Page 2 of The Billionaire Experience

“There’s my beautiful girl!” Her grandfather threw open his front door. At age seventy-two, he was slightly stooped, and his neck wasn’t as straight as it used to be. Thick-rimmed glasses had left a permanent dent on the bridge of his nose, and rows of false teeth grinned back at her. He wore a short-sleeved plaid shirt and gray trousers. His hair—a head full of graying white—was trimmed at the sides but combed into a perfectly respectable side part.

He enveloped her in his arms, patting her back hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. “I booked us the best table at the bistro,” he said when he let her go. “My treat.”

“You should let me treat you. Dustin is closing on the house today, which means my ship’s come in.” He wasn’t paying her a massive amount of money for housesitting, but it was a good-sized chunk that she could certainly use.

Ike’s smile fell. “I can’t let you treat me. You’re saving for a fancy apartment with a garage. One that is much better than the dump I raised you in.”

“It’s not a dump.” She knew what he was doing. Trying to make her feel better that the house on 388 Maplebrook had been sold six weeks ago to someone other than her. By the time Dustin’s out-of-state job offer had led to their subsequent breakup, the sale had gone through two weeks prior. She’d played it off with a que-sera attitude. Whatever will be, will be. To be fair, she had believed that at the time. “I hope the guy who bought it doesn’t knock it down and build a McMansion.”

“Ha. McMansion. Whatever befalls that pile of bricks was meant to be.” He smiled warmly. Any optimism she had inherited was thanks to Ike’s influence.

Their old neighborhood’s value had skyrocketed recently. It was established, with fully grown trees and lush green lawns, and located close to the city and the golf course her grandfather now lived on.

“I doubt he’ll bulldoze it. He was talking at the closing table about making it his own. He was excited about mowing and asked if I’d sell him the riding mower.” Ike pressed a button to open the garage door, revealing a gleaming blue golf cart. “Weather too cool for us to ride to the bistro?”

“Never!” Her smile was genuine when she pressed her hands into prayer pose. “Can I drive it? Please?”

“Some things never change. You asked the same thing about my Buick on your sixteenth birthday.” His laugh was raspy when he handed over the key. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and raced to the golf cart. She settled into the plush white leather seat and turned on the battery-powered cart. Ike sat next to her, continuing where he’d left off. “Can you imagine someone would buy that old rattletrap of a lawnmower?”

She punched the gas a bit too hard, and the vehicle jerked. Ike grabbed the oh-shit bar above his head as his pale eyebrows jumped. “Easy, Ray. My bones ain’t what they used to be.”

The nickname “Ray” had been fitting for a tomboy at heart. Almost always in jeans and a T-shirt, she liked to think she offset the nature of her work by wearing bright lipstick and mascara.

“Sorry. I’m excited.” She eased down on the gas pedal this time.

“He paid me a thousand dollars for that mower,” Ike said as they glided along the smoothly paved road.

She turned her head to see if he was serious. “A thousand dollars?”

Ike laughed again. “Those city boys really don’t know what they’re doing, do they?”

She considered Dustin as she shook her head in agreement. “No, they sure don’t.”

“Merri…what?”

“Merriweather Springs, Ma.” Brody Crane watched via video call as his mother dashed around backstage at the studio. She was better known by most as Keaton Killdeer and had been on the soap opera scene since before Brody was born. She’d won two Emmys for her starring role as Mary Marigold on the wildly popular soap Loving and Living. “It’s a suburb about thirty minutes outside of Chicago.”

She swiped a donut off the craft services table and took a bite, humming while she chewed. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why you’re doing this. You’re a city boy. A world traveler. You’re adventuresome! Now you’re living life in suburbia in the Midwest.” The studio lights reflected off the lenses of her glasses when she shook her head.

“I’ll be here a couple of months, Ma. Not exactly an eternity.”

He’d purchased the house over a month and a half ago but had only recently stepped foot in it. He’d been traveling, and sorting out his penthouse in New York, before he left for his extended stay outside of Chicago. He’d barely done more than furnish his new house, and even then, sparsely.

The purpose of the move was to be immersed in suburbia while he penned his second book. He hadn’t so much as typed “Chapter One” into his manuscript. The last thing he needed was a repeat of his last deadline—which he’d missed to the tune of six months.

“You can write from anywhere. Why not fix up a stately brownstone here in the city?”

He’d lived in a stately brownstone once upon a time with his ex-girlfriend. Just remembering the smothering feeling of permanence made him shudder. “Because,” he explained instead, “the premise of the new book is about a billionaire making a house a home in the Midwest. I can’t talk about what that’s like without actually living in the Midwest. I don’t write fiction.”

“Well, I preferred the premise of the original book.” Keaton popped the rest of the donut into her mouth.

Yeah, because he’d been living in Manhattan while writing it.

“If that premise had worked, I’d have written it months ago.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, residual panic from the long months he’d spent avoiding his editor and ignoring his deadline washing over him anew.

When he’d blown by his deadline by half a year, he’d had to admit that the premise of his follow-up book was off the mark. Writing about living extravagantly in New York City was a little too on the nose for a Crane billionaire. He hadn’t stretched a single inch outside his comfort zone during that time, and had been invited to nearly every ball, charity event, and cocktail party on the Upper East Side. Worse, he’d stationed himself at his apartment, not following his whims to travel even once. No wonder once he’d closed on his new house he’d booked a flight to Paris.

His first book had remained on the New York Times bestseller list at number one for nearly a year, and writing it had been an adventure in and of itself. Nothing had stayed the same from day to day. He’d traveled across America, had found temporary jobs—mostly construction or restaurant work—and had either crashed on newfound friends’ couches or slept in his car. He’d met incredibly hardworking, down-to-earth people, some of whom he’d kept in touch with since. Returning to highbrow society had been tepid by comparison.

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