by Julia Kent
“It’s not the prom, Mom,” Amy shouts through my open apartment door.
“Of course it’s not,” Mom snaps. “Shannon had those really bad cramps that night and her date got lice, so it’s not like she ever even went!”
Amy’s face appears at the door for a fleeting second before she drags my protesting mother inside. Slam!
I blink three or four times, silent. Declan’s thumb begins to move back and forth, slowly, maddeningly, like it’s gentling a spooked horse.
His hand is shaking a bit. Not from nerves.
Because he is laughing.
I jerk my hand away, remembering myself. This is a business meeting. Business. Pure business.
“I promise I don’t have lice,” he says.
I almost snap back, And I don’t have my period right now, but I already want to crawl into a hole and die. Why add to it?
“Not having lice is a great quality in a VP of marketing. Especially since so many of them are louses.”
“Ouch.”
“Hey, I aspire to be one someday.”
“Shannon Jacoby, head louse.” His face hardens as he realizes what he’s said versus what he clearly meant.
“That just sounds all kinds of wrong, Declan.”
“How about we both stop talking and just get in the limo.” It’s not a question. His hand lands on the base of my back and we both freeze again. Electricity travels in a full circuit between our two bodies. His pulse becomes mine. The tiny hairs on the wrist I can see stand up slowly, as if summoned, just like—
Well, just like something else on his body, I imagine.
The hand on my back slides up my spine, over the fine wool of my jacket, sinking into my loose hair, respectful but sending one hell of a signal. There is no pretense here. I don’t have to guess whether he’s interested. And my signals are so clear that the only way I could be more obvious would be to rent a billboard and hang a twenty-foot color photo of myself naked with the caption “I WILL SLEEP WITH YOU, DECLAN.”
It can’t be this easy, can it? My mind spins as his fingers move along the tender skin of my neck, making me gasp. I’m looking up at him and his lips look soft. Tender. Commanding and tasty.
A distant sound of ringing glass fills the air. It’s distinct and cuts through the spell between us.
Declan looks back toward my front door. My mother is standing next to the open window with a wine glass and a spoon, gently chiming it like she’s at a wedding reception and calling for the bride and groom to—
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” she chants.
Declan looks at me, and with a deadpan expression says, “I think your mother wants us to take this nice and slow.”
Amy yanks Mom out of the window and I hear muffled yelling. I grab Declan’s hand and pull him to the limo door. The driver opens it and I climb in so fast and so inelegantly I hear my skirt split up the seam in the back.
Declan hears it, too, but sits back in the beige leather seat and ogles the vast expanse of creamy skin my mishap now exposes. A scene from a movie I saw recently, where a couple has sex in a limo, the woman in a ball gown, straddling the man, picks this exact moment to make a re-entrance into my psyche, plaguing me.
“Nice legs,” Declan says.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the marketing coordinators.” He starts to say something, and I add, “And to none of the marketing vice presidents.”
He thinks about that for a second and says, “You got me there.”
Chapter Nine
Our eyes lock.
“Where are we going?” It’s a relief to make simple small talk.
He names a restaurant I’ve always wanted to try, but needed to date a billionaire to afford.
Oh.
“Sounds good,” I say, nodding. Leaning back against the buttery leather, I try to take in my surroundings without looking like a major gawker. The leather seats hug my body better than any knockoff Tempur-Pedic memory foam like Mom and Dad have on their bed back home. A small fridge and a few decanters of what I assume are spirits dot the edges of the enclosed space. The limo looks like it could seat six comfortably, eight in a pinch.
With just two of us in here, there’s plenty of room to stretch out.
Go horizontal.
Or straddle.
I close my eyes, willing the sensual images that flood my brain to stop. Declan’s steady breath doesn’t help, cutting through me like he’s syncing it with the pictures in my mind. The scent of him fills the air between us and I feel charmed.
And doomed.
Declan chooses to say nothing, just watching me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. His eyes take me in and I wonder how I appear to him. Loose, long hair. Makeup mostly where it’s supposed to go. A curvy body in a dress meant to ooze sophistication. A tailored, feminine blazer that says I might be sexy underneath, but I’m all business on the outside.
My inner world is crumbling, brick by brick, and Declan’s holding the sledgehammer that demolishes me. Women like me don’t ride in cars like this. We don’t get invited out for a dinner—business or pleasure—by men like Declan. And we certainly don’t entertain wild ideas about happily ever after with men who will go so high in the business world that women like me are just, well…coordinators.
Whatever delusions I hold inside about his attraction for me are there only because he’s looking at me like he really means it. As if I am as beautiful and desirable as his look says.
He’s very good at pretending that I’m worth the attention.
His phone rings, making me jump. His breathing stays the same, and his sleek, fluid movement impresses me. Nothing seems to rattle him. With dulcet tones, he talks to someone named Grace, the cadence of their conversation quickly familiar to me. Scheduling helicopters and private jets may be out of my realm, but I know a logistics talk when I hear one. Grace is probably his executive assistant. Something about New Zealand, a reception, and then a return flight to the west coast pops up through their twenty-minute conversation.
I spend the time willing my heart to stay in my chest.
If I weren’t such a cheap date I’d knock back a shot of whatever is in the crystal decanter at my elbow, an amber liquid that looks good. But two drinks and I’m quite tipsy. Three and I’m drunk.
Four and I’m singing “Bad Romance” at full blast in a really cheesy karaoke performance. Whether there’s a karaoke machine or not.
Declan shoots me apologetic looks every so often, and I just smile without teeth. A shrug here and there helps communicate that it’s okay. I get it. And I do.
In fact, the phone conversation helps me to bring my overwrought self back to center. Business. This is business. I’m not on a date with him. We’re talking about a few million dollars a year that his company wants to spend for a specific value premise, and my company would love to receive that money to offer services.
That’s it.
This is a transaction. Not a relationship. And certainly not an affair.
“It’ll be at the restaurant?” Declan murmurs into the phone, then his face goes neutral but the skin around his eyes turns up a touch, like a smile without his lips moving.
Grace says something. Declan replies, “Good,” and hangs up abruptly. It would be rude if it weren’t shorthand. I’m sure Grace is doing a dance she and Declan know all too well, keeping the ship running smoothly through the careful discarding of unnecessary social expectations for the sake of ruthless efficiency.
He tucks the phone inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket just as the driver slows the limo, bringing it to a gentle halt. I look out the window. We’re here.
Except the entrance we use is most definitely not one for the hoi polloi. Wouldn’t want the unwashed masses rubbing elbows with the richie-riches, right? My own bitterness surprises me, and I have a hard time looking at Declan for a minute or two.
His eyes shift; he sees it, and wants to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, the driver opens my door and Dec
lan’s hand comes out to take mine.
My heart seizes with the touch of bare skin on bare skin. Jesus. If the man can get me this close to an O holding my hands, I’ll stroke out if we ever make it to a bed, naked.
And there I go again…what is wrong with me? I don’t do this. I don’t think like this. Not only do I not randomly strip strange men naked with my mind and have little porno movies in my head about them, I don’t even think about one-night stands.
The only guys I’ve ever slept with were friends first. Good friends. The slow, leisurely meandering to physical affection and something more, carefully measured out and talked through is more my speed.
I like to take things slow. To reveal myself layer by layer to men. To dip a toe in the water and pull back. I’m the kind of person who gets into a pool one inch of flesh at a time, pausing to shiver and acclimate.
Declan is the sexual equivalent of doing a cannonball. At 4 a.m. In March in northern Vermont.
As I climb out, my torn skirt shows so much thigh I might as well have given birth.
Declan’s eyebrow arches with appreciation. Controlling my breathing is becoming a second job. I stand and he reaches for me again, his hand on my back, and he smells like cloves, cinnamon, and tobacco. Not cigarettes, though.
“Do you smoke?” I ask as he leads me to an enormous oak door that opens suddenly, a concierge standing there in full tux.
“No. That’s Dad’s pipe you smell. We were working late at the office.”
It’s cardamon and Bengal tea spicy yumminess. I want to brew him in hot water and drink him.
We enter a room with an arched ceiling so high I expect to look up and see God with his finger outstretched. The dusky night shines through rounded windows at the peak. Dark mahogany covers the walls and muted lighting gives the restaurant a womblike feel. I can see past the front desk into the main dining room, where thick burgundy curtains frame each table.
This is a place designed for privacy.
“Ms. Jacoby.” The maître d’ appears, a man who looks to be about my father’s age, with gray hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He’s shorter than Declan, but lean, like a triathlete. Dressed in a tuxedo slightly different from the man at the door, he exudes luxury and service.
In his hand is a small white box with a bow and a gold paper medallion on it. He holds it out to me.
Puzzled, I look at Declan, who just smiles. I slide my fingernail along the gold seal and open the box.
It’s a corsage.
“What?” A sentimental laugh fills me, and suddenly I’m at ease.
“You missed your prom, so I thought…” Declan has been calm, cool, and collected until this moment. Right now, he looks like a nervous seventeen year old, though he covers it quickly, eyes going back to a hooded, careless look quite fast.
I pull it out of the box and pin it to my blazer. It’s a tasteful set of small red and white roses with a sprig of baby’s breath around it. Simple. Elegant.
Special.
I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. My lips graze his jaw as I step down. He’s clean-shaven, but the rasp of my skin against his makes my entire body fill with instant lust.
“This is the nicest gesture anyone has ever done for me at a business meeting. Normally I’m lucky to have my own laptop outlet.” I can’t say what I really want to say, a mixture of gushing gratitude and joy that my babbling adolescent self is screeching inside. The words Thank you and He likes me! echo a thousand times a second through my mind and heart.
The box disappears as if the maître d’ were Dumbledore with a wand, and he leads us back to a table for four, shrouded on three sides by thick velvet curtains, a dim chandelier above us.
Declan pulls my chair out and I sit, scooching in, the press of cool leather a surprise on my upper thighs. Damn. My skirt’s split that high?
I’m unnerved again. A corsage? The heady scent of roses and caring fills the air around me. Declan’s looking at me with eyes that say this is not a business meeting, and my body responds to him like it has to no other man. Ever. Not even Steve made me feel like this.
“I didn’t go to my prom either,” he says as we settle in. A waiter fills our water glasses and a bottle of wine appears. Before I’m asked, a glass of red is poured for me.
I hate red wine.
“I would have thought that you were prom king,” I say.
He shakes his head, eyebrows furrowed. Then he waves a hand as if dispersing a bad memory.
“What?” I ask. I feel bolder now, as if I have the right to make him tell me whatever it is he was about to dismiss.
“I…I missed it because of my mother,” he says, reluctant, as if the confession is against his nature.
“Your mother?”
“She was in the hospital.”
My mind races to recall all the details Amanda and I learned when we researched Anterdec after our meeting. I know the name is the amalgam of the three sons’ names: Andrew, Terrance, and Declan. An Ter Dec. But Mrs. McCormick…I don’t remember anything about her.
“She died the day after my prom,” Declan says softly. Our eyes meet, and mine must be horrified, because he reaches out for my hand to comfort me. He’s the one whose mother died.
“You lost your mother that young?” I can’t help it. My throat fills with sympathetic tears. My mom may be a pain in the ass, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.
“It’s been ten years,” he says thickly. “But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For reacting like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you care. Most people don’t let themselves have genuine reactions to anything emotional.”
“I’m not most people.” The words come out wrong. What I want to say is I wear my heart on my sleeve, but that seems too vulnerable. This is just a business dinner, right?
Right.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling my hand away with great reluctance. He squeezes it and begins to run his thumb along the soft skin of my wrist.
He’s not going to let me retreat.
“So tell me why you need more convincing to give this account to Consolidated,” I say, trying to change the tenor of this encounter.
I fail.
“Tell me why you’re so afraid of me.”
I reach for the red wine with my open hand and twirl the glass. The last time I drank red wine was with Steve, at our final work outing for him. He dragged me along to a big dinner with his firm and I choked down a glass and a half as he sent me a million nonverbal signals throughout the entire dinner.
Most of which involved scowls and eye rolls, because I did everything wrong.
Declan takes a sip of his wine and returns his attention to me.
“I’m not afraid of you.” I really want white wine. A battle inside emerges. Let it go, one part says. Speak up and assert yourself says another. Billionaire grandchildren says my mother’s voice.
I take a big sip of the red wine and choke it down.
“Maybe you’re afraid of yourself,” he says.
“Maybe I’m afraid you think I’m just being whored out by my boss so I’ll land this account.”
“Maybe I don’t need sex so badly I trade accounts for it.”
“Maybe that was never an option.”
“Maybe I’m more interested in knowing why you were perched on that toilet. You still haven’t answered my question from earlier.”
That makes me laugh. “Why do you think? I was finishing the last mystery shop of the day. Who do you think reports on the cleanliness of the bathrooms?”
That makes him pause and take another sip of wine. “Never thought about it.” He’s still holding my hand, but his thumb stops moving.
“Of course not. That’s my job. Not yours.” I lean in, lowering my voice. “And thank you for not asking me to count the pubic hairs on the urinal cake.”
“You’re welcome, I guess.” He does a double take. “Our competitors do that?”<
br />
“And worse. Don’t ask what I have to do when I evaluate a manicure salon and detail their anti-fungal procedures.”
He closed his eyes, but he’s amused. “How romantic.”
“I wouldn’t talk like this if we were on a date. But this is all business.”
We both look at our clasped hands. Then our eyes meet and he starts to say something, but the waiter appears and introduces himself. A flurry of recited specials and then we order. I get the filet and Declan orders some complicated pheasant dish.
“No salad and fish?” he asks when the waiter leaves. We’ve dropped hands. It feels weird to be disconnected. We’re sitting next to each other, yet the table is large.
“Was I supposed to? Is this a mystery shop and that’s the required meal?” I’m teasing, but it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve dined out in a long time where I get to choose exactly what I want.
He cocks his head and studies me. In the low light of the restaurant, I can see auburn highlights in his hair. “Tell me about your life.”
“Wow. You start small, don’t you?”
He smiles wide, flashing those perfect teeth. “Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you about the account,” I insist, trying hard to bring this back to business.
He sighs. “You have the account.”
“I do?” I squeak.
“Of course. Now I want more.”
Chapter Ten
“Wait. Why did you ask about salad and fish?” First things first.
“Because that’s what every woman I date orders when we dine.”
“Seriously? There’s a meal code? I’m breaking some rule by getting beef?”
“You ordered what you like. I find that appealing. No pretense. No affect. You’re just being Shannon.”
Which wasn’t enough for Steve. “I’m being the marketing coordinator for Consolidated Evalu-shop, Declan. You’ve just told me we have the account. Thank you.”
Deflect deflect deflect.
“No—thank you. Once I realized what you were doing in that men’s room, I knew we needed to give your company the account.”