Hot Billionaire Thanked: So Hot Billionaires, #22

By Melody Love

He's been alone. She's been right there.

 

But will it work if the two of them are together?

 

When billionaire Ronan Coleman lost his wife as she was giving birth, his world closed down. He was left with his work, his baby daughter, and his daughter's nanny Ashley, who became Ronan's best friend.

 

For Ashley Cobb, being Molly's nanny is as much about love as it is about having a job. Molly is the daughter she'd loved to have.  But as her love for her best friend and employer starts to grow more heated, Ronan retreats into his grief over the loss of his wife.

 

If Ashley can reach Ronan through all his pain, she has a chance to get everything she wants – the man she loves as her husband, the little girl she loves as her daughter, and the life she'd love to have as Ronan's wife. 

 

But if Ronan can't leave the past behind after Ashley chooses to take a chance at a relationship, she might just lose it all.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: DM
• Release date: May 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393129912

Book preview

Hot Billionaire Thanked

So Hot Billionaires, Volume 22

Melody Love

Published by DM, 2020.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

HOT BILLIONAIRE THANKED

First edition. May 25, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 Melody Love.

Written by Melody Love.

Also by Melody Love

So Hot Billionaires

Hot Billionaire's Cinderella

Hot Billionaire Faking It

Hot Billionaire's Baby

Hot Billionaire Mile High

Hot Billionaire Professor

Hot Billionaire's Escort

Hot Billionaire Cowboy

Hot Billionaire Night

Hot Billionaire Rescued

Hot Billionaire's Story

Hot Billionaire Player

Hot Billionaire On A Train

Hot Billionaire Delivered

Hot Billionaire Changed

Hot Billionaire Played

Bride's Hot Billionaire Brother

Hot Billionaire's House

Hot Billionaire's Secret Child

Hot Billionaire Reconnected

Hot Billionaire Pictured

Hot Billionaire Troubled

Hot Billionaire Thanked

Hot Billionaire Putted

Hot Billionaire Shopped

Hot Billionaire Jerk

Hot Billionaire Remembered

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Also By Melody Love

HOT BILLIONAIRE THANKED | By Melody Love | This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. | Copyright © 2020 Melody Love | Click here to get a FREE book for a limited time

Further Reading: Hot Billionaire Putted

Also By Melody Love

HOT BILLIONAIRE THANKED

By Melody Love

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 Melody Love

––––––––

Click here to get a FREE book for a limited time

Chapter 1 – Ronan – Monday

The day kept getting ahead of me.  It was one of those crisp fall days in Lexington when you feel like you can do anything. There's still hot sun but there's a snap in the air and the scent of wood smoke early and late.  On days like that it feels like anything is possible.

Those days lie.  This one was rocketing out of control.  I had a meeting I had to get to, paperwork that had to be filed with various federal agencies before five p.m., and my phone kept ringing off the hook.  I'd be upset with my assistant, only Lauren always knows what calls to send through and which not to.  She's right 99 percent of the time. 

President and CEO of a big pharma company with researchers across the globe looking to duplicate Canada's finds on curing cancer and our own proprietary research on drugs meant to combat the opioid crisis, seems like I could employ a fleet of assistants with master's degrees who could manage everything.

I've tried it.  It actually made everything worse.  Even when I put Gary in charge of handling the assistants, there was just too much that couldn't be accomplished without my direct input.  As long as I was inputting my own input, I might as well not have to delegate to a raft of assistants who had to come back to me for approval, so they all got very nice severance packages and letters of recommendation.

And I went right on running behind and thinking any day now I was going to catch up.  Probably I wasn't.  After all, this had been going on for the last three years.  I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't pushed to the edge and using every thirty hour day to max advantage.

That's why when the text buzzed and sent my phone dancing across my desk, I growled and slapped at it, not wanting to even drag my eyes from any of the screens on my desk – desktop, laptop, tablet –

Phone.

Are you coming to Molly's doctor's appointment?

Shit.

That's all it took to stop all forward movement.  For a second I just sat, running my hands over my scalp, feeling the hair trying to grow back there.  Shaved was faster and easier and at five-ten, I'd never commanded the attention of a room full of executives as easily as I did once I started shaving my head and wearing mostly black. Black t-shirts and black jeans. Black suits with black button ups. 

The only person whose attention I could instantly capture even when wearing PJs and sporting a head of toast-colored hair was Molly.

I'd forgotten the doctor's appointment.

Routine, thankfully.  She'd had one of those little kid viruses, all stuffy nose and what came out of it looked like something from a horror movie that would become sentient in the night and kill us all.  Croupy cough.  Fever.  She was recovered, no matter what this appointment said.  I knew because she was already moving at a billion miles an hour.  Before I'd left the house this morning I'd watched Ashley trying to corral her, laughing and chasing and making scary claws with her hands while she called, I'm gonna get you!

Thank god for Ashley.  Molly adored her.  I adored her.  In the proper way for an involved father to adore his daughter's absolutely perfect nanny.

Involved father.  Yeah, right.  Involved fathers don't forget their daughter's doctors appointments.  I'd had every intention of being there but last minute Laruen scheduled half a dozen back to back conference calls on one of the new Rain Forest derivative drugs we were working on and that was hope to a boatload of people with a rare neuromuscular disease.  It wasn't something I could miss.  It wasn't something I really understood.  I'd had some medical classes past the pharmacy major I did as undergrad, but I hadn't been anywhere near med school.  I'd known from the time I was a kid Molly's age my job would be to grow up and take over the pharmaceuticals company for the old man. 

I hadn't expected to do that by the time I was 33, but the old man drowned on a fishing trip in a creepy desert lake in Nevada.  Thunderstorm came up out of nowhere, high winds capsized the tiny boat, and my dad's best friend made it back to shore.

My dad didn't.

Bad couple years.  Because a year later Molly was born and while she was the light of my life, Kathryn, my wife and Molly's mother, didn't make it through the birth.

I rubbed my forehead, wishing I could text back something to Ashley along the lines of, Of course I'll be there, leaving the office now, wouldn't miss it, XXOO, Doting Dad.

But of course I'd been scheduled for things I couldn't miss and of course the text was a reminder from a perfect nanny who loved and cared for my daughter and kept her safe.

And judged me, I feared. 

I took a breath.  President and CEO of a big pharma company shouldn't be afraid of the censure of his own nanny.

Yeah, right on that one, too.

I've gotten held up by conference calls I can't miss.  Please give the Molly Monster extra hugs and kisses for me.

Then I shoved the phone under a stack of papers so I wouldn't feel judged and guilty after she wrote back all sunny and loving – and judge-y.

Text from Ashley?  Gary's voice on the other side of my desk made me jump.

Dude.  Stop sneaking up on me.

If by sneaking you mean knocking on your door, then walking across your uncarpeted floor in hard soled shoes? You bet.  I'll go barefoot and –

Shut up and tell me what you want.

I'm your date for the first conference call.

I'm not buying you flowers.  I'd known Gary since high school.  We were way past the flowers part. 

I'll cry myself to sleep tonight, Gary said and nodded at the stack of papers my phone was under and repeated, Text from Ashley?  His grin said he already knew.

How the hell do you know?  I pulled the phone out and looked at it, discovering Ashley had said, We understand.  See you at home.

Because you always shove her under something when she calls you out on –

Dude, I said, interrupting.  I shoved the phone back under the papers like See?  No text this time.  It's just where the phone lives!

Gary just rolled his eyes.  You look like a train wreck.  When's the last time you even slept?  Ate?  Got laid?

This week.  Today.  None of your business.  What does that even mean, I look like a train wreck?  I was searching my desk for notes I'd taken at the last meeting while we talked.

Like your cars have derailed, Gary said and I glanced at him.  He's about six inches taller than me, thin and bony, kind of like a knockoff Beto O'Rourke.  Or your elevator car doesn't reach the top floor.

You're mixing metaphors.

I'm combining clichés. It saves time.  Point is, you need some damn downtime.  Gary shoved his hands in his pockets and stared out the window at the city that lay sprawling below us.  Louisville had been home all our lives.

I don't have time for downtime.  Let's talk about the phone calls that are lined up. I started going through the stacks of paper on my desk, unearthing my phone in the process.

Gary took it away from me, held it up and looked at the text from Ashley.  You could have gone to this.  Or don't you trust me? 

There was nothing challenging in his voice.  Gary makes more than enough as my right hand man and has time for a personal life besides.  He's my best friend and nothing would ever convince me he was working against me.

Don't be an ass.  Of course I trust you. I kept rummaging through everything on top of my desk only at this point I was hoping I'd remember what I was looking for.

Gary's hand came down in the center of everything I was pawing through.

I sighed.

I'm worried about you.

What are you, my mother?  I wasn't looking at him. Just snarling so he'd drop it.

No. I'm your friend.  You love Molly and you want her to have the best life and you want her to have a mommy.

It should have sounded strange for Gary to say Mommy in the office.  It didn't.  It sounded like he cared about what he was talking about.

I ran a hand over my head again.  Can we talk about this later?

I heard his hands slap against his thighs.  Sure.  We've got all the time in the world.

Truth was, we did.  Molly was three.  She'd be four early in the new year, but four was hardly twenty-one and dating or twenty-five and walking down the aisle or, fuck, I don't know, thirty-four and taking over my company so she could bankrupt me because I'd missed her doctor's appointment when she was three. 

But I threw myself down in my desk chair, legs out in front of me, one elbow on the chair arm and that hand stroking my cleanshaven jawline.  I've been trying to be mother and father for almost four years.  I appreciate every single thing you've done for Molly.  And me.

Gary, having brought this conversation about, instantly felt uncomfortable with sentiment. He shrugged unconvincingly.  She's my niece, he said, which technically, she wasn't.  And you're my – he hesitated and I saw the humor on his face.  He was thinking just what exactly to call me and my lips twitched, thinking how I could escalate whatever he came up with.  Which turned out to be, Responsibility.

I laughed.  Oh, right, making sure I take my meds and bathe regularly.

That's just the start of it.  Making sure you get your electro shock treatments, making sure the straightjacket is dry cleaned...

Shut up, I said, laughing.  I love that kid like crazy.  I looked past him, out the window at the fall sky.

Then how come you're not at her doctor's appointment?  Because if you'd had it on your calendar Laruen would never have scheduled the afternoon calls.  He had that way of looking at me like a basset hound that really needs an answer to some question it's just managed to ask.

I ran my hand over my jaw again.  Because I'm going to screw it up.  Because she deserves all of me and not all of me is free to go to that appointment. There'd be a call.  There'd be a crisis.  There'd be a new lawsuit come up, someone who didn't manage to get clean on the anti-opioid or –

Knock if off, Gary said.  You're scared.  Good for you.  What do you do when you're scared in business?

Molly isn't business.

Right.  And wrong.  If my life was wrapped around my business, then Molly was the most important business I had.  She needs a mother.  I was aware as I said it that Gary had just said the same thing.

You've got a hot nanny who loves your daughter every bit as much as you do.  You know that, right?

Yeah.  I trusted Ashley with my daughter's life, every day.

"And you got the word hot in there, right?"  He was looking at me like maybe I'd forgotten what a hot woman was like.

Maybe I had.  Ashley was beautiful, no doubt, the kind of girl who makes men hard by walking by. When was the last time I thought about her in those terms?

Probably when my daughter wasn't recovering from a cold that left her full of alien mucus.  That was when hot nannies became mommy.

I turned away from that thought.  Ashley wasn't Molly's mother.  Never could be.  There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't breathe good morning to Kathryn and breathe goodnight to her as I fell asleep in the king sized bed. 

Gary said I needed to get laid.  What would he say if he knew the truth?  Kathryn died in childbirth, giving birth to Molly, and in January it would be four years since her death.

There hadn't been a woman in my bed once during that time.

I stood, shoving off the blues.  Ashley was great for Molly.  She was great for me because she was fun, and funny, quick witted and full of random bits of information like a trivia game.  I loved being around her, and only some of that was because Molly adored her and she adored Molly.

Part of it was because I loved her company.  The two of them completed me.  But we were friends, damn it.  It was like having a close sister instead of brothers, a sister who came through in a pinch to raise my daughter.

Without ever seeming to have her own life.  If Ashley was dating, I didn't know about it.

Abruptly, I was angry.  Why should I know about it?  Why should I even be having this conversation with Gary?  Best friend, sure. But he wasn't my shrink.  I looked over at him.  He'd gotten to his feet, out of the chair across from mine, and was waiting for me so we could go grab some lunch (when was the last time I ate? I believe there's sushi in my future; does that count?) and discuss the calls we'd have during the afternoon. 

Are we finished with this? I asked as I headed for the door, stopping to snag phone and tablet so we could talk shop over raw fish.

Just two more words for you, bro, Gary said, slapping me on the back as I passed.

Hot nanny?

Hot nanny!

I shook my head.  I've got two words for you, too, I said.

Fuck off?  He was following me out of the office, turning off the lights at the door.

I shook my head again.  Keep dreaming, I said. 

Chapter 2 – Ashley – Wednesday

I'm pretty sure Molly was born running.

Unfortunately, there's no way to find out.  Ronan will never talk about Kathryn, his wife and Molly's mother, and there's no one else to ask.

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning and Molly and I were exploring the Children's Museum.  There were times I couldn't believe my luck, having landed a job taking care of a child I so adored and whose father had become one of my best friends.  It was like somehow taking a job as a wife and mother.

...without being either.  The thought brought me down.  I wanted to be a mother, someday. Until then, being a nanny to this little girl who needed a woman in her life, that worked.

Ashy, look.

She had a fist full of Lego's she'd just turned into – well, something tall.  A skyscraper like the building her daddy worked in. Or a rocket ship, poised and ready to take on the stars.  She was too young to understand the phallic shape of what she'd designed.

Is it a building? I asked.  Like Daddy works in?

She shook her head seriously, butterscotch colored curls flying.  She looked so serious.  Clearly she wasn't going to tell me what she'd created.  Just as clearly I was supposed to go on guessing.

Is it a rocket ship?  Please let it be a rocket ship.  That was my last guess.

Very serious head shake and the lower lip was starting to stick out.

Is it – a horsey?  For whatever reason, lately she talked about horses.  Maybe it was all the hype of the Kentucky Derby.  Probably not.  It was held right after she turned three, back in May.  Molly was smart but I didn't believe she could remember that.

At the moment, why she was crazy about horses all of a sudden didn't matter because she was squealing and throwing her arms around me, kissing my face with slightly spitty kisses.  It is!  It is!

I'm so smart, I murmured, surreptitiously wiping my face.  What else can you make? I asked and tried not to wince as she knocked the horses apart, showering the pieces all over the floor.  We made a game of picking them up, seeing who could collect the most, and despite my larger hands, strangely enough I lost. 

There was a short presentation then, kid-sized documentary on tide pools, another on bunny rabbits.  Neither was big on facts.  Both were big on animals.  Molly was enraptured.  Following the films she sidetracked a little boy who was climbing a model of cumulous clouds and made him go with her to create a miniature volcano.  He seemed to like that.

How old is he? I asked his mother.  She had the same beautiful olive skin as her son and looked more like his older sister than his mother but she wore a wedding ring.

Almost four, she said thoughtfully,  Her left hand had formed a loose fist and she touched her lips to the ring as she spoke. 

It made me realize all over again my naked ring finger, my absence of a real title.  Molly was supposed to call me Ashley. At night I left the big house Ronan Coleman and his daughter Molly rattled around inside of and returned to my townhouse, elegant and just the right size for one person.

Paid for courtesy of my great job as a nanny.

He's smart, I said, watching him recreate something he'd just seen on one of the documentaries, that one on water.

She nodded complacently as if his being smart had nothing to do with her so she didn't have to be overwhelmed by the compliment.  More like it was a fact.  One hand rested on her nearly flat belly and I would have bet if her boy was an only child, he wasn't going to be for much longer.

Your little girl is smart too, she said, watching the two of them.  She's beautiful.  And you seem like such a good mom.  She's lucky to have you.

I blinked at her and turned to watch the kids playing with the water features.  Thank you, I murmured.  It was easier to just thank people for their comments and go on about my business than to explain I wasn't Molly's mother.

I was the hired help. 

Mol!  Come on, it's time to go!  She was up inside one of the cloud models.  I could see her through the soft material.

Don't wanna! she called back.

That's too bad, honey.  We can come back again.  Right now we have to get ready to go see your dad.

No!  It came back loud.  I wasn't sure if she was mad at Ronan for something or just overtired or what, but it didn't matter.

Molly Marie Coleman, you come down here right now!  I had a graduate degree in early childhood education.  How was it I was reduced to sounding like every mom ever?  Especially when I wasn't one?

Molly let out a piercing wail that suggested all her dreams had just been rendered unto dust and her ice cream toppled off the cone but in fact, there wasn't anything wrong except I'd reminded her just who was in charge.

I could still see her through the clouds.  I kicked my shoes off, waded into the cloudy cottony material, and reached out and pulled Ronan's daughter out of the fake sky.

She kicked, bit, giggled and tried to wriggle free.  It was a bit like I assumed holding an electric eel would be.  Or – and I knew this from experience – trying to get my mother's cat lowered into the carrier.  I didn't let go, though, and was rewarded with an armful of angry three year old. When she tried to wriggle free I just wrapped my arms around her and blew raspberries onto the silky smooth skin of her cheek.  Molly squealed and batted at them and hiding in the clouds – which sounded like a metaphor for something – was forgotten.

I had her by the hand and we were moving toward the exit when an older lady stopped us with a head tilt and a smile.  Your little girl is so adorable, she said.  She looked like the type who was there watching a grandchild.  She's lucky to have you for a mommy.

Oh, thanks so much! I said and kept moving, Molly now tugging me like I was the one holding things up.

It was just easier not to get into the whole discussion about late wives and dead mommy's, about who Molly was.

And who I was.

After I got her fastened into her car seat I had a chance to check who the text I'd just gotten was from.  Turned out to be Bailey, my best friend. 

Are we still on for tonight?

Good!  That meant she was in.  Wednesday night meant pizza and girl's night, talking and watching movies, sometimes till dawn.  Bailey worked as a court reporter.  I sometimes wondered what kind of records they ended up with on Thursday mornings after we'd been up all night talking.

Yes! I needed girl time therapy. 

From inside the car came Molly's voice rising more loudly as she said over and over, Let's go!  Only fair, since I'd just been saying it to her, but if she was directing that at me, we'd have to have a talk about who was the little girl and who was the –

Nanny.

And she didn't get to sass the nanny.

But she was saying it to herself, some complicated game with an imaginary friend?  I smiled, ran my finger down her ski jump nose, and got into the car.  Ronan bought it for me when I started working for him.  It was stolid and staid, one of the safest models of sedan in the world.  It was also free, with gas provided by Ronan's credit card, and it was the safest car he could find for me to drive Molly around in.

He could give her everything, it seemed.  Except his time.

We were meeting in a little mom and pop place that made great chicken enchiladas.  They were so good Molly could almost eat half of one by herself.  Plus she'd get over having to leave the children's 'soom. 

I picked her up piggyback, keeping my hands on her cubby thighs, bouncing her a little as we went through the line.  It was a cafeteria type place, order as you moved along the glass-fronted shelves showing what was on the day's menu, then getting a plastic triangle with a number on it to put on the table so they could deliver the order.  We paid, the teen boy behind the register not immune to Molly's sunny smile. 

Our number was fourteen, which had nothing to do with anything.  I parked us at a table in the fading fall sunlight.  Time change was coming up, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve and, in late January, Molly's fourth birthday would come about two weeks before my second anniversary as her nanny. 

She'd been