Free Romance: The Billionaire Alpha Collection by Penny Ward Page B

thought that it was a bad start to my night, I was about to find out it was going to get even worse.  
    I went back to the parking lot at work to see that my car had been broken into.  Glass was lying across the seat and the GPS I bought as a Christmas present for myself was missing. 
    I sighed in defeat as I brushed the glass off the backseat.
    Why did I leave the GPS in the car? 
    I should have taken it out. 
    I was so stupid.
    I knew this was a bad parking lot and I knew that things got stolen out of cars here.  I shouldn’t have left the GPS in the car. 
    Stupid me.
    I called the police department but they weren’t interested in fingerprinting the car.  They asked me to come in to file a report next week but said it was very unlikely that they would find the GPS. 
    And of course, my car wasn’t insured.  I couldn’t afford insurance.
    I gently sobbed in the car before driving home in complete discomfort, the shards poking my stocking legs.
    When I arrived at my apartment, I tried to flip on the kitchen light but it didn’t come on. 
    In fact, nothing came on. 
    Not the lights.  Not the television.  Nothing.
    Not even the digital time readout on the face of the microwave, which was always on and blinking ‘12:00’ to light my nightly trip to the bathroom. 
    I rolled my eyes and walked across the hallway of the apartment complex to the neighbor’s door.
    I hate this place. 
    I hate the fact that Richard broke our lease at the same time he broke our relationship, and he left me in this rat hole scrambling to pay the rent all alone. 
    I was almost tempted to call him back to grovel, just so he would move back in and help me financially.  He had gotten a job since we broke up but refused to pay back anything I loaned him.  I was so close to calling him.
    But I decided against it.
    He was no good for me. 
    And after all, he had been cheating on me with a hot blonde from across the road.  They were living together now, and if I looked out my apartment window, I could see hers.
    That hurt.
    Even the thought of those two living directly across the road made me upset. 
    Why couldn’t she have been in another suburb? 
    Why did they have to live across the road?
    I knew I should call my parents and ask them for financial help. 
    But that wasn’t a great idea either. 
    I would rather struggle at my crummy job than listen to my dad say ‘I told you so’.  He didn’t really care anyway.  He always grumbles about how much of a pain I was. 
    The last time I asked Dad to loan some money, he gave me an hour-long lecture about how bad I was at being an adult and how disappointed he was in me.
    My parents disliked Richard from the moment they met him. 
    They saw that he was a womanizer but I didn’t want to believe them.  His sexy body and his boyish smile distracted me from the real truth. 
    I quickly found out for myself that Richard was a slime ball.  He cheated on me numerous times, verbally abused me and sucked me dry of any confidence I had ever had.
    I never had much luck with men. 
    I figured that I would be better off as a crazy cat lady.
    “Was there a power outage, Caroline?”  I knock on my neighbor’s door. 
    “No, I'm afraid it's just your place, Abbey.”
    Great. 
    I missed paying the electricity bill again. 
    I was utterly disgusted. 
    Is this my miserable plight in life?
    “Coffee?” Caroline popped her head into the hallway.
    “Considering I can’t boil water without electricity, I think that is a mighty fine idea.”
    Caroline opened the door to her apartment to let me into the warmth. 
    We have become good friends over the past few months, living across the hallway from one another.
    “You look like you’ve had a rough day,” Caroline stated.
    “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
    “What you need,” she continued, “Is to win big in the lotto.  Or better still, you need a billionaire to come in and sweep you off your feet.  That way you could