Curvy Girls Can't Date Billionaires (The Curvy Girl Club #2) - Kelsie Stelting Page 0,1

today. Plus, I had to steel myself before going inside. If this was what the outside of the house looked like, I hated to think of what chandeliers lay inside that could pay my college tuition or crystal serving bowls that could float us for months.

I shoved my empty cup in the cupholder and got out to help Mom. She passed me the handle to the cart we used to bring cleaning supplies from place to place. I began pulling it toward the open garage door, but she put her hand on my forearm. “Jordan, wait.”

I turned and looked at her, confused. We needed to get as much work done as possible before I had to get ready for school. “What’s up?”

She waited until my full attention was on her eyes, completely serious. “This is a big job, and it could mean finally paying off Juana’s medical bills.” She gently touched the charm at the end of her silver necklace, just like she always did when she talked about Juana. “I need this to work.”

My chest clenched as I nodded, too afraid to even hope to get out from under the crushing medical debt. “I’ll do my best, I promise.”

Her lips tugged down. “There’s more.”

Confused, I set the handle of the cart back and gave her my full attention. “What’s going on, amá?”

“The client—he has a son. Your age.”

My stomach clenched. A son? At least that cut Merritt Alexander and her crew of mean girls out of the mix, but that didn’t leave a lot of options... “Who is it?” Please don’t be Kai Rush. Please don’t be Kai Rush. I couldn’t go much lower than cleaning for an actual billionaire.

“It doesn’t matter who it is.” Her hands ran over my shoulders. “Let’s just make sure we do this right.”

She meant the gesture to be comforting, but now I was just nervous. “What’s going on?”

She held the charm of her necklace, looking at our pile of cleaning supplies. “Things have been tight since I started my business, and if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Now I was less worried about the mystery boy and more concerned for our home. Maybe it wasn’t the right time to start a business. “Can’t you go back to work at Lucinda’s? She always took care of us.”

“She made sure we didn’t starve, but I wanted more for us than just getting by.” She shook her head, frowning. “When I went on my own, she told me to never come back.”

I gasped. The woman who’d been like a second grandmother for my entire life had cast my mom off like that? Cast me off? “Why would she do that?”

“She’s a proud woman,” Mom said. “She feels like she gave us everything. She doesn’t understand why I’d want more for myself. For us.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Mom simply shook her head. “We can’t risk this job. Please, whatever you do, do not date this boy.”

That’s what this was about? I scoffed. “Amá, you know I’d never date an Emerson rich kid.” And a boy who probably hung out with models and the social elite would never consider dating a poor, plus-sized girl like me.

With that, I picked up the handle and started walking toward the house. Me falling for the boy inside the mansion was the last thing my mom needed to worry about. Public humiliation? Definitely. A secret romance? That was a waste of her mental energy. We had a job to do.

Two

A butler let us inside. A butler. Wearing a suit. Who apparently worked at four in the morning.

“Welcome, Ms. Junco,” he said to my mom. “Miss Junco,” he said to me.

She smiled at him, but all I could do was stare at the house’s entryway. An abstract art chandelier hung from a ceiling so tall it might as well have been the sky. Art lined the walls as well, like someone had meant to place the installation in a gallery and whoever owned this house decided it belonged here instead.

I didn’t have time to gawk, though. The butler—Robert, he called himself—was leading us through the mansion, telling Mom the plan of attack. We were to start with the kitchen and dining quarters today, the living areas tomorrow, and so on until the entire home was cleaned in the span of a week. Cleaning this place would take us that long, and I hoped Mom was prepared for that amount of work on top of the other small