Shopping for a Billionaire 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

find us in a few weeks, you noshing on my crispy legs.”
    “You should think about the fact that you say more to your cat than you do to your own mother,” Satan says from behind my ficus plant.
    I scream. Chuckles screams. I pick up Chuckles and fling him at the plant, which serves exactly three purposes. First, it reveals my stupidity. Second, it makes Chuckles plot my death on a whole new level. And third, it makes my mother sidestep the whole fiasco with the fluid movement of a woman who teaches yoga, leaving her to glare at me with a look that makes me realize exactly where Chuckles learned it from.
    “Nice guard cat,” my mom says. She holds her purse over her shoulder and keys in her hand. “Before you ask,” she adds as I press my palm over my heart, willing it to stay in place as Chuckles’ death ray of magnetic harm tries to pry it out of me, “Amanda called and told me she couldn’t reach you.”
    “I’ve been unavailable by phone for no more than thirty minutes. Thirty minutes! And she sends out the National Guard.”
    Mom looks triumphant. Marie Jacoby is what all my friends called a MILFF—Mother I’d Like to Flee From. A little too tan, a little too blond, a lot too judgmental. My mother doesn’t greet you with “Hello.”
    “You should” is her salutation of choice.
    “You should consider yourself fortunate. Some young girls would be falling all over themselves to have a mother who cares so much,” she grouses.
    “First off, I’m not a girl. And second, you’re right. How about I sell you on eBay as mother of the year? You’d fetch a great price.”
    One eyebrow shoots up. One perfectly threaded eyebrow, that is. No stray hair can live on Mom’s face. She visits the mall weekly and the women at the threading spa not only know her by name, they know her preferred coffee order from the little espresso place next to the escalator.
    She peers intently at me, her eyes that luminous sapphire I still envy. I got dad’s dirt-brown eyes. “You’ve met someone,” she crows, plopping her oversized fake Prada bag on my scarred thrift shop table.
    Which means she is here to talk.
    “How do you do that?” I screech, channeling the same inner fifteen-year-old she can conjure at will with just two sentences and one knowing look.
    Her eyebrow climbs higher. “So I’m right.” She stands and gives my coffee machine an appraising look. It is an espresso machine I’d gotten on a mystery shop for a high-end cookware store. “Make me a coffee and I’ll only ask the basics.”
    “Blackmailer,” I mutter, but I know the score. Do this and she’ll leave me alone. Argue and I am in for the full hover-mother treatment that makes the NSA look like Spy Kids .
    I grab the can of ground espresso out of the cabinet above the sink and she makes a guttural sound of reproach. Ignoring her, I fill the machine and make sure there is enough water. Sometimes, pretending she didn’t make a noise works.
    But not this time.
    “Look at the food in your cabinets! Coffee. Sugar and sweetener packets. Ketchup and soy sauce packets. Sample-size cookies. Teeny packages of microwave popcorn.”
    “I eat a perfectly fine diet, Mom,” I mutter as the machine begins to hiss. Or maybe that’s me. It’s hard to tell.
    She waves a perfectly manicured hand dismissively. The nail polish matches a thin line of mauve that runs as a single stripe through her shirt.
    “Not for you. For the man you’ll entertain! He can’t see that. That’s not wife and mother material. No woman who makes a good wife keeps a pantry like that!”
    “Last week you were Feminist Crusader Mom, telling me how proud you were that I finished my degree and support myself!” This is a well-worn argument. Since she turned fifty a little more than two years ago, and as her friends are all getting to Momzilla their way through their daughters’ weddings, Mom has become zealously devoted to finding me A Man.
    Not just any man, though.
    A man worthy