Cade, p.1
Cade, page 1
Cade
Billionaire Blind Dates
Book 3
Toni Denise
Happy Birthday Bonnie!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Keep in touch with Toni Denise
Owen
Owen Chapter 1
Coming Next
Also by Toni Denise
Bonus Content Old Friends
Old Friends Chapter 1
Chapter One
Cade
“So, who is next?” Evan laid down his cards and folded.
“It’s a little soon for that,” Cade said, tossing chips in to raise the bet. He didn’t want to talk about dating again just yet.
He and his group of friends met most Friday nights to play poker, and tonight was no exception. However, these games had been more and more rare with the new relationships for three of the six of them.
Almost a year ago now, Evan had come up with an idea to try a blind dating restaurant he was considering investing in. The idea was that the dates were done in the dark, with no info except what you shared, and you couldn’t see each other making the success of the date strictly based on your personality.
It was a brilliant concept, especially for their group, considering it was hard to know if women were interested in them or their money and status as successful billionaires. Jake had gone first, and the dates had started off rough, to say the least, and then he’d been set up with Cade’s assistant by his sister. It was technically Cade’s turn to pick a date for Jake, but Catherine had taken over, and he’d let her.
In the time that all this had been happening, his father had grown increasingly bizarre with his demands of both Cade and Catherine. He’d also taken a personal affront to Jake, dating Lauren, his assistant, and called her some choice names. Cade had done his best to distance himself from his father since then.
Only now, that problem was showing up again. His father had worked with Lauren’s mother to almost completely ruin the restaurant. Unfortunately for him, Cade and his friends pulled together to help rebuild it. It left Lauren with a sense of misplaced guilt, with it having been her mother that was involved.
Cade had told no one yet that this latest attack had his father behind it, mostly because he couldn’t understand why. Attacking Cade’s friends served no benefit that Cade could see and without a motive, he would not solve much. His friends wouldn’t be upset with him at all. They’d help him puzzle it all out, but he felt the need to hold this one close.
It pissed Cade off, though. He’d already banned his father from the building of the business he used to run. He had a private investigator looking into him and he’d cross the bridge of what to say to his friends once he knew more. Until then, he’d work to stop his father on his own.
“I think you’re up next, Cade,” Luke joked.
Cade groaned and ran a hand down his face. “Not if you’re picking.” Luke had a history of picking the worst dates for everyone.
“I’m offended.” Luke pressed a hand to his chest as he pretended he cared. His smile showed how much he didn’t care.
“I had to suffer through it. You can pull through,” Jake encouraged him.
“Only fair that everyone gets to endure Luke’s picks,” Evan agreed.
“Help me out here,” Cade turned to Ryker. “The longer it takes me to take a turn, the longer it will be before yours.”
Ryker remained stoic.
They were an interesting group of guys, Ryker being the quiet one. He only spoke when he felt the need, and those words were usually grunted out. He was Luke’s mentor somehow, though. Two more opposite personalities didn’t exist.
For every word that Ryker didn’t say, Luke did. He was the youngest of the group and his maturity level shined through everything he did in both business and personal life. Luke hadn’t matured beyond his teenage years still, despite being several years past them.
Then there were Jake, Evan, and Owen. All three of them had met their significant others on blind dates. Owen hadn’t done it at the restaurant like Jake and Evan. It hadn’t even been his blind date. He’d accidentally crashed someone else’s and ended up with the girl.
“Stop delaying it. You can help us re-open the restaurant.” Evan was a not so silent partner with Kayla, the owner of The Blind Date.
He didn’t really have a choice unless he wanted to explain why now wasn’t a good time in his life to be dating. That was going to happen.
“Fine,” Cade grunted out. “He can’t go first.” Pointing at Luke, Cade leaned back in his chair with a glare.
“You won’t know who went first. That’s the point.” Luke reminded him.
“We all know when it’s your turn.” Evan rolled his eyes.
Luke grinned, not even bothering to look sheepish about it.
“Deal or not?” Cade asked. He just wanted to move on, back to the game where he could play without too much arguing.
“In the end, Luke is right. You aren’t supposed to know who goes first, so can’t really agree to it,” Jake said.
“Bullshit.” He wasn’t about to lose this argument. There was no way that he was going to go on his first date in forever with some crazy chick that Luke picked.
“No. You play fair like everyone else did,” Evan insisted.
“That’s hardly fair. I don’t want to do it if I’m just going to go on an awful date with some chick that only wants to sleep with a guy with money.” Each of them had more money than they could spend in this lifetime, all of them billionaires. Women were almost always after their money.
“I resent that,” Luke said. “Besides, maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”
Cade snorted. “That’ll be the day.”
“Enough,” Owen jumped into the conversation.
“You aren’t part of this,” Cade reminded him.
“Damn, dude.” Owen pushed away from the table and stood. “Anyone want another?”
Cade didn’t look around to see who asked for another beer. He tried to focus on the fact that he needed to rein himself in. Mentally, he scolded himself for snapping at Owen.
“We can set you up with that girl from the coffee shop,” Evan teased.
“Her name is Paisley. And, no.” He had already tried asking her out before everything went sideways in his life. She’d turned him down flat and he had to find a new place to get coffee.
“She’s nice,” Luke said quietly.
It was such an odd statement from him that everyone stopped and turned. He didn’t think women we nice and comment on it. Luke was strictly a one-nighter kind of person and everyone had seen Paisley, knowing she wasn’t that at all.
“What?” Luke asked when he noticed everyone looking at him. “She is.”
Cade nodded. “She is.”
“We’re just surprised that you noticed,” Ryker pointed out what they were all thinking. “You rarely notice or comment on the ones that aren’t willing to bed you right then and there.”
Luke crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking every bit the petulant teen despite being 26. “I notice things. This is why I don’t say shit.”
“No one said anything. We are just surprised.” Jake took a sip of his beer, his eyes staying on Luke.
Cade kept his mouth closed as they went back and forth. Taking the attention away from him hadn’t been planned, but he’d be grateful and not look this gift horse in the mouth.
“I have feelings, you know,” Luke huffed.
Evan bit back a chuckle that turned into a bull blown laugh before he could stifle it. “No one said you didn’t.”
“You all act like I’m so shallow all the time,” Luke complained.
Cade took in the other man’s stance and realized something had changed in their dynamic. Luke was no longer relaxed and while his tone was still slightly relaxed, his body was rigid. He stood, flexing his fists as he looked back at his friends.
“Is something going on?” Cade asked.
“No,” Luke bit out, too fast.
Cade shrugged. It would come out in time, whatever it was, and Luke would clue them all in when he was ready.
“You can talk to us. Seriously,” Owen’s laughter had dried up and his tone was more somber.
Luke’s eyes cut to Ryker, who gave a small shrug. Then he faced Owen again and shook his head.
“We’re here when you’re ready.” Cade stood and squeezed Luke’s shoulder. “We are always here, no matter what it is.”
And that was the truth. This group of friends had each other’s backs, no questions. Something they all knew about each other, but Cade wasn’t ready to put his problems out there yet, either.
Chapter Two
April
April stood, placing her hands on her back and stretching. She’d had her head down at her desk for entirely too long and now she was paying for it. Sore all over, she groaned and added a few twists to her stretching before looking at the clock.
Five hours. It had been five hours since she’d last looked up and taken a breath. April shook her head at herself and bent down to close her laptop. She needed to be in the conference room in less than ten minutes and was wholly unprepared.
It was a wonderful thing that her meeting was with Kayla, a client but also a friend, and she’d spend half their time catching up before they actually got to work. It wouldn’t take long for them to make this new contract, anyway.
Kayla was bringing Evan out of the silent portion of their silent partnership officially. It was a simple contract change, one that Kayla didn’t need to come in for. April could do it in her sleep. Fact was she could do most of it in her sleep anymore.
She hated her job. Not the clients, except for a few, but she was relegated to doing contracts despite all her years of law school. This wasn’t what she intended to do forever and yet it was the only job in law that she’d had. Right after she passed the bar, she was hired here and had worked her way up from lackey to her own clients, but she was bored.
“Keep up the good work,” her boss said last night when she left well past dinnertime. “You could be looking at partner before too long.”
She shuddered. There was no way she could do contracts for the rest of her life. She’d go insane. Unfortunately, she was too busy to look for a new position and if word got out that she was, she could lose the job she had, which she couldn’t afford to do.
No sooner than she sat her laptop down did Kayla walk into the small conference room.
“I brought you something,” she sang out, waving a bag of takeout.
Her smile was genuine even as she tried to keep her mouth from watering at the food. Of course, she hadn’t eaten since she wasn’t watching the time. “Is that for me?” April joked, taking the bag from her friend.
“Tell me you’ve eaten already today?” Kayla said with concern as she took a seat next to April.
“Lost track of time,” April said sheepishly as she dug into the bag. “You didn’t?”
April pulled out her sandwich from her favorite café, that wasn’t far from her apartment. There was something special about the food there and all of it was amazing and hit the spot every time.
“I figured you hadn’t eaten. You’re going to waste away, girl.” Her friendly tone held an underlying note of sadness and concern.
“I know. I just forget,” April told her.
“Set timers. Do something.” It wasn’t quite a plea, but April knew it was. “I just worry about you.”
“I’m fine. Taking a long look at things lately and might be making some changes soon,” April confessed.
Kayla arched an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
“I’m not ready to talk about it yet and it’s still just a, maybe.”
“Don’t leave me without telling me,” Kayla teased.
“Afraid you’re stuck with me no matter what,” April joked back.
The mood sufficiently lightened. They both ate their sandwiches and spoke about the restaurant. It was about to reopen, and April was thrilled for her friend. The restaurant was vandalized and had been closed for a bit. It had been very hard on Kayla to lose the momentum that the restaurant had been enjoying all at once.
It was an interesting concept, but April had never been to the restaurant on a date. She had eaten there but always upstairs in Kayla’s office. The novel idea had been turning heads for a while now since Evan, Kayla’s boyfriend, had convinced his friends to give it a try. It had leant an air of trust to the restaurant and business had picked up.
Just after the vandalism, April had met all of Evan’s friends, only to discover that she already knew one of them, Cade. They’d dated once and Cade’s parents had quickly told him they didn’t approve of her and Cade had dropped her quickly.
It was a shame because when his family wasn’t involved; they got along great. They had chatted about deep, dark things in their life and she had told Cade things that she’d told no one before or since. Cade had seemed open with her as well, but then his father had told him she wasn’t a good fit and he’d dropped her so quick.
And he’d dropped her hard. This was the next time she’d seen him, and that was a few years ago. He sent her a text and that had been the last words from him. There’d been no further communication because he’d blocked her. She went to his apartment building once but saw him with another woman, so she’d walked away and assumed that it had all been bullshit for him.
After almost six months of dating, they’d never slept together, a regret. Then, if she had slept with him, she was almost positive that she wouldn’t have wanted to stop.
“You good?” Kayla asked.
April shook her head, ridding her mind of the unwanted thoughts. “Sorry. Was zoned out.”
“Thinking about anything in particular?”
She shook her head. “Just work, as always.”
“Well, I have something to distract you,” Kayla grinned.
“Is it more work?” April teased.
“Nope. You're going to try a blind date. I need you to test the new system for me because I trust you, but also because you haven’t gone to the old one, so you won’t be biased.”
April stared at her friend, trying to decide if she was serious. “No way. I don’t have time to eat most days, much less to date.”
“All the more reason,” Kayla pressed. “Please do this for me?”
“No way. I am not letting you manipulate me into one of these dates. I am good right now. Find someone else to be your guinea pig.” April stood and carried her trash to the bin while trying to calm herself down.
April knew about the deal between Evan’s friends because Kayla had told her. She didn’t know who was next, but she was worried enough that it was Cade that she couldn’t do this.
“Please, April. I’ll be your food alarm forever if you do this,” Kayla begged.
“I can’t. I really don’t have time,” April said gently. It was the truth.
“Just one. That’s all I ask. Please?” she continued.
“Kayla,” April started. “I just can’t right now. Plus, I already know it will be one of Evan’s friends, so isn’t that a lot like cheating?”
“You don’t know which one,” Kayla pressed.
“I don’t want to date a billionaire,” April said. “That and there’s a one in three chance. I know who it is before I get there. Odds are even better for after I meet them.”
“Fine,” Kayla sulked. “Let’s get this contract done so I can get back to it. You’re still going to come by after the kitchen is open again for dinner with me, right?”
“Of course,” April smiled. She had no hard feelings for Kayla over her trying to set her up. It wasn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last one.
They spent the next half an hour adjusting the contract for Kayla to take with her. Perks of knowing your contract lawyer this well was that you got to get your changes done in real time and end your appointment with the finished copy.
“Are you sure I can’t convince you?” Kayla asked again as they stood to leave.
“How many times have you tried to set me up?” April asked.
Kayla shrugged, but had to good grace to look sheepish.
“Have I ever said yes?”
“Maybe if you said yes once in a while, I wouldn’t ask so much?” Kayla teased.
The women hugged quickly and as they stepped back, Kayla took April’s hand. “I just want you to know I am really worried about you. Please take care of yourself better?”
“I’m trying,” April promised. “I’ll see you later.”
She caved. It took an hour after Kayla left for her to give in and text her.
