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Most Eligible Billionaire
Annika Martin
OMG the cute little dog I adopted turned out to be a billionaire!
I promised to adopt an old woman’s little dog out of the goodness of my heart…and then I got the shock of my life when that dog inherited the woman’s billion-dollar company.
That’s right, my little floofball now heads a multinational corporation. What’s more, the woman’s will states that I’m supposed to speak on the dog’s behalf at all board meetings.
Umm…what?
Then the sexy yet totally arrogant CEO, Henry, decides I’m a scammer. He totally insults me.
Hey, I’m just trying to carry out a lovely woman’s last wishes. And this Henry wants to be cruel and mean?
Fine! I’ll take my place on the board, helping my dog run the company.
What? Does my little dog have opinions on CEO Henry and the company? Does he? Does he? Oh yes he does! He’s a good boy with many opinions!
Unfortunely, Henry has opinions, too. And big plans to crush us both.
Chapter One
Vicky
I’m smuggling a tiny white dog named Smuckers into a Manhattan hospital to see his owner, Bernadette Locke. Thanks to a standing appointment at a chandelier-draped dog salon on Fifth Avenue run by a woman who ostensibly loves dogs but might secretly hate them, Smuckers’s facial fur is blow-dried into such an intense puff of white that his eager black eyes and wee raisin of a nose seem to float in a cloud.
There are three things to know about Bernadette: She’s the meanest woman I ever met. She believes I’m some kind of dog whisperer who can read Smuckers’s mind. (I can’t.) And she’s dying. Alone.
The people in her condo building will probably be glad to hear of her passing. I don’t know what she did to earn their hatred. That’s probably for the best.
Bernadette has a son out there somewhere, but even he seems to have washed his hands of her. There is a photo of the son on Bernadette’s cracked fireplace mantel, a toddler with a scowly little dent between fierce blue eyes. Surrounded by people, the little boy manages somehow to look utterly alone.
Back when Bernadette got her terminal diagnosis, I asked her if she’d told her son and whether he might finally come to visit. She brushed off the question with a contemptuous wave of her hand—Bernadette’s favorite way of responding to pretty much anything you say is a contemptuous wave of the hand. He won’t be coming, I assure you.
I can’t believe he wouldn’t visit her, even now. It’s the ultimate dick move. Your mother is dying alone, jackass!
Anyway, put all of that in a pot and stir it and you have the strange soup of me clicking past a guard, smiling brightly—and hopefully dazzlingly—enough that he doesn’t notice the squirmy bulge in my oversized purse.
Smuckers is a Maltese, which is a toy dog that’s outrageously cute. And Smuckers is the cutest of the cute.
Smuckers and Bernadette Locke made a notorious pair out on the sidewalk in the Upper West Side neighborhood where my little sister and I have our very sweet apartment-sitting gig.
I remember them well. Smuckers would attract people with his insane fluff-ball cuteness, but as the hapless victim drew near Bernadette would say something insulting. Kind of like the human equivalent of a Venus flytrap, where the fly is attracted to the beauty of the flower only to be mercilessly crushed.
Locals learned to stay away from the two of them. I tried—I really did.
Yet here I am, slipping down another chillingly bright hospital hallway, smuggling the little dog in for the third time in two weeks. It’s not on my top ten list of things I want to do with my day. Not even on my top hundred, but Smuckers is Bernadette’s only true friend. And I know what it’s like to be hated and alone.
I know that when you’re hated, you sometimes act like you don’t care as a survival method.
And that makes people hate you more, because they feel like you should look at least a little beaten down.
Bernadette’s hatred was real-life neighborhood hatred; mine was real life plus a fun national online component, but it works the same way, and heaven forbid you should have a cute dog. Or that a picture of you smiling should ever appear on Facebook or Huffpo or People.com.
I know, too, how being hated can build on itself, how sometimes you do things to make people hate you more because it’s better in a certain perverse way. I think only people who have been hated in their life can truly understand that.
I push into the room. “We’re here,” I say brightly, relieved no medical personnel are around. While Smuckers enjoys being in a purse, he prefers to ride with his head out, like the fierce captain of a pleather airship. Needless to say, he’s achieved maximum squirminess. I take him out. “Look, Smuckers—your mom!”
