Read Shopping for a Billionaire 4 for Free Online Page B

you?”
    Steve’s jaw drops a little and he starts breathing through his mouth.
    I keep mine shut and sit back, ready to watch Mom in all her glory. It’s kind of nice to watch her turn this on someone other than me. 
    “Uh, I, uh…” he says. 
    She turns to me with a pseudo-accusatory look on her face. “Shannon, is that why Steve was always so uptight? You wouldn’t play the flesh flute?”
    Marshmallow cream comes flying out my nostrils as I choke to death. It’s a hell of a way to go. I imagine the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man greets you in heaven on a white cloud of fluff. 
    She points at me and grasps Steve’s arm. “See? She can do it with ice cream. I’d imagine that marshmallow cream tastes better than—”
    “Mom!” I cough. I’m not rescuing Steve. I’m preserving my nasal passages, because if she makes another comment about fellatio I’m going to shoot hot fudge so far into my sinus cavity I’ll have yeast infections in my brain. 
    “My sex life is none of your business,” Steve says in a cold voice.
    “I did,” I tell Mom, pretending Steve’s not here. “But let’s just say it wasn’t an even trade.”
    Steve’s eyes fly so far open his irises look like they’re swimming in a bowl of cream. Marshmallow cream. 
    “You can’t talk about blow jobs with your mother! That’s…private,” he insists.
    “Like feeding Jessica Coffin stories to tweet is private?” I say sweetly.
    “So you went up the elevator but you wouldn’t go down,” Mom needles Steve.
    “I…what? No, it’s not…I didn’t…you don’t…” Give up , I want to tell him. You’re just digging the hole deeper, and that’s just more rope Mom needs to get to lower the bucket of lotion to you. 
    She turns to me and pats my hand. “Poor thing. No wonder you didn’t fight him when he dumped you. It was a blessing. Being with a selfish, egotistical blowhard is one thing. But a selfish, egotistical blowhard who is bad in bed isn’t ever worth it.”
    Steve looks like someone just removed his voice box with a corkscrew. His mouth opens and closes, his eyes jumping like little fleas trying to find a safe place to land. He’s struggling to think and speak and react and I get the distinct impression that this conversation is not going as planned. 
    “I did not say a word to Jessica,” he argues, eyes shrinking to tiny, piggish triangles. Ah—so he’s going to address that and ignore the giant sucking chest wound that Mom just gave him over his, well…giant suckage as a sex partner. 
    He’s hovering over us, shifting his weight from one hip to the other, and leaning down. A veritable tower of terror, I tell you. I am afraid for his dignity, which is about as likely to remain intact as a rock star’s t-shirt in a mosh pit.
    “ Someone fed her the story,” I retort.
    “I’m not that someone.”
    “Then it was Monica.”
    He snorts. It makes him sound like a manatee. “My mother and Jessica aren’t close.”
    “Monica isn’t capable of being close to anyone,” Mom says. “It would ruin her varnish.”
    Steve frowns. “That’s my mother you’re insulting.”
    “Yes,” Mom says. “It is.”
    “Why did I even come over here?” he asks the air, waving his hands around as if he has an audience. Every single person in the store ignores him, because in the battle for attention between Steve and a giant peanut butter fudge sundae, he’s losing. Big time. 
    “We were wondering the same thing,” Mom and I say in unison.
    “Maybe to apologize for being so selfish in bed with Shannon?” Mom adds in a voice that carries through the ice cream parlor at the exact moment the satellite radio station pauses between songs. Now Steve’s got all the attention he wants. And he clearly doesn’t want it. 
    “Dude,” says a college student, a guy sleeved with tattoos. “That’s sad,” he says as he walks out carrying a loaded ice cream cone the size of my cat’s head.
    “Would you please tell your