The Billionaire and the Assistant (The Billionaires 3)

He kissed me hard and passionately and the presence of the other guests melted away.

15 August the following year

Eli:Alex gave birth at 3:45 am. Son, Damian Alexander, 7lb 8oz. Mom and baby doing well. Father besotted. Big sister enthralled.

Aidan: Hey dude. Congrats on the birth of Damian. You know this is all down to me, don’t you? You’d still be dithering around the office if it wasn’t for our bet. You’re welcome.

Eli:You’re such a smartass…and no doubt, correct.

“You can put that phone away now, Elias King, your son’s nappy wants changing.” I informed him. He hung up and went off to the nursery, our son firmly in his arms.

“How are you feeling about all this?” I asked Brianna.

“I’m okay. Dad said he did all this kind of thing with me. It was when I w

as around eight the shit show started. I’ll book a therapy session in for when Damian’s eight and dad still likes him.”

I stroked her arm. Thank you for being here, you were a great help at the birth.

“It was my pleasure. What an amazing thing to watch my baby brother being born. I’m planning on moving to Manhattan. Work is bringing me here most of the time now and I want to see as much as I can of my brother.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome to stay here.”

“No, I’ll leave you lovebirds to it. I’m going to look for a place of my own.”

“You’ll never look back.” I told her. “I don’t intend to.” She replied. “It’s time to look to the future and my own happiness.”

I embraced my stepdaughter.

“So, once you’re feeling better are we going to have a night on the town?” She asked me.

“You bet. Your dad can babysit.” I told her, watching him return from the nursery, cooing at Damian. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

THE END

Alex

Chapter 1

Alex

I stepped out of my house that morning, breathing in the crisp air that blew across the rolling hills of this part of Kentucky and closed my eyes, savoring the moment for just a second more. There was plenty to do around the ranch today, but I wanted to take a minute more to revel in the stillness of this most remote part of the ranch.

My father knew what he was doing when he gave me land in this area of the ranch. It was no secret that I was the most hermit like of all the Killarny brothers. I just had my own way of doing things and my preference for how I lived out here. Even though I was close to each of my brothers in one way or another, I was the one who tended to prefer retiring to my own house for the evening or any time that I wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle that followed them all around. It seemed like wherever you found more than one of us gathered together it either turned into a friendly argument or a wrestling match.

It was simply that we liked to poke fun at one another. My mother had been very patient with us all, but I knew that while she was alive, we had caused her an awful lot of grief. She had tried tirelessly to keep us all out of trouble and aside from a few drunken nights spent in county lockup we had stayed out of any kind of major drama for the length of our adult lives. We had all been a worry to her, and I thought about that on occasion, how she wanted us all to be happy and how many times I had heard her pray for that.

Now my mother was gone, and things on the ranch hadn't been the same since her death. We were all moving on in our own ways, and things had changed even further when my father had decided to pick up his things and move to Puerto Rico. It hadn't been too much of a shock to me. I knew my father was struggling to get past my mother's death, and the best way for him to do it would be to get as far away from the thing that most reminded him of her -- the ranch that the two of them had made their own after the death of my grandfather.

Killarny Estate spread out across the vast expanse of green hills in this part of the state. Perfect for raising horses, my family had carved out their place in the industry over a hundred years ago and continued to raise some of the fastest and most sought after thoroughbreds in the country and all over the world. You never knew who might call the office to inquire about a Killarny horse. We had seen some princes and sheiks visiting our estate in the years when we had our most distinguished horses breeding new foals every year.

The breeding had been what my father was most passionate about and in the years when my mother was battling cancer it had taken a backseat to her health. Now that we were back to our normal state of things, at least as normal as things could be without my father and mother overseeing the operation, we were expecting more foals, and we had reached the time of the year when we would need to start checking our mares for possible pregnancy. And that was the thing on my to do list for this particular day.

I closed the door behind me and headed up the road. It was about a half mile to the main barn from my house, and I enjoyed the walk. Even though I preferred being on a horse, I didn't really see any need in building my own stables like some of my brothers had at their own homes. To me, it was nice to maintain the sense of being out away from the rest of the world. I had a lot of pasture lands around me where some of our wild horses from the Dakotas were kept, and out the back of my house was where the woods started and things became a deep, dark thicket the further in you went. That was all Killarny land as well, a portion of it that had been set aside and would never be cleared, at least as far as any of us were concerned because it provided a nice buffer between our estate and the other ranch that was the nearest to us.

Walking up the road to the barn I caught sight of my niece Emma on her horse Saoirse. It was clear that she had not seen me there when I saw what she was about to do. Emma leaned in and urged her horse on, and together they bounded over a fence -- a fence that was absolutely not intended for jumping. I knew better than to shout out because it would spook the horse, and at that point, there was no need. The two of them had already cleared the fence and Emma was patting her horse on the head, telling her what a good job she had done. I was up behind the two of them before she noticed me there.

"So, Emma. Does your dad know you're practicing your jumps back here?"