Read Online Shopping for a Billionaire 4 by Julia Kent - Free Book Online

a billionaire and something goes wrong, it’s always your fault.
    The next twenty minutes go by in a blur as I sit on the couch and process email, Chuckles eats a ficus leaf and then hairballs it up, and Amy and Amanda ignore us while strategizing.
    “Earth to Shannon!” Amanda says.
    “What?”
    “How did Declan’s mom die?”
    I halt. “I…I don’t know. I asked him twice and he never answered.”
    All six eyebrows in the room shoot up. Eight, if cats have eyebrows.
    Amanda snatches the computer from me and types furiously.
    And then she gasps in shock.
    “Oh, Shannon. Oh my God.”
    “What?”
    “Read.”
     The obituary Amanda pulled up on the computer screen has a breathtakingly lovely older woman’s photo front and center, a thick chain of pearls around her neck, her hair pulled back in a smooth updo. Lively, friendly green eyes so familiar my heart tugs at me stare back. 
    Elena Montgomery McCormick.
    Declan’s mother.
    Born in 1956. Died in 2004. She had him when she was older, and that makes James in his late fifties, which makes sense. My eyes race over the words to get them all in, and then I come to a dead stop.
    Stung by the words in front of me.
    The obituary is tasteful, mentioning her three kids—Terrance, Declan and Andrew—and her loving husband, James.
    It’s the link under it, though, that makes me hold my breath. Makes time stand still. Makes the air go thick.
    The headline for a Boston Globe story reads:
    Local business leader’s wife dead from wasp sting.
    Oh my God.
    Amanda’s hands are gentle on my shoulder as my eyes race across the page. “I can’t find more about it, yet,” she explains. “There isn’t a major news story to explain how it happened.”
    “His brother had a bad incident around the same time,” I tell her, brain reeling. Declan’s mother died from a sting? Died?  
    “I guess this explains why he knew exactly what to do with you,” Amy whispers, eyes glistening. My own throat goes salty and tight as tears I didn’t know I had in me spring to the surface. The memory of that picnic, how Declan was so calm and steady yet swift and immediate, reacting with perfectly orchestrated steps, how he ran with me in his arms so far, so hard, so fast… 
    He saved my life and then he broke my heart.
    “This can’t be real,” I choke out, but deep down I understand more. Suddenly. Like a clap of thunder and lightning that makes the landscape bright in a flash, revealing parts unknown, the sound echoing in a ripple of cacophony, now I get it.
    I get it.
    “He can’t date me because I remind him of his mother,” I say.
    Amy raises one skeptical eyebrow. “You look nothing like her. For one, she has cheekbones more prominent than Heidi Klum’s.”
    I wave my hand in the air between us. “No, not that I look like her. The sting. She had an anaphylactic allergy, I have an anaphylactic allergy. Declan can’t handle it. Maybe I’m a trigger?”
    Amanda makes a noise that tells me she’s not convinced. “He would have dumped you right after the ER incident, then.”
    “It’s a miracle he didn’t,” Amy adds with a snort. “You nearly decapitated his second head.”
    I give her a look that shuts her up. “Maybe he was just being nice. Not breaking up with me when I was in a medical crisis.”
    “That doesn’t explain Easter,” she declares.
    We sit in brooding silence. Amanda takes action and starts googling furiously. I take action by searching through all the open mystery shops available at work to see if there’s one at a bakery. I have a hankering for muffins suddenly.
    “What are you doing?” Amy asks, peering over my shoulder.
    “Discovering my ex-boyfriend’s mother died from the same allergy I have always makes me crave baked goods, you know?”
    Amanda ignores us both. “You two leave me alone for an hour and I’ll have an answer.”
    “What the hell am I supposed to do for an hour while I wait to find out the one little piece of