by Julia Kent
“I think that’s exactly what you meant. Don’t back away from it. Own it.”
Is he right? I don’t know. I’m so used to acquiescing, because most of the time he is right on topics like this. One of the foundations of our relationship is the fact that Declan’s so secure, and has such faith that I can overcome my own overly-developed sense of helping others to strike a healthy balance. I’m still not sure I agree with his assessment, but I’ve gone along with his opinion because so far, every time I follow his viewpoint I feel better about myself.
But what if I’m just replacing my mother with Declan? Letting people tell me how I should feel gets harder and harder as time passes.
And maybe that intolerance includes Declan.
“Smother.” I square my shoulders as I say the word. “You’re smothering me.”
“With jewelry from Tiffany?”
“And tailored clothing from Italy. And a wedding that costs more than an expensive house in metrowest Boston. And limos and SUVs and helicopters and planes. Restaurant meals that cost more than my first car. You don’t live a life that even dips its toe in reality, Declan.”
“It’s my reality.”
“Your reality is most people’s fantasy.”
“But not yours, clearly.”
“You are my fantasy. You. You’re my fantasy man come to life, vibrant and breathing and breathtaking, Declan! I love you. Not your money.”
“Is that what this is about? You’re worried I think you’re after me for my wealth?” Relief washes over him, as if he’s figured it all out. “That’s it? God, no, Shannon, I know you’re not one of those types.”
“What types?”
“The Jessica Coffin type.”
“She comes from money!” I declare, completely blown away by this conversation. We’ve talked about this before, of course. James wanted me to sign a pre-nup, but Declan shot that down long before the wedding. You can’t be engaged to a man with Declan’s level of money and not have a long series of discussions, but we’re navigating a winding river we’ve never traveled before.
This isn’t about his money.
It’s about his lifestyle.
“Right. She comes from a family with connections and a long history of being the equivalent of aristocracy in Boston society, if such a status existed. And yet she’s a gold-digger, plain and simple.”
He said it. That damn word.
“How can she be a gold-digger when she’s already rich?”
“Her gold isn’t money. It’s status. Prestige. Unearned privilege that she wants to swallow whole, to hoard for herself by virtue of partnering with the perfect husband.”
“Sounds more like a merger and acquisition than a marriage.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“How cold.”
“How Jessica.”
I flash back to that first date, when we went out to dinner and ran into Jessica and my ex, Steve, on a date. The awkward dinner between the four of us, Jessica’s compulsive need to insult me through digs and jabs so obvious to me and Declan. Steve, a social climber himself, chose not to see it.
By the end of the night she’d clearly dumped him, anyhow, her eye on catching a bigger fish.
My fish.
My soon-to-be-husband fish.
“You’re my fish,” I mutter under my breath.
“I’m your what?” he chuckles.
“My fish.”
“You’re deflecting.”
“Technically, I’m not. I’m thinking about Jessica Coffin and how she tried to steal my fish from me.”
He points to himself. “And I am the fish.”
“Something like that.”
“What kind?”
“What kind of what?”
“Fish. Am I a salmon? A trout? A grouper?”
“You’re a lobster, of course.”
“Lobsters aren’t fish.”
“We’re speaking in love metaphors.”
“It still doesn’t make sense.”
“Love doesn’t make sense.”
“No shit.”
“Declan.” The hurt in my voice masks some utterly chaotic emotion that plumes through me like a toxic cloud, a throbbing, pulsing danger that threatens to infiltrate every cell inside me. Not only has this conversation spiraled into bizarro Mom-topic territory, Declan is still angry. Frustrated. Disappointed.
And I’m the cause of that maelstrom inside him.
Which he hides behind barbs and banter, his stone face intact.
“Why the big emerald?” I ask him, my voice neutral.
“Huh?”
“Why an emerald? Aside from the fact that it matches your eyes?”
“It seemed fitting.”
“Because it was bigger than Amanda’s earrings? And because those earrings had gemstones like Andrew’s eyes?”
Declan’s frown tells me he’s truly caught off guard, his words sincere. “I didn’t think about that when I ordered the necklace. I just wanted something timeless, beautiful, and worthy of your delicate neck.”
I melt, blood firing at the words.
“You make me want to give you the world. And when you say no, it’s like—” He breaks off his words, turning away from me.
“I have the world.” My voice comes out in a shaky sigh. “I have you. I love you. I don’t love your money or your power. I don’t love your hundred-hour weeks or your press coverage. I love Declan McCormick, the man. Not Declan McCormick, the image. The billionaire. The icon.”
His eyes bore through me, as if fusing onto my soul.
“I don’t need baubles and designer clothes and stylists and new cars. I’m simple, Declan. I just want more of you.”
“You have more of me.”
“I want even more.” I’m greedy that way.
“And when I give you parts of my life, that is how I offer you more of myself.”
“You are not the giant green emerald!”
“And rejecting it doesn’t make you some kind of better person,” he says softly.
“I feel like we’re talking in circles,” I say, curling up inside, hurt that he doesn’t accept my words.
“I feel like I’m spinning my wheels,” he replies. If he feels the same way, then maybe...
“We’re not really at odds, though, are we?” My look begs him to agree.
“No.” He opens his arms and I step into them, pressing my cheek against his chest. Still naked, he stands tall and strong, back straight and his cheek resting against the crown of my head. “Not as long as you stop drinking that damn coffee from the resort next door.”
My laugh feels good. “Too bad Anterdec doesn’t own Grind It Fresh!” I joke.
His smile spreads across my scalp. “Or a Tesla dealership.”
“I’m a cheap date,” I remind him. “A good latte is all I need.”
“You’re all I need.” We’re trying to find our way across a fault line that has widened during the course of this conversation, tossing tether lines at each other with reasonable certainty the other will catch the weighted end.
Here’s the problem with reasonable certainty: a tiny portion of the time, it’s not reasonable.
Nor is it certain.
Chapter Twelve
“All that over a coffee?” Amanda and I are in the fitness center, pretending to work out before lunch. Mom goes to yoga upstairs, some poolside class where she gets to strut her stuff, and I don’t want to be anywhere near her right now. Knowing we have dinner tonight at eight p.m., and knowing it’ll be a giant mess just makes my avoidance kick in that much harder. By pretending we’re using the workout equipment, Amanda and I get a modicum of peace.
And she smuggles me clandestine lattes.
“Right.” Sip. It’s an orgasm in coffee form. Not the kind that makes fireworks explode in your head, though, or that make your hands curl and your fingertips scrape against the wall above the headboard. It’s the kind where wave after wave keep coming and coming until you st
art to wonder if it’ll ever end.
Maybe I’m imagining this coffee.
“He blew up like that just because you raved about the resort next door? Seriously?” Amanda takes a sip of her breve and gives a sound of appreciation. We’re on treadmills next to each other, set at 3.0 miles per hour, which means we could be lapped by old ladies at the mall with tennis balls on the bottom of their walkers.
“Right. Totally uncharacteristic of Declan. We’ve been together for two years. I’ve never seen this side of him.” Walking this slow takes effort. Effort requires calories. Which means this latte is actually workout fuel.
“He is supercompetitive.” She snorts. “Look at him and Andrew.”
All I have to do is look at her to get what she means. Amanda’s new wardrobe upgrade screams Andrew hired a stylist for me. It’s a nice mix of tastefully erotic and Girls Gone Wild. Never in a bajillion years would Amanda wear this outfit, with a push-up bra that turns her breasts into a reportable FAA obstacle, but she and Andrew are in that early phase of a relationship.
You know. The one where all you can think about is being naked together. Society requires that we cover our erogenous zones in public, so this is the next best thing.
In Man Land.
“Quit staring at my boobs.”
“I can’t help it. They’re so...prominent.”
She tugs at the hem of her shirt and whoops! There we go. Don’t need that helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon that Declan was planning for tomorrow. Just got an eyeful.
“You could sell tickets to that view,” I say with some speculation. My treadmill counter ticks over the two-mile mark. We should celebrate with another latte.
“Andrew. It’s all his fault. And frankly, yours, too.”
“Mine?”
“If you’d just let Declan spoil you a little, Andrew wouldn’t feel the need to one-up Declan all the time.”
“Huh?”
“They’re trying to outshine each other. Declan keeps getting upset that you won’t wear the jewelry or the clothes he’s buying you. Now he’s prowling around Tesla dealers and thinking about getting you a new car.”
“WHAT?” Declan’s earlier Tesla joke pings in my mind. He wasn’t joking?
“And you should accept it!”
I give her a speculative look. “Is Andrew buying you a car?”
She shrugs, then brightens. “I don’t know. He hates the Turdmobile, so...”
“I don’t need these things—necklaces, clothes, fancy cars. Do you? Really?”
Her eyes glaze over. I know she’s thinking about Andrew naked. “It’s nice. I don’t know.” She shakes her wrist. The charms on the Tiffany bracelet cheer for her. “He likes to give me these things. It brings him joy.”
I start to say something snarky, but realize that won’t improve matters. I am at a crossroads with Declan and need to fix this. Sarcasm doesn’t repair anything.
“Doesn’t it make you feel weird accepting all these lavish gifts?”
She peers at me in confusion. “No. I’m not asking for them. I’ve never pressured Andrew to spend money on me. Ever. If he wants to give me these beautiful items as a present, then what’s the harm?”
What’s the harm?
“Don’t you feel like it’s too much, too soon? I’ve been with Declan for more than two years and some of the gifts he tries to give me feel too extravagant.”
Amanda’s eyes tighten, her head shaking slightly, her expression one of intense thought. “If I felt like it made me obligated to him, I suppose it would bother me.” Her eyes dart nervously to me. “Is that it?”
“No! No,” I protest. “Not at all. Declan’s made it really clear that he wants me to have all these beautiful luxuries because he can give them. Not because it ties me to him, or makes me think I owe him.”
“Is this about Steve?”
“Wha?”
“Are you worried Declan’s trying to shape you too much, like Steve did? Worried that he wants you to wear the ‘right’ clothes, drive the ‘right’ car, eat the ‘right’ foods?”
“No.” The answer comes so easily, and is crystal clear. For a topic I can’t quite wrap my head around, this much is obvious. “I don’t get that vibe from him at all. Never have.”
Her shoulders relax, and she grabs for her water bottle on the treadmill rack, drinking half before turning back to me with a smile. “Then he just wants to share.”
“Share?”
“Share his life with you.” A sly smile tickles her lips. “We think of these choices Andrew and Declan make as luxuries, but to them, they’re not. A Tesla to Andrew is like buying a cheap Toyota to us. Bringing an Italian designer into your hotel suite to create outfits for you is like one of us going to Ann Taylor at the mall and asking the salesperson for some color-coordination help.”
I slow the treadmill down to 2.5 miles per hour and finish off my water, all while contemplating her words.
“Shannon, maybe this is just who Declan is, and he wants you to embrace that. Let him.”
“How did you become so wise?”
She jangles her Tiffany charm bracelet. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m blowing smoke out my own ass. I just know that Andrew is giving me peeks into his real life, and I’m accepting that. Reveling in it. Besides,” she says with a confident laugh, “it’s not like I’m marrying the guy anytime soon!”
It’s hard to believe that two days ago she was bringing me lattes from Starbucks in the prep room at Farmington Country Club, acting as a filter between me and Mom.
It’s even harder to realize she’s really with Andrew, and that they’re happy, after two years of Andrew being a douche and not letting himself truly fall in love with her.
But you know what’s harder?
Realizing that she’s right.
Maybe I’ve gone about this all wrong. Amanda has a great point.
Maybe I need to let Declan spoil me a little.
It can’t hurt, right?
* * *
“What are you doing?” Declan asks as he walks into the bathroom, naked, obviously ready to take a shower. I eye the wall of glass, twelve different shower heads all positioned at various angles. If the entire enclosure weren’t lined with Italian marble I’d think this was a prison.
I squint, holding the magnifying-glass mirror a few inches from my face, tweezers in hand. “I’m doing my eyebrows.”
Reflected in the half-wall-sized mirror, he’s a study in artistic perfection. While I am Rubenesque, he’s all Greek sculpture, his body suited for display at a national gallery. Declan isn’t an enormous, overbuilt gym rat, nor is he a metrosexually-toned man who has a Body By Trainer. He works out regularly and yes, has a staff for that, but the natural grace of muscles stretched over bone that moves through the world as if it owns the space in any given room is part of his mystique.
He sets his neatly-folded underwear on the sink next to my toothbrush and glowers at me.
“Doing your eyebrows?”
“Yes. It’s a beauty thing.”
“I know what it is, Shannon. Why not go to the spa downstairs?” He frowns again, his eyes buried under a tuft of bedhead hair from last night. Boyishly cute, his look morphs into an expression that makes me pause.
“Spa? No.” I don’t need the intimidation factor. If I want to be reduced to an ego the size of a fingernail and feel like an awkward middle-schooler out of her league, I’ll ask my mother to go shoe shopping with me. I don’t need the stress that comes from going to a luxury spa in a place where the breakfast menu includes egg whites with basil-infused air.
“Where did you get tweezers? We never packed bags. Did the staff bring those?”
“When I went out with Amanda yesterday, I dashed across the street to a drug store. Got a few things.”
His frown deepens. “You’re plucking your eyebrows with drug store tweezers?”
“Yes.”
“While staying in one of the first hotels I created, which possesses a worl
d-class spa I personally designed for optimal marketing purposes and hotel guest satisfaction?”
“Uh...”
Snatching the silver implement out of my hands, he throws it in the trash and stalks out of the bathroom. I retrieve the tweezers from the garbage can and tuck them away in my makeup bag.
He’s back in one minute. “Lüq is expecting you downstairs. Now.”
“Luke?” He says it in a funny way, like Lee-ooq.
“No, Lüq.”
“That’s what I said. Luke. And who is Lüq?”
“The spa manager. Lüq has orders to take care of you.”
Terror makes all the hair on my body stand up, especially the southern parts. I know where this is going.
“I hate spas. You know I hate spas.”
He leans against the doorjamb with a smug smile. “I know you do. That’s why I just called in reinforcements.”
“What? You need reinforcements for cucumber skin treatments and hot stone massages?”
His eyebrow goes up. “You did read the spa menu.”
I shrug. “But at two hundred bucks for a fifty-minute massage, no way.”
“That’s a bargain.”
“That’s a crime. For five dollars I can get Tyler to heat up rocks in the microwave and put them on my back while Jeffrey walks on my ass and spine in his stocking feet.”
Knock knock knock.
“Shannon?”
That’s my mother’s voice.
I look at him in horror. “You didn’t.”
“Reinforcements.” His smug smile makes me regret having so much sex with him this morning.
Okay. That’s not true. Let’s just say I’m angry and leave it at that.
Declan shrugs into the bathrobe in the armoire, then opens the door. Even Mr. Exhibitionist has his limits when it comes to being naked around my mother.
Mom and Amanda are standing there.
Mom walks in, looking as excited as Chris Harrison with a fresh set of contestants on The Bachelor. “We’re here to make Shannon learn to relax!”
Right. ’Cause that’ll work. Force Shannon to enjoy herself.
She reaches for my face and twists it from side to side. “You need a full-face threading. Especially for that chin hair there. A few more of those and you’ll have that new lumbersexual look down, honey. If Declan wanted to see growth like that, he’d have married a man.”