Shopping for a Billionaire 4

by Julia Kent

  I really don’t know what to say, so I finish my drink and eat more bread.

  “Trust me,” he says, his eyes searching for and finding Andrew, who is polishing glasses at the bar. James returns his attention to me, his eyes red-rimmed, the loose skin of an old man making him seem even sadder. “That’s no way to live your life.”

  “Neither is cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

  Resentful eyes meet mine. “Ah, if only life were so simple.”

  I stand, my appetite long gone, legs wobbly but mind very, very clear. “You make it more complex than it needs to be, and you are teaching your sons all the wrong things. What about love? You loved your wife, didn’t you?”

  He leaps to his feet. We’re making a scene. So much for professional standards. At this point, the ruse that I’m mystery shopping anything other than my own freaking life is over.

  “Of course I loved her. More than life itself.”

  “People say that, but it’s not true.”

  He just stares at me, red-faced and angry.

  “If you love anything more than life itself, that means you’d rather be dead. And you’re not. You chose to live after her passing.”

  “That wasn’t an easy decision.”

  “And now you are emotionally crippling your sons!”

  “I don’t need you to play armchair psychologist with me, Shannon,” he spits out.

  “You need someone to play psychologist, Dad,” says Guido, who has mysteriously appeared behind us. One look at his face, then James’ angry eyes, and it all clicks.

  “Terrance,” I whisper. “You’re not Guido.”

  He gives a twisted smile. “And you’re not an executive here for a night.”

  “What is this?” I demand. “Why are you both and Andrew and Declan all pretending to be hotel employees?”

  “Amanda told us—” James starts.

  “Really? This was set up by Amanda?”

  “She suggested we each take two hours to learn more about the inner life of our property.”

  “And have you?”

  “I’ve learned quite a bit, Shannon,” James says over his shoulder as he leaves. “More than I ever wanted to know.”

  I take a few shaky steps and stumble. Terrance/Guido grabs my elbow.

  “How many drinks did you have?” he asks in that deep voice. My panties are wet, though that might be from the melting bar stools from before.

  “Enough to tell your father off.”

  “That many? I’m impressed.” He helps me walk toward the elevator and asks for my floor number. I type in 14 and step back.

  “Terrance,” I say simply.

  “Call me Terry. Impressive,” he says, his eyes combing over me.

  “You’re going to hit on me, too? I’m kind of done with that, thanks,” I sigh. Between Declan’s kiss and Pete’s thigh comments I think I’ll become a nun.

  “No, just...Declan’s spoken so highly of you. Plus you have a really interesting vibrator. I’ve never seen one before that can fly and stop traffic like that.” Those words come out of his mouth just as an older couple comes to the bank of elevators and starts to press the buttons for their floor. The man halts in mid air, finger an inch from the numbers.

  Mercifully, my elevator arrives and Terry escorts me on to it. The older couple doesn’t join us. We ride in quiet, the enclosed space spinning just a bit, my body warming up to him. Of Declan’s brothers he looks the most like him, and for as angry as I am at Declan, I want him, too.

  Terry gets me to my room and says, “Nice meeting you, finally.”

  I snort. “Not that it matters. Declan dumped me. But nice meeting you, Guido.”

  And with that, I key into my room, flop down on the bed and everything fades to black.

  I took a chance on you.

  * * *

  Someone is knocking on my door. I sit up, disoriented. The wind’s blowing the curtains and moonlight streams into the dark room.

  Darkness. Nighttime. When did that happen? I climbed onto the bed in the day time, and now...

  A glance at the bedside clock tells me it’s 10:22 p.m.

  What?

  I sit up as the person outside the door knocks again, harder this time, like a man banging with the edge of his fist.

  “Room service,” says a muffled man’s voice.

  Room service? Did I order room service? I know I was supposed to as part of the mystery shop, but I don’t remember it.

  I sit up, my mouth dry, and rub my eyes repeatedly. A deep inhale and I launch myself up. A gurgle, deep inside my belly, makes me realize I’m ravenous.

  Maybe I did call and order dinner? If so, what the heck am I about to eat?

  I open the door and there’s Declan, standing behind a room service cart loaded with covered dishes.

  I close the door in his face.

  Not that hungry.

  Back pressed against the door, I fight my way to full wakefulness, heart slamming against my breastbone. I’m still mad at him, aren’t I? By all rights I should be. And yet as the details from my conversations earlier in the night come flooding in, a calm sense of equivocation fills me. I bite my lower lip, hard, trying to wake up. To shake some sense into me.

  Tap tap tap.

  “Shannon?” His voice is contrite. This is new. “Please? You need to eat. Andrew and Terry are worried about you.”

  Worried?

  “They said you were drinking quite a bit, something about a guy hitting on you in the bar, my dad being an asshole and...” His voice winds down into a frustrated snarl. “Just let me in. Take the food. I want to make sure you’re well.”

  “What’s on the tray?” I ask through the door.

  “Filet mignon. Mashed potatoes in a reduced fig and balsamic vinegar sauce. Mocha caramel cheesecake.”

  I moan. Can’t help it.

  “No white wine, though. Andrew insisted.” There’s a big question in his voice. I rub my cheek against the door and take a deep breath, deciding.

  Cheesecake wins.

  The click of the door sounds like a choice, and I open it, stepping back. Declan rolls the car in and gives me a half smile as he sets the car next to the desk and unloads the trays onto the bed.

  “Eat.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me, you know,” I insist, but as he pulls the top of the first tray up the scent of steak and spices makes my stomach scream the opposite of my words.

  He laughs.

  “Just eat.”

  After he sets the cover down he steps back and looks me up and down. “Nice nap?”

  “No. I kept dreaming about a killer bee coming to get me in Antarctica. And a ferocious wolf.”

  “What a mystery,” he deadpans. “No need to guess what your subconscious is struggling to get out.”

  “What do you dream about, Declan?” I pick up a fresh strawberry from a fruit plate and eat it, grateful for something to fill my mouth after asking.

  “You.”

  “Nice,” I say, tipping my chin up, hurrying to swallow. “Really. Great line.”

  “It’s not a line.” I take a bite of potato and then another, suddenly starving. Declan pulls the desk chair away from the keyboard tray and turns it backwards, straddling it.

  Oh. So he’s staying. And we’re talking.

  So that’s how it is.

  I cut into the steak and take a bite. It’s like eating butter, just right, the perfect cut of tenderloin. “Tell me more about your dreams,” I insist as I eat, then I stop. “Would you like some?”

  “I already ate.” His voice is raw. “I enjoy watching you.”

  “Dreams,” I demand. “Dreams.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “When I dream about you, it’s all sweetness and light. I don’t remember the dreams,” he confesses. “Not the way normal people do. I see pictures. Still images. Flashes.”

  “Not like a movie reel? That’s how my dreams work. The parts I remember,” I explain. The filet
is the size of a silver dollar and I finish it in five bites, then move on to the potatoes, then some julienned vegetables. Our conversation is so...normal. Concrete.

  Cradling his jaw in his palm, he leans his propped elbow against the back of the leather chair. “No. Even as a kid. I compared notes with Terry once and he ribbed me about it. Said I was weird for not having dreams like him and Andrew.” Declan shrugs, eyes a little too bright, throat tight. I pause my dinner and take a long, slow drink of water, enjoying the moment to look at him.

  He’s nervous.

  Nervous.

  My soul starts to hope.

  I unveil a piece of mocha caramel cheesecake that could feed a small village in Southeast Asia. Grabbing two forks, I hold one out to him like an olive branch.

  “Have some with me.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Look at that! It’s a work of art. If you don’t want a single bite of it, then you’re not human,” I joke.

  We simultaneously take a bite and groan together. Mutual mouthgasms. They’re rare, but when they happen, they’re unbelievable.

  He gets to the cheesecake before me for a second bite.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry,” I tease.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he says, vulnerable and watching me like I’m the only woman he’s ever seen. I swallow and stop, fork jabbed into the dessert, hanging in suspension. My shaking hand reaches for the water goblet and I finish it, Declan’s breath tortured, the air in the room singed with anticipation.

  “If you missed me,” I say in a hoarse voice that seems to come from a place nine inches away from my mouth, “why haven’t you called? Or texted? Or sent a bat signal?”

  “Remember that whole idiot thing from earlier today? Yeah. That.”

  “And then there’s your mom.”

  This time, he doesn’t flinch. Just closes his eyes and sighs, then opens them, fighting for composure. I want to reach out, to touch him, to connect my skin to his but he has to make the first move. Simply knowing what happened ten years ago and making the connection doesn’t mean he’s here to reunite.

  He has to be the one to say it.

  Leaping to his feet, he begins to pace. There’s a nervous tension in him, like an animal that has been caged for so long it doesn’t know what to do when freed. Three times he traverses the small room, words pouring out.

  “You know my mother died from that damn wasp sting. Andrew was stung. First time he had a full-blown anaphylaxis.” The medical term comes out in a robotic voice, but as he continues he becomes more emotional. “Mom kept pointing from the EpiPen to him. She fought me off when I tried to jab it in her leg. Fought me. She couldn’t speak by then. The words came out as grunts. Andrew was panicking and they were both dying.”

  “I know.” I walk to him and stop him, reaching for both his hands. “I know.”

  “That day when you were stung,” he says, eyes wild, pulse beating so hard I can see it in his neck, right under his earlobe. “When you were stung and your EpiPen came out my first thought was Thank God, only one person. Only one person who I am responsible for. The odds aren’t stacked against me.”

  “And then I stabbed you,” I say with a choked, horrified snort, squeezing his warm hands.

  “And I thought that was it. But you had a second one.” He doesn’t need to say what we’re both thinking. The room goes cold with a huge gust from a brewing storm on the bay. If only...

  “Fate,” I blurt out.

  “Fate,” he says without question. “Fate is a cruel mistress.”

  I look at him with a questioning face.

  “Of all the women I could have met with their hand down a toilet at one of my stores, it had to be the one with the same allergy that....”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty freaking weird.”

  “I shouldn’t be with you.”

  I freeze.

  “But I can’t do this.”

  Do what?

  “I can’t stay away. Dad tried to convince me that I’m signing up for nothing but heartbreak with you. That the genetics are stacked against us—”

  Genetics?

  “That our children have a higher chance of—”

  CHILDREN? Did he just say children?

  “And I’ll spend the rest of my life in fear of—”

  In a mad rush I tackle him, the kiss desperate and urgent, my body launching into his with such force that we fall onto the bed, a mass of pillows rolling off and bouncing, pelting our legs as his mouth meets mine, rougher with each second, claiming me.

  “I can’t be without you,” he says in a hurried gasp. “I’ve tried. You’re forthright and honest and the most upfront woman I’ve ever met. You have an inner core that makes you turn toward the good. You make me want to be good, too.” He kisses the end of my nose and pulls back, half in shadows and half in moonlight. The room is timeless, his face pensive. Thoughtful.

  “And you have a very weird family.”

  “And a malicious cat,” I add, peppering his jaw with kisses.

  “You don’t give a damn what people think, at the same time you care about what people feel. And you took on my dad.” I can feel his grin through our kiss. “That’s when I fell in love with you.”

  “The same day you dumped me you fell in love with me?”

  “Love isn’t rational.”

  I fell in love with you.

  “When you said you took a chance on me, that was...”

  “My being an idiot. Not the taking a chance part.” He pulls my shirt out from the waistline of my skirt and rests his palms against my back. The feeling charges me, making my skin hum. “The jumbled mess of thinking that I should just walk away. That the pain of being with you outweighed the joy.”

  Joy.

  “And you’re here because...”

  “Because I couldn’t stay away.”

  “You had to pretend to be Alfredo the Plumber in order to tell me this?”

  “Did it work?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask me again. At breakfast.” The smoldering look he gives me as he pulls me to him in a kiss makes my toes tingle. Dishes on the tray rattle and he sits up, moves the tray, and stands in the moonlight, the lines of his clothed body like a work of art.

  I stand pressing in for a kiss, and begin to unbutton his shirt. “Forthright, huh?” One knowing touch as I reach down makes him suck air in through his teeth.

  “I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

  “Then you must really like me, because I know exactly what—and who—I want.”

  My own breath is foreign to me, the spellbinding touch of his fingers on my cheek like a caress from a different world. He’s different now, deeper and richer in his intents, and I want to believe him. Need to believe him. My body responds before my heart, so quick to react that I pause, listening to the beat of blood pounding through me, all rushing to the surface of my skin to get closer to him.

  I hold nothing back now and invite him to cast aside whatever keeps him from surrendering to the new reality we’ve woven just by being together, right here. Right now. I don’t need to hear him tell me he loves me—it’s too soon for that—but I need him to show me.

  Show me.

  His hands take in my skin like a man in charge, grasping what he wants, possessing it. As I reach for his pants and unsnap them, his fingers make quick work of undoing my bra, then his heat is on me, warm palms cupping my breasts, the pleasure of being together and intimate nakedly on display in the look he gives me, open and revealing.

  Trust. He trusts me, now, and joy pours through my body like liquid fire, my lips quivering from emotion, my whole being at rest and yet in eager motion. He slips my shirt, then bra, off my shoulders and onto the floor as he steps out of his clothes. We’re both naked and raw before one another in the blink of an eye, and we both feel it. The shockwave of peace and hope, of arousal and yearning.

  Of coming home.

  “This is what you want,” he
murmurs against my shoulder as he seeds it with tiny kisses, repeating my own words back.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. More than anything. This is...everything. You are everything.”

  “Then let’s be everything together.”

  “High standards.”

  “I know you’re an overachiever.”

  His deep, throaty chuckle morphs into something more sensual as he gently guides me to the bed, the full length of him covering me. All my jokes disintegrate, replaced by a moment-by-moment awareness that makes me feel ancient, alive and immortal, regenerated kiss by kiss, stroke by stroke, lick by—

  “Oh, there,” I whisper, the sound half groan, half sigh, as he makes me speechless once more. We’re just kissing, but it’s so much more, his mouth sensual and alive, our hands roaming and remembering, searching and loving. Each lush kiss makes me go to a level inside myself that I didn’t know I possess, and Declan’s right there with me, a fiery, passionate presence.

  “You know,” he says as my hands ride up from the grooves of his hipbones, over his sharp belly, abs like inverted shells under perfect, musky skin, “this isn’t part of your evaluation.”

  I laugh as he kisses the base of my throat, my fingertips memorizing him, reaching down to feel his tight ass. “How do you know? Maybe this is in my app.”

  “Do you find the lovemaking aesthetically pleasing?” he says, his hands making damn certain that I do.

  “I need more time and observation to make that kind of determination,” I say in a faux-prim voice.

  The teasing fades as he kisses me again, then dips his head down to tongue one tight rosebud nipple. Again? This is new. Then again, we’ve never had all the time in the world, our own hotel room, and a bed the size of my backyard.

  “As you wish,” he adds, showing me exactly how to perform exemplary customer service, the rough rasp of the soft hair on his thighs and calves tickling my hips. We’re a slow, languid twinning of warmth now, and Declan stops to look at me.

  Really look at me.

  No modestly, no walls to hide emotion behind. We watch each other for longer than is decent, the air telescoping to a pinpoint, his eyes a cavern of delight. He’s inviting me to join him with this look, and I intertwine my fingers in his, shift my thigh just so to stroke him, the resulting gasp the only answer either of us needs to give.