Read Billionaire With a Twist for Free Online Page B

if her professor is still pursuing it after, what, four years
since she took a class,” I said.
    My mom shivered delicately. “Yes,
well, certainly not our kind of people. Imagine what that would do to
Paige’s prospects for a husband!”
    Paige was still looking at her lap,
ashen-faced, as if she had done something terrible like set fire to a
school, rather than just having some talent in a field other than
husband-finding. I took pity on her and decided to try to draw my
mom’s fire.
    “Well, that’s too bad. Oh,
hey, that reminds me of this ad we’re putting out for the
Grace-and-Harmony personals site—”
    I didn’t even get to the part
about how I’d helmed the ad about the gender preference options
that my mom would have found really offensive before she
interrupted.
    “Darling, please don’t
bring up online personals at the dinner table, they’re
unspeakably crass.” She raised her eyebrow at me. “I
certainly hope you haven’t had to sink to that level. I will
not have you consorting with that—that—” she pulled
out the strongest insult she was capable of—“ riff-raff.”
    Great, first I wasn’t meeting
enough men, now, I was trying to meet them the wrong way. “I’m
too busy at work to maintain an online profile,” I said, which
was technically true, since I hadn’t logged on in months. What
can I say, if I wanted constant dick pics I’d sign up for a
porn subscription. “We’re actually doing a project with
local roots right now, the Knox bourbon—”
    “Why, that company’s not an
hour’s drive from here!” my mother said, her voice
suddenly strangely delighted. She leaned forward, eyes bright. “Tell
me, will you be commuting a great deal?”
    “Er, yeah…” I said
slowly, still trying to work out why she’d switched gears from
furious to gleeful.
    “And it’s a long-term
project?” she asked, her eyes sparkling like those of a mad
scientist gathering together all the ingredients needed for a
dastardly plan.
    “A few months…” I
allowed, hesitantly.
    “Wonderful!” She clapped
her hands and stood, practically sprinting to retrieve the dessert,
strawberry shortcakes smothered in whipped cream and dusted with pink
sugar, from the sideboard. “This calls for a celebration!”
    Wow. My mom had never been so
supportive before. What was happening? Was she really so glad that
I’d be around more? It seemed more likely that I had just
stumbled into an alternate universe where I had a mother who was
actually happy for my successes, but…well…could it be
that I had just misunderstood my mother’s motivations? Was she
just…lonely?
    “This opportunity will be
perfect!” my mother was enthusing, her cheeks glowing as she
distributed the shortcakes. She clasped my shoulder. “It’s
not too late for you, my darling. So many opportunities! I’ll
start calling around this evening, see if any of my friends know
about any nice local boys who are still single.”
    My heart dropped, and I could feel my
face falling as well. So that was it. Just another match-making
scheme, since I would never be a complete person in her eyes unless I
was hanging off the arm of a moderately successful man.
    “Mom—”
    “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot.”
She rolled her eyes fondly at me, magnanimous in the glow of her
planning. “Nice local men .”
    So now I was not only going to have to
prove myself while working on my first big assignment—I was
going to have to do it while fending off all the sons and nephews of
Mom’s chapter of the Queen Bee Society Quilters and Ladies’
Social Club.
    Yeah, that’s an actual
organization that she’s not even remotely ashamed to belong to.
    Paige shot me another sympathetic look
as my mother chattered on, but she had been too cowed by the previous
put-down—not to mention a lifetime of being under my mother’s
thumb—to try to divert the conversation.
    “Oh, there are so many suitable
candidates!” my mother prattled on in a rapturous