Page 27 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

Wait—turned on? I sit up, mortified.

Hell, no!

I toss aside the phone. So over controlling assholes!

I need to survive another day. That’s all that matters.

I should try and go back to sleep, but there’s no way. The wake-up call definitely woke me up. Mutually assured destruction. I get up and make coffee in our tiny kitchen, careful not to make noise and wake up Mia.

Trying to get his rumbly voice out of my mind.

I bring the coffee to my bedroom and sit in bed with my laptop. I navigate over to my bakery’s blog and start working on a post, which always makes me feel serious and sad and not at all sexually aroused.

Sure enough, it does the trick. Because I put my heart into the business, and Mason reduced it to rubble.

Never mind. It won’t be easy to rebuild, but I’ll do it.

First, though, there are my knees to protect. The safety of my best friend to ensure. My bullet-hole-free skin to keep bullet-hole-free.

Even though I’m sad, I keep things extra positive on my blog and on Instagram. My new post has a picture of flowers with one of my famous random-occasion frosted cookies. Canary Appreciation Day.We’re coming back bigger and stronger!it says underneath.

Someday soon. NOT, I add in my mind. I duplicate the post onto Instagram.

Last week’s post:New recipe: vanilla-maple glaze, just in time for Paul Bunyan Day!And a picture of my tester batch. I used a special frosting nozzle to get the red-and-white-checked shirt looking just right.

A few people commented excitedly. One wonders whether I’ll be back up and running in time for National Ferret Day. National Ferret Day is April 2nd—just a few weeks away. I answer with a smiley face.The ferrets will have to go cookie-less this year, alas. #ChocolateferretsFTW

I didn’t tell the customers that Mason is the reason my business crashed and burned, or that he fooled me and squeezed every penny out of my life. It’s better that way, image-wise. I don’t want people feeling sorry for my bakery. I want them to see it as a place of joy, the way I once did.

I loved going in there in the mornings. I’d laugh with my staff and customers. We’d listen to music and bake and frost.

And then came Mason. Gorgeous, controlling Mason, who was full of ideas for modernizing my accounting systems and things. He’d give me lectures on how much of a slacker I was with money management, how I should tighten this and that.

And god, he was so charming, so out of my league. This sexy suit guy who worked on Wall Street. It was love at first sight the day he came into the bakery. Or so I thought. He seemed to have all this money. Not that I cared—I had my own, after all. The bakery was killing it! It never crossed my mind that the bakery was paying for his nice suits and limo rides.

I wanted to believe he loved me. I was willfully blind.

The police actually knew who he was. They had five names for him. A list of female victims. They said he was one of the best in the business. It was supposed to be a consolation, but it wasn’t.

This time I’ll stand on my own two feet. No man involved. I’m going to oversee every aspect of my business, or hire professionals I can trust.

I sip my coffee and create and schedule more hopeful posts. Maybe my bakery is a whimpering little woodland animal, and maybe I’m a whimpering little woodland animal too, but I’ll never show it to the outside world.

A few hours later I’m strolling down the sidewalk in the last of my three-prairie-dress rotation, having had not at all enough sleep, yet I feel good. Like the world is fresh and new. I tell myself it’s the ionization from the rain, or maybe my fun canary post, but deep down, I know it’s a little bit the phone call with Mr. Drummond.

It was so wrong. Yet strangely intimate. I never speak to people like that!

When I emerge from the scaffolding tunnel at the corner, the Vossameer building comes into view, rising up from the ground with all its concrete muscle. Butterflies swirl madly in my belly.

There’s the prison I’ll soon escape,I remind myself.

But the butterflies aren’t thinking prison; they’re thinking stern Mr. Drummond’s lair. They’re thinking sparkling gray eyes glowering out from nerdy glasses. They’re thinking lab coat. Bad-boy lips.

Stop!

I force my mind to the Instagram strategy as I ride up the elevator to the third floor. Betsy up at reception is her cheery self, persevering in the face of utter grimness. “You look nice today,” she says, a total pity compliment.

“Thank you,” I say, looking down at what is basically a stitched-together ream of fabric. “Maybe this dress looked better on the rack.”

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