by Julia Kent
SHOPPING FOR A BILLIONAIRE’S FIANCÉE
(DECLAN’S PROPOSAL)
BY JULIA KENT
Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
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All of our best dates end up in the emergency room....
I planned the perfect proposal. Plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. The perfect setting. The perfect woman.
The perfect everything.
Dad gave me my late mother’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore. Shannon wouldn’t care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond designed to impress.
But my future mother-in-law, Marie, will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked backside on the internet.
I was going to make it perfect, from the color of the tablecloth to the freshness of the roses.
And it was perfect.
Until Shannon swallowed the ring.
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Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancée gives near-billionaire Declan McCormick the chance to tell his story in this continuation of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Shopping for a Billionaire series.
CHAPTER ONE
Shannon has no idea how many layers of beauty she has. And that’s exactly why she’s so exquisite.
When I was sixteen, the year before my mother died, Mom took me and my little brother, Andrew, to New York City for a long weekend. Pulled us out of school over the objections of the headmaster at our academy. Mom didn’t care. We spent three nights at the Waldorf Astoria, skated at Rockefeller Center, had the best seats at the top Broadway musicals, and dined on the finest footlongs you could get for $3. Loaded with mustard and sauerkraut, plus a cream soda or two.
(Do you have something against footlongs? Too bad. Two teenagers can only handle so much caviar and lobster.)
What I remember most about that trip, and what Shannon reminds me of every moment I look at her, was our trip to the Museum of Modern Art. Mom insisted we go, and Andrew and I rolled our eyes like sets of dice at a craps table.
And then.
And then I got it, right there in front of a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece. In art history class we’d covered this painting in detail. We were taught the biography of Van Gogh, how he came to create the series of paintings, his motivation, and his flaws. We’d dissected the meaning so thoroughly that I felt like I could recreate the art by automation, our elite prep-school instruction clinical and impeccable.
Standing in front of the painting, a few feet away, with my eyes trailing the curve of brush strokes, my mind taking in the nuance of color, my senses dazzled by the sheer essence of the whole, I halted. Froze. Was completely in the painting’s spell.
You can study something in the abstract. Know it’s real somewhere out there in the world, and understand intellectually that what you read in a book or what you’re told by someone else is true.
You have to stand in front of it and have it stare back at you, though, to really know it.
That’s how I feel when I look at Shannon. Every single time my eyes find her. Shannon’s smile is warm and sweet, yet better every time she flashes it at me. Her honey-colored hair shines in the sunlight but looks richer when it’s tangled, in bed, highlighted by the moon and messed by me. Those warm eyes see only me when we’re together. That luscious body craves my touch. My hands. My...all of it.
When I’m with her, the world is more nuanced. Deeper. Authentic. Real.
She’s a work of art, one of a kind. And one I get to hold next to my body, tuck away in my heart, and...grow old with.
I have planned the perfect proposal. No footlongs and sauerkraut, unfortunately, but plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. (What is it with women and tiramisu? It’s cream, cheese, sugar, cake and rum, not some magic potion that generates mouth orgasms. My Y chromosome scratches its head in confusion, but hey, if it’s her favorite...I give my woman what she wants.)
Dad gave me Mom’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore, a monstrosity he’d bought for her nearly four decades ago as his business took off. The ring is designed to impress. I doubt Shannon would care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond.
And, frankly, I don’t care, either. But the thought of my Shannon sharing such an important part of my mother’s life makes my chest swell. Only Shannon—and my mom—can do that. Only love can do that.
Plus, Marie will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked ass on the internet.
“It’s not as if your brothers are planning to tie themselves down to one woman any time soon, if ever,” Dad had said when he gave it to me. He’s about as sentimental as a pet rock. After having it resized to fit my future fiancée, it was ready to rest on yet an
other McCormick woman’s finger.
It was going to be calculatedly perfect, down to the color of the tablecloth and the freshness of the roses.
And it was perfect.
Until Shannon swallowed the ring.
Why do all our best dates end up at the ER?
And who the hell called her mother?
CHAPTER TWO
One week before the proposal...
Grace taps her knuckles on my doorway. For some reason, the door is ajar, the muffled sounds of copiers buzzing and people talking to each other a dull roar in the distance. They all annoy me.
“Declan? The jeweler called. The ring is ready.”
My blank stare is all I can muster.
She smiles. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Ready.” Grace looks like she could get into a catfight with Honey Boo Boo’s mom and come out the winner. When she frowns, something deep and primal in me clenches.
That’s why she’s the best damned admin a guy could have. No worries about office sex (Grace is a lesbian married to a rugby player) and in a pinch, she can act as a bodyguard.
“Ready for a meeting?” Based on the look she gives me, I am not with the program this morning. Frankly, I am not on the planet this morning. Between a helicopter ride from New York that was so choppy I might as well have been riding a bucking bronco, and no sex at all from Shannon for three entire days (due to business meetings in NYC), I am lucky I can read a basic stock report and tie my shoes.
“Ready to get married.”
Oh. Yeah. And then there’s that.
Did I mention the no sex part? Because that’s really occupying my addled brain more than the whole pick-one-woman-for-the-rest-of-your-life thing.
And only one woman.
One.
It’s not so hard to pick one woman to be with for all eternity, right? Grace did it, so I can, too. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
“You look sick. Not ‘ready’.” Grace steps in my office all the way and gently closes the door, holding the doorknob like it’s a ticking time bomb, waiting for the gentle click before turning to me with that look.
You know that look. The look older women give you, their eyes going soft and concerned, like you deserve to be the object of pity, the recipient of chicken soup and completely unusable advice.
Three thin, gold bracelets jangle against her freckled, wrinkled skin. She’s nothing like my future mother-in-law, and—
My entire body tenses for no apparent reason whatsoever. It’s as if the Ghost of Testosterone Past has slipped into my office unannounced.
Future mother-in-law.
Marie.
“I’m fine,” I insist. This is getting old. I have three video conferences with accounts, a business lunch with a client who thinks tequila shots confer the same health benefits as a field green salad (and by the fourth shot, I always agree with him), and a woman right here in this building who I need to locate, pull into a supply closet and bang senseless.
(That would be Shannon, for the record.)
“Declan, I’ve known you since you were in high school, and I’m going to take off my admin hat for a moment and put on my not-quite-mother hat,” Grace says, complete with hand gestures, as if she’s pretending to wear a hat.
Grace was a pre-school teacher in her first career. It shows.
“I have enough not-quite-mothers in my life,” I say in the most I am annoyed voice I can manage, which is a pretty damn strong one. Shannon tells me I have Resting Asshole Face. It’s like Resting Bitchface but for men.
I try it out on Grace right now.
She waves me off. “Oh, stop it. Listen to me. You’re about to propose to the woman you love. Any man in your shoes would be nervous.”
“Nervous,” I scoff, standing up and buttoning my suit jacket, unbuttoning it, buttoning it. The buttons are a bit tight and it just came back from the tailor for readjustment. I am not nervous.
“You’re human, Declan.”
“I’m a McCormick. We’re not allowed to be human.”
“No matter how often your father says that, you know it’s not true,” Grace says with a smile, clasping her hands in front of her, making the gold at her wrists jingle again.
Someone knocks on the door. We both turn and look.
“Come in,” I call out. To Grace, I mutter, “Maybe we’re secret immortal werewolves and we’ve fooled you.”
“You’re too vain about your suits to let them get torn when you shift,” says Shannon, entering the room with a smile.
One part of my clothing threatens to split quite suddenly.
Grace gives me a look that says We’re not done here. Oh, yes, we are. We’re done talking about whether I’m ready for marriage and, instead, we’re going to talk about how ready I am for sex.
If we’re measuring that readiness, it’s a good nine inches long.
(You expect me to be modest? Good luck with that. Facts are facts.)
Shannon works three floors below me. I like knowing she’s under me all the time. Right now, I want her on top of me, beneath me, spooned in front of me, on her knees at my feet...hell, I’ll take anything. I can hear my heart beat in the quiet between us, except the blood isn’t pounding through my chest right now.
Grace departs, and I take in the vision of my future bride. Bride. I like that word. Could get used to saying it, especially since it has the word “ride” tucked right in there.
Shannon. My ride.
She’s wearing a dark grey suit with a double-breasted jacket and a light colored shirt under it. Nylons and high heels a little taller than the ones she normally wears. Her brown hair is pulled back in a braid, her lips freshly painted with bright red lipstick. Long lashes frame those perfect eyes. Shannon is working the hell out of the naughty librarian look.
She moves toward my desk, not touching me, walking past to tease. She knows damn well how hard I want her, er...how much I want her, and she’s prolonging the moment, stretching it out in an endless series of sultry moves designed to make me fling every paper off my desk and take her in front of the giant glass windows here on the twenty-second floor, with a view of the Back Bay our orgasmic scenery.
The seam of my zipper begins to split as she pulls herself up to sit on the edge of my desk, slipping her heels off with stocking feet, and she widens her legs.
Garters. Red garters. And—
My inner werewolf is trying to climb out of my body through my pants fly.
She’s wearing no panties. At all. Shannon doesn’t do this.
Oh, thank God she’s doing this.
“See something you like, Mr. McCormick? I’m here to pitch a new product for you to consider for Anterdec Holdings.” Widening her legs even more, she licks those red lips. The lipstick matches the color of the garters.
“A new product?” I say through a mouth full of marbles and dead brain cells, hands burning to touch her. I take a step forward and pause, letting desire wash over me. Better enjoy it for a second or two, because in three seconds I’ll be inside her.
“Yes,” she says, unbuttoning her suit jacket, leaning back on the desk with her arms. She’s wearing a red corset.
Corset. A corset makes gravity its bitch. The engineering behind this simple piece of clothing deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, because there is nothing in the world—nothing—that will get a group of straight men to share the same opinion than the sight of a woman in a red corset.
“Nice,” I groan. Her breasts are pushed up, abundant and in need of release. The last time I saw her looking so wicked was at Christmas, eight months ago, when she wore an elf costume that made me deliver Shannon a sack full of goodies.
And by “sack,” I mean—
Bzzzz.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Shannon sits up and—no! Don’t cross your arms like that and put the Himalayas away!
“Declan?” It’s Grace, over my phone’s intercom. Dad insists on keeping this charming 1970s ritual.
Says it makes him feel like some guy from an old television show about three gorgeous female private investigators. Right now, I’m about to grab the phone and throw it out the window.
“Yes? It better be important,” I say as I march toward Shannon, nudging her knees back to their proper, wide position, my hands hot on her waist. She looks uncertain, and I need to kiss that out of her.
“Shh!” Shannon whispers in my ear. “I don’t want her to think that we...that you and I are...you know.”
“We’re not,” I groan. “That’s the problem.”
“Declan, there’s a call for you. From New Zealand. Says it’s important. Something to do with a marketing campaign that’s glitching because of faulty web software.” Grace’s voice crackles like we’re on a police radio.
I look at the clock. “It’s the middle of the night there! Who cares if people can’t get their custom-blend cosmetics for the new spa line?” Anterdec handles a chain of twenty-three luxury hotels and spas in New Zealand. We’re rolling out a new product line. In exchange for giving me Mom’s engagement ring, Dad got a concession out of me: fix the nightmare project in New Zealand. What had started out as a nice, cushy contract had turned into an international disaster. I’d left the project a year ago in fabulous shape and it had disintegrated. The developers assured me that going “live” would be glitchless.
They lied. Developers lie. You know those Dilbert cartoons where the marketing people are portrayed as dunderheads who have no link to logic or reality? Who do you think writes that comic strip?
A developer.
“And you’re interrupting me because...”
“Because the system’s crashing and customer service is lighting up in Indonesia and—you need to take this call. It’s the CEO.”
“Fine,” I snap. Grace disappears. So does Shannon, wiggling out of my arms and re-buttoning her coat. A whiff of her perfume, light and feminine, tickles my nose. So does her natural scent, those legs open and waiting for me seconds ago, her body primed for me.