Baby Love: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Read Free

purse and pulled out my wallet. I had three dollars in it; just enough to go squat in a Starbucks until the rain passed. I crossed the street and passed a man on the sidewalk holding a worn, folded cardboard sign.
    “Out of work. Need meds.  N-E-thing helps. God bless,” it said. I felt my stomach turn over. The smell of iced coffee had already hit my nose as two well-dressed young professionals rushed out of the warmly-lit coffee shop. They nearly tripped over the guy, knocking over his cup of coins onto the sidewalk. The woman grimaced sheepishly but didn’t bother to apologize or offer to clean up the mess.
    The man leaned forward with dirt-covered knuckles to pick up the pennies and quarters off of the piss-stained ground.
    I rushed forward to help him, hoping I wouldn’t rip the skirt in half as I did so. I gathered up the coins that were out of his easy reach and scooped them into the worn Styrofoam cup.
    “Thanks,” he said, tilting his head forward in appreciation.
    I took the crumpled wad of dollar bills that I’d reserved for my iced coffee and shoved them into his cup, walking away in the wind that was rapidly gaining power. There was nowhere free to go in this city outside of libraries; but that was the case everywhere in this capitalistic society.
    I cringed as I thought about how capitalism was exactly the problem I was trying to solve with my business. It was the ultimate irony that I still had to play the game to try to break the game, even in a small way.
    I assessed the sky, which was spitting out more and more raindrops by the minute. There was the possibility that I could run from overhang to overhang to dodge the water that was about to pummel me from the sky.
    The library was only two blocks away. If I ran, I could make it. I remembered reading once that Jennifer Garner had trained for an acting role by running a track in five-inch heels. If she could do it, so could I.
    In a moment of good luck that had been avoiding me for the better part of the last year, I made it to the brass doors of the library just as the heavens opened. The rain was so heavy it felt like God was dumping several million garbage cans full of water onto the streets. I stood with a knot of other people in the threshold of the library. We all watched the water come down.
    A young white guy with hipster glasses held up his iPhone. “My weather app says it’ll be fifty minutes more of this.”
    Several people groaned and I barely resisted the urge to join them in the disappointment. So much for missing rush hour traffic on the bus lines. Hopefully Callie wouldn’t be too worried about me. I couldn’t afford a reliable cell phone and had no change to use the payphone on the wall.
    I was a millennial oddity out of fiscal necessity, not by choice. I turned into the library, the dusty smell of old books, paper, and hushed silence washing over me like its own rain. I went into the periodicals section and grabbed a newspaper without looking at what it was. I just needed something to make it look like I was busy.
    I hated accidentally making eye contact with strangers and did my best to avoid it if at all possible. I could daydream while I held the messy newsprint in my hands. That was the best I could do for now. An old man who smelled like musty mothballs had fallen asleep in the worn armchair next to me. The soft snore emanating from his wrinkled mouth reminded me of a kitten purring. I settled into the chair and opened the paper.
    My stomach flipped and my heart beat a little faster as my eyes rested upon the image above the fold. The handsome, gorgeous, sculpted face of Chicago’s own billionaire Chosen One, Zane Reid, smoldered up at me.
    It was rare to see a photo of him these days. I remembered a time not too long ago that he had been on the cover of the Sun-Times on a weekly basis, though it was usually a photo of him in football gear holding the winning touchdown ball as his teammates swarmed him on the field.
    The