Shopping for a Billionaire 1 by Julia Kent Page B

billionaire?” Mom would get her Farmington Country Club wedding and more if I…
    STOP!
    “You feeling faint, Shannon?” Greg pauses, looking at me intently. “You seem fragile today.” A look of sheer horror passes over him while I struggle to keep down my bites of all those early-morning bagel sandwiches. “You’re not…you couldn’t be…you know?” He mimes a basketball in front of his already-basketball-sized belly.
    “What? A sumo wrestler?” Amanda mimics with startling brutality.
    “Pregnant,” he whispers. The two of them look at each other with twin expressions of shock and dissolve into hooting laughter, the kind where you wipe your eyes and hope you don’t pee your pants.
    “Not funny,” I say.
    “We know. You can’t be pregnant. It would be the immaculate conception,” Amanda squeaks.
    My dizziness passes. “Done making fun of me? Let’s get going.”
    They compose themselves and Greg beeps his car to unlock it. We climb in. I take the front seat and Amanda grumbles. I summon a Chuckles-worthy glare and she cowers, climbing in without another peep.
    “What’s your rush?” Greg balks as I tap my foot impatiently.
    “I have to find something nice to wear tonight.”
     

 
    Chapter Eight
     
    “You snitch!” It’s 6:45p.m. and I am being held hostage by terrorist extremists with a list of demands that make Al-Qaeda look like preschoolers playing pirate.
    “I didn’t mean to tell her,” Amanda insists. “She asked me about Hot Guy and—”
    “I can hear you. I’m two inches from your mouth,” Mom says, waving an eyeshadow wand like she’s conducting the Boston Pops. Occasionally it actually hits my eyelid. She won’t admit she needs bifocals; her glasses are pushed so low on her nose they might as well be in Albany.
    She can’t see a thing, and I’m rapidly fearing I look more like Pennywise the Clown than Olivia Wilde. Mom promised me she could make me look like her, or Scarlett Johansson, or Jennifer Lawrence with enough time and high-end makeup.
    Right now I’d settle for retaining full vision in my left eye, which she has now poked twice with the eyeshadow wand.
    “You have to look good to catch a billionaire’s eye,” Mom says. Then she frowns and, Lord have mercy, puts down the eyeshadow wand.
    “I know,” I simper.
    “What about the rest of you?” Her eyes comb over her work so far. I think she’d like to produce the Mona Lisa, but is going to have to settle for Lisa Simpson.
    “The rest of me? I shaved my legs and armpits. Plucked my eyebrows—”
    “Is that’s what’s different? What did you use, honey? A weed whacker?”
    I look at her. She flinches. I swear the corners of Chuckles mouth turn up a tad.
    “You can leave now,” I say for the umpteenth time. “It’s a business dinner.”
    “Did you shave…you know?” She points vaguely at my crotch area.
    “My knees? Yes.” I’m playing dumb on purpose.
    “No! Your pink bits.”
    I choke and cough uncontrollably. I am not having this conversation, am I? Seriously? What did I do in a past life to deserve this? I was Eva Braun, wasn’t I?
    “All the girls your age do it. You’d think having a pubic hair or three was some kind of social crime.” She’s talking, and the words are coming out, but I can’t hear her over the lambs screaming in my head. “Then again, men your age have come to expect a smooth Chuckles, so…”
    Chuckles arches his back, the hairs rising on end, and he opens his mouth, hissing.
    “A smooth what?”
    “Chuckles,” she whispers, enunciating the word. He hisses at her.
    “Huh?”
    “P-u-s-s-y,” Mom spells out. “That’s the word your father likes to use now that we need to spice things up in the—”
    “Hari-kari! Give me a kitchen knife!” I shout just as my sister, Amy, walks in the door.
    “To kill Mom, or you?” She’s carrying a bag of groceries and an extremely large foam hand.
    “Either. Both. Mom was just telling me allllll about how Dad