Page 207 of The Billionaires

BILLIONAIRE RAKE

CHAPTER 1

JANE

“Why not wait at the library?” Mom asks, and though we’re talking on the phone, I can sense the worry on her kind face. “I thought this interview was important.”

Important is an understatement. This librarian job is The One Ring, and I’m Gollum for it.

Gripping the phone tighter, I look around at my picturesque Central Park surroundings. “I knew sitting in the waiting room for too long would make me nervous, so I took a promenade.” Not that it helped much.

Mom gasps audibly. “Is ‘promenade’ what the kids are calling Xanax these days?”

I almost drop my phone into the serene waters of the nearby lake. “A promenade is a leisurely walk in a public place. Sorry—another one of those historical romance words.”

“Oh.” Mom sounds way too relieved, considering I’ve never done drugs. “Make sure to tell them how much you like those books.”

Huh. Saying that I merely like historical romance is like saying Glenn Close’s character was kind of into Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction. Or that Hannibal Lecter was peckish for human livers with fava beans in The Silence of the Lambs.

The alarm on my phone goes off, spiking my heartbeat. “It’s time to head over there,” I tell Mom. “I only have ten minutes before my interview starts, and it’s a five-minute walk.”

“Go then,” Mom says. “Hurry. I’m sure you’ll crush it.”

“Thanks.” Hanging up, I smooth the skirt of the suit I bought with the last of my money—clothes I’ll have to return if I don’t get the job.

But I will, of course. This library has the best collection of historical romance in the world, and I’m the most avid historical romance reader there is. It’s a match made in Victorian England.

Miss Miller tightens her stifling corset, readjusts her bonnet, and lifts her chin. During trying times such as this, a lady must keep a stiff upper lip.

Yes, that’s better. When I need to calm down or cheer myself up, I often cast myself in the role of a nineteenth-century lady named Miss Jane Miller. She’s the daughter of a baron who impregnated her mother out of wedlock and then promptly died on a ship that was hunting sperm whales. According to survivors, the good baron was humped to death by the majestic beast’s eight-foot cock—which, to me, seems like a fittingly ironic fate for a useless sperm donor.

To further relax myself, I pop in my headphones and play the theme from Netflix’s Bridgerton.

A menacing white shadow appears in the corner of my eye.

I turn, and my already-pounding heart nearly jumps out of my throat as I freeze on the spot, a dozen questions forming in my mind.

Is that a sheep? If so, what’s it doing in Manhattan? Why is it running at me? Is it wagging its tail? Can you be killed by a?—

Snapping out of my stupor, I attempt to move out of the ruminant’s path, but it’s too late. The massive thing is already upon me, standing on its hind devil-hooves and plopping its front ones on my shoulders with the force of Thor’s hammer.

I fly backward.

The ground slams into me.

Air rushes out of my lungs, and it’s a struggle to breathe.

There’s thick liquid all around me.

Blood? Brains?

No, worse.

It’s mud. Mud that probably saved me from an injury but has destroyed my hopes of looking presentable.

I suck in some air and thank God I’m not dead. As far as embarrassing ways to die go, getting killed by a sheep is up there with getting mauled by a hamster and licked to death by a kitten. The fact that I’d die a twenty-three-year-old virgin would just be the cherry on top of a multilayered shit-cake.

The sheep is right in my face now. Is it about to eat my eyelids? Or chew the glasses that, by some miracle, are still on my nose?

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