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

by Laila Kelly

  “Well, I’m an only child and my parents opened up the flower shop that I now run, Flower’s Flowers. My parents ran the shop for thirty years all the way up until my mother passed away a few years ago, and then my dad got sick,” she whispered. Things in their conversation had already taken a left turn and it hadn’t even been an hour yet. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you mind telling me what his condition is?” She looked over at him and saw genuine concern in his eyes. Usually when she went out on dates and she brought up her father, it ended things pretty quickly. No one wants to be with someone who’s caring for a sick parent so young, but she didn’t see the familiar look on Graham’s face. “Um, he has frontotemporal dementia, which is basically similar to Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s caused by a mutation of some of his genes.” Joleigh decided against going into more detail about her dad’s condition. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Graham whispered. She looked over at him and smiled. At least he said something. It’s never easy to find the right words to say in response to something like that.

  Joleigh stared out the window and pointed to the other side of the street, hoping that their conversation would take a turn for the more lighthearted. “You need to turn right,” and Graham out on his turning signal while he merged into the right lane. “You’re driving pretty well for someone who isn’t from Atlanta,” Joleigh looked at him, giving him a look of approval, and then looking out the window. “Why thank you, Miss Everett,” he chuckled. She watched as they rode down the familiar rode to her favorite ice cream shop in Atlanta. “The traffic in Houston is just about as bad as it is here in Atlanta, but I can see that you all have a lot more to offer than we do in Texas,” Graham slowed down as they came to a road block. “Oh really?” Joleigh looked over and watched as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and placed it in one of the cup holders. “Have you ever been to Houston before?” Graham turned towards Joleigh. She looked down at her watch and saw that it was 5:30, they would be sitting there for a while. “No, I haven’t. I’ve actually never been to Texas at all,” she looked at all of the cars around them and wondered how even with four lanes on each side that it still wasn’t enough to accommodate all of the people in Atlanta. “Well it’s kind of similar to Atlanta, so I imagine if you like it here, you might like it out there. Let me guess, because it’s 5:30 p.m. we won’t be making much progress for another few minutes?” they both laughed. “I guess afternoon traffic is universal,” Joleigh shook her head and looked out the window. His green eyes peering into her, locking their gazes with one another. Joleigh felt her cheeks getting red and ran her fingers through her hair and looked down. She wasn’t used to being looked at the way that Graham was looking at her. It was like he was studying her, and she didn’t know what he saw.

  “Why do you look down so much?” he reached over and placed his hand on her arm for a brief moment before traffic moved an inch and he placed both hands back onto the wheel. She glanced over at him and then looked back down into her lap. “What do you mean?” She didn’t know that he had noticed that about her, or that he had been looking at her the entire time that they’d been in the car together. Clearly, he was an observant man, something that she definitely wasn’t used to. “Right there, why do you look down so much?” Joleigh looked up at the stand still traffic and pondered on his question. After a few moments of thought she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really have a reason why,” she sighed, “I guess it’s just more of a habit than anything.” The traffic inched them closer and closer to their exit as she looked out the window. “I mean I know that you have some very interesting pants on, and they look a lot better than I do, but please don’t hurt my feelings too bad by not even looking at me,” Graham smiled at her. His cheeky comments reminded her of how she felt when cute boys would talk to her when she was in high school. Joleigh peeked over at him and blushed. “I’m sorry,” she paused and laughed. “I’m not going to lie, I feel really nervous about all this,” her voice shaking a little. She wrapped her fingers around the handles of her purse and brought it closer to her body.

  His face scrunched a bit, “How come? Is there anything that I can do to make you feel a little more comfortable?” She looked at the car in front of them and looked back over at him, catching him staring at her. His face frowned and he gripped the steering wheel. “Well, I’m going to be completely honest with you, I spent a little bit of time before this afternoon looking at your profiles online, and I’m a little struck, so that didn’t help the fact that you had asked me out this morning. It usually takes me a few days to mentally prepare for a date,” Joleigh felt her face getting hot and could already tell that the embarrassment that she felt inside was written all over her face. She didn’t expect to tell him that she had been stalking him online this morning, but she did feel better about not telling him that ever since she found out his name, she’d been doing research on him. Curse her tendency to talk too much when she was nervous. Joleigh didn’t have one clue of what she was doing sitting in a car that was number one on Houston’s most wealthy and valuable list. He looked blankly at her and shook his head before bursting out into laughter, laughing and laughing while he slapped the steering wheel. Joleigh felt her face getting redder and redder, Joleigh pouted. The embarrassment meter in her head had reached the highest level that it could go and if she could evaporate and vanish out the window she would. “What’s so funny, Graham?” he shook his head, wiping a tear out of the corner of his eye. “I thought that I was the only one that did that, and now that I know that I’m not, I feel a whole lot better about it,” he took another deep breath, finishing his laughing fit. “What do you mean?” Joleigh looked at him confused.

  Graham looked at her sheepishly and grinned, “I kind of did the same thing a while ago on you, and then I did it again when you agreed to go on this date with me,” Joleigh widened her eyes and they both burst out into laughter. “I kind of looked you up when my private investigator was trying to find the shop that my mother had ordered flowers from. When I saw your face on the front of the website, I just knew that I wanted to know more about you. I can’t believe that we both looked each other up online. I guess that’s what dating is like in 2019,” Graham shook his head, grinned and pulled forward as traffic inched along. Joleigh shrugged her shoulders and held up her hands. “I guess that’s what happens when you’re dating nowadays. You find out their name and then you look them up online before you go out on a date to see if you’re going to be wasting your time or not.” Graham nodded his head in agreement, “So from what you saw about me online, what conclusions did you come to about me?” Joleigh pursed her lips, not wanting to spill all the beans on all that she had seen, and certainly not wanting him to know that she spent the better part of her morning trying to learn all that she could about him.

  “Well, when I looked at your Facebook profile, I saw that you went to Baylor University, and that you like a lot of football pages, but you aren’t really that active. I did see that you were tagged in a lot of posts from people that I assume are your friends, so from those things I came to the conclusion that you weren’t a crazy person and that going out on a date with you wouldn’t be a bad idea after all,” he nodded his head, looking over at her and smiling and making goofy faces at her while she spoke. She playfully shoved him, “What on earth are you smiling so much about?” before she burst out into laughter. Her sides began to hurt at how much she was laughing. She didn’t realize that it had been as long as it had since she’d had a good time without worrying about her father or the flower shop.

  “I can’t help but to smile when I’m around such a beautiful woman,” she blushed and shoved him again. “Oh, stop it, you’re making me blush,” she whispered. “Then I guess I’m doing my job.” They both watched as the sea of red lights lit up the roads as far as they could see them. “What else did you see about me?” Graham asked, placing his foot on the break and turning towards Joleigh. She sat quietly for a moment, wondering how much of what she saw that she needed to tell
him. “From what I saw I can see that you’re doing very well in your business, and that you’re quite the figure out there in Houston,” she left the fact out that she knew that he was a big fat billionaire. He smiled and tilted his head back onto the headrest. “I guess you could say that those things are true,” Graham teased. The gleam in his eyes mesmerized Joleigh, and for the first time, she didn’t feel like she needed to look away. She felt comfortable enough to get lost in his eyes, anticipating where they would take her if she dared to get lost in them.

  “Well, if they are true, then tell me a little more about yourself. You know, the kinds of things that I wouldn’t know from scrolling through your empty social media pages and looking at the multiple news articles written about you,” Joleigh asked in a curious tone. Graham smiled slightly. “It’s a lot,” he warned, and Joleigh waved her hand, “That’s okay, most of us have long

  stories. It’s just your luck that I’m looking to hear a good one tonight, and I have good reason to believe that yours will be a good one.”

  Graham held up his hands, “Then you’re in luck as well. It all started when I was adopted at two days old by my parents Allen and Sarah Brentwood. I’ve lived in Texas my whole life, mostly in Piney Point, which is a suburb a few minutes outside of Houston, right about the same amount of distance between Flowery Branch and Atlanta. I grew up on a ranch, but when I was in the third grade my family sold it and we moved to a more “esteemed home”, my mother’s words not mine,” he rolled his eyes in a silly manner that sent Joleigh into another bout of laughter. Graham continued, “That’s the house that my mother still stays in to this day. I have a younger sister named Sophia, and she’s also adopted, but not from the same biological parents. Funny thing is, we look exactly like each other to the point that people thought that we were twins when we were growing up. She used to practice law, but since she got engaged to her fiancé Collin, she’s stalled on her law and now she spends the majority of her time preparing for their wedding this winter,” he looked over to see if Joleigh was still listening. He knew that he could get into a long rhythm of talking and tend to bore people, but she sat there hanging onto every word that he spoke.

  “Keep going,” she nudged, and he inched through traffic a bit more. He looked down at his watch and wondered how much longer they would be sitting in the same spot. “I spent most of my time growing up either playing sports, or spending time with my father at his business. He owned a construction company,” Joleigh nodded her head and interjecting, “We’re going to be taking the exit after this one, so merge into the next lane,” and then waving for him to continue. “I spent a lot of my weekends either at football or wrestling practice or at my dad’s office. I feel like when I was there, I was learning a lot more than I learned when I was in college. In my opinion, I feel like my father was the ultimate businessman, and I can one hundred percent attribute my success to being his son.” He stopped talking and merged into the next lane. Joleigh grabbed her necklace and watched the sun light the sky in variations of pinks, reds and oranges, thinking about what Graham was telling her.

  She had never met someone who relished in the thoughts of their father. It was the same way that she felt about her father. “That’s really beautiful, Graham. I can remember when I was younger, I would pick weeds out of the yard to make miniature flower arrangements so I could make beautiful ones like my mother did while she was at the shop. I felt so good about myself when she would tell me how beautiful they were and how I would grow to make big ones like her. Now that I look back on it, I imagined that they were quite horrendous. They were basically, a bouquet of dandelions and lambsquarters, but it made me feel good and I truly believe that’s why I am here today, because my mother encouraged me and harbored my talents. I can’t say that for a lot of my friends’ parent’s, but I am ever so grateful that I had the two that I had.” They both laughed at the thought of Joleigh’s first floral arrangements and a comfortable silence fell between them as they assimilated into the flow of traffic.

  “Where’s the next turn after I get off on the exit?” Graham looked over at Joleigh, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Oh, sorry, you’re going to be making the first right turn when you get off, and then we’re going to ride for about a mile and a half and then the ice cream shop will be on our right. Parking is really easy, its right there on the street so we don’t have to make too many twists and turns for parking,” Joleigh wiggled around in her seat, finding herself more and more comfortable around Graham. “So, what else was interesting about your childhood?” Joleigh pried. “How did the Graham Brentwood that’s sitting next to me get to where he is today?” he cracked a smile that electrically transmitted one to Joleigh’s face.

  “I think it was in the tenth grade that I decided that I wanted to be like my father in every way. I wanted to own my own construction company like my father, but one of the things that he always instilled into my sister and I is that he wanted us to do better than he and my mother did, so I decided that I would have a construction company and then also own a real estate company to go alongside it. So, I brought the idea to my father and he thought it was brilliant. Ever since then, all my spare money went into the bank so I could buy my first couple of houses when I got into college, and the rest was basically history,” Graham got quiet and Joleigh looked over at him, a questioning look in her face. “Why’d you stop talking?” a frown forming. “Sorry, I just didn’t want to bore you with talking about my business. I felt like I was about to get on a tangent, it’s something that happens a lot when I get on the subject of business. I just drone on and on and I want this to feel like a date, not an internship interview,” he chuckled. Joleigh laughed and touched his arm, sending chills up her own spine. She quickly removed her hand and placed it back in her lap.

  “No it doesn’t feel like that, I mean, if you talk about something a lot then it means a lot to you and if your business means that much to you then I would love to hear all about it,” she smiled and Graham nodded his head, “You’re right, I guess I’ll continue then,” Joleigh turned her body to him and propped her head on her arm and the console. “So, I started buying a few houses here and there in Waco to turn into student housing, and to make a long story short, I graduated, and I mirrored my construction business after the one that my father had built and later on sold. He managed a few of my properties while I finished my bachelor’s degree and when I began my master’s. He helped me out a lot and that’s something that I will always cherish, especially since he’s no longer here with us,” Graham’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.

  The subject of death wasn’t an easy one for Joleigh, with the death of her mother still fresh in her mind. Her death was something that Joleigh hadn’t fully dealt with, especially when she had the flower shop and her father to take care of. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your mother like?” she wanted to switch the subject before things got too deep and she ended up in tears. That was a sure-fire way to ruin a good first date, by crying her eyes out before they actually got to their destination.

  “My mom’s a character for sure,” Graham laughed, “She’s the type of person that tells you exactly what’s on her mind and sometimes it doesn’t always translate to well, even though she means well most of the time. Being raised by my mother definitely gave me a tough skin. She was definitely the harder of my parents on my sister and I,” Joleigh nodded her head and wondered what it would have been like for her to have her own siblings. Even though she and Amber were practically raised together, and she had a brother and sister, it was always something that crossed her mind.

  “What was it like growing up with a younger sibling?” she asked. Graham pulled up to the ice cream shop and parallel parked into the first spot. “It was actually really nice. My sister, Sophia, takes after our mother a lot in terms of how she is. Very spunky and full of life, but very serious about everything for sure. You should see her now that she’s in the last ninety days of her wedding planning. She’s
wound up so tight you would think that she was preparing for the biggest trial of her career. Everything has to be exactly perfect and I think it’s quite hilarious to watch her stress over the difference between ivory and crème,” Graham laughed in the most cute but menacing way. It reminded Joleigh of how Amber’s brother picked at her.

  She reached over and lightly shoved Graham’s shoulder, “Hey! Leave her alone. I mean it’s every girl’s dream to be able to plan her perfect wedding and you want every detail to be absolutely perfect, so if half of your décor is ivory and the other half is crème its most certainly a big deal,” she laughed. Graham grabbed her hand and ran his fingers over her knuckles. Another shock ran through her body and she knew that Graham felt it too, because he pulled back his hand. Joleigh pursed her lips and looked down at her purse on the floor. This was certainly something new to her. Feeling so attracted to someone that she just met. There was no denying the electricity that was in the air when they brushed past each other. She was almost sure that if there was any more electricity between them that her hair would begin to stand up on the top of her head.

  “There is one thing that I can say about my parents is that they were truly in love, and that was an amazing feeling to have when you’re growing up as a child. It made everything that went on in our lives much easier to cope with,” Joleigh looked over at him and smiled. “That’s beautiful. I guess that’s one thing that we have in common. My parents were high school sweethearts who got married after college. My dad would write my mother letters every other day even though they lived down the street from each other. It was their little thing and he would write her little letters and leave them all over the house all the way until she passed away two years ago,” Joleigh felt a lump forming in her throat and she looked back down into her lap, willing herself not to cry. “Wow, that’s definitely some old school romance,” Graham paused and reached over to touch her hand. “And I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” she glanced over and smiled weakly. If anyone knew how painful it was to talk about the death of a parent, it was Graham.