but he did as he was told and turned the call volume up so that his date could hear Tony; if there weren’t other people at the five-star restaurant having dinner as well, he would just put it on speaker phone, but he wasn’t quite sure what Tony had in mind. The phone started ringing. “I’m sorry, that’s my assistant calling, do you mind?” he asked, cutting Eliza off mid-sentence.
“Oh, no, go ahead,” she said with a casual hand wave.
Nathaniel answered the phone, and immediately a hysterical sounding Tony began sobbing in his ear. “Oh my God, Mr. Lynch! Mr. Lynch, we need you at the office right away!”
“Calm down, Tony, what’s going on?” Nathaniel asked, trying hard not to smile –Tony sounded incredibly sincere in his tone, and Nathaniel could see Eliza perking up slightly to eavesdrop.
“I just –I don’t- “ Tony stammers. “This man showed up… he says we stole an app idea from him. He’s losing his mind and causing a huge scene. Oh, God, he’s calling the police right now! He says he’s going to hire a team of lawyers; he says he’s going to sue! Mr. Lynch, I don’t know what to do!”
“All right, calm down, Tony. Let the man know the CEO is on his way. Take a breath. I’ll be there soon,” Nathaniel said and hung up the phone. He looked over at Eliza sadly. “I am so sorry, but there seems to be some sort of crisis at work.”
“I understand,” Eliza said, “your assistant seemed pretty upset.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine. Tony can over-react at times, but you never know.” Nathaniel quickly paid the check, thanked Eliza for a lovely date, and hurried out the door where Tony was waiting in the parking lot by his car to drive him back to the office.
“She looked dull,” Tony said and Nathaniel clasped his shoulder in his hand.
“I owe you, kid,” Nathaniel laughed as he hopped into the passenger’s seat of his car, and Tony started up the engine. He kept laughing; he could not believe how crazy Tony could be at times. “You sounded like you were honestly crying.”
“I minored in theater, remember?” Tony teased.
“Yeah, why exactly did you do that?” Nathaniel asked as he leaned back in his seat, thankful to be away from Eliza Hordon for the time being.
“Those improv lessons are really beneficial whenever I screw up at work and I’ve got to come up with something to tell you,” he joked, and Nathaniel gave the kid a friendly punch in the arm.
They headed straight for Lynch Industries, and Nathaniel could not possibly have been more thankful for the emergency rescue; he was ready to be back at the office after such a disastrous date with the spoiled daddy’s girl.
Nathaniel checked his Rolex for what was probably the ninth time in the past hour; he despised flying commercial. He felt as though time would stand still whenever he was squished so close to other people; his personal jet was in for its annual maintenance, so he had to book an actual flight, go through security and deal with the TSA. Thankfully, Tony was beside him instead of some random stranger, keeping him somewhat sane; he could not believe they weren’t even able to get first class seats. Some woman got the aisle seat beside him, and she had been snoring the entire flight.
“Would you relax?” Tony said and gently nudged Nathaniel in the side. “Have you seriously never flown coach before?”
“Don’t start with me, Tony,” Nathaniel snarled and leaned back in his seat. This trip to Troy, New York was not exactly something Nathaniel was looking forward to, and Tony knew that. “I don’t even see why I have to be there for this thing,” Nathaniel griped. Lynch Industries was opening up a homeless shelter in New York as a sort of charity PR stunt. It would act as a shelter, soup kitchen, and there would even be places where the homeless could collect donated clothing. Tony had set virtually the entire thing up along with Nathaniel’s business partner and best friend, Adam Reins. Nathaniel had virtually nothing to do with it, but the PR stunt was pretty much to fix his reputation.
“Well,” Tony spat, “If you would stop acting like such a damn party boy, you wouldn’t need to constantly remind people that you’re not a bad guy.”
“Screw you, Tony,” Nathaniel said, but he knew Tony was right. His twenties were rapidly leaving him, and he had spent most of those years acting like a complete fool. He was a thirty-year-old man-child who just so happened to be a business genius. Drinking, partying, and bringing home random women was not something he was willing to give up just yet, despite his mother’s constant efforts to get him hitched. The public knew him all too well as the rich guy who liked to flaunt his money to impress anyone who would sleep with him; only to turn around and be the predictable heartbreaker. It was an act that the public was getting tired of reading about in the tabloids, so putting some positive light on his company was well needed if investors were ever going to take him seriously.
Being professional had always been more of Nathaniel’s father forte. When the man had died via a hit and run driver, he had left a note behind for Nathaniel in the event of a sudden passing. The note had told him that he needed to get his act together, that when his mother passed every last dime would be going straight to charity, and that he wanted Nathaniel to make something of himself on his own. While at first Nathaniel had felt somewhat betrayed by his father’s plans with his fortune, he was now quite thankful. His father had left behind a small trust fund to help Nathaniel get started, and Nathaniel had wisely invested into a tech company, eventually buying out the original owners and turning the small company into a billion-dollar corporation. If his father hadn’t warned him about where the family fortune would be going, Nathaniel assumed he would have never done much of anything with his life outside of wasteful party boy spending. Now, he had his own company –his own name to uphold, and he was ruining it quite quickly.
He was thankful for hires like Tony who actually seemed to care about him and about the business. The homeless shelter had been almost entirely Tony’s creation, and Nathaniel almost felt bad stamping his name on it. He intended to give Tony a pretty serious pay raise if all went well. Tony was on his tablet, reading some emails. “Okay, looks like everything is in place for the opening tomorrow. The local media are all wanting you to speak-”
“Whoa,” Nathaniel sat upright, “no one said anything about me having to get up and-”
Tony, without looking Nathaniel’s way, handed him a small handful of index cards. “First one is your speech, the others are pre-approved questions for the media to ask along with your answers. Memorize it before tomorrow, and you’ll be fine.”
Nathaniel smiled and took the notecards. “Thanks, kid,” he said and began skimming through Tony’s notes. He tried not to chuckle at the answer to the question
what inspired you to open up a shelter here in Troy?
Because the answer was nothing but hogwash; the shelter had not been his idea, and he had had very little to do with it. Tony had planned everything, but his notes certainly made it sound like Nathaniel was the mastermind and that he had been compassionately moved into creating the shelter. It was not that Nathaniel did not care about the homeless –he certainly did, but he had never thought much about doing anything about it before. He donated money to charities, of course, but there was a big difference between writing and check and getting your hands dirty.
Finally, the plane landed, and Nathaniel and Tony rushed to escape the confined space. Almost as soon as they had gotten their luggage, Nathaniel’s phone started going off. He cringed when he saw his mother’s face light up on the screen. “You better answer that,” Tony said. “She left me a nasty voicemail at the office, so I don’t think you want to make it worse.”
“Great,” Nathaniel grumbled and swiped the screen to answer. “Hey, Mom,” he said in the chirpiest tone he could muster.
“Nathaniel Grayson Lynch, I ought to ring your neck!” his mother’s voice screeched into the phone.
“Good to hear from you, Ma,” Nathaniel said.
“You ditched Eliza, didn’t you? And don’t you dare try lying to me, you know I can tell when you’re lying!”
“Geez, Ma,” Nathaniel grumbled. “She was obnoxious, all right?”
“Eliza Hordon of the Hordon family is not obnoxious! She is a sweetheart, and she comes from a good family, and you just left her sitting by herself at a restaurant. You could have at least called her back and rescheduled! Honestly, Nathaniel, what am I going to do with you?”
Nathaniel went to grab his suitcase, but Tony grabbed it for him. The kid looked ridiculous trying to drag around all of the luggage on his own, but Nathaniel was going to let him so he could focus on the unpleasant conversation. “Look, you have got to stop trying to set me up,” Nathaniel said, “I’m pretty sure you and I have different tastes.”
“I want grandchildren,” she whined, and Nathaniel cringed. “Your father would have loved Eliza!”
“All right, that’s it, do you want me to hang up? I’m not going to let you guilt trip me by playing the dad card, got it?” Nathaniel’s voice raised only slightly; he hated it whenever she used his father against him. It was a regular occurrence with her.
“Fine, Nathaniel. Will you at least come over this Saturday? I’m having a little gathering at the homestead, and Eliza and her family are going to be there; I think you at least owe the girl an apology,” his mother’s voice calmed significantly, knowing she had crossed a line by bringing up his father. Nathaniel was not fooled, though. He knew she would just try to set him and Eliza up again at the party. This time, though, he had an excuse.
“Sorry, Mom, I told you, I’m in Troy for the next two weeks,” Nathaniel said, and he could hear his mother seething on the other line.
“And why are you in Troy?’ she asked.
“I told you,” Nathaniel said, although he was not entirely sure if he had or not, “It’s the grand opening for the homeless shelter my company is sponsoring.”
“Why are you wasting your time with that? Can’t that sleazy little intern of yours handle it for you?” she asked.
“If you’re talking about Tony, he’s not an intern anymore, first of all, and he’s not sleazy. I need to be here, all right? Can we talk later? I’m just now getting off the plane, and I have a lot I have to get done today,” Nathaniel tried not to raise his voice again, but his mother was pushing her luck.
“Fine, Nathaniel, fine! I guess I’ll just have to apologize on your behalf –again. To someone else –again. Enjoy your trip. I will just see you when you get back in town.” His mother hung up the phone, and Nathaniel pulled his tie loose because he felt as though it was strangling him after the fairly heated conversation.
“So, what’d-ya talk about?” Tony teased, and Nathaniel punched him in the arm as they were climbing into the rental car.
“Let’s just go,” Nathaniel huffed as they pulled out of the parking lot of the airport. He almost wished that he would meet someone just so his mother would get off his back. He shook his head; glad they had put a pin in the conversation if only for a little while.