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

What. The plank.” She shoves me out the front door. 
    The big orange fireball in the sky is so interesting. I haven’t seen it for days, holed up in my apartment, and I’m tempted to wave hello, like it’s some neighbor I’ve known for years but haven’t chatted with for a long time.
    “ Some vibrators are pretty nice ,” I taunt Amy. “You had to say that, didn’t you?”
    “Sometimes it’s true.” She won’t back down. Sheesh. Little sister syndrome. When in doubt, dig in your heels.
    “Something is very wrong with you,” I mutter, but we go for a walk. Because she’s right.
    Not about the vibrators, but about needing to get out of the house.
    “Tell the story about James, Mom. I can’t believe you let a real billionaire get away.” She misses the obvious sarcasm in my voice. 
    She chuckles. It’s not a happy sound. “He wasn’t a billionaire back then. Far from it. I was an artist’s assistant in some crappy squatter’s building where we were all avant-garde painters and he was with the real estate company that was trying to turn our run-down warehouse into fancy loft apartments. If he could get the building, he could make his first fortune. Only one thing stopped him.”
    “You?”
    “Rats.”
    “Rats?”
    “Rats.” She says that single word like it explains everything.

Chapter Nine
    “Go on.”
    “You want me to go on about rats?”
    “Could you please connect the rats to James?”
    “Isn’t it clear?”
    “No.”
    She sighs heavily. “The building was overrun with rats.”
    Amy and I both shudder and gag. I shudder, she gags. Then we trade.
    “And the only way to keep the rats away was with cats.”
    “Is that where we got Chuckles?”
    She snickers. “No, but Chuckles could be the baby of one of the babies of one of those old warehouse cats. There were so many.”
    “Rat killer thrice removed,” Amy says. 
    “Get on with it. The James part.” I’m impatient. My life is hanging in the balance here. Amanda’s researching what the hell happened with Declan’s mother, who died in a most fragile way and one that could kill me, too. Meanwhile, my mother spills the fact that she once dated (slept with?) Declan’s father, and she’s blathering on about rats.
    “So when he saw how we controlled the rats, he went to the humane society and adopted fifty cats. Set them loose in the building. Except he didn’t think about the stray dogs in the neighborhood.”
    “Dogs?”
    Mom’s laugh is infectious, and I study her profile. The years strip off her face and she looks like she’s twenty again. Sunshine frames her face and I hold my breath, enraptured.
    “All these dogs started sniffing around the building, howling. They wouldn’t kill the rats, but they loved to chase the cats. We slept on these little pallets in the art studios and it reached a point where you didn’t know if a rat, a cat, or a dog was running over your body at 3 a.m.” She makes a funny frowny face. “Or if it was the residual effects of the hit of acid from that night.”
    “Are you sure any of this is true?” Amy asks. “Maybe it’s all just an elaborate flashback.”
    Mom whacks her lightly on the arm and Amy yelps with manufactured injury. “It’s all true. You can ask James.”
    “I can’t ask James anything,” I argue.
    “Sure you can. He’s still your client.”
    “What about you and him? How’d you start dating?”
    “He came to the building one day and was horrified to find that it had become a doggie hotel. The cats were in hiding, the rats were gone, and a ton of homeless women had followed the dogs who were so starved for attention that they curled up in everyone’s laps. There was one, named Winky—this cute little mangy Jack Russell terrier. That thing was smaller than some of the rats he managed to kill.”
    “A rat-killing terrier?” Amy’s laughing.
    “Mom! Dating!”
    “He came over one day to assess the mess and I told him he had to take care of Winky’s vet