Breaking the Billionaire's Rules(68)

I scream and laugh when he hauls me over his shoulder and carries me to his bed.

He throws me down and crawls over me, and we make love by the moonlight.

Later we’re just lying there, looking out over the city. He wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about amending the grade for your tower to five stars.”

“I want ten stars. What do I have to do for ten?”

“Hmmm,” I say with a mysterious smile. “Good question.”

He growls and flips me over on my back and looms over me with that half grin.

Then he kisses me.

And I think that there are not enough stars.



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Thank you for reading Max & Mia’s story! I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I loved writing about them.



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OMG - the little dog I adopted turns out to be a billionaire! That's right, my tiny dog inherited a jerky bad-boy billionaire’s entire company…and he is not amused!

Are you ready for more romantic comedy? Don’t miss Most Eligible Billionaire!

“I can't remember the last time a book sucked me in like this…the experience of reading this book - transcendent! There aren't words.”





~Book Girl





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Turn the page for a peek at Most Eligible Billionaire!





Most Eligible Billionaire sneak peek!




Vicky



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I’m smuggling a tiny white dog named Smuckers into a Manhattan hospital to see his owner, Bernadette Locke. Thanks to a standing appointment at a chandelier-draped dog salon on Fifth Avenue run by a woman who ostensibly loves dogs but might secretly hate them, Smuckers’s facial fur is blow-dried into such an intense puff of white that his eager black eyes and wee raisin of a nose seem to float in a cloud.

There are three things to know about Bernadette: She’s the meanest woman I ever met. She believes I’m some kind of dog whisperer who can read Smuckers’s mind. (I can’t.) And she’s dying. Alone.

The people in her condo building will probably be glad to hear of her passing. I don’t know what she did to earn their hatred. That’s probably for the best.

Bernadette has a son out there somewhere, but even he seems to have washed his hands of her. There is a photo of the son on Bernadette’s cracked fireplace mantel, a toddler with a scowly little dent between fierce blue eyes. Surrounded by people, the little boy manages somehow to look utterly alone.

Back when Bernadette got her terminal diagnosis, I asked her if she’d told her son and whether he might finally come to visit. She brushed off the question with a contemptuous wave of her hand—Bernadette’s favorite way of responding to pretty much anything you say is a contemptuous hand wave. He won’t be coming, I assure you.

I can’t believe he wouldn’t visit her, even now. It’s the ultimate dick move. Your mother is dying alone, jackass!

Anyway, put all of that in a pot and stir it and you have the strange soup of me clicking past a guard, smiling brightly—and hopefully dazzlingly—enough that he doesn’t notice the squirmy bulge in my oversized purse.

Smuckers is a Maltese, which is a toy dog that’s outrageously cute. And Smuckers is the cutest of the cute.

Smuckers and Bernadette Locke made a notorious pair out on the sidewalk in the Upper West Side neighborhood where my little sister and I have our very sweet apartment-sitting gig.

I remember them well. Smuckers would attract people with his insane fluff-ball cuteness, but as the hapless victim drew near Bernadette would say something insulting. Kind of like the human equivalent of a Venus flytrap, where the fly is attracted to the beauty of the flower only to be mercilessly crushed.

Locals learned to stay away from the two of them. I tried—I really did.

Yet here I am, slipping down another chillingly bright hospital hallway, smuggling the little dog in for the third time in two weeks. It’s not on my top ten list of things I want to do with my day. Not even on my top hundred, but Smuckers is Bernadette’s only true friend. And I know what it’s like to be hated and alone.

I know that when you’re hated, you sometimes act like you don’t care as a survival method.

I push into the room. “We’re here,” I say brightly, relieved no medical personnel are around. While Smuckers enjoys being in a purse, he prefers to ride with his head out, like the fierce captain of a pleather airship. Needless to say, he’s achieved maximum squirminess. I take him out. “Look, Smuckers—your mom!”

Bernadette is half propped up on pillows. Her skin is sallow and her hair sparse, but what hair she has is energetically white. Her eyes flutter open. “Finally.”

She has a tube in her arm, but that’s all. They’ve taken Bernadette off everything except morphine. They’ve given up on her.

“Smuckers is so excited to see you.” I go over to her bed and set Smuckers next to her. Smuckers licks Bernadette’s fingers, and the love that comes over Bernadette’s face makes her look soft for a moment. Like a nice woman.

“Smuckers,” she whispers. She moves her lips, talking to him. I can’t hear, but I know from past conversations that she’s saying she loves him. Sometimes she confesses she doesn’t want to leave him, doesn’t want to be alone. She’s frightened about being alone.