Loving the Secret Billionaire (Sample)

Part 1

Veronica

I couldn't run for city council if I was dead.

Which was why I'd saved the house in the woods for last. That way if the person who lived there turned out to be an ax murderer, I'd at least get my canvassing in first.

No one could say I wasn't dedicated.

I hiked up the long, wooded drive on the very edge of town, feeling exactly like a horror movie heroine before things got really bad. If I were in the audience right now, I'd be screaming at me to turn back.

Who would live out here?

I rounded the last bend and stopped.

The house's windows were dark, with no cars in the driveway, but it was the only house I hadn't gone to that didn't sport a Rylie for City Council sign in its yard. I had to at least give it a try.

I could barely see the violet glint of my sneakers as I picked my way through soggy, overgrown grass and up sagging steps to a porch that had seen better days. It wasn't until I got to the door that a wave of something hit me—a prescience or foreboding.

This house will change my life.

Ignoring the shiver that worked its way up my spine—it felt kind of good under the sweat I'd worked up these past few hours—I tried checking the time on my phone only to find the battery dead. Right. Now, I couldn't even check the app again to see if this house had been canvassed since an hour ago, or even what party they were registered under. Or call for help if this was, in fact, a murder house.

Whatever. It was still light out. I squinted over my shoulder. Well, lightish. Everything was muted this deep in the woods.

I lifted my hand to rap on the door, defeat already settling heavily on my shoulders, and stilled. What was that? Eyes narrowed, I leaned closer to the chipped wood.

Music! Ha! The house was inhabited. Something itched between my shoulder blades and I knocked.

I counted the seconds in my head to the tune of "Wheels on the Bus," like I'd done at every other house I'd visited today, and for the past few months. Earworm from hell.

Nothing.

But someone was in there, dammit.

It was almost full-on dark now. For about twenty seconds, as my yard signs started to slip from my sweaty hands, I considered turning back and calling it a day. Everything would be so easy if I just let those signs drop and walked away, not just from this house, but from the election, from everything.

Clint S. Rylie—or Wily Rylie as we'd known him in high school—chose that moment to park at the far end of the driveway in his pristine black Audi. He emerged with his pretty blond wife, who let two well-behaved children out of the backseat. All that perfection and I still didn't trust him. I remembered, even if nobody else seemed to, how he'd cheated to get his straight As. Everybody'd known it was happening, but he'd never once been caught.

It looked like he and his wife were unloading a slew of items—probably their magnets, stickers, goody bags, for God's sake—and rather than curl up and hide like the low-budget fraud I was, I gripped my garish Veronica Cruz for City Council yard signs tighter and kicked the shit out of the creepy house's front door.

I must have pounded pretty hard because I didn't hear footsteps or anything, but suddenly the door was yanked open and I was frozen in raised-limbed limbo. I had no idea how long I stayed in that position—suspended with a foot and a hand up, about ready to claw my way through that door.