Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee

by Julia Kent

  Revelations bring power.

  Declan deals with other people’s emotions by turning his own off.

  I just watch.

  And learn.

  But there’s one thing I don’t do: reveal.

  Because when you reveal, you cede. There’s a reason why poker is such a popular game. The money is an afterthought.

  Poker faces reveal nothing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t reflect the truth.

  And the truth is that there’s a roiling boil beneath the surface, waiting to come out if you give it the smallest chance.

  Amanda doesn’t play games, though.

  Which means the stakes are that much higher.

  We’re playing for keeps.

  At least, I think I am. And it terrifies me to think she’s not.

  I open my mouth to say something smooth. Suave. Caring and articulate, hot and emotional. The perfect words to make her know how authentically I love her, and that makes up for the craziness of these past few days.

  “I dated Jessica Coffin.”

  See? The perfect words.

  For a man on death row.

  Her breath catches in her throat, and she blinks, over and over, as if trying to clear her vision. I expect her to yell. Shout. Turn red with anger. Snap at me, incredulous.

  Instead, she nods slowly and says, “I wondered.”

  Oh, hell.

  I’d rather have her yelling.

  “You wondered?”

  “The race.”

  “Race?”

  “Oh, come on. The race? The one I volunteered at and Anterdec sponsored, two years ago, when Declan was being such a jerk to Shannon?”

  “What does some charity we support have to do with my dating Jessica?”

  “I saw you talking to her and—” She pauses and looks at me. Her face is impassive, a sheet of glass with two enormous, closed-off eyes that blink slowly, methodically. Unnerved, I watch her watching me. Amanda generally shows all her feelings in a big pile of emotion in her eyes, which now narrow.

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  And here we go.

  “No.”

  Amanda just blinks.

  “You don’t have to lie.”

  “I’ve never lied to you before. I wouldn’t start now.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Andrew? If you’re trying to have a Mile High experience with me, this isn’t the best form of foreplay.”

  “It’s not? Because Men’s Health magazine says that spilling your guts about your past girlfriends is the best aphrodisiac.”

  “Girlfriend? She was your girlfriend? You told me you never had a serious girlfriend!”

  “Part of my junior year of high school, yes. For about a month.”

  “Oh.”

  “Right. Doesn’t count.”

  “Who broke up with whom?”

  “I dumped her.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She shrugs. “Probably not, but it will kill me not to know. You can’t just blurt out that you dated my best friend’s nemesis and not expect the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Ready for takeoff,” the pilot announces. “Estimated flight time five hours and twenty minutes.”

  This is going to be the longest flight of my life, isn’t it? Longer than that Boston to Hong Kong leg.

  “Who was the first guy you ever slept with?”

  Her mouth drops open.

  I actually don’t want to know the answer. In fact, the minute she spills the name, I’ll have Gina create a hot sheet on him and he’ll find himself signed up for every nasty porn site and political volunteer list in the U.S.

  But I ask because I need her to stop looking at me like that. Like my past is ruining my future.

  She smiles.

  “You.”

  My mouth drops open. My balls fall through my seat cushion and dangle with the fuselage.

  “Ha! Gotcha!” She sighs. “Fine. Don’t tell me why you broke up with her.” She wiggles in her seat, her head turned away from me, tilted down for a nap. “I don’t need to know.” She yawns. “I love you no matter what.”

  This is the difference between men and women. Not the ovaries vs. the balls. Not the breasts vs. the pecs. Not even the up-down toilet seat controversy or the Period Errand vs. the Morning Wood.

  Oh, no.

  She cannot settle in for a nap while my brain burns with the need to know the name of the guy who deflowered her.

  “She didn’t like the way I kissed,” I say with a sigh.

  Amanda sits up fast, like someone’s pulled her up by her hair. “What? Is she crazy?”

  “We were sixteen. She went to a different school. We had three dates. We texted with flip phones. She was shallow and said I kissed like a sloth with an overproductive salivary gland.”

  “She said that?”

  “Worse. She texted it. There was no Twitter back then. Do you know how determined she must have been to take the time to text all that on a flip phone?”

  One corner of Amanda’s mouth curls up. Her nostrils flare as she purses her lips, trying not to laugh.

  “Quit shining me on.”

  “I’m not!” I stick my tongue out at her and loll it to one side. “See? Wet-tongued sloth.”

  “Andrew.”

  I pretend to snore, tongue hanging out.

  “You are impossible.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Who?”

  “The first guy you slept with.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “No. But yes.”

  “Fine.” She thinks about it for a few seconds, just long enough to make my brain turn into ribbons of pain.

  “And?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Charlie? You date him for long?” The thought of some gawky teen slobbering all over Amanda awkwardly makes my gut hurt.

  “We never really dated. Just hung out a lot.”

  “He didn’t take you out? Buy you dinner? Go to the movies?”

  “No. He was more of a stay-in kind of guy.”

  “Bastard.”

  “He did have this kink.”

  I freeze and close my eyes.

  “What?”

  “He liked to pee on shoes with laces.”

  I open one eye. “Charlie, huh? Last name wouldn’t happen to be Kulls?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  I snort.

  She laces her fingers through mine. “It’s okay. Just never, ever tell Shannon you dated Jessica.”

  “Why would I?”

  “It could slip out.”

  “That’s not the kind of statement that just slips out.”

  She cocks one eyebrow at me. Huh. She has a point.

  It just did.

  “Telling you is different.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I tell you, or why is telling you different?”

  “Both.”

  “You always say both!”

  “I always want to know as much as possible.”

  “So do I. Tell me his name, Amanda.”

  We’re at a standoff. I crack first. And that’s okay, because relationship negotiations are different from business negotiations. In business, if you crack first, you lose.

  In relationships, if you don’t crack first, you lose out on sex.

  I hate losing.

  “I told you because it felt dishonest not to.”

  She just nods.

  “And telling you is different from telling Shannon because she doesn’t need to know.”

  “And I do?”

  “I think so. Otherwise, there’s too much power to the information.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “She was just a fling?”

  “It was high school. She was a schemer then, just like she is now. Our parents were in the same circles.”

  “And she’s easy on the eyes.”

  “No.” My answer pre
cedes thought. “She’s not. Not anymore.”

  “She’s gorgeous, Andrew. Don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not. Swear.”

  “But back then?”

  “Back then I thought that surface looks were a clue to the inside of people. Before I learned better.” I reach over and stroke her cheek with the back of my hand.

  She falters. “Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”

  I chuckle. “You’re beautiful inside and out. Jessica is a Barbie doll on the outside, and nothing but molded fakery on the inside.”

  “Why did you break up with her?”

  “Tell me his name.”

  She dips her head and smiles. “Al Barkin. Senior year of high school. Prom night. We were in school band together. Clichéd, I know.”

  I can’t breathe for a moment. Amanda’s look says, I showed you mine. Show me yours.

  My turn. “I dumped her because she went after Declan.”

  “And that,” Amanda says in an arch tone, “is why Shannon can’t know any of this. Wow. Jessica tried to date Declan while she was your girlfriend?”

  “Ambition. Why date a Milton guy when he had a Harvard brother?”

  Amanda frowns, the skin between her eye crinkling, the expression adorable. “Your junior year. That was Declan’s freshman year?”

  I know where she’s going with this.

  “Yes.”

  “Right after your mother died.”

  “About six months later, yes.”

  “That sleazy little psycho bitch.”

  “Don’t hold back, honey. Tell me how you really feel.”

  Rising up out of her seat, Amanda starts to stand, her fingers curled into claws, as if she’s about to go find Jessica and cut a bitch. I push her down gently by the shoulder.

  She is a live wire, eyes bulging, her fight response primed.

  This is so hot.

  “How can you even talk to her now? Anterdec does charity work with her family’s foundation! I see you chatting with her at events. She’s gone after Shannon in such a distorted way, and now you’re telling me she used you to get to Declan?”

  I shrug. “She has no actual power.”

  “She can ruin someone with one tweet!”

  “You consider that to be power?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Wrong. Let’s stop right there.” A flash of insight. “Jessica has no intrinsic power.”

  “Intrinsic power?”

  “The only influence she has comes from other people. It’s basic popularity, which is a mirage on top of an optical illusion.”

  “Huh?”

  “Popularity comes from getting enough people to say you’re a hot item that others believe it. Critical mass and all that. It’s fleeting, and relies on the masses propping up your influence. That’s all Jessica has. She’s a paper tiger.”

  “But she’s so powerful on the social scene.”

  “I think you give her way more sway than she really possesses. Stop reacting to her. Stop reinforcing her with others.”

  “She made fun of Shannon’s poop.”

  “She is just a paper tiger.”

  “Was she always like this?”

  I have to think about that one. “Yeah. I guess so. I never really got to know her.”

  “Didn’t date long enough?”

  “No. She just wouldn’t let me in.”

  “I didn’t mean sexually.”

  “I didn’t either. She was tight as a drum emotionally. Our month of dating was mostly focused on my getting her into big parties at Milton so she could social climb. Then taking her to Harvard to visit Dec. All it took was one Cambridge party and bam—I found her on his lap.”

  “Whoa.”

  “He was shoving her off it.” I remember it perfectly. ‘These things happen’ was all Jessica said, as if that explained everything.

  “Why are we in a private jet, finally truly alone for the first time since the wedding, and we’re talking about Jessica Coffin?”

  “You brought her up.”

  “Actually, you did, Andrew.”

  I restrain myself from replying immediately. In the space of a few breaths, I find a more authentic answer.

  “I wanted to give you a piece of me. That means sharing more with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  My inner life is a spiral staircase that ascends and descends to infinity. I brace myself and confess, “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Share?”

  I shrug.

  “How to be in a relationship?”

  “Any of it.”

  “It’s new to me, too.”

  “Not the newness. Being new is the easy part. I get that. I don’t know how to lose myself in you without losing all of myself. How do I let go and trust that you’ll give me the freedom to figure out who I am and at the same time trust that you’ll be right there with me?”

  “That’s your idea of a relationship?”

  “It’s wrong, isn’t it? Jesus, Amanda, I don’t even know how to describe my own confusion properly.”

  “It’s not wrong,” she says slowly. “Just interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “I never thought of it that way. Guaranteed freedom and guaranteed company. That’s such a paradox.”

  “Which means it can’t exist.”

  “Can’t it? Why not? Says who?”

  I don’t have an answer to that.

  “We both know how to manage systems, Andrew. We’re experts at looking at processes and understanding how to make a process work. How to use systems to serve people—with an end goal in mind.”

  “So?”

  “Isn’t a relationship just a series of emotional processes?”

  “You sound like Declan.”

  That’s not a compliment, and she knows it.

  “I’m not wrong.”

  I make a derisive sound that I cut off, because I suddenly sound like my father.

  “This is a lot to take in after the insanity of the last week.” She looks at her ring finger.

  “That doesn’t make any of this less real.”

  “You’re right. We broke all the rules. Took all the steps and shook them up.”

  “There’s so much more to relationships and love than a nested list of steps and procedures.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I grab her, hard, and kiss her, the impulse driven by something that does not appear anywhere on my personal Gantt chart. This kiss holds the world together. My hands on her soft, yielding shoulders are pillars, meant to hold up the next layer of emotion. We are the moon and stars, her eyes are the atmosphere, her breath the air I breathe.

  Laws of attraction keep atoms together, electrons and neutrons repelling and migrating closer, forming differentiated objects that serve our purposes.

  Feelings shouldn’t follow the same pattern.

  And yet they do. The heart may be a muscle, but it’s also a vessel that pumps blood and magic through cells that I’m kissing with yearning, cells that kiss me right back, with heat and warmth and wetness that curves into me, our skin attracted to skin by nothing more than emotion attached to biological processes.

  That feel damn good.

  So damn fine.

  The earth jolts. I knew we compounded energy, but—

  “Sorry about that, Mr. McCormick and Ms. Warrick. Problem with turbulence.”

  Amanda gives me a weak smile and asks, “What if that were more than turbulence?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What if we had five minutes before the plane crashed. What would you do if you knew we only had five minutes left before we died?”

  I give her a look.

  “I know it’s silly,” she says. Her expression says it’s anything but.

  “I would regret not really marrying you.”

  Her eyes move down, unfocused suddenly, her blinking in time to the beat of my heart. I know she’s processing what I just said, integrating the
implications, trying to decide whether to believe it or not, shock wearing off.

  What fills in the spaces once the surprise is gone?

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Wrong about wanting to marry you?”

  “Wrong about not knowing how to reveal yourself to someone, Andrew.”

  What the hell am I supposed to say to that?

  My turn to look away. Stare out the window. Pretend I’m thinking through her words when all I’m really doing is trying to hold it together. How can I stare down a Sultan during intense business negotiations but a simple question from my girlfriend shatters me?

  Love.

  Right?

  Cotton and warmth take over, my lungs inhaling Amanda, exhaling confusion. She’s next to me, her eyes guarded yet hopeful, trying to understand me from the outside in. That’s all we can do. Look and listen, touch and hear, filled with the infusion of our lover’s scent and their very essence, until we know them as well as you can know someone whose flesh isn’t yours.

  And if you’re really fortunate, you uncover parts of yourself through them that would otherwise remain buried under that outer shell that you present to the world as you.

  “What about you?” I challenge. “Five minutes. You have five minutes left before dying. What would you do?”

  Her kiss is my response.

  And wetness on my cheek.

  Alarmed, I reach up, cupping her face with both hands, not breaking the connection our mouths make. Deepening the kiss, I sweep my tongue between her lips, sucking, her sweet teeth nipping at my lip, the softness turning urgent. More tears, and I’m torn. I want to pull back and say all the right words to make her stop crying, but instinct makes me search for an answer with my mouth, my lips, my hands and tongue.

  I turn in my seat, seeking her soft curves, wanting her heat against me, needing her.

  “We’re not married,” she whispers against my mouth, our foreheads pressed together.

  “I know,” I rasp, ready to tell her how much I want to propose, how she’s the one, the only one, and how that feeling makes my chest collapse.

  Clarity is so rare. Certainty is slippery. As I kiss her again, my hands integrate with her space, our bodies no longer separate from each other, hearts fusing. She is becoming me and I am becoming her and by God, this is such a familiar feeling. The curve of her spine against my fingers, the tickle of her hair against my nose, the way she inhales as if she’s whispering my name through centuries—it’s already in me.

  This is déjà vu through touch.

  She’s already mine.