Her Red-Carpet Romance Read Online Free Page A

calling you to tell you that I’ve got your room all ready.”
    Yohanna closed her eyes, gathering together the strength she sensed she was going to need to get through this phone call.
    Until just a minute ago she’d been walking on air, still extremely excited about being hired. She would have been relieved landing
any
job so quickly, on practically the heels of her recent layoff, but landing a job with Lukkas Spader, well, that was just the whip cream
and
the cherry on her sundae.
    However, dealing with her mother always seemed to somehow diminish her triumphs and magnify everything that currently wasn’t going well in her life. Her mother had a way of talking to her that made her feel as if she was a child again. A child incapable of doing anything right without her mother’s help.
    Yohanna knew that, deep down, her mother really meant well; she just wished the woman could mean well less often.
    â€œWhy would you do that, Mother?” she finally asked. She hadn’t used her room since she’d left for college and moved out on her own.
    â€œSo you’ll have somewhere to sleep, of course,” her mother said impatiently.
    â€œI
have
somewhere to sleep. I sleep in my bedroom, which is in my condo, Mother, remember?” Yohanna asked tactfully.
    She heard her mother sigh deeply before the woman launched into her explanation.
    â€œWell, now that you’ve lost your job, you’re not going to be able to hang on to that overpriced apartment of yours. You should sell it now before the bank forecloses on it.”
    Yohanna was stunned. Where was all this coming from? She’d had this so-called “discussion” with her mother several years ago when she’d first bought her condo. Her mother couldn’t understand why “a daughter of mine” would “waste” her money buying a “glorified apartment” when she had a perfectly good room right in her house. She’d thought that argument had finally been laid to rest.
    Obviously she had thought wrong.
    â€œThe bank isn’t going to foreclose on me, Mother,” Yohanna informed her. “My mortgage payments are all up-to-date.”
    â€œWell, they won’t be now that you’ve been fired,” her mother predicted with a jarring certainty.
    â€œLaid off, Mother,” Yohanna corrected, trying not to grit her teeth. But there was no one who could make her crazier faster than her mother. “I wasn’t fired, I was laid off.”
    â€œWhatever.” The woman cavalierly dismissed the correction.
    â€œThere
is
a difference, Mother,” Yohanna insisted. “One has to do with job performance. The other is a sad fact of modern life. In my case, it was the latter.”
    â€œPotato, po
tat
o,” her mother said in a singsong voice. “The bottom line at the end of the day is that you don’t have a job.”
    The words suddenly hit her for the first time. “How did you find out?” Yohanna asked.
    She hadn’t told anyone about her layoff except for Mrs. Parnell, bless her. Granted, the people that she’d worked with knew, but a lot of them had been laid off, as well. She didn’t see any of them sending her mother a news bulletin. They didn’t even
know
her mother.
    So how had her mother found out?
    â€œI’m your mother,” Elizabeth Andrzejewski replied proudly, as if that alone should have been enough of an explanation. “I know everything.”
    â€œYou’re not omnipotent, Mother,” Yohanna told her mother wearily. “Spill it,” she ordered. “Just how did you find out about the layoff?”
    The silence on the other end of the line began to stretch out.
    â€œMother...” Yohanna began insistently.
    Elizabeth huffed. “If you must know, I went to the office to surprise you and take you out for lunch today. Imagine
my
surprise when I walked in and found out that you didn’t work there