Shopping for a Billionaire 2

by Julia Kent

  Meanwhile, Declan is closed off. Aloof. Contained, controlled, and in full mastery of whatever emotions must be roiling inside him like a cyclone waiting to strike land.

  This is no simple pissing contest. The argument over Declan’s detour here—to see me—has roots that go way back.

  I’m riveted in place, my hands beginning to sweat. The Turdmobile is a distant memory. A horrid one, but nothing compared to the cataclysm of these two duking it out with every clipped word.

  And the many that remain unspoken.

  “Fine.” James rolls the window up and the limo speeds off.

  Declan just shakes his head, eyes narrow and watching me, pointedly ignoring the disappearing car.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. My voice is barely above a whisper. I don’t even need to turn around to see that Amanda, Josh, and Greg are gone. They’re eavesdropping, I’m sure. But they have the decency to give us some privacy.

  “I’ll survive first class.” His face is serious, but I can tell he’s making a very dry joke.

  I laugh without mirth. A very large, fluffy animal seems to have taken residence on my chest. My breathing slows, deliberate and careful. The wind lifts loose strands of my hair, and it catches the loose ends of his tie, which flap over his shoulder. He could be a model, like something in GQ or Vogue, exuding wealth, prestige, confidence, and something timeless. Ancient. Embedded in the way he walks toward me, how his gaze is single-minded and completely aimed at me.

  The second his hand reaches for mine I shiver, a delicious stroke of connection that makes my shoulders square. I’m wearing a boring office-drone outfit, casual slacks with old black leather shoes and a long-sleeve cotton wrap shirt that matches his eyes. My hair is a crazy, windswept snarl, and whatever makeup I put on before I dashed out the door this morning has long faded.

  “Hi,” is all I can think to say.

  He leans in and gives me the sweetest kiss on the cheek I’ve ever received. “Hi. I couldn’t stay away.”

  My heart stops for a few beats. A part of me feels like Carrie, on stage at the prom, seconds before the bucket of pig blood is about to be dumped on her.

  This really is too good to be true.

  “You’re willing to brave TSA agents for little old me?”

  His answer is buried in the kiss he gives me, this time most definitely not on the cheek.

  The tug of his fingers in my hair, the brush of early afternoon stubble against my lips, the feel of his warm, wet tongue against my teeth all make me moan, a little sound coming from my throat that I have never uttered. Declan clasps me to him harder, fueled by my reaction.

  Then he breaks away and says in a voice that makes all the blood rush out of my head, “I knew this was a good idea. I can’t stop thinking about you. Friday is too far away and I have to be in New York for the next three days. This was my only chance.” His mouth takes mine again, my own hands clinging to him like I’ll blow away if I don’t hang on. Petals from the blossoms on the trees behind us float on the wind, making me feel like a fairy, as if this were part of an imagined world where magic is real.

  Maybe it is.

  He pulls back and presses his lips together with a smile that makes those damn hot dimples appear. “I’m willing to brave quite a lot for you, Shannon.”

  Including the Turdmobile?

  All I can do is smile back and keep my hands around his warm waist. His hands are on my shoulders and he’s looking me over, searching. Memorizing.

  And, I hope, enjoying.

  “I also hoped you could spare some time from work,” he adds, looking at the concrete block that pretends to be my office building. “All you need is razor wire around the top and it looks like you work in a prison.”

  “A day in the life of Shannon Denisovich,” I joke.

  He nuzzles my neck. “A woman who knows her Russian literature,” he murmurs. “That’s hot.”

  I pinch myself, because now I know I’m dreaming. Either that, or Amanda’s secretly working for some low-rent cable reality television show where hot, successful businessmen make fun of fluffy women with inferiority complexes.

  He looks behind me, over my shoulder, and one eyebrow rises high. “Do you have an exterminator in your building?”

  That’s quite the topic change. From nuzzling my neck to thinking about bugs.

  “No—why?” I turn and follow his gaze. Ah.

  The Crabmobile.

  “Then what…” He cocks his head.

  Oh boy. How do I explain this?

  “It’s a promotional thing some company is doing,” I say, staying as boring and nonchalant as I can as my fingers play with the rippled muscle of his torso. I could touch him all day. I can’t believe he’s letting me touch him.

  Magic. Seriously.

  “So—coffee?” He shrugs. “I don’t have a car. Can you drive?”

  All the magic disappears in that sentence, replaced by the Eye of Sauron. Staring at me from atop one of the new cars.

  “Uh…”

  “You don’t have a car?”

  I have two. Neither is acceptable for you to ride in.

  “There’s a great local coffee shop next door,” I say, pointing toward a ubiquitous chain that everyone in the Boston area knows and that is about as far from “great” as I am from “slim.”

  He laughs and laces his fingers in mine. “How about we just spend a few minutes together.”

  “You have a plane to catch. Bags to check. Unwashed masses to share germ-laden air with. And you have to get that coveted middle seat between a sumo wrestler and a four-year-old who will insist on unlimited access to your smartphone.”

  Just then, Greg, Amanda, and Josh all burst through the building’s double-doored entrance. All of them have keys in their hands. In rippling-fast motion, my brain processes three things:

  1. Declan and I are holding hands in public.

  2. I am going to have to take him for a ride in my screwdriver-ignited car.

  3. Under no circumstances can I take him anywhere in the Turdmobile.

  “Catch!” Greg says, tossing a set of keys at me. As I have the eye-hand coordination of a drunk frat boy going through basic training, I scream like a little girl and flinch.

  With flawless precision, the hand Declan’s not currently touching me with snaps up and catches the keys.

  “Nice,” Josh says. As his eyes take in the suited hottie before him, I realize he isn’t referring to the catch. Though I know Declan is straight, and I also know I could take Josh down in a cat fight (though he has no hair to grab), I still feel a massive plume of green mist take over my senses.

  “Thanks. Declan McCormick,” he says, letting go of my hand to reach toward my coworker.

  I want to growl.

  Declan hands me the car keys. “These are yours?”

  Josh’s eyes go wide with amusement, and if he could run upstairs to make a big old bowl of popcorn, he would. Explaining my car situation to Declan would have been amusing to me, too, if it weren’t, well…me.

  “Yes.”

  Declan’s green eyes are surveying my face, then glancing between Josh and the parking lot. “So you do have a car. Can we go for a drive together?”

  I stuff the keys in my front pants pocket. “No.”

  “Don’t worry, Shannon!” Greg says, trying not to laugh. “It’s fully insured. You can start driving it right now.”

  I hate you.

  “Company car?”

  I nod, miserable. “Yes.”

  “New cars today!” Amanda adds. She gives Declan a friendly little wave. She gives me a look that says, You have to face this sometime.

  “I’m not really feeling very coffee-like right now,” I say.

  “Are you ill?” my coworkers say in unison.

  Declan leans in and whispers, “Am I intruding? Because I can leave.”

  My grip on his arm tightens. “No! It’s just…the Turdmobile.”

  “The what?”

  I pull him
by the arm toward the cars and point to my company car.

  He reads the tag line. Takes in the car’s appearance, his eyes lingering over the roof’s distinctive…decoration, and finally says, “Is this an ad for civet coffee?”

  “Civet what?”

  “Civet coffee. it’s a delicacy from Indonesia. Collected from coffee berries that cats eat and then excrete.”

  Josh walks closer and looks at Declan like he’s man candy. “Coffee from a cat’s ass?” He nudges me and whispers, “Coffee gets everything moving.”

  I punch his arm hard enough to make him squeak, then pretend I didn’t do it.

  Declan nods, his face inscrutable. No affect, no crazy attention-seeking demeanor. He’s telling the facts. “It’s a delicacy. Sells for well into the hundreds of dollars per pound.”

  “You feed coffee berries to a cat, collect them out the other end, and people charge hundreds of dollars for the resulting coffee?” I ask, incredulous. My eyes flicker between the top of my new car and Declan.

  Chuckles may need a change in diet.

  “Have you had this coffee?” Josh asks just as his phone buzzes. He looks at it, eyes wide with alarm, then glances at Amanda, who is a few paces away tucking her phone in her bra.

  “Excuse us,” Josh adds with a tight tone. “We have to go.” I wonder what Amanda said to make him leave like that, and make a mental note to send her my firstborn child as a thank-you for doing it.

  “Did I scare them off?” Declan asks, laughing. “Cat-poop coffee too much for them?”

  “They’ve seen worse,” I mutter.

  Declan’s phone buzzes. He reads his text and mutters a curse under his breath. “They added a meeting. Dad’s coming right back with the limo.” His expression is pained. “I’m sorry. I only have about five more minutes with you.”

  I can’t help myself. I have to say it. “Why me?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?”

  “I’ve only asked once.”

  He leans against the picnic table, one hip jutting out with a jaunty athleticism that makes his ass muscles tighten. It makes other parts of me clench, too. Yowza.

  “You asked over and over on the ride home yesterday, Shannon. You really impressed my driver. Lance said you were the first date he’s ever driven who could sing every word of ‘Chasing Cars.’”

  “I sang Snow Patrol songs in a limo?”

  “And then you did an encore of Lady Gaga.”

  I groan. He’s highly amused, and steps forward, scooping me into his arms. I’m caged by him, all heat and want.

  “You have no pretense, Shannon. No fake affect, no shield. You’re real. Raw. Open. Yourself. I like that.” He touches the tip of my nose with his finger, then slowly slides it down my lips, opening my bottom lip a bit. I snatch his finger into my mouth, too timid to go for the overtly sexual gesture.

  I just kiss it instead.

  “You like it when I’m genuine and just Shannon.”

  “You’re not ‘just’ anything, Shannon.”

  Just then, the limo squeals into the parking lot. Declan grabs me in a kiss that bends me back, his arms strong and unyielding, the rushed taking making a flame light up inside that has to last me three days until I see him again.

  And with that he breaks the kiss, jogging off to another world.

  “Cat-poop coffee,” Greg says from behind me. “Dating is nothing like it was twenty years ago. Boy have pickup lines changed.”

  Chapter Six

  Friday. I am going out of my mind now that it is 4:14 p.m. and I have exactly one hour and forty-six minutes to transform myself into a hiking Barbie.

  Steve won’t stop texting me, though he finally stopped texting Amanda and Amy when they resorted to texting him various pictures off 4chan and Goatse. I’m close to following suit, but that’s how I handled our breakup at the very end, and if there’s anything worse than being immature, it’s being immature in the exact same way twice.

  I receive a text from Amy with a copy of the last picture she sent to Steve. Who knew that anuses could prolapse? Huh.

  My phone actually rings. I know Amanda is next door in Josh’s office, talking animatedly to him about simplifying the password policy so we don’t need to use three non-standard Arabic characters when we change our monthly passwords, so it can’t be her.

  Mom is with dad at an all-day Reiki training, so it much be Carol, my older sister.

  I look at the number. Yup. Carol calls for one of three reasons:

  1. She needs a babysitter.

  2. She needs someone to come over and binge watch Orange is the New Black and pick up a pint of ice cream on the way.

  3. She needs a babysitter.

  “I’m busy tonight,” I say as I answer the phone. No preliminaries. Don’t need them. Besides, I’m a ticking time bomb right now, with sixteen minutes to go before I can race home and try to turn myself into a nighttime hiking phenomenon.

  “You are?” She sounds disappointed. Panicked, really. I hear mayhem in the background. Random animal sounds that are, in fact, just boy sounds. Same thing, really. Until they’re ten years old or so, boys are just human versions of beasts.

  “Yep.”

  “Mystery shop?”

  “No. Date.” The word rolls off my tongue with a delicious fluidity.

  She bursts into a long, drawn-out giggle fest. “Good one. Hah! So which shop is it. Donuts? If you ever get another one for the chain of bars where you have to order the filet skewers and two margaritas, let’s get Mom to watch the boys!”

  I am offended. Why does everyone laugh at the thought of me being romantically involved with someone?

  “I have a date. An actual date with the vice president of a company.” I want to say more, but I know I’ll be skewered if I do. Carol is like a blend of Mom and Amy. Half reasonable and half batshit crazy.

  You never know which half you’re talking to at any give time.

  “Is this the billionaire Mom’s been rambling on about? I thought that was some kind of fantasy of hers.”

  “It is,” I mumble.

  “So you’re not dating a billionaire? She was going on about getting her grandkids into exclusive prep schools like Milton Academy and Buckingham Browne & Nichols—and all kinds of other weird stuff last night.”

  In the background I hear my seven-year-old nephew, Jeffrey, arguing with his four-year-old brother, Tyler, who only whines in response. Tyler has a speech disorder and the words don’t come easily, but he’s highly fluent in Whine. My trained ears tell me they’re arguing over access to the iPad Mom and Dad got them for Christmas.

  “I-duh! I-duh!” Tyler screams.

  “Give it to him!” Carol bellows. “When he uses a word right, you have to give it to him.”

  Jeffrey says something muffled. Carol says something muffled. And then I hear Jeffrey, clear as a bell, shouting, “Eith cream! Eith cream!” Jeffrey has a lisp. Or, as he says, a lithp.

  “Eye-kee! Eye-kee!” Tyler says, joining in.

  “What are you doing?” Carol says, clearly to her oldest. I know that tone. It’s the same tone Mom has used on me for twenty-four years. It must be embedded in our DNA. I shudder. Someday I plan to have kids. “Someday” just got kicked back another year.

  “If he geth what he wanth by thaying it, why can’t I?” Jeffrey moans.

  I snort. The kid has a point. Tyler’s speech therapist told Carol that in order to reinforce language, she has to walk a fine line. Encourage speech by giving him what he asks for. But after a while, that can lead to problems, so…

  “Tatum Channing!” Carol shouts. “A million dollars! A free nanny!”

  Declan McCormick, I mouth.

  Jeffrey giggles. “I want to talk to Thannon!” Shuffling sounds, and then:

  “I can fart on command now when you pull my finger,” he announces.

  “You will be a CEO one day.”

  “No. I want my own YouTube channel. I’m going to do that inthtead,” he says ser
iously.

  “More money in it,” I reply.

  “Yep. Did you know Tyler peed himself at the dentitht thith morning? It was groth.”

  “I’ll bet.” Carol’s life is like birth control for me. I absolutely adore Tyler and Jeffrey, but I could do without the pee, poop, farts, vomit, and other nasties from the kids. I mentally add another year between me and motherhood. At this rate I’ll start when I’m sixty.

  “I need to talk now, honey,” Carol says. Jeffrey leaves without saying goodbye.

  “You live a life of luxury,” I say. 4:23. Carol gets exactly seven minutes of my attention.

  “Speaking of luxury, I got an actual child support check today!”

  Of all the words I expect ever to hear from Carol’s mouth, these are not it.

  “WHAT?” Her ex, Todd, ditched her and the boys three years ago. He’s played “Daddy for a Day” here and there. More there than here. It’s been seven months since anyone has seen him.

  He has never paid her a dime in child support. Tyler never even learned to say the word “Dada” or anything close to it. He occasionally says “Puh-puh” for Papa, which is what Jeffrey calls my dad.

  I just get a big old smile. When you have a speech disorder and you’re four years old, “Shannon” isn’t exactly top on your list of easy words. A smile and hug is close enough to my name.

  “I know!” Carol exclaims, then lowers her voice. She doesn’t speak ill of Todd in front of the boys. Ever. I give her huge credit for that, because I don’t know if I could stay that classy in her shoes. “An actual check from the state.”

  “That means he got a job working over the table!” Carol has a child support order. Todd owes close to five figures in unpaid support. He refuses to get jobs on the books, and never files taxes. She’ll never see that money.

  “Something like that,” she says, her voice hiding something.

  “How much was the check?”

  She pauses, then says with a laugh, “$11.61.”

  I snort again. “Don’t spend it all on one place.”

  “I spent ten dollars on my birth-control pill copay and the rest on Pokemon stickers for the boys.” Again, that pause. I hear her gulp something quickly and then Tyler’s distinct whine.