A Billionaire Gentleman (The Holden Brothers Book 1) Read online

  A Billionaire Gentleman

  The Holden Brothers 1

  M. S. Parker

  Belmonte Publishing, LLC

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Belmonte Publishing LLC

  Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC

  Contents

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  The Holden Brothers Reading order

  1. Jude – 1993

  2. Deklin – Present Day

  3. Sofi

  4. Deklin

  5. Sofi

  6. Deklin

  7. Sofi

  8. Deklin

  9. Sofi

  10. Deklin

  11. Sofi

  12. Deklin

  13. Sofi

  14. Deklin

  15. Sofi

  16. Deklin

  17. Sofi

  18. Deklin

  19. Sofi

  20. Deklin

  21. Sofi

  22. Deklin

  23. Sofi

  24. Deklin

  25. Sofi

  26. Deklin

  27. Sofi

  28. Deklin

  29. Sofi

  30. Deklin

  31. Sofi

  32. Deklin

  33. Sofi

  34. Deklin

  35. Sofi

  36. Deklin

  37. Sofi

  38. Deklin

  39. Sofi

  40. Jude – 1993

  Office romances by M. S. Parker

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  The Holden Brothers Reading order

  Thank you for reading A Billionaire Gentleman, the first book in my new series, The Holden Brothers. Each book is about a different brother and can be read standalone, but I highly recommend reading the books in this order:

  1. A Billionaire Gentleman (This book)

  2. A Billionaire Rebel (Coming January 17)

  3. A Billionaire Dom (Coming January 31)

  One

  Jude – 1993

  I stood at the window and looked out over Houston without really seeing the city. I’d been born and raised here. Married and had a family here too. Now, at fifty-two, I was a grandfather twice over, the youngest one just a couple months old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Walter and Cheryl had at least a couple more.

  A hint of a smile appeared as I thought about little Damon. The oldest, Davin, was such a serious child, especially for a toddler. Being a big brother would give him something to focus on, and I hoped, something to smile about.

  I sighed as I turned away from the window and went back to my desk. Hopefully, all the hard work I’d put into Holden Enterprises would give my son and my grandsons – maybe a couple granddaughters – an easier life than I’d had. Not that my life had been financially difficult. Though I would’ve traded every penny to have had my parents just one day more.

  My eyes dropped to the pictures on my desk. One was of my first wife, Dorcas, and our son, Walter. It’d been taken about a year before she died. The other one was of me with my current wife. Rachel and I had been married for eight years, and things had actually been really good…until a few days ago when she’d started acting crazy.

  I winced at the word. I’d actually said it to her last night, and then I’d slept in the guestroom. I’d known it was the wrong thing to say the moment it’d left my mouth, but the things she’d been saying had been crazy.

  She’d been going on and on about this woman that she thought was flirting with me at church. Some tall, skinny blonde whose name I didn’t even know, and I really didn’t remember talking to. I only knew she was a tall, skinny blonde because Rachel had said so. If Rachel had told me her name, I didn’t remember it.

  I glanced at the clock, surprised to see that my morning was pretty much gone. I hadn’t realized I’d been there that long. It wasn’t the first time I’d recently gotten lost in my head. Getting older was harder on me than I’d always thought it would be. Not that I was old. I intended to be around long enough to see great-grandchildren.

  Pushing away the maudlin thoughts that came with age, I turned my attention to the stack of mail sitting on the corner of my desk and reached for the envelope on top. Junk mail. I tossed it into the trash and reached for the next one.

  My phone rang, and I reached for it with one hand as I used the other to toss a catalog into the wastebasket.

  “Holden Enterprises, how can I help you?”

  “Did I interrupt something?” Rachel’s voice was harsher than it usually was, and I closed my eyes as it grated on my nerves.

  “Just going through my mail. How are you doing?”

  “Going through your mail? Isn’t that what you have a secretary for?”

  I let out a slow breath and counted to five before I spoke again. “Is something wrong, Rachel?”

  “Nothing that you want to talk about.” She waited a beat before adding, “What time to you plan to be home tonight? I want to get to the salon, and they couldn’t get me in until six. And don’t even suggest I wait. I found three new gray hairs, and I’m not having that.”

  I didn’t like being at odds with her. We actually didn’t fight much, and never like this. I’d never thought of her as the jealous type, but she’d been a little more…sensitive recently. It wasn’t until right now that I made the connection, though. She was jealous because she felt like she was getting old. One of our friends had recently left his wife for a much younger woman. Since Rachel was a few years older than me, the news must’ve hit her harder than I’d realized.

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again, realizing that there was absolutely no way to tactfully address what I’d just figured out. Before I could think up the best response, my secretary, Lulu, came rushing in, her eyes wide.

  “Mr. Holden, you need to come! Hurry! He’s going crazy!”

  “Who’s that?” Rachel asked in an overly sharp voice. “Is it her?”

  “It’s Lulu,” I snapped. “I have to go.”

  I hung up before she could start in on me again, even though I knew I’d hear it from her tonight. But I knew Lulu, and she didn’t exaggerate. If she was that worried, I needed to go.

  The noise gave me a clue to what was going on before my eyes finished processing what I was seeing. A man was beating my car with a baseball bat.

  Fortunately, he saw me before I had to yell at him.

  “You!” He pointed the bat at me.

  Shit. “Mark, you need to go. The cops are on their way.”

  I really hoped that was the truth because, if it wasn’t, things could go from bad to worse. I was in good shape for my age, but he was an angry thirty-something with a baseball bat. The odds weren’t exactly in my favor.

  “I’m not going anywhere!”

  His face was bright red, but he stopped a foot away and just pointed with the bat, so I decided that was a positive turn of events.

  “You’re fucking my wife!” He turned around in a circle, clearly enjoying the audience. “Do you all hear that?! Jude Holden is a fucking cheater! He’s fucking my wife! My! Wife!”

  “I’m not sleeping with Heidi, Mark,” I said mildly. I put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything stupid. The last thing I needed was a picture of me in a tabloid, hittin
g someone who was in the process of accusing me of having an affair with his wife.

  “Right. I believe that.” He glared at me as he stalked forward. “Heidi’s always whispering on the phone, and then I see the two of you talking, and it stops when I come in the room. Don’t tell me there’s nothing going on between the two of you.”

  He was literally spitting as he talked, but I didn’t step back. I needed to maintain a calm, steady presence. Too many people were watching, and I had worked too hard to build my business to let this idiot tear it down or make me look weak. Besides, often the best defense against a bully was to make them look foolish by comparison.

  “Put down the bat.” The voice came from behind me.

  One of the security guys. Delbert, I thought his name was. I carefully schooled my face not to show my relief. At least things wouldn’t get too far out of hand.

  Mark sneered at us both, then tossed the bat to the ground. “I don’t need a bat to fuck up an old man.”

  That was all the warning I got before his fist connected with my jaw.

  Two

  Deklin – Present Day

  Even with the sun getting ready to set, the temperature was sweltering, but that didn’t mean any of the Holden family would acknowledge it by taking a dip in the Olympic-size swimming pool several yards to the right of the party pavilion where we’d gathered.

  This was no picnic. This was a celebration for me graduating with my MBA, and as such, there was more drinking wine and scotch while discussing business than there was levity. We had a reputation to maintain, after all.

  Of course, part of that reputation was the reason we’d been waiting around for the past hour. Dad and Davin were late. As Holden Enterprises’s CEO and CFO, respectively, they rarely worked regular hours. My oldest brother, Davin, was the worse of the two. Dad, at least, took Sundays off since he still attended church every week.

  My brothers and I had cut back attending services to just Christmas and Easter. Well, Davin and Damon did only those two, anyway. I still lived in the house where I’d grown up, so I had to put up with more of Dad’s day-to-day complaining than my brothers did. That meant, when I was home from college, I went to church at least every few weeks, and that was enough to appease them. Now that I’d graduated, I’d be looking for a place of my own.

  Finally.

  I turned toward the house as I heard Damon call out to our brother. The three of us were twenty-three, twenty-six, and twenty-nine, our birthdays even in the same month – March – but Davin had always seemed much older and Damon much younger.

  Me, I was the baby. Dad and Grandad both had been only children, and my mom’s sister was a nun. Literally. All that meant that my brothers and I had grown up without cousins. Which meant I always was and always would be the baby.

  “Congratulations,” Davin said as he held out his hand. With his golden blond hair, athletic build, and perpetual tan, he would’ve looked right at home on a beach, getting ready to catch some waves.

  Those of us who knew him, however, knew that was about as far from my brother as it could get. The fact that he was still wearing a suit and tie even though he could’ve taken both off on the way over just reinforced the serious businessman image.

  “Thanks.” The slight nod of approval I got told me that my handshake had met the Holden family expectations, and I hoped that meant that he was finally ready for me to come work at the family business. I’d never been passionate about business – or real estate – but I was passionate about my family. And the business was family.

  “You don’t like the wine selection?” Dad gave a pointed look to the dark bottle in my hand.

  I gave him a tight smile. “We didn’t want to open the wine until everyone was here.”

  “And that meant you needed a beer while you were waiting?”

  My grip on the cold glass tightened. I wondered if his problem was that I was drinking or that I was drinking beer, but I wasn’t going to ask. This was a party, and I refused to ruin the occasion by getting into a debate over alcohol consumption. I was over twenty-one, and I wasn’t drunk.

  Besides, this was my party. I could have a beer if I wanted.

  “Walter, Davin, glad you’re here.” Grandad saved me from having to figure out a tactful way to change the topic. “I’ll let Cynthia know to have the caterers bring out the food.”

  I didn’t have to look at Dad to know he’d stiffened as soon as his stepmother’s name was mentioned. I liked Cynthia, actually. She was nice and really loved Grandad, but it was hard for Dad. He’d been fifteen when his mom died, then nineteen when Grandad married Grandma Rachel. I remembered her, and she’d been okay, but I’d liked Cynthia from moment one. The fact that she was only ten and a half years older than me kept me from seeing her as a grandmother, but she’d never tried to make us view her that way.

  Dad, however, would never forgive her for being younger than him, or Grandad for marrying her.

  Family gatherings could be awkward.

  “Deklin.” Grandad put his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you come with me. This is your party. You should be mingling.”

  I was half-tempted to ask if, because it was my party, I could decide whether or not I wanted to mingle, but I knew it would be pointless to ask. All it would do was point out another way I wasn’t cut out to be part of Holden Enterprises.

  I knew all too well that no one in the family thought I was cut out for any business, let alone something that had the excellent reputation this particular business had. Grandad had built it himself, using the money he’d gotten from his inheritance and his parents’ life insurance to create a billion-dollar company.

  I pulled my attention back to the present as Cynthia excused herself to let the caterers know it was time to eat. While we waited, Grandad steered me to the next group over and introduced me to the people standing there. I knew them by sight and name, but I hadn’t really talked to any of them before. I’d never been the heir apparent, so there’d been no point until I’d followed through with schooling.

  “So, Deklin, it looks like you’re following in the family’s footsteps like Davin, not going your own way like Damon.”

  Lindberg Shreve was a big man with an even bigger presence. He’d known Grandad for years and was one of the best-known conservative judges in the area, even if Grandad didn’t always agree with his politics. They played golf together and had the occasional dinner. Every time they were at the same event, they shook hands and asked how the other was doing, even if they’d seen each other the week before at a different event.

  Networking.

  Grandad had technically retired eight years ago, but he was still involved, at least as much as he could without driving everyone completely crazy. Networking was one of the areas neither Dad or Davin liked, so they were more than happy to pass along that particular responsibility and focus on the more concrete aspects of the business.

  “Yes, sir,” I said to Lindberg. “It’s what I’ve been working toward.”

  “Were you at Texas Southern?” he asked. “My alma mater, you know.”

  I shook my head, my smile tightening. “University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.”

  His bushy eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t want to move there? Didn’t meet anyone who tempted you to become an East Coaster?”

  To my even greater embarrassment, I flushed, my ears growing hot. I’d had a girlfriend a couple years back, but we’d broken up after eight months together. There hadn’t been anyone since. “No, sir. Never met anyone who would’ve made it worth leaving Houston.”

  “Good to hear. Play the field as long as you can. Wish I still was.” He let out a loud belly laugh and then clapped me on my shoulder hard enough to make my knees threaten to buckle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see the good Scotch is being brought out.”

  “That’s the key to Lindberg Shreve,” Grandad said. “Good Scotch and bragging about women.”

  I could handle the first. The second would be an i
ssue. I didn’t really have anything to brag about.

  “This is how you handle public relations,” Grandad said, his tone even and matter-of-fact. “You find out what they like, where they go to school, all those sorts of details. It gives you something to talk about, so they don’t think that you’re only talking to them for business reasons. A lot of companies can brag about education, financial backing, that sort of thing, but what I built our business on is personal relationships.”

  I’d heard this speech before. Dozens of times, in fact. Sometimes, it had been for Dad, sometimes for us kids. Davin had probably heard it more than anyone except Dad, who I was pretty sure had heard it along with his bedtime stories. Not that it’d done much good. Both Dad and Davin sucked at personal relationships. Davin could at least fake it with business contacts. Sort of.

  Cynthia clapped her hands, and everyone quieted. “Jude and I would like to thank everyone for coming to help us celebrate Deklin’s college graduation. I know we’re all hungry, so we’ll save any speeches or toasts until after we eat.” She gestured toward the now-full food table before stepping out of the way.

  I felt bad for her at things like this. She knew that people looked at her and Grandad and thought she was just after his money. Grandad was important enough that no one would dare say anything to her face, but there was plenty of talk behind her back. People could be real assholes.