by Julia Kent
“Check your messages. Maybe he texted or called.”
My fingers feel like icicles as I fumble with my phone. No voice mail. A quick scan of my email shows a few communications with mystery shoppers who encountered problems, a couple who lost receipts, and a ton of junk mail.
157 text messages.
I open the app with a finger that feels like I’m pushing the nuclear war button.
I’m getting tweets from people in high school who didn’t bother to acknowledge I existed back then. People who openly mocked me. And is that my former orthodontist? Christ. Who’s next? My gynecolo—
Yep. @openwide123—that’s the gynecologist, not the ortho.
Most of the messages, though, are gibberish from people I don’t know, all from Twitter. I opened an account a few years ago but barely use it. Did someone loop me into the @jesscoffN conversation?
Amy explains. “Steve did it. He referenced you. You can see it in his feed.”
“We can explain this to Declan,” Amanda whispers as I groan.
I ignore her, searching my messages. Nothing from Declan. Nothing. Not a word. Silence is worse than outrage.
Much worse.
“We have a meeting today with him,” Amanda adds.
“Who?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from the end of a very long tunnel.
“Declan. We’re meeting with Anterdec today.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Oh, God.” I pull the covers over my head like it will accomplish something. Inside my white, billowy pretend cloud of escape, I wish I could go back to being five years old, when the worst thing that could happen to me was to have to wear the wrong colored ribbon.
Amy comes back in. “Shannon? Come out from under there,” she insists. I pop my head out like a turtle checking it out after an atom bomb’s been dropped.
In my panic I hadn’t noticed she took my empty coffee cup and now she’s returning with a full one. When did she become so servile? Ever since I met Declan she’s been waiting on me. Not that I mind—coffee in bed is best served by a naked man who smells like sex, but a close second is, well…anyone delivering hot coffee in bed.
I reach for the cup, grateful. “Thanks.”
“No text from Declan?” she asks, pointing to my phone.
“Nope.”
“You’re sure? With a bazillion messages you might have missed one.”
“Go ahead.” I point my chin at my own smartphone. “See for yourself. Or,” I add, taking a long sip of coffee, “don’t see. There’s nothing to see. He’s dumped me, hasn’t he?”
A big, tight wave of pain and lust billows through me. It’s the feeling of tidal waves pulling back from shore, exposing all the starfish and hermit crabs to the sun and air, helpless and at the mercy of a force of nature so much stronger.
Jessica Twitterhead Coffin.
“That Tweet wasn’t so bad.”
“It’s pretty incriminating,” I mumble. I can’t believe my life has imploded because of comments made in 140 characters or less. If brevity is the soul of wit, then Twitter is the steaming pile of manure at the end of the horse. Yeah, I know that comparison made no sense, but I’m sitting here in bed with 157 text messages, most of them from people with Twitter handles like @lebronsux4ever and @mygunmyheart and I’m supposed to have a cogent reaction?
And not one damn message from Declan or @anterdec2 or…
“Wait.” I snap my neck up at Amanda, who, I realize, is now a redhead. Her hair is the exact same color as Amy’s. I narrow my eyes. “You said we have a meeting with Declan today?”
“And James and…Andrew.” I can see long strands of drool coming out of her bright-red-painted mouth when she says that last word. Great. Now my best friend wants to hump my boyfriend’s brother. This could be a sitcom.
Except a good sitcom needs a crazy mother to invade at just the right moment. I pause, because if ever there were a time for Mom to appear, it would be now. I close my eyes, cross my legs, and just…wait.
Chuckles climbs on my bed and settles into my lap. This must be worse than I thought if he’s offering me comfort. You know how those nature shows on cable TV talk about how animals have a preternatural instinct to sniff out natural disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes before they happen?
Uh oh.
“Why did you just go blank?” Amy asks. She keeps wandering in and out of the room and I see why. Her hair is pulled up now in a perfect up-do, one long, springy curl cascading down around each ear. Her work suit is cut to fit her curves and she’s inserting a simple pearl earring into one creamy lobe.
“Why do you look like a young Chelsea Clinton?”
She beams. “Do I? Because she worked for venture capital firms, too, and now she makes $600,000 a year!” My inadvertent compliment makes me forget, for a split second, the mess in cyberspace I apparently need to deal with in real life. At Anterdec.
Today.
“I think that $600,000 has something to do with her last name, Amy.”
“Whatever.” Amy fluffs her hair. “If I can make half that I don’t need to chase billionaires.”
Ouch. Chuckles leaps off my lap and gives her ankles a rub. Too bad she’s not wearing laces. His head twitches around and our eyes lock, as if my damn cat read my mind.
“What time is the meeting?” I ask Amanda.
“One o’clock. But Greg wants to have a strategy session before we go.”
“Strategy session?”
“James McCormick wants us to start evaluating his high-end properties immediately. They’ve experienced a significant financial loss over the past two quarters at their major hotels, specifically.” She claps her hands with joy, like Pee Wee Herman. “We’re gonna shop The Fort! We’re gonna shop The Fort.”
All I can manage is a scowl. “One o’clock.” Can I wait that long?
My damn mind-reading friend says, “Text him. Call him.”
“He didn’t text or call me!”
“Maybe he’s just busy.”
“Amanda, he was sexting nonstop after our last date, and then he goes cold.” I hold up a finger to get her to pause. She’s sliding her shoes back on, and I want to warn her, but...
I type Please call me and click send, hoping he replies.
She watches me, and when I’m done Amanda says, “Maybe he lost his phone in a toilet?”
I throw a pillow at her. Chuckles chases after it, then stops at her foot. I open my mouth to say something but it’s too late.
“Jesus Christ!” she screams as a thin stream of yellow pee hits her foot. She limps back into the bathroom, whimpering something that sounds close to a Scottish curse you’d hear Geillis Duncan mutter in one of the Outlander books.
Chuckles looks back and me and I swear he winks.
“Bad kitty,” I mutter through a smile.
“Did you train him to do that? Why does he pee on laces and gladiator shoes, of all things?”
“Your kink is not my kink,” Amy says as she slings her leather bag over her shoulder. She really does look like a commanding businesswoman, ready to take on a boardroom full of investors, cat-pee-free and blissfully unencumbered by Twitter rumors about her sociopathic use of a bad-boy billionaire to clinch a business deal while cheating on her lesbian wife.
Say that five times fast.
“What does that even mean?” Amanda shouts from the other room. “I don’t have a kink. I’m vanilla.”
“Nobody’s truly vanilla,” Amy scoffs. She gives me a mischievous look, playing Amanda. “You have to have a kink. Getting golden showers from Grumpy Cat, for instance.”
“Golden what?”
Amy frowns at me. “And she’s the one who gets to do sexy toy store evaluations?” She shakes her head sadly but, thankfully, does not elaborate.
“No, but Mom offered to go with her on those.”
Amy’s face twists with agony. “Poor Amanda.”
“Right. Mom has a kink or two she can lend.”
“I don�
��t need a kink!” Amanda insists, walking into my bedroom smelling like the orange air freshener spray we keep in there.
“Everyone needs a kink,” Amy and I say in unison.
And it was like saying Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, because my front door opens and in walks my mom.
“You summoned her!” Amanda hisses. She’s holding her sandals again, and turns to my closet just as Mom walks into the scene. “You better have some nice shoes I can borrow.”
Mom looks at Amanda’s shoes and immediately whips around to look at Chuckles, who is staring into the mirror on the back of my bedroom door and hissing at that strange cat.
“You wore shoes with long laces around him?” Mom giggles and shakes her head slowly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I ask.
“That’s my fault. Um…” Her brow furrows. “Actually, it’s your father’s fault. He wore that gladiator outfit that one time we got into this little role play where I pretended to be tied up for the Kraken to come and take me, and Chuckles panicked. He peed all over Jason’s feet and I haven’t been able to wear a pair of sandals with ankle laces ever since.”
Amy freezes in the doorway.
“But Marie, the Kraken…why would you use that in a bedroom role play?” Amanda’s muted voice calls back. She’s buried in my closet. I see her ass poking out and I want to kick it.
“Don’t provoke her! I don’t want to hear!” Amy dashes out the door. I hear the apartment door slam. My fingers are in my ears as I say “tra-la-la-la-la” as loudly as I can to drown out whatever depravity-laden story Mom is oversharing.
Amanda’s distinctly paling face tells me I need to keep up my verbal assault. Even Chuckles looks a shade or two lighter than usual.
“Shannon! Shannon! You can pull your fingers out of your ears,” she says with exasperation, as if I am the transgressor.
Amanda mouths Be careful.
I pull my fingers out and Mom says, “You’re coming to my yoga class on Friday.” It’s Tuesday, so I have three days to agree and then come up with a really lame excuse to back out. Agnes might rough me up in the alley if I show my face without Declan’s ass.
“Okay,” I say.
“And no excuses! Chuckles did not have a leg amputated, like you said last month to get out of coming.”
Damn. Chuckles examines his front paw with a distinct expression of relief. Great. I’m going to come home to find he’s used my jelly bean stash as a litter box, aren’t I?
“Sorry, bud,” I whisper to him from across the room. “I’ll bring home some catnip. Please don’t eat the computer cords again.”
Amanda and I share one of those looks where a series of weird, covert gestures and eyebrow movements somehow translates into facial semaphore code. Does Mom know about me and Declan and the Twitter mess? is my basic question.
Seventy-two twitches and grimaces later, the answer is no.
Whew.
“Marie, we’re very late for work,” Amanda says. “How about I make us a coffee while Shannon showers?”
Mom’s eyes narrow to black-smudged triangles. Whenever any of her daughters are too nice to her, she’s suspicious, and Amanda’s her fourth kid in her mind.
“Is Declan in the bedroom?” she says with glee. “Is that why you’re acting so weird?”
I wish.
“If he were?” Amanda says. Ouch. Shoot me through the heart, but I see her point. Mom starts to back out slowly. It’s not technically a lie, right?
Then she stops and looks at Amanda, hard. “If he’s here, why are you in the bedroom?”
Amanda slowly, exquisitely, arches one eyebrow and stares Mom down. It’s like Laura Prepon in That ’70s Show and Orange is the New Black with a heaping dose of Angelina Jolie thrown in.
Mom’s look of horror is beyond perfect. “I, um, uh, I have to go,” she says quickly. We hear the apartment door slam and Chuckles gives Amanda an admiring look and lifts his front paw toward her like a high-five.
“I can’t believe you implied we’re having a threesome,” I squeak out. But hot damn, it worked! I need to file that little strategy away next time Mom comes over and wants me to get a Brazilian or those pedicures where the fish eat all the dead skin.
“I can’t believe some role play kink between her and your dad makes your cat piss all over my shoes.”
“Touché.”
Tears threaten to push through and I can’t quite catch my breath. What if it’s over before we really got started? So much is there with Declan, and I—
Amanda’s steady hand presses into my shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, the early reports are coming in from the credit unions and there is clear discrimination going on in at least two branches. The LGBT mortgage program will help weed that out. You might want a divorce, but—”
I stick my tongue out at her.
“—but we made a difference.”
That makes me cry, finally. “Great. Can’t even wallow in self-pity,” I sniff. “I may have screwed up my one chance at happiness with a great guy, but we also made a difference and helped people.”
“Don’t look so glum.”
I sigh. “I know. It’s just…I don’t regret doing the shop, but at the same time, let me feel what I feel. Okay? I can feel two conflicting emotions at the same time. It’s called being human.”
A few beats of silence stretch between us. And a handful of sniffles.
“Get your butt in the shower and let’s go see Declan and figure this all out. The longer you cower in the bed, the stupider this gets. Don’t let a Tweet dictate your life,” she counsels.
“When did you become a philosopher?” I stalk off to the bathroom without waiting to hear her answer.
“When your cat turned my foot into a litter box.” She taps Chuckles’ extended paw and I swear he separates his little toes and gives a “peace out” sign.
“What if he…what if I…oh, God.” My hands shake and my heart feels like it wants to run away and bury its head in a giant vat of double-chocolate brownie ice cream.
Amanda’s sympathetic face comes into view through the hair curtain I have covering me. “The only way to know what Declan is thinking or feeling is to go see him.”
“What if I’ve blown it?”
“You don’t know that you did.”
“Easter was so special.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” she declares. “No guy shows up for a holiday with the family and then ditches a woman because of a stupid tweet.”
“Really?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. That sounded like a supportive thing to say.”
“Too much honesty is not a good thing.”
“No kidding.” She sighs. “Why do you think I’m still single?”
I blink back my tears. “But not enough honesty gets you tweets from a woman who looks like something out of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.”
My phone buzzes.
We both freeze.
It’s Declan.
* * *
Continued in Shopping for a Billionaire 4, the end of the Shopping for a Billionaire series…
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Other Books by Julia Kent
Suggested Reading Order
Her First Billionaire—FREE
Her Second Billionaires
Her Two Billionaires
Her Two Billionaires and a Baby
Her Billionaires: Boxed Set
It’s Complicated
Complete Abandon (A Her Billionaires novella)
Complete Harmony (A Her Billionaires novella #2)
Random Acts of Crazy
Random Acts of Trust
Random Acts of Fantasy
Random Acts of Hope
“Share Me” in the anthology Spring F
ling
Maliciously Obedient
Suspiciously Obedient
Deliciously Obedient (the trilogy is done!)
Shopping for a Billionaire 1
Shopping for a Billionaire 2
About the Author
Text JKentBooks to 77948 and get a text message on release dates!
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julia Kent turned to writing contemporary romance after deciding that life is too short not to have fun. She writes romantic comedy with an edge, and new adult books that push contemporary boundaries. From billionaires to BBWs to rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every book she writes, but unlike Trevor from Random Acts of Crazy, she has never kissed a chicken.
She loves to hear from her readers by email at [email protected],
on Twitter @jkentauthor, and on Facebook at
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Visit her blog at http://jkentauthor.blogspot.com