Dazzle: The Billionaire's Secret Surrogate (Contemporary BWWM Romance) Read Free Page A

tomorrow night. She hadn’t been looking forward to that at all. When she looked at her options, they were depressingly few.
                  Biting at her lower lip, and without allowing herself a second to doubt, she tore one of the slips with the address written on it from the flyer and grabbed her belongings, bolting for the door. Kady wasn’t sure what to expect from the interview as she read the little slip of paper for the third time, memorizing the words. Maybe he was crazy, and she knew she was definitely crazy for considering it, but it just might be the opportunity she needed to keep her head above water. It couldn’t hurt just to go talk to him, right?
    The refined, older woman she’d been speaking to stepped out of the back room soon afterwards and looked around the room.
                  “Damn it, I don’t see her anywhere,” she said tersely. “Will you pull the files of all the black girls in their twenties? I’d like to start with them and see if I might find her again.”
                  “Yes, Ms. Caldwell,” the secretary at her side replied. “And if I do see her again, I’ll be sure to send her your way.”
                  “And what is this thing doing on my bulletin board?” she complained, as she pulled the billionaire ad down. “You know I don’t allow trash to be posted on my walls!”
                  “Yes, ma’am,” said the secretary. “It won’t happen again.”

Chapter 3
     
    When she returned to the apartment to finish up the packing and had tossed all of Melina’s things into her bedroom, Kady was in no mood to talk to anyone. She yanked the house phone cord out of the wall and packed the cat-shaped phone itself into one of the boxes. Since she hadn’t paid for her cell phone in a month either, and the service had been cut off a week ago, she knew that she could now pack in total, blissful solitude.
    She decided to drag her own bed down the stairs and load it into the back of her friend’s pick-up truck while it was still available, since Ben had only agreed to help her move a couple of loads of the big stuff this afternoon. He had also told her he would have loved to take her in if he could, except he lived in one of the other apartments here and he doubted that Mrs. Knotts would let him.
    “It’s all right, Ben,” sighed Kady. “You really don’t need to worry about me. I’m gonna pull myself right back onto my feet, and this time I’m gonna find a worthwhile roommate if possible; and if not, I just won’t have another roommate at all.”
    “Still, I can’t believe your best friend for years would do you like that,” he grumbled. “That was real ghetto.”
    “We did grow up in the ghetto, so it shouldn’t be such a surprise, but it really is,” Kady admitted. “I should have known as soon as I returned from college that she and I were worlds apart. I don’t know, maybe going to school on a scholarship isn’t as helpful as I thought it would be. I mean, here I am right back to square one, no closer to my dreams than I’ve ever been.”
    “Oh no, Miss Kady, I don’t wanna hear that defeat in your tone,” Ben argued. “You’re lovely and talented and you’ve got that degree in computers. That’s gonna take you real far in life. I just know it.”
    “Thank you, Ben,” she said, giving him a hug. “I really mean that. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime, eh?”
    “You have my number once you get your phone back on.  You be sure to give me a call.”
    “I’ll do that,” she agreed. “Have fun at work tonight, okay?”
    “I wonder how many people I’ll have to bounce tonight,” he said with a chuckle. “What do you think, Kady? Will my big, burly black ass be enough to keep all the drunks in line this time?”
    Kady laughed. “It never does seem to, does it?”
    “No,” he agreed. “It never does. Well, here you go, kid. I’m afraid the last of the boxes you’ll have to