Page 3 of Date The Billionaire

He had! Tony had managed to get me on a television dating show. He was so going to have to die!

Chapter Two

Jake

I shuffled through a list of things I had to do in the next couple of days and ignored the tone from my smart phone telling me I had another email. It was only a message from a dating website my gran had signed me up for. Women knew I had money after a little online research and were only interested in me for my bank account. Gran meant well, but all those women sending me naked pictures, offering to do anything for me, didn’t turn me on. Besides, I knew they really wanted my wallet, not me.

“Jake, are you down there, my boy?” I heard Gran at the top of the stairs and walked up to see what she needed.

“What’s up, Gran?” I pushed my dark brown hair out of my eyes and peered at her. The long length of my hair irritated her, and she sometimes walked around trying to cut it with a pair of scissors without me noticing. I’d been keeping it tied up in a protective bun since I’d moved back in with her, but hadn’t bothered with it today. The tight buns always gave me a headache. Maybe it was time to cut it.

“It’s so nice to be able to see those green eyes without all of that hair in the way. Why don’t you let me cut a little off, Jake?” Gran turned away, waving her hand at me to follow.

“I might one day but not today. What may I help you with?” I grinned at her as she turned around and gave me a speculative look.

“You sassing me, boy?” She watched me and my grin deepened.

“Would I do that, Gran?” I blinked my eyes innocently.

“Of course, you would! Listen, I got some news in the mail today. Have a seat.” She indicated a chair at the table next to the large window in the kitchen. The top of the walnut table was covered in papers, bottles of herbal supplements, and a small television she used to watch her game shows on. Gran wasn’t one for technology, and now that she was older she didn’t move around the house as much as she used to.

The table had always been her favorite place, even when I was a child. She’d taken me in after my parents died in a house fire, and I owed her the world. I’d moved back in with her recently, the need for privacy tantamount after I’d made my first billion dollars from my tech company and people started crawling out of the woodwork begging for money.

I’d been raised by a woman who loved the simple life. When she wouldn’t move in with me to a gated house with a security guard, I thought the safest place to be was at her house. That was a great idea until she decided to sign me up to a dating website. How she’d even managed to get on the website, I had no idea, but she’d managed it. The woman didn’t even own an analog cellphone! At least she hadn’t listed my address or my alias. She’d used my real name, Jackson, and that’s why they all thought I was still living in Charlotte, looking for a soul mate. In my business dealings, I used my full name, but in my everyday life, I went by Jake, which is what she tended to call me.

“Now, Jake, I know you may not like this, but, well...” Her words trailed off and she looked out of the window at the house next door for a moment. “Well, you need a woman, son! Or a man, but you need a partner! I guess there’s no better way to say this than to just come out with it. I’ve signed you up for a television dating show. This is the paperwork.”

I rocked back in my chair. The movement of my large, powerful frame made the chair creak ominously. I quickly moved back, leaning my elbows on the table. “You’ve done what now, Gran?”

“Here, look at this. And take your elbows off the table, it’s rude!” She batted at my arms with her frail hands and I did as I was told. She’d never told me why it was considered rude to put your elbows on the table but she always said it was.

I pulled what looked like a thick report over to my side of the table and looked at it with dread. “What have you done now, Gran?”

“Oh, you’re going to die a lonely old man at the rate you’re going, down in that basement, Jake. I thought you could use a little excitement and I might have finagled you into a dating game show.” She was looking at me from the side of her blue eyes, her lips twitching in absolute joy.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Gran loved me and that I loved her. She hadn’t done this to hurt me, and though I really wanted to be angry I couldn’t refuse her. She’d raised me, after all.

“It’s that new one, where they have three men and one’s rich, and nobody else knows but the three men and the show, which one is the rich one. You’ve hidden your status so people won’t realize it’s you, if you play your cards right. They think you’re perfect for the show.” She finally looked at me, her expression revealing her enjoyment at the thought of the game.

“You know this isn’t my idea of fun, right, Gran?” I put the folder back on the table, wishing it would just go away.

So I’d made an absolute fortune with my tech company, that didn’t mean I needed a wife, or even a woman for that matter, did it? I wanted to focus on the projects I had lined up, especially the one that would see teachers providing education to children in remote parts of the world through the use of solar-powered devices made from discarded tablets and phones. People threw away goldmines and didn’t even know it.

“Gran, I just...” I paused as she looked at me with that look only a grandmother can give you, expectations of great things tinged with a slight disappointment that her world was about to cave in as reality dropped a bomb on her. “I don’t know if I have time for this, Gran.”

“Oh, boy, come on. You’re down there in that basement all day long, fiddling with your toys, you have the time!” She smacked the tabletop for emphasis and I winced.

Those “toys” were my phone, tablet, and computer, from which I ran an empire without so much as ever stepping foot into an office. It wasn’t that I was a recluse, I just hated wasting resources, resources that could be saved by not commuting and by holding meetings over the Internet or through video calls.

Forcing air out through my lips I looked at Gran. She looked so hopeful, so pleased with herself, that I just couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to spend weeks being groped by a bevy of beautiful women that only wanted me because they thought I had a lot of money. Gran wanted it though so…

“Alright, fine, as long as I can keep working I’ll do it.” I didn’t even realize I’d talked myself into the whole thing, Gran hadn’t said a word.

“Great! You just need to contact this lady here at this email address and they’ll get everything sorted. Oh, and read the contract.” Gran patted the table this time, as if to apologize for the slap earlier, and went to put some coffee on. I had a feeling I’d need it.

* * *

“Thirty seconds people.” A man with a pair of headphones on and a beard that would do Merlin proud walked past, holding up three fingers to the men gathered in the foyer of the rented mansion.