An Heir At Any Price: The Billionaire's Obsession - Contemporary Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

cash them?” I
asked her. “They were made out specifically for those
bills.”
     
    “Honey…maybe I lost them and someone
else got ahold of them and cashed them.”
     
    “Stop it!” I yelled at her. I didn’t
usually. I wasn’t a yeller, most of the time I was just a big
pushover and that’s why my own mother as well as others sometimes
took advantage of me. But, she just told me that two bills I
thought were already paid this month weren’t. Setting aside the
fact that she just lied to me, changed the payable to on the checks
and spent every penny on alcohol, I would have still been pissed.
“When are you ever going to realize that you’re wasting your life?
You’re wasting my life…you’re killing yourself and you’re killing
me in the process.”
     
    “Holly, I’m sorry, honey. I’m going to
try harder…” If I had a dollar for every time I heard that in my
life, I’d be richer than Aiden Scott. I thought about Aiden and I
wondered if he would still want me to mother his child if he knew
about my mother. Alcoholism has a big genetic component to it, a
big reason why I don’t drink very much, and why I am always careful
not to have too many.
     
    “How did you cash them?” I asked her
again in a calmer voice. It didn’t really matter now, but I wanted
her to have to at least be accountable for admitting what she
did.
     
    “Ronnie at the Liquor King cashed ‘em
for me. I changed who it was made out to. I drew a single line
through it and put your initials. I’m sorry, baby.”
     
    “I’m going to bed,” I told her. On the
note my mother had just admitted to theft and fraud.
     
    “I can borrow the money from Benny, to
pay the bills. You won’t have to pay them. I’ll go see him
tomorrow.” Benny was my Mom’s brother and he’d gotten over her and
all of this drama a long time ago. He rarely even called or came to
see her any longer and he only lived about ten miles away. He
wasn’t going to lend her a dime. He was like me, he’d been taken
enough to know that if he gave her money it would all go into a
bottle.
     
    “I’ll take care of them,” I told her.
“Don’t bother Uncle Benny with it.” I stood up to head in the
direction of my bedroom.
     
    “Good night, Holly. I love you.” I
wish I didn’t feel like there was a knife sticking out of my chest
every time she said that.
     
    “Good night mother,” I said, wearily.
I didn’t say it back, I just couldn’t at that moment.
     
    ***
     
    The next morning on my way to work I
went by and paid the electric and water bills for my mother’s
house. I called her when I got to work and told her she could go
home. I wasn’t even mad anymore, I was numb. It was over a week
until payday and I now had ten dollars and forty-two cents in my
account. Thank you, Mother. I hope that was some good vodka and I
hope the tips are good the rest of the week so I can pay my own
bills.
     
    I went about my work, trying to keep
my mind off of my mother. I pretended to talk and laugh with Rose
and Myra but my heart wasn’t in it. At about ten-thirty after we’d
gotten the breakfast rush cleaned up, Rose pulled me to the side
and asked, “What’s wrong, girlie?”
     
    “Nothing’s wrong,” I told her, forcing
a smile.
     
    “You’re a terrible liar,” she
said.
     
    “Thank you,” I said with a real smile.
I had promised myself growing up with my mother that I wasn’t going
to be one of those people who had issues with the truth. “I’m okay
though, really. My mother’s acting up a bit, but nothing I can’t
handle.”
     
    “Aw, I’m sorry, honey. You deserve a
lot better than the hand you’ve been dealt.”
     
    I shrugged. Rose had an autistic son
and a husband who cheated regularly. I knew this because she told
me, but I never heard her complain even though she was in her late
forties and still working more than me. We all have our crosses to
bear and I just thank God that I have a job and good friends like
Rose who