One Night Bride

by Brooks, Sarah J.

  “If you spent more time with her, then she’d learn to adjust. I think Ashley is just using your love for your daughter to push you away. She literally moved as far away from here as possible to try and keep you from your daughter.”

  “No, come on now. She moved to be near her family. I was working eighty hours a week then and traveling more than I was home. It was the right move for her. She needed help with Izzy when she was young, and her family was there for her.”

  “Her family talked her right out of being with you.”

  “Maybe that was a good thing. We weren’t good together. Before Izzy, we were drugging and partying every day. Ashley stopped when she got pregnant, and I didn’t until a few years ago. At least things broke off before they got too nasty between us,” I said as I grabbed the drone I wanted to show Jacob. “Now take a look at this.”

  I turned the drone on and used my phone to guide it into the hovering position. While at the beach in Florida a few weeks before, I saw a group of guys flying this drone over them while they were surfing. I couldn’t wait to get it back home and see what the guys thought about it.

  “What the heck is it? Some sort of camera drone? There are hundreds of those on the market right now.”

  “No, this one will follow you without having someone control it. See, you put it into the air and have it fix onto a person. Then I can walk around and the drone will stay behind me taking video. I saw some guys surfing, and the drone was following them. Talk about some insane footage, it was epic.”

  “So it doesn’t need someone to control it?”

  “No. It uses facial recognition and will follow you. This is the future, don’t you think?”

  Jacob grabbed the drone out of the air and looked at it for a minute. He was the tech guy of our group, and I valued his opinion on all our technology investments. I found companies based on my gut, but Jacob could find the holes in their processes and equipment that prevented us from wasting our money.

  “I’d need to talk to their engineers, but it looks good. Where are they manufacturing?”

  “Let’s talk about it at the office with the other guys. I don’t want to explain everything twice, but I really wanted you to see it first.”

  “Alright, I’ll see you at the office then. Go take care of that thing,” he said as he pointed at my shorts. “No one wants to see that.”

  “I beg to differ. Cindy might want to see it.” I winked.

  “Devin, Cindy is a lesbian. She definitely doesn’t want to see that.” Jacob laughed as he headed back out to his car.

  Cindy might be a lesbian, but I was pretty sure she swung both ways. She’d been flirting with me about as long as I’d known her. She had been my human resources manager at my tech startup nearly ten years ago, and we both happened to be looking for something to do with ourselves about a year ago. After the sale of my company, I floundered around trying to decide what to do with my newfound money and time; partying took a front seat for a while, but that got old.

  Capital S Investing was started because I had nearly a half billion dollars from the sale of my company and nothing new to do with myself. I started looking into small up and coming companies and helping them out with their funding needs. Soon I’d gather a half dozen other friends that wanted to help these start-ups, and we were now running our own small firm.

  We didn’t meet often – only about one week of the month. The rest of the month we were off researching new companies or just hanging out and enjoying ourselves. During our week in the office, we analyzed the numbers of companies we’d invested in, decided on new investments, and sometimes heard pitches from companies. It felt like a little bit of normal for me, and I liked that. It was the same reason I bought a house in a normal neighborhood, as I didn’t want to be seen as that rich guy who women used for his money.

  Certainly, my house was plenty large enough for me. The neighborhood was an upper class for Chicago with nearly zero crime. I was comfortable leaving my house for weeks at a time and never worried about intruders or crime, although I did keep an alarm system hooked up just in case. Life in Chicago was as close to a normal life as I could hope for.

  When I arrived at the office, everyone was sitting around the conference room laughing and eating lunch. It was nearly noon, but that was our normal starting time. Working all week didn’t mean that any of us liked to wake up early in the morning and come to work. Our typical day went from noon to eight o’clock, and sometimes much later, depending on what projects we were working on.

  “I thought you were in Bali this week?” Cindy said as I walked in.

  “Bali?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you say there was a new surf company out there that you were going to visit?”

  “Shit!” I said as I scrolled through my phone. “Yeah, I’m supposed to look at this board company. Wow, I’m glad you know my schedule so well,” I joked.

  “I’m sure you would have remembered two hours before your flight when your phone alerted you. And you’d probably still make it to your plane.”

  “Yeah, probably,” I laughed at the memory of the two of us running to a plane when we were flying to New York one weekend. We had literally arrived at the airport thirty minutes before the flight and still managed to get through security and onto the plane. It probably didn’t hurt that we had first class tickets, but it still felt like quite the accomplishment.

  “Show them the drone,” Jacob exclaimed. “This thing is going to make us rich.”

  We all laughed at his joke. Every single person in that room was already rich. Most of us had nine figures net worth. All seven of us were there purely because we needed something productive to do with ourselves and wanted to help new companies. But of course, we were business men and women, so making money on the deal was always an important part of the process.

  From the outside, our office didn’t look like the home of seven millionaires, but we technically did most of our work out of the office anyways. The drab walls and boring furniture weren’t at all like the startup companies we worked with, but then again we didn’t care anymore. Our bank accounts were full, and none of us had the need to impress others with fancy office accommodations. We had one employee, Stewart, our accountant. He kept the books looking nice and did most of his work from home. We didn’t have a big social media presence and certainly didn’t advertise. Our purpose was solely to help other companies and our investments in those companies were now our business. Sooner or later, we would need to hire staff, but at the moment we relished the small size of what we were doing and the relative quiet that we had been allowed to work in.

  My old brown office chair squeaked as I got up and lifted the drone into the air to show the group how it worked. At least everything was so old that I didn’t have to worry if I accidentally broke a light fixture during my little demonstration.

  “It has facial recognition and will follow me without the need to control its every move,” I said as I walked around the room. “I saw the founders on the beach, and they had the drone following them while they were surfing. It was friggin amazing.”

  “What’s their production like?” Jacob asked.

  “I’m really not sure of any details. We will need to visit them and start from scratch. They seemed very green, and I think they’ve just been financing with family and friends’ money. We could put some capital behind them with some advertising, and it would blow up rather quickly.”

  “Where are they located?” Chris asked.

  Chris was the youngest of our group and had just left his job at Google. His coding skills were amazing, and he was itching to start his own company soon. I’d convinced him to hang out with us while he got his own thing up and running. His long beard and scruffy hair made him look more like a homeless man than one who had acquired a multimillion dollar portfolio.

  “Florida, do you want to go check them out?” I asked.

  “Sure, I don’t have much going on this month. I’d like to take a look under their
hood and see what type of code they are using.”

  “You know most guys your age are looking under skirts, not coding hoods,” Sergei laughed.

  “Skirts ain’t going to make me rich.”

  “Very true, but they have their own benefits.”

  Sergei was happily married but loved to give the rest of us a hard time when it came to women. He and his wife had known each other since they were children, and their family had arranged their marriage while they were in college. It didn’t seem like a good way to start a life together, to me, but Sergei was happy so who was I to say anything?

  “Thanks, Chris, send out an email after your visit, and we can see if we can set up a meeting with them. I’m not even sure how much they might need in capital, so find out the details while you’re there please.”

  “Will do.”

  My phone started ringing, and I noticed it was Ashley. If she was calling, I had to answer it. She hardly ever called me unless our daughter had been hurt or Ashley needed more money for something. In fact, I hadn’t actually talked to Ashley in nearly a year; instead, she had sent a few text messages, and her parents had been there when I went to drop off Izzy’s Christmas presents.

  “Hey Ashley, give me just a second,” I said as I put the call on mute. “I’ve got to take this. Edward, will you go ahead with your presentation on the company from the last month?”

  “Sure thing Devin,” he said as I left the room.

  “What’s up? Is Izzy alright?”

  “What? What do you mean?” Ashley said with slurred speech. “I’m not calling about Izzy. I’m calling about what you did to me. You made me love you and then forced me to leave. You made me like this.”

  “Ashley, what’s going on? Are you alright?” I asked as I became worried.

  “I’m not alright. I’m stuck raising a daughter alone while you bone every skirt you see. You don’t deserve to party all the time, and I am forced to be responsible. That’s bullshit.”

  “Where’s Izzy at?” I asked. “Are you drunk?”

  “She’s at school stupid. If you were involved in her life, you’d know she goes to school.”

  “Ashley, are you home? Can I call your parents for you? Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine; you’re not calling anyone. I just wanted you to know what a mess you’ve made of everything.”

  “I’m sorry things didn’t turn out between us. I’d be happy to be more involved in Izzy’s life, but you said you didn’t think it was good for her. Do you want me to come and get her? I could have her live with me in Chicago for the school year if that would help you?”

  “No! You’re not taking her from me. You just don’t want to pay me what you owe for her. I’m not giving her up just so you can keep all that money for yourself.”

  It was clear that Ashley wasn’t as sober as I thought she had been. Her slurred words and belligerent tone of voice reminded me why we were no longer together. She wasn’t a nice drunk, which was something I remembered very well.

  “I don’t care about the money, Ashley. I really would like to build a relationship with Izzy. She only sees me twice a year, and anytime I call you’re always telling me she isn’t around.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Do you want to know how the story continues? Click here to read the whole story plus 4 more hot and exciting billionaire romance novels (FREE with Kindle Unlimited!)!

  About the Author

  Sarah has been writing since she was 16 years old and has published multiple Amazon bestselling books. No matter if her heroes are Billionaires, Bad Boys or both - she loves to write about hot and sexy alpha males, who are protective and sometimes bossy, as well as the women they crave. Her exciting stories are always steamy, with a lot of twists and turns and a guaranteed HEA that leaves you satisfied after a wild ride - just like it should be in the bedroom, you know?

  Sarah loves to travel the world, because new places always inspire her. Right now she enjoys time in Europe while writing new books.

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