Page 10 of The Undercover Billionaire's Baby

I closed my eyes and tried not to conjure his face, those high, chiseled cheekbones. That Superman jaw. A shock of blond hair. Piercing blue eyes. And his voice, deep and gentle. A voice you could trust. I’d gone weak when he smiled at me, physically weak.

“He’s… attractive,” I said.

“All kinds of attractive.”

“He said he’d pay first and last months’ rent up front. And a security deposit. How much would that be?”

“Half a month’s rent, I think.” Alice shrugged. “That’s what I paid.”

“I could really use that, the way things are going. It would pay off the heating bill. Make a dent in the—” I paused as a strange sound caught my attention, a sort of low groaning. I waved Alice to silence. “Do you hear that creaking?”

Alice cocked her head. “Yeah. What is that?”

Wood cracked like gunfire. I shrieked and jumped back. A huge shelf had torn away from the wall, and it tipped as I watched in dreadful slow motion. Alice lunged to catch it and I jerked her away. She trod hard on my foot and we got our legs tangled. We crashed down as the shelf did, in the opposite direction. The shelf crushed a spinning rack. We knocked down an endcap. A huge cloud of dust rose up. Books fell and slid, and I reared back, coughing. Alice pulled free of me, rubbing her eyes.

“Was that Wiener? Did Wiener do that?”

I stood up, shaky, and picked my way through the wreckage. The shelf had torn out a whole section of wall, not just the drywall, but the framework behind it. The strut it’d been screwed to had split down the middle. I saw it was rotten, all pulpy inside.

“Not Wiener,” I said. “That looks like real damage. Old wood, maybe. Or termites. Water?” I poked at the split strut. It felt vaguely damp. “Oh, this is bad. This is so, so, so bad.”

“We don’t know that,” said Alice. “It could just be that shelf.”

I leaned in, trying to see how the rest of the struts looked. But it was dark in the wall, dense with insulation. All I could see were the guts of my store, thick snarls of wire. Mystery plumbing. When had we last had the building inspected? Was that a thing, even, a thing people did? I didn’t know anything about running a business. Oh, God, was this my fault? Had I screwed up somewhere?

“Hey, Lana? You good?”

I reeled back, trying to think. “The door,” I croaked. “We’ll need to close early, while I, uh…” My head spun, my knees wobbled, and I sat down hard. “We’ll need to stay closed till this is fixed up. If another shelf toppled, if someone got hurt?—”

“They didn’t. They won’t.”

I sat there just breathing, trying to think. But my thoughts were all scattered like books on the floor. I’d been coasting for months in a state of denial, clinging to routine so I wouldn’t have to think. But this was reality right in my face. I couldn’t hide from the wreckage. Couldn’t wish it away. My business was crumbling, my store, my whole life.

“We’ll fix it,” said Alice. “My aunt’s in construction. I bet she knows someone who’d do you a deal.”

I barely heard her. My head was a mess. Contractors, discounts, more bills. More debt. Could I even borrow against what was left? The bank would take one look at the hole in my wall, and my only asset would become a liability.

Alice touched my arm. “Can I get you some water?”

I dragged in one more breath and let it out in a rush. Then I stood up and brushed dust off my pants. “No, it’s okay. Let’s just close up. You can look at the next few days as an early vacation. A paid one, of course. This isn’t on you.”

“You don’t need to pay me.”

“Yeah, I do.” Mom would’ve paid her. “Listen, it’s fine. Just head home, okay? Maybe talk to your aunt for me, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Alice pulled me into a tight, crushing hug, her hair up my nose, her breath on my neck. “It’s going to be fine,” she said. “I promise you’ll get through this.”

I hugged her back, needing the comfort. When had anyone last held me, made me feel safe? Alice smelled like the store, like new books and coffee.

“No one’s hurt, right? Nobody died. That means this is fixable. And we’re going to fix it.”

Then Alice was gone, and I locked the front door. I flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and a shiver ran through me. What if I never turned it back? What if I closed up today and that was it, done, and the door chimes’ next tinkle was when I unhung them? I’d forget what they sounded like, how this place smelled. How the pipes sighed in winter. Mom’s chair in the back. She’d left it there one day and gone back to Miss Rose’s, and never come back again. Had she known?

“No…”

The word came out broken, my voice hardly mine. I drifted around like a pale, worried ghost, testing the other shelves to see if they’d wobble. They felt firm enough, but so had the downed one. It had felt fine, till the moment it hadn’t. A carpenter would be how much? Then I’d need to repaint. I’d be shut down a week at least, and maybe more. Contractors were busy this time of year, shoring up beach houses for the summer rush. I’d be lucky if I could get someone to come in this month.

A low moan spilled out of me, raw in my throat. My chest hurt. My head hurt. My eyes felt too hot. I tried to think what Mom would’ve done. Not this, for sure, what I was doing. Not drifting around in stunned despair. She’d have found some solution, some way to move forward. A stopgap, at least, till she could come up with a plan.

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