The Belated Billionaire

by Elana Johnson

  “So,” he said, very aware he started a lot of sentences like that. “Do you want to stay?” She had ordered a smoothie. “I mean, I’ll understand if you’d rather just go home and then delete me from your contacts on GBS.”

  He really hoped she wouldn’t stand and storm away, and when she didn’t a bit of hope entered his bloodstream. But not much, because she wasn’t talking either.

  So he would. “I’ve never been re-married,” he said, not quite sure why he started there. “A lot has happened, I suppose, but I stayed in Texas until moving here.”

  “Why’d you come here?” she asked, and Theo was glad her vocal chords had thawed.

  “Business,” he said, which was true, if only partially. He’d heard of the billionaire club here on this island, and he wanted to find out if it really existed. When he’d confirmed the Nine-0 Club—and been invited to join it—he’d left the Lone Star State, somewhere he’d lived for almost fifty years.

  He did miss the sagebrush and the insane football traditions, the barbecue and the threat of hurricanes. But Getaway Bay had tropical storms too, so he supposed that was the same.

  “Something with technology,” she said. “Isn’t that what you messaged me?”

  “Yes,” he said, wondering if he should tell her the whole story now or in little pieces as they continued to see each other. Just the fact that he thought she’d go out with him again was pure insanity. She probably wouldn’t even order dinner. “App development,” he added. “It’s just a lot of code, honestly.”

  “I didn’t realize you were into computer science.”

  “Well, that came after you left.” He didn’t mean for the words to leave his mouth with such bite, but they did. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “That was…rude.”

  She cocked her head, her hair falling softly over her shoulders in a way that brought decades-old memories soaring to the surface of his mind. “Did you actually miss me after I left?”

  “Truthfully?” he asked.

  “I’d like to know the truth, yes.”

  “Then yes, terribly. It was….” He cleared his throat, some of the suppressed memories quite unpleasant. “Difficult. My life was very difficult without you.” He wasn’t sure he needed to qualify in all the ways he’d missed her.

  But he had. He’d missed having her presence in the apartment where they lived. He missed having her to bounce ideas off of. He missed holding her hand and kissing her forehead while his mind worked through some unknown problem with whatever he was working on. He missed having her reassurance that he’d figure out what to do with his life, and that she’d be right there with him once he did.

  That might have been the biggest thing she’d taken when she’d left. Without her, he lost all his confidence. How he’d found it again, he wasn’t quite sure.

  But the world had changed in twenty years. Technology had grown and expanded and returning to college to earn a computer science degree had been logical.

  “I went back to school,” he said. “Got a degree in computer science and started working for a big video game company out of Dallas.”

  She nodded, her eyes alive and bright, indicating that she was listening.

  “And I dabbled in building my own things here and there,” he said. “I launched Software Solutions about five years ago, but it wasn’t until about two years ago that I moved into app development.”

  He was aware that she probably had no idea what he was talking about, so the cute confusion on her face wasn’t unexpected.

  “Basically, I created a program that makes business owners able to make their own apps at a low cost,” he said. “So if say, a gardening company wants to offer their customers an app where they can schedule lawn mowing or order supplies with the tap of a button, they buy my software. It’s drag and drop, super user friendly, and we manage all the technical stuff for them.”

  She leaned forward, interest parading through her eyes now. “Could a cleaning company do that?”

  “Of course. Set up times for when maids would go out, cancel service right on your phone, leave reviews, request a cleaning—even a specific person.” He stopped talking, understanding dawning on him. “Do you have an app, Kather—Katie?”

  “No,” she said, leaning back as the waiter appeared with a glass easily as tall as his head, filled to the brim with light orange liquid and a huge puff of whipped cream on top. He set the concoction in front of Katie, and put the water and a bowl full of lemons near Theo.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, still quite enamored with this woman he used to know.

  “Are you ready to order?” the waiter asked, and Theo picked up the menu.

  “I haven’t even looked yet,” he said. “Can we get a few more minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  Theo pretended to look through his choices, though he couldn’t get his mind to settle. He’d simply ask for the best thing on the menu once the waiter returned, as he liked almost anything.

  Katie set her menu down only a moment after him, and he was once again struck at her beauty, the way her aquamarine eyes seemed to drink him up and radiate warmth at the same time.

  “Still averse to carbonated beverages?” She wrapped her lips around her straw, and Theo felt the temperature shoot through the roof.

  He stared for a second past comfortable, and then cleared his throat, actually reaching up to loosen his tie before realizing he wasn’t wearing one. He rarely left the house without a dress shirt and tie on, fancy slacks, and patent leather shoes.

  “Yes,” he finally pushed out of a dry throat. He reached for the lemon wedges and selected one, almost throwing it at Katie because it was so slippery. He got a good grip on it and squeezed it into his water. “It gets worse the older I get.”

  “Yeah, have you hit fifty yet?” Her gaze drifted to his gray hair, and Theo was actually used to this type of behavior from women. Since his hair had started to lose its color, he’d gotten more female attention. Still hadn’t gone out with the same woman more than three times since arriving in Getaway Bay, though.

  “You know I haven’t,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my birthday.”

  She shrugged, which meant no in Katherine Fleming language, and Theo found it downright adorable.

  Stop it, he told himself. There was no way he’d be getting a second date with his ex-wife, let alone making a real relationship with her. But they did both live in Getaway Bay, and what were the chances of that?

  “Tell me about Heather,” he said next, spying the waiter coming out of the corner of his eye. He’d know for sure if Katie was going to stay if she ordered food.

  Before she could give him even a single sentence about her daughter, the waiter arrived. Katie ordered the steamed mussels as an appetizer and then the surf and turf. “Medium,” she said, handing the menu back to the waiter.

  Theo couldn’t help the enormous grin that sat on his mouth as he said, “What’s the best thing here?”

  “So how was the date last night?”

  Theo looked up from his phone, where he’d been trying to employ his Superman heat vision to make KatieH message him on GBS. Unfortunately, he didn’t have superpowers, and she hadn’t responded to his message from last night.

  She’d said a few things about her daughter—Heather liked to paint, she loved guacamole and chips, and she took in every stray cat that wandered by their house. But she really kept the conversation on building an app, and what that would take.

  Theo had gotten much better at listening to those around him since his marriage to Katie, and after their date had ended—two and a half hours after it had begun—he’d messaged her from the comfort of his high-rise condo overlooking East Bay.

  I can help you build an app for your cleaning company, if you’d like.

  In fact, he may have sketched out a few features she’d definitely want that morning before coming into the office.

  And his office was a second apartment he’d purchased one floor do
wn, and the only other person who ever came in was Ben Brown, who was also standing in front of him, wanting to know about the date.

  “What?” Theo asked.

  “I’ve been in here for ten minutes, giving you the weekly update from Dallas, and you haven’t looked at me once.” Ben grinned and sat in the chair across from Theo. “So, who was she?”

  Theo didn’t want to say, but he couldn’t help the giddy feeling in his chest. “This is going to sound crazy,” he said.

  “Oh, I can’t wait.” Ben’s dark eyes glittered, and while they only worked for an hour on Saturday mornings, the man had never complained. He’d come to Getaway Bay with Theo, and he’d managed to find a girlfriend within the first thirty days. Even though that relationship had only lasted a couple of months, he’d been out with more women since than Theo had been out with in years.

  “It was my ex-wife,” Theo said, leaning away from his desk and thus his phone. “And I thought she’d get up and walk right out, but she didn’t. She stayed and ordered lobster and steak and we talked.”

  “Talked,” Ben repeated, folding his arms.

  “Yes,” Theo said with a bit of defensiveness in his tone. “Talked.”

  “You didn’t kiss her?”

  “I don’t kiss everyone I go out with,” he said. “It was our first date.”

  “You kissed that English woman, what? Three weeks ago? First date and everything.”

  “Yes, well.” Theo cleared his throat. “Felicity was a bit of a tart, wasn’t she?” Very good at flirting and asking questions, and they’d chatted for hours through GBS for only three days before meeting in person.

  And fine, there’d been a kiss—and then she’d disappeared.

  Theo hadn’t known what he’d done wrong. Ben, who was fifteen years younger than Theo’s forty-nine, said some women just liked to go out once. “One and done,” he’d called it.

  “So the ex-wife,” Ben said. “Katherine.”

  “She goes by Katie now.”

  “Ohh, I bet she does.” Ben chuckled as Theo’s phone zinged out the sound that meant someone had messaged him through GBS. Sometimes he really hated that sound, and he wondered what it would take for his chief engineers to change it.

  But this time, the sound made his heart leapfrog around inside his chest like he’d swallowed one of the amphibians while it was still alive.

  Please be KatieH, he thought as he reached for his phone. After all, sometimes his employees messaged him through the app to test things, or just to get his attention as he was notoriously bad with email.

  But this message was from Katie, and she said, I’d like that.

  Theo said, “A-ha!” and punched the air in triumph. He turned his phone toward Ben. “I just got a second date.”

  Ben leaned forward, his eyes scanning the conversation. “And another customer.”

  That too, but Theo was mostly interested in the date.

  Three

  Katie sat at her kitchen table the following morning, her calendar out in front of her. Heather stood in the kitchen, whisking together pancakes. “Mom, can I heat up the syrup in the bottle?”

  “Yes,” she said without looking up.

  “Because last time it sort of exploded.”

  Exploded got Katie’s attention, and she looked away from the mess of cramped writing on the desk calendar in front of her. “What?”

  “I think I just need to pop the lid, but then it leaks, because the bottle’s too tall.” She set down her whisk and looked at her mom.

  Katie loved how her daughter had the same round face she did. The exact same shade of brown hair. But while Katie had blue-green eyes, Heather had her father’s eyes. Ray’s had been a bit darker, but Heather had a lighter version, with a hint of green if she stood in the sunlight just right.

  She loved cooking, and since Katie wasn’t aspiring to be a chef, she let Heather make whatever she wanted, buying random ingredients like saffron or sesame oil on her way home from work.

  “Maybe pour some syrup into a glass measuring cup,” Katie suggested.

  “Okay, I’ll do that.” Heather turned and bent, struggling to get the griddle out of the cupboard. Katie went back to her calendar though her GBS app blinged at her again.

  If it was Theo…she still couldn’t believe she’d stayed for dinner last night. Not only that, she’d enjoyed herself. A lot.

  Theo had always been charming, she’d give him that. The truth was, he’d always been the North pole of a magnet while she was the South. She was attracted to him even after all these years, and the conversation hadn’t been difficult. The food was delicious, and they’d left on pleasant terms.

  He hadn’t asked her out again, but he had messaged her to ask if she needed help building an app for her cleaning company.

  Yes, she very much needed help with that.

  She hadn’t answered him back yet, because she knew what he was really asking. If she said yes, they’d have to see each other again. If she said no, she’d basically be telling him to delete her as a contact on GBS and start over.

  Katie focused on scheduling Anna for the next two weeks, printing in neat, tidy letters in the dark green pen assigned to the maid. If she could just have fifteen more minutes without an interruption, she’d have everything ready for the next two weeks.

  Eleven minutes into the schedule, the doorbell rang. A moment later, Claire stepped into the house. “It’s just me.” She walked down the hall and into the kitchen and dining room, where Heather and Katie worked.

  “Hey, Claire,” Heather said. “These are hot. You want to eat?”

  “Hey, baby.” Katie heard the fondness in her friend’s voice. “Your mom’s not eating?”

  “Five minutes,” Katie barked out, determined to finish before she did anything else. Yes, her stomach was roaring for food. No, she wouldn’t die.

  She finished as quickly as she could and joined Heather and Claire at the counter, taking two pancakes from the stack and slathering butter on them. “These look great, Heather.” She smiled at her daughter. She’d been making pancakes since she was seven, and her first batch had been too blonde and rather doughy inside. But these were perfectly brown, as well as light and fluffy.

  “Did you ask your mom about her date last night?” Claire met Katie’s eyes over Heather’s head, a knowing look in her eye.

  Katie shook her head, but Heather said, “Not yet. How was it, Mom?”

  “Oh, it was okay,” she said.

  “You going to see him again?” Claire asked.

  “Why are you sitting here eating pancakes? Don’t you have bathrooms to clean?” Katie glared at her best friend and maid, half joking but half serious too.

  Claire simply laughed and took another bite of her pancake. “She must like him,” she said around bread and syrup. “Otherwise she’d tell us she wasn’t going to go out with him again.”

  “He’s an app developer,” Katie said slowly. “And I’m thinking Clean Sweep needs an app.”

  Claire blinked, her bright blue eyes curious. “Are you kidding? That would be awesome.”

  “Yeah, The—the man I met for dinner last night gave me some ideas.”

  “So you’re going to see him again.” Claire finished her pancakes and picked up her plate, taking it to the sink and rinsing it.

  Katie exhaled heavily. “I’m not sure.” She wished she didn’t have ten-year-old ears in the room so she could really tell Claire who she’d met at Bora Bora and why she really wanted a second date with the magnetic Theo Fleming.

  “Well, if it’s good for the business….” Claire shrugged and continued doing the dishes. She did laundry too, and Katie was never happier than on Saturdays after Claire left. A clean house. A conversation with her friend. And a couple of days off until she had to face running her business again.

  Katie did want Clean Sweep to continue to thrive. Grow, even. It had started with her and Claire, a dream, and more hard work than Katie had known how to do at the time.
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  She knew now, and she’d gained some respect for Theo and what he’d been trying to do during those five years of their marriage.

  So she picked up her phone and typed out, I’d like that, and sent it to Theo.

  A smiley face came back several moments later, and then What are you doing this afternoon?

  Did he not remember she had a daughter? And her time with Heather was precious, especially on weekends.

  Not available until Monday, she said. And preferably during the day. Maybe lunch?

  The Theo she remembered sometimes skipped meals if he was knee-deep inside an idea.

  Lunch on Monday sounds great. Should we let GBS choose for us again?

  Katie had liked Bora Bora, just as her app had predicted she would. So she said, Sure, and asked Heather if she had any homework.

  “Yeah, let me go get it,” she said, leaving her plate on the counter.

  “After you’re done, we can go to the movies,” Katie called after her. “Or the beach.” It was the end of September and still plenty warm to lie on the sand and play in the ocean.

  “Beach,” Heather called back, always one to choose the outdoors over staying inside. Another characteristic she’d picked up from her father. Katie let her thoughts linger on Ray for a moment, and then she subdued them.

  Just like Theo, it did no good to dwell on things—and people—she couldn’t change. While she waited for Heather to come back, she wondered if Theo had changed enough over the past twenty-five years to warrant starting another relationship with him.

  Not a friendship.

  Katie wasn’t stupid, and she knew if she and Theo were to be anything, it would extend far past friendship. Her heart bumped around erratically, and she wondered if it had ever truly healed from the divorce all those years ago.

  Probably not.

  She picked up her phone and saw a few more messages from Theo. She read over them quickly, but they weren’t anything that needed a fast response. So she silenced her phone, determined not to spend every waking moment from now until lunch on Monday thinking about her ex-husband.