Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee

by Julia Kent

  I smile.

  Leverage. Ah. That’s so much better.

  She sees it, too, her shoulders slumping, her breath let go in a long sigh. “Fine. I confess.”

  “You did file the marriage licenses?” Amanda says with a groan.

  Tears fill Marie’s overdone eyes. She palms away one rolling drop. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Are we married to each other?” I ask, pointing to Amanda.

  Marie shakes her head.

  “Shit!” The word’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.

  “Am I married to Josh?” Amanda asks.

  Marie shakes her head.

  Amanda fist bumps me, then freezes. “Is Andrew married to...Josh?”

  Marie shakes her head. She’s being way, way too quiet.

  “Am I married to Rainbow Brite?” I ask.

  Marie shakes her head.

  “Marie, who is married to whom?” I ask tightly.

  Her hands cover her eyes and she says, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” over and over, rocking against the bamboo-covered wall.

  Amanda and I exchange a look. I convey, through a single glare and a sudden eye tic, the message that dragging the truth out of Marie is Amanda’s territory.

  “Marie, what did you do?” she asks.

  “It’s what I didn’t do! You clearly wanted me to file those marriage licenses, but it was late and I was tired, and I’m so sorry!” She reaches into her enormous purse and pulls out a sheaf of thick papers, mangled and stained with reddish-purple wine rings.

  I snatch them up, rifling through them. I learn something new.

  When drunk on entheogenic wine, I spell my name Ayndrough. That’s my handwriting. No denying it.

  Amanda correctly spelled her entire name, but saw fit to draw pictures of butterflies with enormous, anatomically-correct penises and balls attached.

  “The state of Nevada issued these?”

  We have licenses for:

  Amanda and Ayndrough

  Josh and Geordi

  Amanda and Charles Kulls

  Josh and Ayndrough

  Geordi and Josh

  Josh and David Gandy

  “Pfft. Right. Like David Gandy would ever marry him,” Amanda says.

  I laugh.

  “Because if anyone’s marrying David Gandy, it’s me.”

  I stop laughing.

  “I’m so sorry!” Marie cries.

  “Why are you sorry?” Amanda asks.

  “Because I didn’t file any of these!”

  I frown at her, completely stymied. “You think we’re upset at you for not filing these marriage licenses?”

  She grabs them back. “If I rush, I can get there in time for—”

  Amanda yanks them out of her hands and flings them into the hot spring.

  “You’re our hero, Marie!” she shouts, pulling Marie into a tight hug.

  I blink over and over, staring at the papers on the water as the saltwater soaks in, turning them to wet, sopping messes.

  Which one is ours?

  Not that it matters.

  I wade in, mop up the useless pieces of paper, and wade back out, marching to a trash can and throwing them in. Staring at the clump of paper, I sigh.

  We’re not married.

  I’m not married to anyone.

  Great.

  My eyes land on an animated Amanda, who smiles and frowns in alternating patterns as Marie chatters away. My right index finger finds my left hand, the metal of my wedding band warm from the room’s ambient temperature. The ring is smooth and unyielding, an infinite loop.

  Amanda hugs Marie again, who looks at me with a shaky smile.

  “I didn’t mess up? You didn’t want me to file the marriage licenses?”

  “Did you really think Amanda wanted to marry Chuckles?”

  “No. But I’m getting the feeling you really wanted to marry her, Andrew.”

  Laughter rips through the room as Amanda reacts.

  I just run my finger around the ring, over and over, silent.

  Chapter Seven

  “So no one’s married to anyone?” Josh asks, his voice peaking on a high note, turning to give Geordi a pouty look. Geordi seems to have fewer facial muscles than the rest of us, because he just broods.

  “Nope,” Amanda says with a grin, taking a sip of her mango cucumber kale monstrosity that someone in the casino made for her. We’re sitting on purple velvet couches in a sunken pit near the High Value baccarat room where Jason won all that money yesterday.

  And gave it right back to my casino.

  I like Jason. Men who give back that kind of money after winning are guaranteed a comped room for the rest of their lives.

  After interrupting us back at the spa, Marie needed concierge service to shoo her and her crew out of the state, which meant Brona intervened and sent a message to my admin, Gina.

  Who urged me to answer the three hundred texts queued up in my phone.

  Instead of having luscious sex with my once-maybe-wife in a rainforest hot spring, I’ve spent the last ninety minutes perusing spreadsheets, giving one-sentence up-or-down decisions, and listening to a very pissed off Sultan rant in my ear.

  While drinking substandard coffee.

  Damn Declan. He’s right—Grind It Fresh! coffee is better.

  “We’re free! No one married anyone! Then we don’t need these!” Josh slides his wedding ring off his finger. Geordi does the same. Amanda tries to pull hers off and can’t.

  “Ugh! I’m too swollen and bloated!” she complains. “Must be from all the drinking and the Cheetos last night.”

  My heart soars. I slide my left hand around her and give her shoulder a squeeze. Good for bloat. I can’t stop my gaze from jumping between our respective rings.

  “We need to let Dec and Shannon and James know that no one’s married to anyone,” she says, snuggling in. Ten more minutes of conversation and we can excuse ourselves and go back to my suite.

  Even if we’re not married, we can pretend it’s our honeymoon.

  “Hi!” Pam appears behind Amanda, holding her teacup Chihuahua in her handbag.

  These mothers have impeccably bad timing.

  Spritzy pokes his head up and sticks his tongue out, panting. If dogs could smile, he’d be grinning.

  “Mom! Where have you been?”

  Pam takes a few steps toward Amanda and winces.

  “Flare,” she says simply.

  Geordi looks at some pins on his leather shirt. “Are not!”

  “Not ‘flair,’ Geordi,” Josh says with a laugh.

  Amanda peels out of my arms and gives Pam a gentle hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I hear you married three men while I was resting.”

  “And a cat,” Josh adds helpfully.

  “Everyone needs a little pussy for a companion sometimes,” Pam says unironically. “They’re so nice to stroke.”

  Amanda squeezes her eyes in a nonverbal tip I pick up instantly.

  Josh shouts, “Why is everyone talking about vaginas so much?”

  Josh clearly struggles with social cues.

  Pam pales. She matches Josh. Amanda helps her sit.

  “Va- va- va-” Pam sputters.

  “Speaking of vaginas,” Josh asks, “where’s Marie?”

  Non sequitur of the century.

  “She left. Took Jason, Carol and the boys home on the jet.” Dad insisted. Said that after what Jason did, returning $700,000 of his winnings in the high-stakes baccarat room, the man gets everything comped. I agree.

  “Did Amy ever make it?” Pam asks, clearly thrilled by the topic change.

  So am I.

  “No,” Amanda says with a pout. “Her new internship took longer than expected.” Amy is Shannon’s younger sister, and was part of the wedding party. She’s the type of young woman Anterdec would have in our intern program if Amy didn’t insist that she wasn’t “into nepotism,” whatever that means.

  “Who knew that venture capitalist work c
ould be so invasive for an intern,” Pam says with a sigh.

  “Oh,” Amanda says brightly. “She loves it. And she would have missed the wedding anyhow. She’ll be there for the presents, though!”

  “Presents?” I ask.

  “Shannon and Declan have more than six hundred presents waiting for them back home. Grace has them in storage. Marie’s inviting everyone to go to a party at Shannon and Declan’s place to open everything when we all get back home.”

  Parse that.

  And your brain burns.

  Dec has no idea what he’s coming home to.

  I grin.

  “Great!” My word makes Pam frown.

  “Six hundred gifts? It will take a week to open them all.”

  “All the more reason for Dec and Shannon to host a big, sprawling party!” I say, trying on enthusiasm, liking the idea that Dec will come home to a pre-arranged wedding-gift party in his apartment he has no choice but to throw.

  Pam’s scrutinizing me. The woman appears to be able to sniff out irony like an IRS agent searching for a fake home office deduction.

  She’s my girlfriend’s mother, so I need to shift. Play it cool. Make a better impression.

  “How’s your room, Pam? Is the staff giving you everything you need?”

  “Your father sure is!”

  Josh leers. “You and James—ahem?” He clears his throat meaningfully.

  Pam is either clueless or very, very sly, because she answers Josh as if he were asking the question straight. “Yes, James. He’s been so pleasant.”

  “You’re sure we’re talking about my father, James McCormick? Hair the color of ash, with an ego the size of Texas?”

  “He can be a bit gruff at times, but he’s taken a liking to Spritzy.”

  “Hope that’s all he’s taken a liking to,” Amanda mutters.

  “What did you learn?” Pam asks. “I assume no one is married to anyone.”

  We gape at her.

  “How did you know?”

  “Easy. First of all, Amanda’s a mystery shopper. She engages in behaviors that are crazy on the surface, but perfectly logical at heart. Second, you can’t legally marry a cat, and I knew that Chuckles didn’t have any ID and therefore couldn’t even try to get a marriage license.”

  “But—”

  “And third, Marie called me from a local strip club and asked me what to do about all of you standing at the bar shoving marriage licenses at the poor bartender. Apparently, you were quite intimidating, Andrew. You pushed a few hundred-dollar bills at him, insisting he sign the government documents and make them official.”

  Everyone slowly cranes their necks, looking at me.

  “What,” I ask her with as much dignity as a man can muster under the circumstances, “did you tell her?”

  “I contacted the concierge at Litraeon and they made fake documents for us. By the time those were done and ‘signed,’ you were both beyond reason. Accepted the papers.”

  “Both?” Amanda peeps. “Both? MOM! You’ve known the entire time that those were fakes?”

  “Didn’t Marie tell you?” Pam seems genuinely horrified.

  “And I told the staff to stock the corporate jet with our finest Champagne for the trip home,” I grumble.

  “It wasn’t entheogenic by any chance, was it?”

  “Not even homeopathic.”

  “Whew!” Geordi says, smiling at everyone. “It’s settled, then. We know what happened. No one actually legally married anyone. We’ve unraveled all the mysteries.”

  Not quite.

  Brona. I wonder if she was in charge of generating the fake documents.

  “Pam, did you tell my father all about the fake marriage licenses, by any chance?”

  She grins. “It was his idea.”

  Chapter Eight

  “What?” Dad shouts into the phone as I call him from the corporate jet the next morning. Amanda and I are alone, and I intend to keep it that way. “It made perfect sense!”

  We escaped the fracas of the Vegas clan, leaving them to finish packing, sorting out their goodbyes and work schedules. Dad, Pam, Josh, Terry and Spritzy will follow on a different jet. We are on the lesser of Anterdec’s jets. Dec and Shannon stole the one with the bedroom, damn it, leaving us with one that requires a certain level of discretion to fit in sex.

  My middle name is discretion.

  But at Amanda’s urging, I’ve made a huge mistake.

  I called my father to find out what the hell he was thinking when he had all these fake marriage licenses created.

  “Dad, you told the staff at my resort—”

  “My resort—”

  I ignore that. “To create fake marriage licenses.”

  “It was brilliant! Shannon and Declan’s wedding escapades only dominated the media airwaves for five days. We needed something new! Fresh!”

  “And getting a marriage license for my girlfriend to marry a cat was part of that strategy?”

  “You have to admit it was clever.”

  “It was stupid. And you made me look like I might have married a guy.” Or two.

  “I thought you were enlightened.” His voice has a mock-chiding tone.

  “I’m fine with guys marrying guys. Just not marrying me.”

  “Gay CEOs test well, Andrew.” His pregnant pause makes me groan.

  “I’m not changing my sexual orientation to get free PR, Dad.”

  I am very, very done with this day. My three hundred text messages are starting to look like the most relaxing part of my life.

  “There’s something to this technique, Andrew. Using the 24/7 media to boost our corporate image. All those free logos plastered all over the news. The helicopter lifting away from Farmington Country Club was even on BuzzBuzz and The Garlic!”

  “Buzzfeed. The Onion.” My head starts to hurt again.

  Amanda motions for me to put the phone on speaker. I do. Might as well share the pain.

  “I’m pretty sure Johnny Carson came very close to covering it.” What’s next? Did Dad use his slide rule to calculate the value of all this free press?

  She frantically waves her hands at the phone in a gesture that I assume means, Turn off the speakerphone.

  I snicker.

  “All right, Dad. Got it. Point made.” It’s not worth correcting him.

  “Any chance Shannon’s pregnant right now? Because that would—”

  Amanda’s eyes bug out of her head.

  “DAD! Stop!”

  “When you’re back, let’s have a conference about ways we can leverage our personal lives for this kind of coverage.”

  “You sound like Marie.”

  A grunt comes across the phone. “That was low. Your brother said that, too.”

  “You know you’re on the wrong track when Declan and I agree on something.”

  Another grunt.

  I look at the ring on my hand. Amanda’s still wearing hers, too.

  “You’ve spent most of my life teaching me how to remain private. How not to let the media use me.”

  “I was wrong.”

  I burst out laughing. “Good one, Dad.” Never heard those words out of his mouth.

  “Andrew, I—”

  I cut him off. “We’re about to take off. I just found out I’m not married to three different potential candidates. My girlfriend almost married a cat because of you. I have three hundred text messages waiting for my attention, and my new admin is about as polished as a piece of coal. Worse: it turns out Declan’s new coffee chain does have better coffee than Litraeon. Goodbye, Dad.”

  Click.

  Amanda laughs softly through her nose. “He’s a piece of work.”

  I do not want to talk about my dad.

  “Want to join the Mile High Club?” I inhale slowly as I reach for her delicate wrist, my ringed hand gliding up, her skin so soft and smooth.

  “Holy topic change, Batman!”

  I shrug.

  “Really? Here? Now? After everything we
’ve been through?”

  If I just sit here in silence, the idea will grow on her, right? Something on me is growing.

  “That’s not going to work.”

  “What’s not going to work?”

  “Thinking you can wait me out and I’ll magically throw myself at you and we’ll join the Mile High Club.”

  We? I start to correct her, then shut my mouth. Fast. The past is the past, and bringing it up now is about as safe as stealing in North Korea.

  She glares at me.

  “Fine. Me.”

  Oh, hell. She reads minds. Mine, at least. The funny part? It’s as if I have no past. No other woman has imprinted herself so thoroughly on me as Amanda. No other woman evokes more of me—the true Andrew—than this very pissed, extremely angry, deeply simmering woman sitting next to me on a plane, a day after learning we’re not married.

  Why are we not married?

  I squeeze her hand, careful around her wounds. It’s only been six days since she rescued the animals in the pool at Dec and Shannon’s wedding. Six days.

  We’re been back together for six days, and this is the first time we’ve had an extended stretch of time to just talk.

  Mile High Club, or deep discussion? C’mon. Which one would most guys pick?

  I pick deep discussion.

  No, really. Seriously. I do.

  I do.

  Those words have too many meanings. Too bad they’re so loaded. A wall has formed between Amanda and me, an instant barrier between us, as if erected by the impossibility of true love. People aren’t supposed to find their one like this.

  It’s a pipe dream.

  We’re drunk with pheromones and adrenaline, still a little off-kilter from psychotropic hallucinogens we never intended to consume, and maybe Amanda’s right.

  Maybe I really am an asshole for suggesting sex mid-air.

  And maybe I just don’t deserve her.

  See that? Those bricks? The seconds that tick by are like little time masons, adding to the wall.

  Faces change when emotions churn under the surface. You have to watch carefully. Dispassionately. Most people let other people’s emotions trigger their own. Back and forth, they lob their inner states like a game of high-stakes Hot Potato.

  If you watch someone morph through their own reconfiguration, it is heartbreaking.

  It’s also revealing.