Shopping for a Billionaire 4 Read Online Free PDF Page B

ask, turning the tables.
    “Jason chickened out.” Not you? I want to ask.
    “Not you?” Agnes asks. If I were standing closer to her I’d give her a fist bump.
    “I…well, anyhow,” she says, weirdly avoiding the question. “We just bought one of those ‘real dolls’ and had at it.”
    The entire room is struck dumb.
    “You had sex with a doll?” Agnes finally asks.
    “This alone is worth the $17 fee,” Corrine whispers to a group of shocked women.
    “ I didn’t have sex with it. But…”
    “Dad did?” I squeak. Brain bleach. Brain bleach. You cannot un-hear that.
    She claps her hands twice. “Topic change! Let’s start out in Child’s Pose.”
    “You can’t just cut us off in the middle of something that salacious! How many of us here have had husbands who humped a woman-shaped version of water wings?” Corrine shouts.
    Three women raise their hands.
    Kink is the new black.
    “This is supposed to be restorative yoga!” I hiss to the group, eyes blazing and on Mom. “I did not come here under duress to listen to people talk about their partners humping plastic sex dolls.”
    “Well, dear,” Agnes huffs, “we didn’t come here to listen to you tell us how you destroyed a fantastic relationship with a billionaire with an ass so fine you could hang it on a wall at the Museum of Fine Arts.”
    More murmurs of assent.
    “So no one is getting what they want today!” Mom says in a too-cheerful voice. “Let’s forget about kinky sex and settle in to taking a nice, meditative breathing session.”
    Groans of dissent.
    As we crawl on our mats, Agnes leans over and says in a scratchy voice, “Make sure the next boyfriend is eye candy, too, and I’ll buy you a new pair of yoga pants.’
    “The poor woman lost Boston’s hottest eligible bachelor, Agnes. We should buy her a consolation prize.” 
    “A vibrator that smells like money?”
    That was Corrine. I just…I can’t sit here and talk about sex toys with a woman who looks like my second grade teacher. Can’t.
    Won’t.
    “And now we relax,” Mom intones as deep chimes tones fills the air.
    Yeah.
    Right.

Chapter Five
    “You did lose a billionaire,” Mom says as she joins me, sitting at the booth at the local ice cream parlor, my spoon digging into a puddle of caramel and marshmallow sauce that is about as viscous as any salacious fluid I’ve ever put in my mouth before (and considerably tastier). “It takes a certain kind of skill to drive a man like that away.”
    “I love you, too, Mom,” I mumble after shoving the chocolate-chip-caramel-marshmallow love in my mouth. That’s right—love. I can buy a giant glass full of sugared love. The proof fills my tongue with a sweet coating of love, the cold chocolate bliss biting into my teeth and gums, my stomach groaning with anticipatory pleasure as my six dollars buys me a gustatory hug, kiss, and if you add in the peanut butter sauce in the ramekin on the side—maybe even an ass grab. 
    “I don’t mean to rub salt in the wound, honey.”
    “Then why are you standing there with a brick of Himalayan salt the size of my head and beating me with it?”
    She purses her lips in what looks like a Chuckles’ butt imitation, then softens. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
    I freeze, and not from an ice cream headache. I go completely still.
    “Say what?” I choke out.
    Mom rolls her eyes. “I can admit when I’m wrong.” Her own glass full of love is perched in front of her, a bunch of berry-flavored nonsense covered in more berries, with whipped cream on top. This is how I know we cannot possibly be related, because my mother only eats berry-flavored ice cream. No chocolate sauce, no caramel-y gooey joy. She won’t touch cookie dough ice cream, nor butter pecan, nor anything with chunks of chocolate in it. 
    That’s just…it’s like she’s a poor imitation of someone who possesses XX chromosomes. Like she’s a Stepford Wife. The only thing worse would be to hate ice cream,