Shopping for a Billionaire 3

by Julia Kent

  “No, buddy, my penith—penis—is just fine.” Declan reaches down and ruffles his hair. Jeffrey leans into the touch like a cat cozying up for some petting.

  “Good.” Jeffrey tugs on Declan’s shirt. Declan bends down, but what comes out of Jeffrey’s mouth can be heard by everyone.

  “Jutht tho you know, you thouldn’t play with your penith anywhere exthept in your bedroom. The penith is a private plathe.”

  Declan’s eyes widen. Dad’s hand flies to his mouth to cover a grin. Even the British doctor chick is trying not to laugh.

  “Thanks,” Declan says with a stage whisper. “I’ll remember that forever.”

  Jeffrey’s on fire now. A room of grownups paying attention, and a dad (in his mind, Declan’s a dad, because all men over thirty are “dads”) who is riveted by what he’s saying.

  “And you know what elth?” Jeffrey is king at court. He makes eye contact with every grownup as he takes roll.

  “Yeah?” Declan is amused. He’s confident and fine with a room full of adults making fun of his penith.

  “You thouldn’t let Auntie Thannon touch your penith. It’s a private plathe and no one hath the right to touch it without your permithon. ”

  Oh, I had permission, bud. I can’t, of course, say that, and the room is now filled with giggles and people biting their lips so hard they are causing de facto piercings.

  Carol lunges for him. “Let’s go get ice cream!” She mouths I’m sorry to Declan, who waves it off and gives Jeffrey a high-five as she scurries out the door with her boys.

  Then Declan turns and faces the crowd. “You no longer have permithon to even talk about my penith.”

  “She needs her rest, anyhow, and I’ve had quite my fill of ‘penith’ jokes at this point,” the doctor tells Mom and Dad. Declan lets go of Mom and shakes Dad’s hand. My father pulls him into a manly hug and claps him twice on the back. It’s a macho thing that would make me laugh if I had the energy.

  Declan whispers something I can’t hear to them while Amy kisses my cheek and squeezes my hand before letting go. “He ran with you the entire way to the car. The entire way.” Her eyes rake over Declan’s body in a way that makes me tingle with jealousy. Or maybe that’s just my catheter shifting a little. Why do I have a catheter? How long have I been unconscious? “Even after you stabbed him in the crotch.”

  I snort. It hurts. Everything hurts. My eyes feel like slits in a slab of organ meat.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “About fifteen hours.” She looks at her phone to check, and nods. “It’s morning now.”

  “Jesus.” I swallow. “Why does my throat hurt so much?”

  “They had to put a tube down your throat to keep you breathing.” She can barely say the words.

  “Oh.” I look at Declan, who is quietly talking to my mom. They keep looking at me with worried expressions.

  “Not only do you manage to catch a billionaire, you catch Captain America,” Amy adds.

  I try to laugh again but it comes out as a choke. She slowly lets go of my hand, trailing off, and follows Mom and Dad out as the doctor explains something to them about my care.

  Declan and I are alone. And all I can do is start to cry. Big, messy tears that would devolve into a true ugly sobbing if I had the airway to spare. Instead, the fat teardrops just pour into my outer ear and collect there with a maddening itch.

  “Why are you crying?” he asks with a tenderness in his voice that makes me cry even more. In seconds, he’s across the room and stroking my hand.

  “Because I almost destroyed your penith!”

  The deep, booming laughter is so unexpected, like a sudden thunderclap on a clear moonlit night, that the sound shocks me and makes me choke out another apology.

  He sits on the bed next to me and strokes my hair, tucking a long strand behind my wet ear. “Shannon, that was my fault. I moved and shoved your arm and you—”

  “You’re taking a lot of blame for what happened,” I whisper.

  He sighs, his neck and shoulders relaxing. “I do that when I think the woman I’m falling for is about to—” Declan swallows, his eyes boring into mine. Feeling his arm shake, his voice husky and low with worry, drains me of all my energy.

  “It was that bad?”

  “Let’s just say I never, ever want to go through that again.”

  “Good. Because you’re allowed to have a toilet girl fetish, but not a bee sting fetish,” I whisper.

  The room goes still as he smiles with his eyes. No laugh, no chuckle. Then I realize what he’s just said.

  “Falling for me?” I ask.

  Without answering, he climbs on the bed beside me.

  “I, uh, I don’t want to get pee on you.”

  “Isn’t it a little early in our relationship for golden showers?”

  I sputter, then gag, then cough for too long. I think I damn near fill the bag. “No, I mean…” I gesture to my pee bag.

  “Oh. That.” With a flick of his wrist he moves a tube just so. I’m on my side, so we spoon, and whatever he did makes it all work somehow. His hot thighs press against my backside, arm reaching over my waist and pulling me in. His touch is tender and careful, gentle and safe.

  “Or do you have a hospital bed sex fetish?” I ask, yawning. I mean, really—hot, rich guy who saved my life and he’s cuddling with me while I have a tube shoved up my urethra and I’m peeing in front of him? Only real in Fantasyland. Or Fetishland.

  He lets out a low sound of amusement. “Believe me, of all the fetishes I could have, this is the last one on earth I’d want right now.” I must have given him my yawn, because he joins in.

  “You must be exhausted, too,” I whisper. “I pumped you full of epinephrine when I injected you. I’m so sorry.”

  He hugs me tighter. “It was an accident. And it’s been, what—most of a day now.”

  How can he be so forgiving? Steve would have ranted for days about my injuring him, as if it had been a character flaw of mine. Declan takes my klutzy mistake in stride.

  I pull away and half-turn to face him. “Accident or no accident, I put you in danger.” I feel stupid and confused. The bed is small but his warmth feels so good.

  “All I have to do is process out some extra adrenaline. My organs can take it. You came damn close to…” He won’t say the word, so I do.

  “Dying.”

  Tension fills his entire body from knees to hands. “Yes. Andrew came close when we were kids after a wasp sting. The whole family carries extra Benadryl at all times, and he has two EpiPens, too. It’s not something you take lightly, and if I’d have known about your allergy, I never would have…” He sighs. “I would have made different decisions.”

  “That’s my fault.” My voice cracks. “I don’t like to let it limit my life, and when you asked me for an outdoor date I didn’t want to be—” I pause and yawn again. The room is getting dimmer and I hear the beeping from various machines down the hall. Machines that monitor heart rates and IV flow, that keep people safe and alive.

  “What?” he asks gently.

  “That girl. That weird girl who is sensitive and who lives a restricted life. Who imposes that on you.” It occurs to me that maybe Steve didn’t like picnics because of my bee allergy. That makes me frown. Perhaps he thought about me with more care than I realized. I seize inside, even though I do not have the energy for any of this.

  Why am I thinking about Steve as Declan’s scent fills me like the perfect prescription for healing?

  “You wouldn’t impose anything on me. I’m a grown man who can make his own choices.” His voice is gruff. I don’t feel vulnerable, though. This is an open give-and-take. I’m his equal. His very tired equal.

  I yawn again. “Then I guess I was worried I’d give you one more reason not to choose me.” I squeeze his hand and he squeezes right back.

  “Why?”

  “Because this is unreal.”

  He shifts against me, the rough denim of his jeans
sliding against my bare legs. Sinking into the comfort of him, I sigh, a long, luxurious sound that feels like an endless exhale. As if I’ve been holding my breath for a year and can finally let it go. If you can’t tell someone how you feel right after they’ve saved your life, when can you? Besides, if he doesn’t return the feelings I can blame delirium on my confession.

  “It is for me, too, Shannon,” he says softly, his breath sending strands of hair against my cheek.

  Oh! He’s joining in. This is new territory.

  He continues. “I can’t believe that I found someone like you. And that you see something in me that makes you want to be with me.” He swallows, and I can feel the movement on my shoulder. “I’ve spent years just chasing arm candy and bedmates.” He’s confessing to me, baring his soul.

  I freeze, taken out of the comfort zone and into wishful-thinking territory.

  “I’m not arm candy?” I try to sound lighthearted but instead I just feel raw.

  “You’re a chocolate-covered strawberry. A dozen of them. On top of a chocolate mousse cake.” He nuzzles my neck, his smile imprinted under my ear.

  “Do you really mean it?” I try not to sound as pathetic as I feel. Hope rises inside my chest, crawling out of a cave near my heart, shielding its face against the first shaft of sunlight it’s seen in a long time.

  He gets what I’m really saying. “Do you?”

  “Do I feel the same way?” I break free from our spooning and very carefully turn over to face him. He’s vulnerable and wanting, his eyes open and watching me carefully. No pretense. No shields. No walls.

  “Yes.” He’s inventorying me.

  “I can’t believe you want to be with me. I’m…nobody.”

  “You’re everybody,” he says with a firm passion. His hand slides along my jaw and under the nape of my neck. “And watching you today, after that bee…I can’t lose you.”

  “You won’t.” I reach forward, the IV pulling on my arm, a sharp, needling pain making me wince. He pulls the tangled tube away from its knot with such care I want to cry from the joy of being treated like this.

  “How about we both just stop right here.”

  My heart seizes. “What do you mean?”

  “This is what we both feel. It’s real. It’s real,” he says with urgency. His lips press against mine and the kiss is so sweet that tears spring to my eyes. His body moves toward me and stops. He pulls back and closes his eyes. “And it’s so real that we need to let down our walls and let reality guide whatever comes next.”

  “I have always lived in Realityland. I’m the mayor of it. It’s the rest of the world that doesn’t cooperate.”

  He smiles.

  “No, seriously. Have you met my mother?”

  Now he just shakes his head with amusement. We both yawn at the same time, slow, lion-like sounds. I turn back around and he snuggles up.

  “Are you allowed to nap with me?” I ask. I think half the words disappear as I fade off to sleep.

  “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission,” he says, the vibration of his words against my neck a cozy feeling. A feeling I could get used to experiencing every day of my life. “Besides, the nurses take pity on me. They’re also a little jealous of you.”

  “Jealous?”

  “When I had to strip down to show them the EpiPen puncture, they got an eyeful.”

  My laughter is quieter than I want it to be. I’m so tired.

  “Is this the weirdest date you’ve ever been on?” I mumble as sleep overtakes me.

  “Probably.” A long pause, and then he adds, “The EpiPen was definitely the most inventive sex toy a woman has ever used with me.”

  I’m in a state of exhausted bliss, and as I float off, a thought occurs to me.

  “Declan?”

  “Mmm?” He’s breathing slowly, his voice muted in the tiny room. I almost feel bad interrupting him, but I have to know. The thought won’t go away.

  “How did your mother die?”

  His breathing halts, the warm muscles behind me solid and tense like granite. Then he relaxes, as if by will. The monitors ping on.

  “It’s not important. Go to sleep, honey.”

  “You called me ‘honey,’” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears. He can’t see me, and that’s good.

  “I’m just so, so grateful you’re going to be okay.” His hand rests on my hip with a possession and a familiarity I like. I like it very much, but I’m so, so tired.

  “Thanks to you,” I mumble, and then that’s all there is.

  Chapter Four

  The first date I have after I get out of the hospital feels like a combination of a bad Girls episode and sealing myself to the bathtub during an unfortunate do-it-yourself waxing session.

  What? Why do you think my mother insists on making me go with her to the spa? She let me get out of it this week because of billionaires and bees and that whole Shannon-almost-died thing, but I know it’s coming soon.

  This bad date, though—it turns out it’s going to be a doozy. The kind of night where you go on Truu Confessions and skewer the person, then it becomes a BuzzFeed article and the next thing you know you have a podcast that propels you to a cable show and then—

  “I wish I had been there, Shannon,” Steve says in a low murmur. That’s right. I’m on a date with Steve.

  Not Declan.

  Declan is off in New Zealand slaying Orcs or whatever you do “on business” in New Zealand. He almost offered to bring me, but the whole IV-in-the-arm thing and my mom’s screams about New Zealand bees killing her daughter put a stop to that. “Bad timing” will be etched on my gravestone, I swear.

  Plus I have a backlog of shops to do, including two podiatrist offices (checking fungal safety protocols), one cigar shop (to see if there’s clerk bias against women), one massage company (hallelujah!), and fourteen fast food restaurants testing out a new Caesar salad.

  Fortunately, I like anchovies. Amanda’s allergic to them (she says…), so I know what I’ll be eating for lunch for the next three weeks.

  Last night I got into a lovely sexting session with Declan that ended in some pictures of him and a few pictures of me and let’s just say thank God for the fact that pictures you take on Snapchat all get deleted within a few minutes, because if this relationship goes south there would be pictures of me in compromising positions way more embarrassing than a hand in the toilet.

  Steve is, instead, my “date.” He keeps calling it a date, and I keep calling it, well, nothing. We’re at a local Mexican joint where all the food is homemade and delicious, but coated with cilantro the way my mother puts on mascara. Three layers deep and with a ruthless efficiency few can master. At least none of the cooks poked my eye out while applying it.

  “If you’d been there it would have been awkward, Steve,” I say in a no-nonsense voice, though I reach forward and pat his hand. That’s such a patented Marie Jacoby gesture that I freeze and snatch my fingers away as if I’d been burned. They say you turn into your mother as you age. Kill me now.

  Weird. It’s so weird to realize how much of your parents seeps into you unconsciously. Pretty soon I, too, will wear nothing but yoga pants and use push powder to fluff up my thinning hair while talking incessantly about Farmington Country Club weddings and my dildo collection.

  And if I had married Steve, that pretty much would have summed up the next three decades. I shudder again and shove a fried tortilla chip in my mouth to stifle a groan.

  “Why would it have been awkward?” he asks, one corner of his mouth turned up in what I assume is an attempt to give me a seductive smile. He looks like the Joker, minus makeup.

  I chew fast and swallow hard. “Because Declan and I were on a date.” Do I really need to spell out the obvious?

  “Got a problem with two men at once?” he says in a guttural tone I’ve never heard from him.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I bark. “And ewwww, who wants two men at the same time?” One is hard enoug
h to handle. If I want two men at the same time then one of them can change my oil while I have sex with the other one. Now there’s a fantasy.

  Steve just laughs and says, “I thought you two weren’t dating.” He uses both hands to pick up his drink, which is a strawberry margarita the size of a bucket. You could host a pool party for toddlers in there.

  I cock one eyebrow and try not to sigh. “You caught us kissing at the restaurant two weeks ago. We’re dating.” My voice is firm and kind of flat, the way you talk to a pollster during a presidential campaign. Like you want to be nice and do your duty, but c’mon—let’s get this over with so you can go off and spin this conversation to your advantage in the most sociopathic way ever.

  “That doesn’t mean you’re dating.” He takes three enormous swallows of his drink and sets it down, salt coating his thin upper lip. Steve then unrolls the silverware from the yellow cloth napkin and shakes the cloth onto his lap. His hands are steady but something is off. Why am I here again?

  Whatever ambiguity I felt when Declan and I dined with Steve and Jessica is gone. Long gone, and now replaced by apathy. Something even less than apathy, though. A growing annoyance that makes me see Steve is part of my past. Not my future.

  The clarity makes me ache for Declan right now. Of all the times to be in New Zealand, frolicking with Hobbits. Hobbits have nasty feet. My mind drifts to the podiatrist visits I have to complete later this week.

  “I don’t routinely shove my tongue down the throat of people I’m not dating.” The words slip out before I even deliberate whether to say them. If Amanda were here she’d be cheering. A few weeks ago I’d have never challenged Steve like this, but a few weeks can change everything.

  He pauses in mid-movement, nostrils flaring, then he’s the one who sighs. “I’m not sure I know that for a fact, Shannon.” His eyes snap up and catch mine. The look he gives me is hard and accusatory.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you’re dating him to make me jealous.”

  Thunk. That’s the sound of my jaw falling through the earth’s crust, magma, core, and splashing into Declan’s lap in New Zealand.