The Billionaire's Alibi: The Proposition Read Free

goodwill. She had told Alexa earlier that week that if she messed up again, she’d be finished.
    Alexa grabbed a bag of potato chips, checking the label to make sure they were the fat free kind that Frannie requested before moving onto the freezer aisle.
    Her hand fell to the door handle, the reflection in the glass case startling her. Did she really look that bad? She knew her hair was gross and stringy, as she was running too late for a shower that morning, and in her frazzled state, she had put on a shirt she’d found strewn across her dresser—one that was stained and at least two seasons out of style.
    But she didn't realize that the bags under her eyes were so dark and heavy. She looked like crap, which wasn't surprising, because she felt like crap, and had for awhile.
    “Watch it!” a woman shouted. Alexa pulled back her cart, just as she was about to ram another shopper.
    “Sorry!”
    Even the little boy in the child’s seat seemed to glare at her as the mom wheeled her cart away.
    Alexa sighed and grabbed a tub of ice cream and tossed it into the cart.
    She knew she shouldn’t be mad at Frannie—she was just trying to find a good nanny who could take care of her kids, run errands, clean her house, and come running at the snap of a finger. But a part of Alexa felt like the world owed her something, something better than the life she was currently living.
    All throughout high school, she had been so sure that her life was on the right track. She had made all the right moves, doing everything she was told to supposedly get a good job. Yet, here she was, checking items off a grocery list like a stay-at-home mom—only Alexa didn’t even have kids or a husband to justify how far she had fallen.
    She scanned the rest of her list, noticing that her cart was beginning to fill up. All that was left to grab were the steaks for that night’s barbecue, which she probably should’ve gotten before the ice cream, now that she thought about it. She pushed her cart toward the meats section at the back of the store in a hurry.
    There was only one other shopper standing in line, a guy wearing a navy, zipped up hoodie. He was tall from the back, and he had that adorable light brown hair that made her think he was always in the sun. He shifted from one foot to the other, arms crossed uneasily. She wondered what he could possibly be anxious about?
    As she pulled her cart up beside him, his profile surprised her—he was unexpectedly handsome, with high cheekbones and dangerous, dagger-like eyes. He was the type of guy who dressed too nice to be a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto, but he had that edge, a wildness about him, like an animal that wouldn’t be tamed. He was the fantasy without all the trappings of a harsh reality—no drug addiction, no running from the law, no heists or murders.
    She took a step closer to get a better look at him, pretending to study the kebabs in the display case, but her phone buzzed in her pocket, distracting her—another text from Vivian, her college roommate from Northwestern. She was in town for a few days and was begging Alexa to meet her at a club that she had never even heard of.
    She didn’t want to see Vivian. She didn’t think she could face her past, not yet. Vivian was one of the few people who knew her before the big breakup with her boyfriend, before the cycle of unemployment, before the rejection from Northwestern’s MBA program, despite her 3.8 GPA as an undergrad. She was the vivacious friend who had encouraged Alexa to party instead of study, who had maintained a rotating door of men in and out of their dorm room, who had stayed out until four in the morning even when she had a test the next day, who had nurtured dozens of best friends who each adored her.
    Vivian had blown off everything during college, but now she was the one who had the posh job in Washington, DC. Vivian was where she should have been, and she didn’t think she could handle the unfairness of it all