Billionaire in Disguise

Author’s Note 🤍

Billionaire in Disguise will be taken down on December 23 as it moves to Galatea.

A short excerpt will remain available here.

Thank you so much for reading and supporting this story. 🤍

— Bianca

JEREMY

I needed a wife.

That was the official reason I came back to Pass Christian, Mississippi. Not for the sweet tea. Not for the slow drawl of front-porch gossip. And definitely not for the humidity thick enough to slap you across the face and steal your wallet.

I yanked off my leather jacket, tied my helmet to the back of my Harley, and stared at the town I hadn’t set foot in for ten years.

Coming back felt like wearing a suit two sizes too small, familiar, but tight in all the wrong places.

If I wanted to merge my tech company with Tokido Technologies, I had to look the part. No more bad-boy billionaire. No flings. No headlines about me being spotted leaving a rooftop bar at 2 a.m. with a girl named Cinnamon. According to my financial advisor, “No philandering allowed.”

And if the deal fell through, I’d lose the biggest partnership of my career and maybe the company with it.

Tokido wanted a stable man with a stable life. A wife. A dog. A picket fence, maybe.

Fine. I’d give them one.

Main Street hadn’t changed in a decade. Same crooked sidewalks. Same rusty red bricks. Same boutique names spelled with unnecessary Y’s. The only difference? I wasn’t the same guy who’d left.

I shed the ‘fat kid’ label somewhere around my sophomore year of college and built a billion-dollar tech company while eating ramen out of a mug. Forbes wanted to slap me on a cover. I said no.

Pass Christian didn’t care about Forbes.

But apparently, it cared about me now.

Women turned their heads. A few double-takes, maybe trying to place me. I was used to that kind of look in the city, but it hit different coming from girls who once voted me ‘most forgettable’ in high school.

Like Sophia Necaise.

Pushing a double stroller, knockoff sunglasses propped on her head like a tiara, she looked me up and down like I was on the menu. I remember the last words she ever said to me:

“Aww, you thought you had a chance? Keep dreaming, dough-belly.”

That one carved a trench through my teen ego so deep I could still fall in it.

I gave her a polite nod and kept walking. She wasn’t worth the sweat.

“Hi there, you new in town?”

The voice was like honey and laced with arsenic.

Casey Thomas. Fire-red curls. Green eyes that gleamed like a credit score commercial. She stepped in front of me with all the energy of someone who thought The Bachelor was a documentary.

“I’m Casey,” she said, already preening. “Want me to show you around the Pass?”

The Pass. Short for Pass Christian. And short on entertainment.

“I’ll manage,” I said.

“You sure?” she asked, flicking her dragon nails.

“Positive. But I appreciate the southern hospitality.”

She pouted. I escaped.

The Flower Pot was my actual destination. A floral shop that smelled like allergies and Mother’s Day guilt. The door chimed as I stepped in, and a wave of air conditioning hit me like salvation.

“Welcome to The Flower Pot!” someone shouted from the back. “Be right with ya!”

Red, white, and blue arrangements filled every available surface. The Beaux family’s Fourth of July cookout was approaching, and my mom had made it her personal mission to get me there, so she could parade me in front of Jacqueline Beaux like I was a prize-winning bull.

I grabbed a mason jar filled with tulips and tried not to think about it. I wasn’t about to show up to Mama’s house empty-handed. And definitely not with Lolita, my Harley, which she still referred to as “that noise-making deathtrap.”

Then came the blur.

“Kiwi! No!”

A chocolate lab exploded out from behind the counter and launched herself at me. The vase flew into the air like a slow-motion Oscar moment. I caught it, barely, but the tulips didn’t survive. And neither did my dry shirt.

Water. Everywhere.

“Oh, sweet baby Jesus, I am so sorry!”

The voice belonged to the brunette who came flying toward me with a towel like she was in the Olympics for flower shop first responders. She scooped up the tulips, wrangled the dog, and vanished into the back.

All I caught was sun-kissed skin, dark brown hair, and an aura of chaos.

She reemerged seconds later, holding a gray T-shirt over her face like a hostage note.

“I’m so sorry. Kiwi’s new. She gets excited.”

“It’s just a shirt,” I said. But it wasn’t. Not really. It was cold and clinging and slightly see-through, and I was trying to play it cool while also wondering if my nipples were now conversational icebreakers.

She stepped forward with the towel. “Let me help—”

She dabbed at my chest with the towel, soaking through the already clinging fabric.

That was the moment I noticed her.

No makeup. Hair in a bun. Mike’s Mechanic Shop tee. And the kind of brown eyes you could write a country song about.

I forgot how to speak.

She blinked. “Oh—sorry. I guess you can… do this yourself.”

“You did a good job,” I said, voice gravelly.

She blushed. “Need flowers for your girlfriend?”

I laughed. “No girlfriend.”

She tilted her head.

“For my mom,” I added.

She smiled. “You visiting?”

“Not exactly.”

She didn’t press. Just nodded. “What were you thinking?”

I held up the soggy tulip jar. “I liked these.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Tulips? For your mom? You know they mean ‘perfect love,’ right?”

I choked. “Maybe you should pick.”

She did, quick and graceful. Before I could bolt, she called out, “Wait!”

I turned.

She ran over with the same gray shirt she’d hidden behind. “Here. Wear this.”

“You just keep men’s clothes in a flower shop?”

“My apartment’s upstairs.”

I set the flowers down, peeled off my jacket, and tugged on the dry one. Her gaze flinched away, but not before I saw the flicker.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

She nodded, biting her lip.

There was something about her, like a name I used to know but couldn’t quite place.

I really hoped she watched me walk out.

Back on Lolita, I realized something.

I never got her name.

But something told me I already knew it.

Maybe coming home wouldn’t be so bad.

Hell, maybe I’d just found my wife.

CHARLIE

Jeremy Tyler was back in town.

And I was fanning myself with the nearest receipt like it could blow away ten years of buried feelings.

He hadn’t recognized me. So I did the only thing I could think of, I acted like I’d never seen him in my life. Like he hadn’t been my brother’s best friend. Like we hadn’t grown up together.

Maybe it shouldn’t have bothered me. I’d been fourteen the last time he saw me, still all legs and braces, my hair braided down my back. He didn’t look like the eighteen-year-old who left town with the dust of Pass Christian on his boots and a chip on his shoulder.

He looked… sharpened. Slimmer, but stronger. His features more defined, like time had carved him from boyhood into something dangerous. But the heart-tipped nose was the same. And those eyes, those impossibly jade-green eyes, I would’ve known them in a crowd of strangers.

Even if he hadn’t known mine.

I told myself it was fine. If I hadn’t seen that picture of him at Mama Tyler’s house, I might not have recognized him either.

But that was a lie.

I’d recognize Jeremy Tyler in the dark.

I never cared what people said about him. That he’d betrayed his southern roots. That he was a coward for running off. That was mostly Bobby talking. Still, the whispers never quite stopped, not even when Mama Tyler was in earshot.

But he never treated me like Bobby’s annoying little sister. He never ignored me or talked down to me like most of Bobby’s friends did. I’d been a goner the day he fixed my daddy’s old ham radio. The one I shattered after Daddy died, thinking I’d never hear our call sign again. I’d cried myself to sleep that night.

A week later, Jeremy showed up with it outside my door, fixed, quiet, steady. No fanfare. Just him.

And when he left…

It shattered something in me. Something I never fully repaired.

I never really forgave Bobby for pushing him out.

But those were ghosts. Old aches.

Jeremy Tyler had come home.

The bells above the door jingled, and my stomach flipped. Another customer.

“Hey darling, I came for Mama Beaux’s table decorations for the cookout.”

Cameron.

My boyfriend.

The one I somehow forgot about the moment Jeremy looked right at me.

I pasted on a smile. “Hi.”

Cameron reached behind the counter and pulled me into his arms, planting soft kisses on my neck like we were in a Hallmark movie.

“I missed you.”

I fought the instinct to pull away. Anyone would be lucky to date Cameron Beaux. Tall, handsome, clean-cut, already halfway through opening his own clinic. His mother ran the town’s social scene like a general in pearls.

But lately, he’d been a bit too much. Too perfect. Too planned.

Mama kept hinting he was about to propose.

And if she was right, if I said no, I’d be crucified by the town.

Jacqueline Beaux would make sure of it. My flower shop would dry up faster than hydrangeas in July.

“Settle down,” I teased, trying to hide the edge in my voice.

Kiwi barked from the back room, where I’d tied her up. Loyal little thing. She could always sniff out when I was off.

“Everything ready?” Cameron asked.

“Almost. Just one left.”

“Great. Mother would’ve had my ass if I showed up empty-handed.”

He glanced around quickly, like saying “ass” in public might bring Jacqueline down upon us in a whirlwind of hairspray and passive-aggression.

He still had one arm around my waist as I pulled the last arrangement together, a mix of gardenias and marigolds, tied with navy ribbon. His gaze felt heavy on my back, like he was trying to remind me who I belonged to.

The space between us had grown taut in recent months, stretched too thin. I kept pulling away, and he kept pulling tighter.

Like the Beauxs always did.

“Dinner tonight?” he asked. “I can get Dr. Lizana to cover my shift.”

I handed him the final box. “Can’t. I have dinner with Mama and Bobby.”

His brow pinched, frustration flashing through his smile. “You’ve been busy a lot lately.”

“It’s wedding season, Cam. You know how that gets.”

He didn’t say anything right away, just nodded slowly. “Okay. I’ll pick you up tomorrow before the cookout, then. You’re still my date, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

He kissed my cheek and carried the boxes to his Yukon. The second the door closed behind him, I deflated like a week-old balloon.

It was time to end things. I couldn’t keep dragging it out.

But every time I worked up the nerve, something stopped me: Mama’s hopeful smile, Bobby bragging about Cameron like he was family already, or the reminder that the Beaux name carried more weight than my own ever would.

And it definitely wasn’t about Jeremy.

Except... maybe it was. Just a little.

***

Mama and I waited on Bobby for family dinner. He was late again, as always.

“So,” Mama asked, swirling her sweet tea like it held answers. “How’s Cameron? Has he popped the question?”

I choked on my biscuit. “No, Mama. We’re not there yet.”

“Hasn’t even been a year,” I added.

“And what’s that got to do with anything? When you know, you know.”

And I knew.

I didn’t want to marry Cameron Beaux.

“Bobby!” I hollered as he finally walked in, kissing Mama on the cheek and plopping into his chair.

“Sorry I’m late. Cam and I were watching his college football tapes.”

My spine stiffened. “You were with Cameron?”

Cameron knew I had plans with Bobby and Mamma, and he’d kept him late anyway.

He smirked. “Yeah. He was my friend before he became your fuc—”

“Robert Timothy Fields!” Mama shrieked, flinging her water at him before he could finish.

He flinched, ducked, and still got hit. “Dang, Mama. I didn’t even finish the word.”

He wiped his face, smirking. I reached under the table and pinched his thigh hard enough to make him yelp.

“Mother fu—”

Mama’s glare shut him up instantly.

Dinner crawled. Bobby pushed peas around his plate. Mama tried to gossip like everything was normal. But I could barely taste my food, too aware of the growing cracks in my life.

Then Mama dropped a bomb.

“Y’all hear about that mystery man everyone’s whispering about? Especially that Casey Thomas. She’s been fluttering around like a drunk butterfly.”

My fork paused halfway to my mouth.

“Nope,” I said, popping a brussels sprout in my mouth to stall.

“Charlotte Anne,” Mama warned. “Don’t play dumb. Who was it?”

Bobby squinted at me. “Who?”

I cleared my throat. “Came into the shop. Bought flowers for his mama.”

“What was he like?” Mama pressed. “Is he worth the buzz?”

I blushed. “Yes.”

Bobby barked a laugh. “Wait till Cam hears about this.”

“I’m leaving,” I said, standing. “Big day tomorrow. See y’all at the cookout.”

I said my goodbyes in a rush, tossing my napkin on the plate before either of them could drag me back into the conversation.

Outside, the air was thick with summer heat, clinging to my skin like syrup. Cicadas screamed from the trees, and a few porch lights flickered on in the neighborhood like fireflies waking up for the night.

I slid into my beat-up station wagon, olive green with one red door and a cassette deck that only played Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 and static. The seat creaked under me like an old friend, and the keys jingled as I jammed them into the ignition.

She took a few tries to start, like she was still deciding whether or not to forgive me for making her drive all the way out to the boondocks to visit Mama. But she roared to life with a final grumble, the steering wheel warm under my palms.

I could’ve afforded a nicer car, something sleek and shiny with working AC and speakers that didn’t rattle. But I loved the way this old gal made Mama twitch every time I pulled into the church parking lot.

I’d bought her just to annoy Mama originally, but she’d grown on me. Kind of like moss on the side of a tree, stubborn, unsightly, and damn near impossible to shake.

***

The sun had set, and the sky was bruised pink and purple as I pulled into the Winn-Dixie parking lot. I needed pistachio ice cream like I needed air.

Then I saw him.

Jeremy Tyler, striding toward the store like he didn’t just walk out of a fever dream and into my actual life.

I blinked. Grinned. Floated.

And then a car honked behind me, loud, angry, Southern impatient.

I jumped.

Tripped over my own sandals.

Fell straight into a wall of leather and muscle.

Strong arms caught me before I could faceplant into the pavement.

My brain short-circuited.

Jeremy. Holding me. Again.

My heart did a little jazz solo in my chest.

And then, because the universe had a twisted sense of humor, a teenage boy barreled past us with a shopping cart, bumping Jeremy just hard enough to send us forward.

Our lips brushed. Not even a kiss, really. Just enough to count in court.

We both froze.

He touched his mouth like he’d just been electrocuted by lightning and liked it.

“The least you could do,” he said, grinning, “is buy a guy dinner first.”

I made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. Or a wheeze. Possibly a duck noise.

“I—uh—I should—ice cream—I need to go.”

He opened his mouth, probably to say something charming and infuriating, but I was already half-jogging toward my car.

“Wait!” he called after me.

But I was gone.

Miraculously, my car started on the first try. A miracle. A sign. Or maybe my car just understood I was about to emotionally combust.

In the rearview mirror, he was still standing there.

Smiling.

Waving.

Like I hadn’t just kissed him by accident in a grocery store parking lot.

I was so screwed.

Because nothing good ever starts with your childhood crush catching you mid-stumble and kissing you by accident in the Winn-Dixie parking lot.