Shopping for a Billionaire's Fiancee

by Julia Kent

  Having kids will slow us down. First, I want to spend a few years taking her all over the world to cross items off my bucket list. We’ve never been to Paris, and Shannon has talked about wanting to see Machu Pichu. Can’t do that easily with a baby strapped to your front in one of those contraptions.

  I could give a laundry list of all the various experiences we both want before we have kids, but instead I’ll just focus on the fact that Shannon is suddenly holding a screaming Tyler, whose nose has turned into Mt. Vesuvius, complete with red blood spurting all over Shannon’s shoulder and chest.

  “What happened?” I bend down to check it out.

  “Tyler tripped,” Jeffrey explains. Simple enough.

  Shannon’s rocking him back and forth while he screams, “Wipe it off! Wipe it off!” as he smashes his palm into his bleeding nose. Every two seconds he does the same loop: wipe, look at it, scream “Wipe it off,” and then repeat.

  “Hey, buddy. Hang on. Are you hurt?” I ask.

  “NOT! NOT HURT!” Tyler likes to deny anything negative. Spill his juice? No, he didn’t. Get his feelings hurt? No, he didn’t. Bloody his nose? No, he didn’t. He’s great at denying reality like that. He could be the Fox News correspondent on climate change.

  Shannon hands me her purse. “Can you find tissues in there?” Her purse is a bottomless pit of practical items you might need once in your life, seven tampons, two EpiPens, a few lipsticks, countless receipts, and one lottery ticket.

  Finally, I find tissues and hand them off. “Lottery ticket?” I ask, incredulous.

  She begins to gently wipe Tyler’s nose. “It can’t hurt to try,” she says in a sing-songy voice.

  “I’m a billionaire,” I say slowly.

  “Only on paper. I know how that goes. Steve was a ‘millionaire’.” She actually uses finger quotes. True, her ex-boyfriend, Steve, was a pompous windbag with the financial management skills of one of the real housewives of Beverly Hills. That prejudice does not apply to me.

  “I am a real millionaire,” I remind her. “And damn close to being a billionaire. You need a lottery ticket like Taylor Swift needs Spotify. ”

  Jeffrey overhears this. “You are? I’m gonna have a rich uncle? That ith tho cool! Do you have a helicopter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a grey tie?”

  Huh?

  “Because Mom is always reading this book at home about a billionaire who wearth a grey tie. It’s on the cover of the book and everything.”

  Oh, God.

  “He has fifty tieth! Fifty! Why would a man need so many tieth?” Jeffrey’s lisp becomes more pronounced as he gets excited.

  “Um...”

  “Fifty! Fifty!” Tyler repeats, laughing. He has so much blood on his face he looks like he’s an extra in the movie Saw 27.

  “Is there another tissue in my purse?” Shannon asks. I look. Nope.

  She frowns, and I see the problem. As we both ignore Jeffrey’s innocent questions about Carol’s mommy porn, I realize Tyler looks like we just smashed his face against a cement wall. He can’t go out in public like this.

  “You have a key to Carol’s apartment?” I ask, certain of the answer. Of course she does. Her family has no boundaries. They probably all share toothbrushes in a pinch.

  She shakes her head sadly. “No.”

  “No?”

  “Mom does but I don’t.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit,” repeats Tyler, perfectly. He, unlike his older brother, does not have a lisp.

  It’s a warm August day, and I’m dressed for the canceled yoga class. Black polyester shirt, black shorts. Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I whip it over my head.

  “While I love the view, what in God’s name are you doing?” Shannon whispers.

  “Shirtless men aren’t exactly a rarity in August in Massachusetts,” I whisper back.

  As if I’m approaching a spooked cat (because I pretty much am), I crouch down and lean on one knee. Tyler’s face is buried in Shannon’s chest. Her pale pink t-shirt now looks like a bad tie-dye job.

  “Tyler? It’s okay. I just need to wipe the blood off your face.”

  “You will NOT!” His eyes are wide and panicked, and I realize my error immediately. I might not know much about kids in general, but after a year and a half of spending holidays and occasional babysitting nights with Tyler and Jeffrey, I have a good sense of what to do.

  Plus, I was a six-year-old boy once. There’s really only one way to proceed.

  “Did I say blood?” I ask in an exaggerated way, like an actor on a kid’s television show. “You don’t have blood on your face, do you?”

  “No blood,” Tyler says with suspicion. At least he’s stopped screaming.

  “Of course you don’t have blood on your face,” I say, holding my bunched-up black shirt near his face. “But,” I whisper, pulling him in like I have a secret to share, “you do have poop on your face.”

  “Poopy?” Tyler asks. Shannon gives me a Really? look with an eye roll that must hurt.

  Jeffrey starts giggling and comes closer to where the poop talk is. If you ever run out of topics to talk about with boys under the age of, oh, thirty-five, just talk about poop. It’s the universal language of immature males.

  Fine. All males.

  “Do you want poop on your face?” I ask Tyler.

  “I don’t see poop,” Jeffrey says, frowning. “All I see is blood.”

  Panic returns to Tyler’s eyes.

  “It’s not blood,” Shannon says to Jeffrey, pulling him to her and whispering furiously in his ear. His face changes to an I get it now look.

  “Tyler,” Jeffrey says excitedly, “you are covered in poop! It’s like you, like you...” He’s frowning, trying to come up with something wild and crazy.

  He succeeds.

  “It’s like you were eating poop!” Tyler and Jeffrey descend into giggles as Tyler says “We don’t eat poop!” eleven thousand times in a row.

  Shannon gives me a disgusted look. I shrug. The kid’s not screaming anymore, is he? In fact, he’s howling with laughter. Still covered in blood, which makes him look like a mini Dexter, but—

  I got this.

  I totally got this whole Dad thing down.

  You just talk about poop.

  “I’ll let it go this time,” Shannon says as she snags my shirt from my hand and Tyler lets her wipe away the “poop” from his face, “but I don’t want to hear you talk about poop again.”

  “But—”

  “Poop comes from butts,” Jeffrey says, like it’s the best joke ever.

  Jeffrey, Tyler, and I fall apart laughing, but Tyler lets her clean his face. Shannon has to lick my shirt here and there and wipe hard, but by the time she’s done he looks mostly okay, if a little pink.

  She hands me my shirt. I unball it and put it on.

  “You’re going to wear that?” Her nose crinkles in disgust.

  “What? It’s got warrior paint on it.”

  “It has poop on it!” Jeffrey declares as we get closer to the ice cream stand. No line today, which is a surprise for an August day.

  “Poop shirt!” Tyler screams. Shannon walks ahead of us and puts in our standard order.

  “Okay, guys, let’s stop with the poop talk. Auntie Shannon doesn’t like it,” I say as I pull them into a huddle. Tyler doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying, and Jeffrey certainly does, his face crestfallen.

  I take them over to the jungle gym and they play for a few minutes, Tyler begging for a push on the swing, Jeffrey climbing up a rope and ramp. Shannon appears with a tray of ice cream cups and we sit at a picnic table.

  It’s like we’re normal. Like we’re a family. I can imagine having two boys like Jeffrey and Tyler and taking them out for a fun afternoon like this (minus the nosebleed).

  Shannon distributes the ice cream and we dig in, muted by sweet cream and sprinkles on top.

  Jeffrey starts giggling uncontrollably. Shannon and I look at him,
perplexed. He points to Tyler.

  Tyler’s chocolate ice cream is all over his face. The kid managed to get it in his hair and along the ridge of one ear.

  Jeffrey is squealing with painful howls of laughter, and can manage only one, single word:

  “Poop.”

  I grind my jaw trying not to laugh, and Tyler repeats everything Jeffrey says.

  “Poopy face,” Jeffrey sputters. Tyler repeats him twelve thousand times.

  “This is all your fault,” Shannon hisses at me. “I do not ever want to hear you make poop the topic of conversation again.”

  “What? It’s not my fault!” I put my hands up defensively. “It got Tyler to calm down.”

  “It’s disgusting and you know better than to get two little boys started on poop jokes.”

  “Poop is hilarious.”

  “Poop is not a conversation topic!”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “No more poop talk. I am done with poop talk. I never, ever want to hear about poop again, as long as I live. I don’t talk about poop, and you don’t need to, either. Are we understood?”

  She’ll regret those words.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Three days before the proposal...

  “That,” Dad says as he hands the ring back to me and picks up his half-empty highball glass, “is a gorgeous ring. Still is after all these years. Your mother wore it well. Cost me a small fortune back then.” His pipe burns, half-abandoned, in a small ashtray. Smoking’s not allowed in Boston, but James McCormick insists the rules don’t apply to him when he’s the owner of the building.

  His hand is steady as he lifts the glass to his mouth but he drinks it all in one long gulp.

  And signals to the bartender for another.

  We’re in the lounge at The Fort. Dad likes to pop in on his favorite property from time to time. There’s a soft spot in my heart for this place, too. After all, you don’t watch your future wife drop-kick a vibrator down fourteen floors into Boston traffic every day now, do you?

  Ah, memories.

  “I always thought Terry would be the first to marry,” he adds, looking mournfully at his empty glass. “He’s the oldest.”

  “Terry is about as likely to marry as you are to date a fifty year old, Dad.” Terry’s a musician who travels all over the world and is just starting to dip his toe into investing in really fringe web concepts for music. Not only does Terry lack a permanent address or a permanent woman, he doesn’t even own a car. The guy is minimalism personified.

  His biggest commitment is his international cell phone plan.

  Dad laughs, the sound dismissive. “What you’re telling me is don’t hold my breath on a wedding for Terry.”

  I give him a tight smile. Dad shakes his head slowly, eyes on the ring I’m still holding in my palm. It feels hot, as if the metal were pulsating from within.

  “I suppose if neither of your brothers is anywhere close to marriage I might as well give it to you,” he says in a gruff voice.

  “Congratulations, Declan,” I say with great affect. “Let me shake your hand and give you best wishes for your pending wedding.” I clap a hard hand on his shoulder. “There’s your script, Dad.”

  He snorts. “Shannon’s perfectly fine in all the right ways except one, Son. I’m not going to bullshit you on that. You know I think you’re in for a world of hurt if you choose a woman with the same medical condition as your mother.”

  “And I don’t give a sh -- ” He perks up as a cocktail waitress with an upside-down, heart-shaped backside that makes Nicki Minaj’s ass look like a flattened balloon appears with Scotch in hand. We both watch her walk away. It’s so...mesmerizing.

  “You can’t tap that once you give Shannon that ring,” Dad says with a chuckle, grasping the drink like it’s a lifeline.

  “Don’t want to tap that.”

  Dad sucks down his drink. That’s his third since I arrived an hour ago.

  “Good. Because if I get enough liquid courage in me, I think I’ll give it a try.”

  I do a double-take. “If she’s thirty I’ll be surprised.”

  “If she’s thirty I’ll be disappointed.” Dad shoots me a leer that’s meant to be shared, a sexual conspirator’s smile. I keep my face neutral on purpose. Shannon made a troubling comment a long time ago about my dad dating women her age, and it’s stuck. She was right. They call him The Silver Wolf. Not fox. There’s a difference.

  Dad’s the stereotype of the uber-rich old dude sticking it in anything born after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  And he’s proud of it.

  Shannon’s theory is a pretty wretched one: after my mom died, Dad couldn’t deal with his emotions and funneled them into rage at me. He’s angry with me for not saving mom when she and Andrew were stung and we had only one EpiPen. I was the person who literally had to choose which one lived. Dad can’t process his grief for Mom without sublimating it into anger.

  And I’m the convenient target.

  I think Shannon’s been watching a little too much Dr. Phil.

  Dad’s dealt with those feelings with overachieving pushes toward Andrew to become CEO, and abandonment of Terry, who’s always been the black sheep of the family.

  Dipping his wick in women under thirty became a way of keeping his emotional distance, too.

  I think the truth is much simpler:

  He’s just a sexist asshole.

  Or just an asshole. Period.

  But he’s my father, and my boss, so I roll with it. It’s none of my business who he chooses to bed. Until he declares he’s marrying again and the will’s being changed, his private life is none of my business.

  My sex life, on the other hand, is about to go public.

  Again.

  Because once you propose to a woman, you’re pretty much declaring to the world your intention to fuck her. A lot.

  Impregnate her, even.

  The thought of Shannon pregnant, belly swollen, body glowing with new life makes me lose focus. A warm feeling of protectiveness and gratitude fills me. Either that, or my second scotch is kicking in. No, it’s not alcohol. It’s a feeling only Shannon can bring out in me.

  “You’ve got it all planned out? The perfect proposal?” Dad asks with a smile. He’s sincere. No sarcasm. That’s a surprise. Maybe it’s the alcohol.

  “I do.” Those two words have new meaning.

  “And you’re not telling anyone a damn thing.”

  “No.” Dad juts his chin up and waves to someone in the distance. Andrew walks into the lounge like he owns the place. Technically, Dad does, but who’s keeping track?

  Technically, Dad is...

  The server looks up and gives Andrew a suggestive smile. Dad scowls.

  “You know her?” Dad asks Andrew, competition flaring in his eyes. Dad’s got that whole Most Interesting Man in the World schtick going for him, with the greying hair, attractive features, and the billionaire mystique, but Andrew’s got youth on his side. Some women want George Clooney.

  Others want Jamie Dornan.

  And Dad hates that.

  “I’ve known her. Biblically,” Andrew says in an undertone.

  Dad just sighs. Being the old lion must be tough. Even Clooney just got married.

  Andrew turns to me and taps my arm. “Speaking of knowing people biblically, you’re about to propose. Got the ring?”

  “Yep.” Andrew doesn’t know Dad gave me Mom’s ring. I’m going to keep it that way until it’s on Shannon’s finger.

  Competition works in a lot of different ways in our family.

  “And the proposal’s planned?” The server brings our drinks over, obviously memorizing Andrew’s preference. Dad gives her a dazzling smile and she returns a polite one. Give it up, Dad.

  “Yep,” I say, impatient now. The testosterone level at the table has reached Titanic drowning levels. I need a door to hang on to. Talking about proposing to my sweet, warm, loving girlfriend while drowning in the toxic wasteland of my brothe
r and dad’s masculine oneupmanship feels like I am stuck with one foot each on two tectonic plates that are shifting. Fast.

  And my balls are about to take the kinetic hit.

  Andrew cocks an eyebrow and looks exactly like pictures of Dad thirty years ago. “Why the secrecy?”

  “He doesn’t want Marie to know when and where,” Dad says with a wistful tone. Among the stranger aspects of my relationship with Shannon I have to include this fact: Dad and Marie dated many years ago, before he met my mom. Which means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still a little disturbing.

  The rehearsal dinner is going to be so much fun.

  Andrew snorts. “Smart man,” he says to me. “I can understand why. What’s her deal? She have a head injury in her past?”

  “No. That’s just how Marie is.”

  “You must love Shannon very much to accept that kind of mother-in-law,” Andrew adds with a smirk.

  Dad’s looking ill at ease. The fact that he and Marie have a past is a vulnerability he’d rather not possess.

  A sudden wave of nerves hits me. I don’t do nervous, so it’s doubly disturbing. Andrew swallows half his drink and gives me a speculative look.

  “What? Spit it out?”

  “You’ll be my best man?” Those words: Best Man. Holy shit. This is real. Really real. Not that getting the ring, having it secretly sized for Shannon, calling Greg and arranging a fake mystery shop, and calling Le Portmanteau to have the perfect proposal setting in place wasn’t real.

  But those words. Best and Man. Best Man.

  I’m getting married.

  Married.

  Is the room spinning suddenly? Perhaps Boston is experiencing an earthquake. Maybe someone slipped a roofie in my drink. Because one minute I’m upright and the next I’m on the ground, head between my knees, with Dad mumbling, “Jesus Christ” far above me.

  I’ve died and gone to hell, haven’t I?

  “Dude, you are going to be the worst groom ever if you’re passing out at the simple thought of proposing,” Andrew says from five miles out into space. “We’ll need an oxygen mask and a defibrillator to get you through the ceremony.” Andrew helps pull me up on my chair. “And yes, of course I’ll be your best man.” He smirks. “Take that, Terry.”