Billionaire Single Dad

by Claire Adams

  My emotions were so raw about everything that was going on. I genuinely felt like Brandon was a good guy, and to think he was involved in something horrible meant I was pretty bad at judging people. After successfully avoiding any relationships since Spencer had passed away, this wasn’t exactly showing me I could make wise relationship decisions.

  As I picked up Connor from school and made my way to his grandparents’ house, I saw a text message come through from Brandon. I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t deal with whatever was going on in his life. I had to tell him I needed a break.

  Brandon: How’s your day?

  Delilah: I’m going to take a break from us. Best of luck.

  Brandon: What?

  I didn’t respond. I really didn’t want to be one of those girls who cause more drama when drama was already going on in someone’s life. The best thing I could do was take a little time and space to figure things out before they got out of control. I already had feelings for this guy; I couldn’t risk getting deeper into those feelings if I wasn’t sure about who he was or the type of character he had.

  “Delilah!” Mary greeted me with a hug as Connor and I approached the front door to her house.

  Mary and Steve were the nicest people. If I couldn’t have my own family with me, I would have picked the two of them, for sure. They loved me and Connor through their own grief and put every bit of their energy into making sure we were happy.

  “Hi, Mary, you look great. Have you been doing yoga again?”

  “You know, I actually stopped eating sugar. I know that seems a little extreme, but I feel great and my arthritis is practically gone.”

  “How’s Steve doing with this new diet?”

  Mary was always on some sort of health kick and since she did most of the grocery shopping and cooking, her husband ended up going along for the ride. It was actually really adorable and gave me goals for my future. Their love also made me miss my husband terribly. We were young and just getting started in our marriage, but I’d sometimes pictured us getting old together and ending up like his parents – and that wasn’t a bad picture at all.

  “I hate it,” Steve said as he snuck past Mary to grab Connor. “Can you imagine not eating another piece of candy?”

  “Nope,” Connor said. “I think I would die.”

  “Well, I don’t know if that will happen, but I really want some chocolate,” Steve said as he and Connor ran off to the play room.

  “You know, Steve is a really good guy. I don’t think I could survive getting rid of sugar from my life,” I added as we sat down in the living room to talk.

  “Delilah, sugar is the number one cause of cancer. You really should stop eating it all together. And, do you know how much sugar they add to cereal, bread, and our drinks? It’s everywhere. We are becoming sugar addicts without even knowing it.”

  “No, I didn’t know all that. I’ll pay closer attention,” I offered, knowing that there was no arguing with Mary when she was on a new health kick. “Thanks for having us for dinner. I’ve had a long day, and I’m really glad I don’t have to cook.”

  “You know you and Connor can come over for dinner any time. Or just drop Connor off if you want to go to dinner with your new boyfriend,” she said with a huge smile.

  “Oh, no…” I started to say.

  “It’s okay, you know. Steve and I are really excited to see that you are finally getting out there and dating. You’re a beautiful woman, Delilah, and you deserve more happiness in your life. I want you to know that we support you in this new dating thing.”

  “I’m not dating that much. Just one guy I’ve gone on a couple of dates with. I really appreciate you guys taking Connor the last couple of weekends. It’s just easier when I get home late and don’t have to worry about him.”

  I wasn’t about to admit that I’d been staying out all night with Brandon; that seemed like a little too much for my ex-mother-in-law to have to deal with. She was a loving and understanding woman, but my sex life wasn’t an area I wanted her to be part of.

  “Whatever you need, we are here for you and Connor. So, tell me about this guy…”

  “Well, he’s just a businessman from around here, nothing exciting.”

  “What kind of business is he in?”

  “Manufacturing or something like that. We haven’t really talked about it too much. You know how those first couple of dates are – really boring and awkward.”

  I lied to her. I lied straight through my teeth to one of the kindest women I knew. Things between Brandon and I hadn’t been awkward, at all. In fact, from the moment we sat down together in the bagel shop until the last time I had been with him, I felt extremely comfortable with him.

  “I’m so excited for you, honey. You know I think of you just like my daughter and I hope you’ll always keep us involved in your life, even after you remarry.”

  “Oh, no,” I busted out laughing. “There will be no getting married anytime soon.”

  “You never know, dear. You might just find another prince charming who sweeps you off your feet.”

  “I don’t think I want to be swept off my feet. I’m happy, Mary. I’ve got a good job, a great family, and Connor is by far the best child I could hope for. Maybe I’ll just stay single forever.”

  Her face turned from upbeat and happy to extraordinarily sad. The corner of her mouth turned down, and I saw a hint of tears forming in her eyes.

  “Delilah, Spencer would want you to be happy. Don’t let your heartbreak keep you from finding love again. We are meant to love one another.”

  I loved Mary so much. Even though her own heart was breaking at the loss of her son, she still wanted to see me happy. She was the epitome of a selfless woman and always thought of others before herself. I don’t think I would have had as strong of a relationship with her had Spencer lived, but I hoped that I would have been able to love her as deeply as I did through our mutual grief.

  “I promise I’ll love again someday. I’m just not in a hurry, and I’m not sure this guy is the right one,” I said. “I’ll keep my eye out, though.”

  “You should go out to those dance clubs with that funny friend of yours. I bet there’s a lot of nice boys at the dance clubs.”

  I had to laugh at how Mary thought about dating in the current day. Sure, there were a lot of men at the dance clubs, but they weren’t the kind of guys you started relationships with. The guys I had met at clubs were pretty much only good for one-night stands and nothing more than that. Online dating didn’t seem to be much better, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved in the whole matchmaking business.

  Dating and finding someone to fall in love with seemed so overwhelming now that things were crumbling with Brandon. I couldn’t even think of getting back out in the market until I figured out what had gone wrong with choosing him. He had felt so right to me. I felt good around him and that was hard to understand now that other things were coming out. Nope, I was definitely going to be taking a dating break.

  “Yeah, my friend Mattie wanted me to go out with her this weekend. She always wants to go out now that she broke up with that jerk of a boyfriend.”

  “You should go out. We can keep Connor here again.”

  “No, no, he’s already stayed over for two weekends. I can’t have him imposing on your guys all the time.”

  “Imposing,” she said loudly. “Absolutely not! Connor is our grandson, and we love having him here. I’d come over and steal him from you every weekend if you’d let me.”

  “I know you guys love him and he really does love coming over, I just don’t think going out three weekends in a row is a good idea. Plus, have you seen my dance moves? I’m no good at dancing, anyways,” I laughed.

  “You stop it right now, young lady. I’ve decided already that Connor and I have a date Friday, so you’ll just have to go out with your friends. He’s wanted to see that new animated movie and I really want some buttered popcorn,” she said. “So, it’s decided. I’ll get hi
m from school Friday, and you can go do whatever you want to do. You can just sit in your bathtub and read a book for all I care; but take some time and relax or go out and have fun.”

  “I remember Spencer telling me about this bossy side of yours,” I teased. “Fine, I’ll let you take him to the movies.”

  She reached her arms around me and hugged me tighter than I’d been hugged in a very long time. I loved the feeling of her arms wrapped around me and the comfort I felt there with Mary. For a moment, I considered telling her everything that was going on with Brandon, but I decided against it. When I knew more, then I’d tell her.

  We spent the rest of the evening as a family, cooking dinner, eating around the table, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company. I hoped that when I finally found someone else, they’d be able to understand just how much Mary and Steve would always mean to Connor and I. It was a tall order to think that a new man would be accepting of my late husband’s parents, but if I ever actually settled down, I wanted to find someone that had a heart big enough to understand this complex part of my past.

  By the time I was driving home with Connor, we were both exhausted. Visiting others almost always took an emotional toll on me. I had to be happy and funny. I had to interact without making them sad because of the loss we’d endured. Even though I felt very comfortable with Mary and Steve, I still had the stress of trying to show them how well adjusted I was.

  When we pulled into the driveway and climbed into our beds, there was a relief that drained from me. At home, I could be myself. In my own bed, I didn’t have to worry about making anyone else happy or if they were uncomfortable because I brought up my late husband. In my house, all I had to worry about was me and my son; I really liked that.

  But when I was with Brandon, I hadn’t worried, either. As much as I tried not to think about him, as I lay in my bed, I did think about Brandon and just how comfortable I was around him. I knew Connor would have been comfortable with him, too, and that made me incredibly sad.

  There were three voicemails from Brandon that I deleted without even listening to them. My life was complicated enough – I didn’t need whatever was going on in his life interfering with the stability I had built for Connor and me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Brandon

  “Everything is frozen, Josh!” I screamed into the phone after trying to use my card to get coffee.

  Not only was my credit card frozen, my bank account, my brokerage account, everything had been frozen. When I called the bank, they said it was frozen from an unknown entity. There weren’t enough swear words to encapsulate how I was feeling.

  “I’ll meet you at your house,” Josh said.

  “No, I’m going to my attorney’s. You can meet me there if you’d like. It’s Sunset and Twelfth.”

  I had waited long enough to get the attorney involved – probably too long. I had to get him and the private investigator figuring this mess out. My life was falling apart right before my eyes. Delilah hadn’t returned my calls all week, my house had been broken into two additional times, and now my money was all frozen. It didn’t seem like this was my life – it seemed more like I was living a nightmare.

  When I arrived at my attorney’s office, he was waiting for me. My frantic call to him before calling Josh had been enough to get him to cancel whatever else he had scheduled for the day and get me in.

  People of my stature just didn’t get their accounts frozen for no reason. No agency wanted to be involved in such high-profile cases and when they were, I was certain they would follow all the rules. Something outside of the rules was going on with my life at the moment and I needed all the help possible to figure it out.

  “Okay, sit down, tell me what’s going on,” Dick Anderson, my lawyer, said as I walked into his office.

  I went over everything with Dick, and the private investigator came in and filled him in on the other details I hadn’t learned yet. My life was an absolute disaster and neither man could figure out what had started it all or how we were going to get my accounts unfrozen.

  “You haven’t received any notices in the mail regarding your accounts being seized?” Mr. Anderson asked.

  “Seized? What do you mean seized? Holly hell, is the government going to take all my money? What’s going on here, Dick? I’ve done nothing. I’m not guilty of anything, except maybe a little stupidity. Billy, tell him what you found out about the official investigation.”

  “Yeah, it’s not official, as far as I can tell. From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s something more personal. I’ll need access to someone at your bank to confirm who froze the accounts, though.”

  “Is your brokerage account connected to the bank?”

  “Yeah, it’s connected to my savings account,” I said.

  “Well, at least that solves a little bit of this. It all seems to originate at the bank, or at least that’s one of the big areas we need to look.”

  As Billy and Dick started to coordinate their attack, I sat quietly and let them work. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but I was becoming more and more confident that it was going to come out very soon.

  “Hey, guys, my ex-wife is calling; I’m going to take this out in the hall,” I said when Rose’s number popped up on my screen.

  “Hi, Brandon. I hate to bother you but I’ve got some forms I need you to fill out before I get married next month.”

  “Sure, what are they about?”

  “I’m not sure, just some stuff that Carlos and his lawyer put together. You can come get them and have your attorney take a look, if you like. I think it’s about stock options or something.”

  “Stock options?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “You’ll have to look at it. You know I’m not technical like you are.”

  “Sure, I’ll come grab them later today. I’ve got to run for now.”

  “What was that all about?” Dick asked when I returned.

  “I’m not sure. Rose said she needed me to sign something before she married Carlos. Do you have any idea what it is?”

  “She probably wants to keep her alimony. It’s no big deal; I’ll take a look at it. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. Billy has the bank on the line and they need to confirm your identity before they will answer any questions.”

  “Sure, but I was on with them before and they weren’t very helpful,” I took the phone from Billy and flipped it to speaker. “This is Brandon Baker; what do you need to verify?”

  The woman was nice enough, but she went on and on with verification questions for at least five minutes before she would actually answer anything we had to ask. It was comical to me how hard it was for me to get information about my own account, considering how easily someone seemed to be able to block my account.

  “Mr. Baker, your account was flagged for fraud last week; is that correct?”

  “Yes, but it was a misunderstanding with my ex-wife. Everything was straightened out.”

  “Okay, well, it appears an outside agency has frozen your accounts. They accessed them through your credit cards. So, you could start by looking for who had access to your card ending in zero-two-seven-eight.”

  “Wait, so it’s fraudulently frozen and you can’t unfreeze it?”

  “At this point, I’m going to ask for an investigation because I can’t tell who has actually activated the freeze. Normally if it was activated by a court order or government agency, we would have that legal document on file. So, from what I’m seeing, it appears to be an illegal freeze.”

  “Great, so you can fix it?” Dick asked.

  “No, sir. I can ask for it to be investigated.”

  “So, you think it is frozen by an illegal means, yet you won’t unfreeze any of his accounts?” Billy asked. “How long will it take for your investigation?”

  “Three to five weeks.”

  All three of us burst into laughter at the same time. The bank was practically admitting that some
illegal person had frozen my accounts, yet they were in absolutely no hurry to fix the problem or offer me any sort of timely assistance.

  “So what should Mr. Baker do for money until the time that your bank can verify this is a fake freeze?”

  “You are welcome to come in and open up a line of credit if you’d like. I see you are a loyal customer and we’d be happy to extend the credit to you while this is getting straightened out.”

  “Fine, I will come down right away,” I said grumpily. “How long will it take to get the funds from the loan?”

  “Oh, you will get them right away, after the loan has been processed, which only takes forty-eight hours. But it is the weekend coming up, too, so I’d estimate it will be processed by Tuesday.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked at Dick in search of some sort of answer to this issue, but he only shrugged his shoulders. I was at the mercy of the bank and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. One thing I knew for sure, though: when this mess was figured out, I would be switching my accounts to a different bank. The security at this one was horrible.

  “Thank you for your help,” I managed to muster before hanging up. “You know, I haven’t used that credit card for anything in a long time. Oh wait, I did use it,” I said as I pulled the account up on my phone. “I used it to join Dating the Rich.”

  “Is that the only place you’ve used it?”

  “Yep, I think so.”

  “Weren’t you dating a girl from there? Josh said there was some trouble with you and her,” Billy asked and I felt the blood rushing from my extremities to my heart.

  “Yeah,” I responded. “She’s pissed at me and not returning calls.”

  “Just playing devil’s advocate again: is it possible she is an identity thief?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s look at what we have going on here. Your problems started after you met her. The bank has evidence that the attack on your accounts originated from the credit card you have on file with her company. And, she’s suddenly disappeared from your life?”