Read Online Shopping for a Billionaire 2 by Julia Kent - Free Book Online Page A

 
    Carol’s words sink in. Discomfort slams me with full force. “Oh, uh…Declan’s company gave our company a multimillion-dollar account.”
    “Because you slept with him?” Carol gasps.  
    “I did not sleep with him!” I shout.
    “Good girl,” Greg calls back.
    “Did you seriously just call her a ‘girl’?” Amanda says. I hear hushed arguments through the thin walls as Carol emits a long stream of words that sound like my mother, minus the rabid need for billionaire grandbabies named Thayer Spotterheim “Scoochy” Mayflower Vanderbilt Kennedy III.
    “—and you don’t need to give it up for a business colleague just to land an account!” Carol finishes.
    “You take after Dad,” I mutter. “Because Mom seems to think I should give it up so she can have her Farmington Country Club wedding.”
    Carol snorts. “She didn’t like the fact that I eloped with Todd.”
    “‘Eloped’ sounds so elegant. You ran off to Vegas and got married by a transgendered Elvis impersonator who moonlights as Elvira. Those pictures were…um…” I shudder.
    “I know,” she sighs. “Thank God you and Amy haven’t been as stupid. Yet.” She sounds so beaten down that a wave of guilt hits me, even as I stare at the clock. 4 :29 p.m. Should I be a good, supportive little sister or fake another call so I can get her off the phone and rip out of here to get home and look better for Declan?
    Amanda solves that dilemma for me. “Is Carol still on the phone? And talking about her wedding?” she shrieks as she walks up behind me. “The word ‘Elvira’ must mean yes.”  
    “Yes.”
    “Then tell her you have to go for your hot date! You have a billionaire to boink.” She makes a shooing gesture toward my door. Carol and Amanda adore each other. They have a mutual interest in mocking me endlessly whenever they’re together. I’m so glad I help people bond.
    “Go! Boink! I’ll call Amanda and trick her into babysitting for me,” Carol says.
    “Ooooh, good one!” I hang up before Carol changes her mind, and grab my purse. Amanda’s phone is ringing before the outer door closes behind me. I walk down the concrete hall bathed in blinking fluorescent lights and look toward the main door’s blast of sunlight through the window, the way a tiny vegetable shoot searches for the sun after it breaks through the outer shell of a seed.
    And then—
    I’m free.
    My stomach flips like it’s an Olympic diver, and my eagerness drains as I reach my car because…this is real. Serious. I have a date with a man who wouldn’t have noticed me if he hadn’t found me hiding in a men’s-room stall with my hand down a toilet.
    And yet…he’s an intelligent, respected, gorgeous man with eyes that go hot when he looks at…me? I steady my breathing and let the rush of warmth fill me.
    Even as I thrust the screwdriver into the lock and turn the car on, the burst of excitement that comes from knowing that he really wants to get to know me better turns into a tingling anticipation.
    Because.
    Because .  
    I’m free.

Chapter Seven
    I’m not five minutes into driving home when my phone buzzes with a text. A few months ago I decided not to answer my phone while driving, so I ignore it like Simon Cowell at a preschool holiday choir festival. Driving with a cell phone pressed to your ear isn’t illegal—yet—in Massachusetts, but I can’t climb into a limo without ripping my skirt, or walk across a room in heels taller than a grasshopper, so should I really try to manage a two-ton vehicle and a mobile call at the same time?
    My hands feel like bricks—white-knuckled bricks—by the time I pull into my parking spot and ding a plastic trash can as I slam the car into park and grab the phone. Three messages.
    All from Steve.
    “Blah,” I say, tossing the phone back in my purse. As if I have time to even think about Steve right now. Somehow, in under an hour, I have to go from an ogre to a princess. And I’m no Cameron Diaz. No