Loving the Secret Billionaire (Love at Last #1)(5)

“True.” I smiled, fighting the urge to hug this big, sweet man. He’d been driving city buses for over two decades. I’d never forget my first bus ride to The Academy. Everybody I knew walked to school or took yellow buses, but I’d been one of the lucky few chosen to head out to the magnet school in the city’s posher neighborhood.

“Maybe you should concentrate on making sure the voters you do have make it to the polls on Election Day.”

That was the crux, wasn’t it? I had a team working for my campaign, but we didn’t have the funds to do all the big-money events Rylie’s donors put on. I met voters in grocery stores and coffee shops. He met them at the country club. We’d just blown the bank on bumper stickers and yard signs that nobody in this part of town seemed to want.

“You wanna run extra buses?” I joked, past the tightness in my throat.

“You know I would.” He flew past an empty bus stop. “We’re countin’ on you, kiddo.”

I reached forward to pat Milton’s shoulder. He wasn’t supposed to campaign for me while on the clock, but the Cruz button I’d given him was front and center on his bag, sitting right there on the dash.

The sight of that button came close to crushing me. I sank back in my seat, eyes squeezed shut, and breathed through it.

I’m not a fraud I’m not a fraud I’m not a fraud.

So, I didn’t fit the typical politician profile. That was a good thing. I knew, from the bottom of my soul, that I would be better for this town that Rylie. Now we just had to convince everyone else.

So many people counted on me—people who worried about whether they’d be able to pay next month’s rent, or how they’d make their seventy hours of minimum wage labor cover child care and food and shoes for their growing kids. People like my grandmother, who wouldn’t survive the next few months if the health clinic lost funding.

I opened my eyes and blinked past my reflection staring back at me from the bus window, to the blur of fast-moving street lights beyond.

“Countin’ on you, girl,” Milton repeated, his words tearing through me like the voice of doom on a crash course straight to hell.





2





Veronica



* * *



Something fishy started happening a couple of days later. I stood in the school lot waiting for Jaime Girón’s dad to pick him up. Like every other weekday, Mr. Girón couldn’t get here until after the school was locked up tight. And like every other weekday, I gave three-year-old Jaime a granola bar, stuck an apple in his bag, and held his sticky little hand in mine, wishing his father wasn’t stuck at work super late, wishing he had enough money to get his kid a healthy snack, and wishing, above all, that Jaime’s mom hadn’t succumbed to cancer the summer before, leaving father and son sad, befuddled, and tragically alone.

After strapping the boy into the back of his father’s car, I hefted my backpack and a handful of yard signs, and pulled up my CaraVan canvassing app, preparing to grab a bus to the southernmost neighborhood in town, where I’d likely strike out—again.

I took a step as the app opened, then another, and nearly tripped when it finally loaded. Something was wrong. There couldn’t possibly be twelve people out on the campaign trail for me today. Okay, so the app was acting up. I shut it down and restarted it.

Again, it looked like a dozen people were canvassing local neighborhoods—for me. But that wasn’t possible. I didn’t have that many people on my roster. Nobody wanted to canvas those areas for me. Realization dawned with a dark, angry flush. Rylie. Rylie had done this. He’d somehow hacked into my lists, gotten the addresses and sent his people out to sabotage my relationships with voters.

I had to call him or get in touch with the electoral board or the ethics people or—

No. I needed to simmer down. This could be a bug in the system. Right. That was it. Just something messed up in the app. I swiped to the nearest house on the list—just a block from the school—and rather than head south as I’d planned, I set off for the address.

I didn’t see the bright purple sign until I was practically on the bungalow’s lawn. It was one of those sweet, well-manicured houses that I always envied. I could imagine my grandmother sitting on the porch watching people walk by.

How’d they get my sign? I turned in a full circle, wondering if maybe I’d canvassed here before and forgotten somehow, but I hadn’t. I gulped back a weird hiccup. Purple signs dotted two-thirds of the houses on the street. I didn’t even own that many yard signs. A little frantic now and a little out of control, I pulled up the app and scrolled to the visit report.

2272 Blenheim. John and Elaine Matthew. Retired. Swing voters. Independent in past elections. Will vote Cruz, the note said, and my eyes blurred.

What the hell was going on?

I scrolled down to the last note, which read: Will drive voters to the polls on Election Day.

My yard signs dropped to the sidewalk with a hollow thud.

“Let me get that,” came an older man’s voice. He emerged from behind a bush in the yard I was staring at, with two dirty work gloves in one hand. I’d bet my meager paycheck that this was John Matthew.

“I’ve got it. I’m fine. Thanks.”

“You with the Cruz campaign?”