The Billionaire’s Special Relationship

CHAPTER ONE

TWO YEARS EARLIER

The first time Stuart Jacobs saw her face was a couple years ago when he was having lunch at Argyles with a group of friends. They had all flown in with him from New York, but they didn’t like the outcome.

He sat back and watched as they voiced their displeasure. Because they still didn’t believe him. Because they still could not get it through their thick skulls that a mother could do that to her son.

“You fly all the way here to this nothing town in nowhere Ohio,” one of his friends bemoaned, “and that woman still didn’t bother to show up, or to answer your phone calls? We waited at that property for hours. Just waiting for her. And she wouldn’t even show up? That’s insane.”

“I told you how she was,” Stuart responded. “Why are you still shocked that she is who I said she was?”

“But she’s the one who wants to buy that big-ass house,” another friend said.

“She called you with this house scheme of hers. You didn’t call her.

And simply because you said you had to come and check it out before you purchased it, she’s offended?

When it’s your money, not hers? That’s weird, Stuart. Even you have to admit that’s unreal.”

“And unreal is exactly how my mother has always been. She wants my money, that’s never in dispute, but she wants nothing to do with me.

And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. I told you she wouldn’t show up.

I told you she wasn’t going to answer my phone calls.

She just wants me to write the check. This is standard behavior for my mother. ”

“And you’re going to write the check anyway?” asked another friend. “Aren’t you?”

They all looked at Stuart. They all were successful people in their own right, but not one of them could be compared to Stuart’s success.

He took his small, struggling watersports company and turned it into a billion-dollar juggernaut.

He was success on steroids, and they admired him greatly.

He was their blueprint. But they just didn’t understand him.

Jennifer Brooks didn’t care to understand him.

She just wanted a ring on it and to become the mother of his children before she was too old to give birth.

She wanted to be the heir, or the mother of the heir, to his great fortune.

That was her singular focus in life. Understanding him meant nothing to her.

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “She may not love you, but we love you darling,” she said with what Stuart always viewed as a smile so fake that it looked as if it had been drawn onto her thin lips. “Even if your own mother treats you horribly,” she added, “we love you to bits.”

Stuart didn’t respond because nobody at that table loved him and he knew it.

They loved his money and spending it. They loved his power and the access to power that opened doors for them.

They loved the trips on his yacht or the vacations in Paris or the come fly with me to Larkin so I can check out this house my mother wants me to purchase for her and other spur of the moment “fun times” being his friend accorded them.

But not one of those members of his friend group, not one of them, loved him.

And Jennifer, he was certain, loved him least of all.

Although she pretended to adore him. Even now, as she told some lame joke about his mother being as horrid as the restaurant they were forced to eat in since it was the only decent one in his hometown, she was seen as his greatest defender.

“You have us,” she said, continuing in that role.

“And with wonderful friends like us, you don’t need that old hag anyway. ”

And all of his friends laughed, as they always did whenever Jennifer told a joke, and she flung her long, blonde hair back victoriously as if she was the queen of the earth.

Every time they got together the guys in their friend group, all of whom were already married, would sing her praises to him.

They would elbow him and whisper how beautiful she was.

Or how smart she was. Or how funny she was.

The ladies in their friend group, all of whom were married to the men, would ask him over and over what was he waiting on.

Better grab her, they’d whisper to him, before somebody else did!

But Stuart knew she had all of them snowed.

All they saw, and ever wanted to see, was the upside of Jennifer.

The gentle soul. The girl next door. She was the daughter of one of the most prominent families in the country, although Stuart’s private investigators uncovered the truth that her family had fallen on hard times years ago.

They were counting on her to marry the richest man who would have her, but continued to front as if they were still old-money-rich themselves.

But that wasn’t public knowledge. Even Jennifer didn’t know that Stuart knew.

He also knew her other side. In the years he’d been around her, he’d seen her downside.

And he began to notice a trend: It always centered around her cruelty towards the less-fortunate.

Because before Stuart became one of the richest men in America, he hailed from one of the poorest families imaginable.

He knew what it was like to be treated like dirt by the kind of people that were similar to those in his friend group.

The kind who viewed workers as if they were commodities.

As if they were the help and nothing more.

As if they were irritations to be put up with rather than respected and appreciated.

But to Stuart, a person’s character wasn’t seen in how they treated the rich and well-connected who could give them whatever their hearts desired, but in how they treated the least among them who had nothing to give.

Show me how they treat the skid-row bum, he loved to say, and I’ll show you their true character.

Not that sweet shit they show the world.

And nobody, in his opinion, demonstrated his point better than the woman they all wanted, and she wanted most of all, to be his wife.

That was why he said very little when they were together. He let her be the center of attention, which she cherished, and he let her do all the talking. Which, to him, revealed it all.

As smart as she was beautiful, Jennifer Brooks was an accomplished concert pianist who worked with great houses like the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the London Symphony Orchestra. She was universally considered a force to be reckoned with in the New York social scene.

But he sat and watched her every time they got together. He saw how she treated those people, as she loved to call them. He saw how she always failed to remember that he was one of those people once upon a time.

And now they were seated in the best restaurant in his hometown of Larkin, Ohio, after his mother stood him up, and she was proving his point to perfection.

Their meals had just been served and they were all eating and laughing and talking excessively.

Maybe even obnoxiously considering how loud they were.

But then their waitress, a black young lady who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five, came by their table on her way to taking drinks to another table.

That was the first time he saw her.

“Is everything okay?” She had a light, cheerful voice and a smile in her eyes. “The food good? Do you need more champagne? Is there anything else I can get for you?”

It was just a check-in that all good waitresses did.

And she was all smiles and very friendly too.

But Jennifer looked upon the young lady as if she was a piece of trash.

“How rude of you,” she said to her the way you would scold a child.

Which took Stuart by surprise. Where did that come from? He stared at Jennifer.

And she continued her harsh diss of the young lady. “Did we ask you to come over here and disturb us? Well did we? Did we ask your ridiculous little butt to do anything at all for us? We’re trying to have a nice, pleasant meal, and here you come!”

Some in their friend group, those who loved to enable Jennifer’s bad behavior, were grinning as if she was on a roll. But Stuart looked from Jennifer to the waitress. He expected to see fire in that young girl’s eyes. How could she not be enraged?

But he didn’t see the smoke. Or the fire.

What he saw was her smiling eyes become suddenly so sad that he found himself sitting back in his seat with a chunk of steak still on his fork.

She had soft, brownish-gray eyes against smooth dark-brown skin, but her eyes held such a depth of emotion that just watching them bothered Stuart.

It felt as if he was watching the inner soul of another person through those eyes, and he was completely in tune with it.

And the way she stood there staring at Jennifer as if she could not believe her cruelty shook him too. Was she that innocent to the ways of the world? Or was she just that vulnerable?

But Jennifer did not let up. “If we needed something from your poor, trashy, can’t-do-no-better-than-a-waitress ass, don’t you think we have enough sense to request your presence?

Don’t you think we, the elite of America, have enough sense to know to ask for what we need?

But no, you had to drag your sorry-ass all the way over here and disturb us! ”

Many at their table thought this was hilarious. Stuart was still staring at the young lady.

But Jennifer kept going. “And you didn’t stop at our table because you care about our welfare.

You don’t give a damn about us. You came over here because you know money when you see it and you believe you’ll get a bigger tip if you stay in our faces.

The greed of you people never ceases to amaze me.

It’s utterly ridiculous how manipulative you can be.

So shoo fly,” she said with a backhand wave as if she was actually shooing a pest, “and stop bothering us!”

The group seemed to nod and agree with Jennifer’s harshness.

But Stuart stared at the young lady as her beautiful, cheerful face turned into a look of shame and pain.

Although he could tell she wanted to put that white woman in her place right then and there, she undoubtedly needed that job too badly to lash out.

Because she didn’t say a work. She just stood there.

And when she refused to just shoo away, Jennifer kept pouncing.

“I get it. I’m not blind to somebody’s misfortune.

But I also know how misfortune happens. It happens because of you.

Your bad decisions or your bad relationship choices or just your plain bad luck forced you to work whatever piece of job you can get while everybody else went to college and made something of themselves.

I get it. You got left behind. But don’t blame us.

Don’t look as if I’m the reason you’re a failure.

You have nobody to blame but yourself. Now leave us alone!

” And she said the last sentence empathically.

Stuart’s heart squeezed when the young lady’s big, unblinking eyes blinked and then she turned and walked away.

But his friends were still enjoying the laugh at that young lady’s expense while Jennifer was flinging her long, blonde hair backwards once again and didn’t give that poor girl a second glance.

The young woman had held her tongue, and her dignity, too, in Stuart’s view, as she walked away from their table.

But she was hurt. There was no doubt in his mind Jennifer had hit a nerve deep inside of that lady’s soul when she came for her so harshly.

“That’s what I love about Jennie,” one of the guys at the table said. “She tells it like it is!”

“And you’re right as rain, Jennie,” said Gheri, who was Jennifer’s best friend. “She just wants a big, fat tip. That’s the only reason she stopped by our table. She wants our money.”

“And that’s why I’m not giving her a damn dime,” said Jennifer. “Not one red cent.”

“Now now ladies,” said Gheri’s husband Logan. “Let’s not be so unforgiving. Those waitresses rely on our tips to be able to feed their families a simple slice of bread.”

“Bump bread,” Jennifer said. And then added in her best Marie Antoniette imitation: “Let them eat cake!”

“What’s wrong with cake? I love cake,” said Logan jokingly. “I’ll take cake over bread any day of the week.” And they all, except for Stuart, laughed at that too.

While they continued laughing and talking until they had moved on to another group to gossip about and laugh about, Stuart tossed the big, cloth napkin onto the table, got up, and made his way toward the backside of the restaurant where his friends assumed he was going to the bathroom.

But while they had been laughing and drinking as if no crime had just been committed, he was observing that waitress. The victim of the crime. He saw her unshed tears. He saw the hurt and the pain all over her petite body. He saw her.

And that was why, after she was out of sight, he thought about it long and hard.

It was nothing new. Jennifer had treated many waitresses similarly in the years he’d known her.

But this one hit differently. And he knew, at the end of the day, he could not let this one stand.

Right was still right and in his eyes she’d been wronged.

He got up and headed in the same direction where he saw her make her escape.