A Brilliant Arrangement: A Sweet Billionaire Love Story (Falling for the Billionaire Book 1)

by Laila Kelly

  On the way to the construction site, he passed by a playground and saw a family of three having a picnic by the pond. His heart contracted and he looked away quickly. From the outside in, it seemed as though Graham Brentwood had everything that he could ever want, except for the fact that he didn’t. One of the things that he wanted the most was to have a family of his own to go home to every night and live out the rest of his life with. A family that depended on him and that he could share all of his life’s experiences with. He wondered what it would be like to wake up to the sound of his children playing or looking at his wife cooking in the kitchen when he came home. But there was just one thing standing in his way before he could have his own family. One hurdle that he just couldn’t quite get over. The empty feeling in his chest made his heartbeat feel like a rattle in a cage.

  Graham knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get to it, but the roadblocks that surrounded it made him stop in his tracks every time. But not this time, not anymore. What he wanted was to discover who his biological family was, so that he could get some sort of closure before starting his own family. The unknown haunted him at night, making it easier for him to stay awake and work late into the night and wake up early in the morning instead of resting. He didn’t want any distractions in his way when it came to being a husband and a father, and the unknown would be the very thing that would unravel his carefully thought out plan. And going out on wild goose chases trying to find out who and where he came from would get in the way of that. Until he got that under control, he had to wait. At least that’s what he told himself at night.

  The only problems were that he didn’t want to not tell his sister, Sophia, and his mother what he was doing. He didn’t want it to come as a surprise to them that he had formed a relationship with his biological family, and the way that he wanted to go about it would certainly come to them as a shock. It had already been too many distractions that he and his family had to deal with and adding another heavy emotional dynamic was the last thing that he wanted to do to them. First, it was his father passing away, then his mother got sick, and now Sophia is getting married. The timing just never seemed to be right for him to begin his journey.

  He shook the idea of the stress of telling his mother and sister what he wanted out of his head and decided that at some point in your life you have to do what’s best for you, and other times you have to care more for the people that are around you. Graham turned down the volume on the radio, noticing that the sports newscaster was doing more yelling about football than actually talking about the game itself. He didn’t need any more extra noise going on in his head, and passionate sports announcers easily fell into the category of noise. The drive from his headquarters in downtown Houston to the newest construction site giving him enough time to clear his mind and regroup his thoughts and get back to the tunnel vision focus that garnered him the business success he had always wanted.

  The trip from his office in Houston to the construction site in Piney Point is supposed to take twenty minutes, but Graham completed it in less than fifteen. One of his lesser attractive habits and favorite hobbies was speeding. He always told himself that one day he would slow down, but for now, he didn’t find it necessary. Something about the way that the wind pushed against the truck when he shot down the road intrigued him. When he arrived at the site, the construction foreman looked up and immediately walked over to his car. His foremen knew to expect his arrival at any moment’s notice which kept them at their highest levels of productivity at all times, never knowing when he was going to show up.

  “Mr. Brentwood, how are you today?” Leon waved, getting closer to the truck, “I’m doing well, how about yourself?” Graham stuck his foot out of the door, the crunch of pavement and gravel munching beneath him. The sound was music to his ears. Leon shrugged and held his hands up in the air, “I’m having a great day, boss. My wife told me this morning that we're going to be having our first baby,” the excitement showed all across his face. Graham patted him on the back, “Congratulations, man, I’m happy to hear that!” Graham loved seeing the people around him happy and healthy, and kids were his favorite. “Thank you, sir, I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s all I can think about now. Since I heard the news, I’ve had so much energy,” his walk with a little more of an enthusiastic pep.

  The construction site was exactly as Graham expected it to be and his projections for where he wanted the site to be at were better than he expected. He beamed like a proud father at how far they had come. They were already working on their fourth house and the first house had already received its first offer. Things were going smoothly, and his plans were coming to life right before his very eyes, and for now, this was Graham’s child. This was one of the most exciting parts of the process to him. “Well, in your opinion, how’s the construction plan going?” Graham asked Leon as they walked down the newly finished sidewalk. Leon looked around at all of the things happening around them. There were guys carrying palettes to the lots they were working on next, new foundations being laid on either side of the street, and the roofers completing their work on the houses up for sale.

  “In my opinion, boss, things are going extremely well here. This was an easy site to work on, and this is definitely a good area to put a new subdivision up. Piney Point is a wealthy and growing area, so people will want to move here. Wealth attracts other wealth,” Graham nodded. He knew the area well, it was where he grew up, and that was one of the reasons that he purchased the land. “The guys have been working very hard to get things done on their projected schedule times without going too fast that we create more problems for ourselves and you in the future.” Leon was right. This was one of the best construction teams that his company had. They were fast, but they were also smooth and efficient. There is no point in going too fast because the mistakes that you’ll make in doing so will cost everyone more money in the end and if there was one thing that Graham hated more than anything, were mistakes that cost him money. “Only perfect practice makes perfect,” a Vince Lombardi quote that’s plastered all across his office, house, car, and this construction site. It’s on the side of every truck that his company had. Seeing it all the time means that it would eventually become a part of the ethos of the people around it. His sister Sophia’s love for reading productivity and self-help books did come with the advantages of him being able to get the synthesized version of what she learned, and him immediately being able to put it to use in his own company.

  He thought about his sister and smiled. She was one of the most successful women in the state of Texas, and for them to have both been adopted from different parts of the country, and being three years apart, people always think that they’re twins. Just like telepathy, his phone rang, and it was his sister. “Excuse me for a moment, Leon,” and Leon walked back across the street to help the guys get ready to get onto the backhoe, watching him drive off carefully. “Hey big brother, are you busy?” her sweet voice came through the phone and he knew she was excited by how fast she was talking. Any time she got excited about something her words came out a thousand words per minute and if you want to know what she was saying, you practically had to catch them. Sophia just came back from a trip to Cabo with her friends for her bachelorette party, and he already knew that she wanted to fill him in on every single detail of the trip.

  Graham was more than excited to see his sister finally with a man that could love and appreciate her as she should be. Collin was a pretty straight guy, quiet, smart and rich, just like their mother wanted for her. He treated her like a queen, and Sophia never had anything but good things to say about him. Not that she would have to say too much if he were to mistreat her. Graham would make sure that he was eliminated from this earth, effective immediately. Not that the threat of a painful, and untimely death were the only reasons that Collin was good to Sophia.

  “How was your trip? I saw the pictures on Instagram, and it looked like you all had a great time,” he scrolled down her timeline of her
and her friends at various spas, eating dinner, going out to clubs and of course shopping for the last three days, and there were still pictures that he hadn’t seen yet. With the number of pictures that she posted, he wondered did she have a dedicated photographer to capture these moments. “It was great! We had an amazing time, but I’m definitely glad to be home. The wedding is ten weeks from now and we are definitely in the home stretch. This is the time where we either have an amazing wedding day, or it all gets shot to hell as it goes up in sparkly flames.” The drama in her voice made Graham laugh, but he knew that she was dead serious. If he’d never realized it before, weddings take a lot of preparation, especially for something that’s going to last for less than five hours. Either way, the amount of time that it takes to prepare for a wedding has all but consumed Sophia to the point to where she’s put scaling her lingerie line and her legal career on hold until after the wedding in December.

  “You do know I’m very serious about this Graham,” a hint of joking annoyance in her voice, “Yes, ma’am I do. I fully understand how important this wedding is for you. It’s equally as important to me, too,” he said with a laugh. He loved his sister and would go to any length to make and keep her happy. It was what their dad would’ve wanted as well. If anything, Graham was most excited to see his sister’s hard work pay off. A Texas Christmas wedding would definitely be an exciting change from the usual beach destination weddings that he’d been forced to attend with his sister and Collin all year long. What was it with rich people and weddings on exotic beaches or in Paris? He thought to himself.

  He shrugged off the thought and continued to listen to Sophia talk about the flowers that she wanted at her wedding, and he made a mental note to look up the flowers she was talking about English Primrose, winter jasmine and hellebore. He saw a relator drive up with some potential homebuyers and his attention shifted, “Hey sis, I need to get off the phone, but I’ll call you back tonight,” the urgency in his voice mimicking hers when she first got on the phone. “Ok brother, oh I remember why I needed to call you. I got a letter back from that private investigator, he found out who my birth mother is and brought me over a packet of information about her this morning when I got back home,” she sounded less excited than when she first had gotten on the phone. He was happy for her, but the news stopped him dead in his tracks like a bullet to the head.

  Sophia had already found who her birth mother was? He thought that was impossible to do so quickly. Their mother told them that both of their adoptions were done through an agency and were closed, never to be given any information of who they were or where they came from. Of course, he couldn’t be too shocked. Money can open doors that were once thought to be sealed, especially when you had a lot of it. When they turned eighteen, they both agreed that they wouldn’t go down that emotional rabbit hole that tracking down their birth parents would be, but when Sophia and Collin got engaged and decided that they would like to start a family shortly after getting married they decided that she should find out who her birth parents are. Collin had concerns about what kind of health concerns their future children could have, or things that Sophia could be predisposed to and a carrier of without her knowing it. It was a smart thing to do, especially when you can’t just ask the people who raised you because you don’t have the same genetic makeup. Yet, it still shocked him that she was actually serious about finding out who her birth mother was. Besides the reasons that Collin had given her, she had never shown any interest in it herself. “Well, who is she?” he asked, trying to seem calm about the situation when inside his stomach felt like it was on fire and he felt like his chest was tightening up. God, he hoped Sophia’s news hadn’t given him a heart attack.

  “Some woman named Charlotte Turner from Phoenix City,” she sounded aloof, and it took him off guard. He thought when she finally found out that she would have shown a little more emotion. She just threw it into the end of their conversation like it was the weather forecast for tomorrow. “Well, how do you feel about that?” Graham asked slowly, not knowing what to expect from her. “Ehh, I feel fine. Now I just need to send him out there to see if she’ll give him a copy of her medical records, and if she knows of any known diseases that run in her family, and if she can give me the name and information of my biological father and that’s it.” She sounded like she read those things off an itemized sticky note of things to do. “That’s it? You aren’t going to try to make contact with her yourself?” Graham walked past the relator and the young couple on the sidewalk and hopped into his truck. “Oh of course not. I’ve had a great life with the parents that I do have, and I’m pretty sure there was a logical reason she felt like she wouldn’t be able to raise me to the best of her ability. Therefore, the answer is no. I already have a mother, our mother, and our father is dead. I don’t need another mom, dad, or any other family,” she replied curtly. Graham was in shock at how distant she was from the knowledge of finding out who her birth mother is.

  If it were him, he would’ve been ecstatic to know who his biological mother was and have the same opportunity, but Sophia wasn’t. “I mean there’s no reason that I would be doing this aside from preparing for my future with Collin. This isn’t some expedition for my emotional wellbeing. I’m completely good with where I am in my life and being raised by Mom and Dad was definitely a blessing. Don’t you think so, Graham?” Sophia questioned. He didn’t have any doubt in his mind that being raised by his parents was the biggest blessing that he could’ve ever received on this side of heaven, but the thought did cross his mind who he came from biologically. It wasn’t a thought that frequented his mind, but when it came, it always left a dark cloud on his mood.

  “Yeah, I agree with you,” his words starting to feel heavy with emotion, “but I’ll definitely speak with you later on today. I need to get back to the site,” Graham’s mind shifted back to the focus at hand. Tunnel vision as he liked to call it. It was the only way to ensure success in this world, by minimizing the emotional side of life and compartmentalizing it until later. “Sure!” the pep in Sophia’s voice returned, “I’ll talk to you later, love you!” and the phone beeped three times letting him know that she’d hung up.

  “Tunnel vision,” he thought to himself, and hopped back out the truck and headed over to Leon. “Sorry about that. Family stuff.” Leon nodded in understanding and walked down the sidewalk beside him, “Back to these new lots, have the ones that the foundations not been laid yet, do they have an estimated time of when they will be done?” Graham was a lot taller than Leon, and his regular stride caused Leon to practically run beside him, flipping through the clipboard for the answer to his question. “According to the plan, it says that all of the foundations should be laid before the middle of November. We’re trying to make sure that we have the foundations completed before it starts to get cooler outside,” Graham nodded, calculating the amount of time that it would take for all of the foundations to be laid and when the majority of the houses would be completed. “Good, good. Have there been any problems that you all have run into since beginning the project?” It was important to ask the people who worked at the site every day if they were experiencing any problems on the site.

  If he left that question up to the people who worked from the main offices and came by the sites every few weeks, he’d constantly be handling problems that snowballed out of control. He needed to ask the people who walked the grounds every day. They were always the most upfront and honest people to hear the truth from. Leon grabbed the pencil from behind his ear while pondering on the question, “No sir, none that I can think of. This has been one of the smoothest sites to work on, so far.” Graham knocked on the imaginary piece of wood in his mind, hoping that the project would continue to run as smoothly as it had been so far.

  He felt his stomach growling and it sounded like a huge beast yelling to be let out of its cage. He didn’t eat much since the egg whites and protein shake after his morning workout. He looked at his watch. 1:00 o’clock. Graham looke
d up and saw the rest of the construction crew heading over to their cars to go to lunch, and he decided to follow suit. “Alright Leon, I like what I’m seeing happen here. Continue to keep up the good work and I’ll be back sometime next week to check on the progress.” Leon shook his head and waved at him as he walked off to his truck.

  His keys jangled in his hands as he unlocked the door and climbed into the truck. Man, he loved his truck, despite his mother and sister complaining about it not being the most becoming vehicle for a man in his tax bracket to drive around in every day. He always shrugged them off with the excuse that for one, he was a man in Texas, and it’s downright a cardinal sin for any man in Texas to not own his own pickup truck. Second, he made his living out of the construction company and he wasn’t about to risk the chance of messing up his luxury vehicles at his construction sites. Besides, it was always easier to get a tire changed for his pickup truck than one for his Porsche. That was strictly his weekend and full office day car. Those arguments usually won the two women in his life over.

  As he drove off the construction site and onto the main road, he decided to drive where his hunger led him. With the windows down and the music blasting a low symphony, he found what he wanted. His hunger led him to his favorite burger joint, Tony’s Burgers and Rib Shack. Not the most luxurious place in the world, but the best burgers, ribs, and barbecue sauce that anyone can get on this side of the Mississippi. It was the team favorite after wrestling matches in high school, and one of the few restaurants in town that could fill up a team full of starving teenage boys after a match.