Page 6 of Baby Daddy Billionaire SEAL

“No, I’m sure she doesn’t. But you two have never been close.”

“Well, she didn’t seem to have a problem with the idea,” I told Danny. “To be honest, I think she was pretty grateful.”

What I was saying wasn’t true at all, of course, but itshouldhave been true. Olivia should have been grateful for my offer. After all, she stood to gain a lot more by it than I did, even if I hadn’t been completely clear about my reasons for doing it. She aspired to create a name for herself in the film industry. This could be her major break. I’d already had my major break. I was already rich off of Branches 1.0. I was trying to ensure my second outing was as successful as my first. If Branches 2.0 flopped, I still had the first one to fall back on.

Yeah, she definitely should have been more grateful to me for making the offer. I didn’t get why she wasn’t.

“Make sure you treat her right,” Danny warned me.

“Of course, I will.”

“I mean it. This movie stuff is a big deal to Olivia. And I know you, Jake. You aren’t always the most considerate guy when it comes to other people’s feelings.”

“I am so the most considerate guy.” But we were both laughing now. “I’m not going to mess up her shot,” I told Danny. “I do want Olivia to keep this job, you know.”

Danny nodded. “In that case, I guess this is a good thing.”

“Exactly! I’ll get the app in front of some extremely important people, and Olivia will be able to show off the Navy SEAL husband she’s pretending to have.”

My computer beeped, and I turned back to it, checking out the results of my simulation. “Come and look at this data,” I said. I was the programmer of the two of us. Danny was much better at data analysis than I was.

He nudged me out of his chair, sat down, and began to peruse the graphs and figures the app had spat out. “It looks like your patch worked,” he said.

“Yeah, looks like. I’d say 2.0 is officially ready to go.”

“You ready to do this?”

I laughed. “I was born ready,” I said. “You know me.”

It shocked me yet again how anticlimactic the app’s release was. When we had first released the first version, it felt like the biggest thing in the world to Danny and me, but in reality, we simply uploaded it to the online store, clicked a few buttons to indicate our preferences for things like price point and whether we wanted users to leave product reviews—and then it was done. It was out there.

We’d been working on 2.0 for eight months, and it was wild to have itfinished.

My screen lit up.

“Look at this.” I turned it toward Danny. “Our first customer.”

“Nice.” We’d made the app free to download. Neither of us needed the money; anyway, in-app purchases were where it was. But even though the first download hadn’t netted us any cash, it felt good to have it under our belts.

“C’mon,” Danny said. “We’re not gonna sit here and watch this thing. Let’s go grab some beers. There’s a basketball game tonight.”

I nodded. I was all for beers and basketball.

But I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder as the pair of us left the room, and I was pleased to see the number of downloads had already jumped up to nine.

It looked like Branches 2.0 was off to a solid start.

Now all I needed was to make sure I got it in front of the right people.

If my plan worked, we might be the biggest names in modern software development this time next year.

Chapter 3

OLIVIA

“Listen,”MichaelSanderssaid.“I went ahead and got you two a room here at the Tower, just in case. I don’t want you driving home after drinking. And to have a Navy SEAL working on my movie…well, I want the two of you to know you deserve the best.”

This wasn’t something I had bargained for at all. I had imagined Jake and I would pose as husband and wife for a few hours tonight before going our separate ways. But now that Michael Sanders was gesturing toward us with a hotel key card while grinning like an indulgent uncle, I knew intuitively that we had to accept his offer. We couldn’t refuse this generosity. If we did, it was going to get me off on the wrong foot.

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