by Julia Kent
But having a real, live, mostly-naked woman in front of my face while I try to eat dinner isn’t my idea of fun, especially when it’s a surprise.
I chug my wine and stand up. “Excuse me,” I say, scooting out the side of the booth.
“What’s wrong?” Declan asks, frowning.
“Nothing,” I lie. “Just need to use the bathroom.” I grab my purse and rush over to the solace of a toilet where I can sit down and not be eye level with a vertical taco.
OMG HELP, I text to Amanda.
Please answer. Please answer. Please answer.
What’s wrong? she texts back.
Declan brought me to a topless stripper joint for dinner, I text back.
WUT? she replies.
I know. Help, I answer.
How can I help? Rush over with coats to cover the women? she types, adding a smiley face.
You suck, I reply.
Need more ones and fives? Now that’s a topless bar emergency, she answers. LOL.
I hate you, I reply. LOL my ass.
“What was he thinking bringing me to a topless bar?” I mutter.
I stop, my entire body flushing.
“Topless bar,” I repeat, the words echoing off the steel stall walls.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.
“Topless bar,” I say again, louder, my breathing growing raspy, hyperventilation a few minutes away.
“Yeah, lady,” the bathroom attendant says. “You’re in a topless bar. Congratulations for figuring it out. How drunk are you?”
Bzzzzz.
I look down at the phone. Amanda has texted back:
OMG, Andrew’s begging me to let us join you
WUT? I type back.
Declan’s texting him and going on about how enlightened you are and how you asked to go to dinner at a topless bar and asked for a Moroccan stripper and now Andrew’s pestering—
I stop reading, shove the phone in my purse, and rush back to the table.
I do not sit down.
The music number halts just as I look at Declan and shout:
“TAPAS BAR! I SAID TAPAS BAR!”
His smile wavers. Hoots and hollers from other tables dot the wall of sound behind me, but I don’t really hear because all of the blood in my body has rushed to my face from embarrassment.
“That’s right. We’re here. You said you liked Moroccan. She was the closest I could get on short notice—”
“T-A-P-A-S. Tapas,” I clarify, drawing out the letters as I spell the word. “Tah-pas.”
Even in the dimly lit nightclub I can see Declan go pale.
“Oh, God,” he mutters, draining his glass of wine and not bothering to refill it. He just starts drinking the rest straight from the bottle. People begin to cheer. Someone throws a casino chip at him. It bounces off his collar and clatters to the floor.
The belly dancer comes over and whispers in my ear. “Hey, honey. Your sweetie bought you special dance from me in one of the back rooms. I’m Amina. Heard you like Moroccan melon.” She licks the outer edge of my ear and cups her ample breasts, heaving them up so they’re inches in front of my mouth. “And you like to share.” She winks.
Declan’s jaw drops.
I give him a death scowl. I am also unexpectedly aroused, and the combination of embarrassment and simple biological reactions makes the room spin.
Bzzzzzz.
That’s his phone.
“If you,” I say through gritted teeth, “actually think that I am going to hang out at a topless bar with you, Andrew and Amanda, you’re delusional.” I look at Amina’s rack. “And besides, my boobs are way better than hers.”
To his great credit, Declan immediately stands up and turns to the dancer, handing her a couple hundreds he’s pulled out of his wallet. “There’s been an enormous misunderstanding,” he says to her, throwing more money on the table and grabbing me so fast I stumble, unable to keep up with him, but somehow I figure a way out.
He bursts through the doors to the street and stands there with such a pitiable look on his face that I burst out laughing, the sound part horror, part hilarity, and part shock.
“You—you thought I wanted you to take me out to dinner at a topless bar?”
“That’s what you said!” He throws his hands up, flinging them toward the heavens, as if the God of Pasties will come to his rescue.
“When have I ever asked to go ogle strange, naked women with you as a form of dining entertainment?”
“Never. But there’s a first time for everything, and we’re in Vegas, and you clearly said ‘topless’ bar.”
“T-A-P-A-S. I said TAPAS!”
“You were going on and on about savoring the exotic, and licking melons, and sharing whatever we both liked—”
“And you thought that suddenly meant I wanted to hang out in a meat show with you? And—” I shudder “—share?”
He stops and goes quiet, looking down at the ground, hands planted on his hips, nodding slowly. Declan looks up, his face half-hidden in the shadows of a street light.
“Well, yeah. It did seem a little too good to be true.”
Our phones ring. Simultaneously.
“Don’t you dare answer that,” I growl as I fish my phone out of my purse.
“You can answer yours, but I can’t answer mine?” He ignores me and takes the call. I answer mine.
“What’s going on?” Amanda asks, breathless.
“I said TAPAS!” I scream. “T-A-P-A-S!”
“Oh.” She almost sounds...disappointed? “Well. I guess we really shouldn’t join you, then, if, um, it was all a big misunderstanding.”
“Ya think?”
I hear her whispering in the background, then a man’s groan of frustration. She comes back to the line and asks, “Just, you know, out of pure curiosity, what’s the address you’re at?”
Click.
Declan ends what is obviously a call with Andrew and gives me a wild look. “I gave the table to Andrew. Texted Geordi. He’ll be here any minute. We can go back to our suite and pretend this never happened.”
My stomach growls.
“If you think,” I say in a menacing voice as I walk slowly toward him like a mother lion going after a hyena eyeing her cubs, “that we can pretend this never happened, you’re certifiable.”
He winces, his mouth going tight.
I kiss it.
He rears back in shock.
“What?” My kiss muffles the end of the question, his mouth softening fast, responding to the sudden connection. My body is pounding from adrenaline and I wish I had more wine. He tastes like grapes and sweetness, and he’s covered in a fine sweat, his scent all male and hot and what the hell just happened in there?
“You hired a special dance for me from a woman who can bend like a pipe cleaner with two watermelons attached,” I fume, turned on and furious at the same time. I’m not sure whether to slap him or spank him.
Maybe both.
“I’m so sorry.” He looks bewildered and confused, contrite and simultaneously really turned on, and it occurs to me that I have the upper hand here. In a big way.
“You should be!” I slap his ass, hard. His hand is on my wrist in a flash, and I’m imprisoned by his grip. He moves me closer to the building and cages me with his arms, his hot, wine-soaked breath sending intermittent chills and heat waves through me.
“That kind of play is private,” he murmurs as he drags his lips along my collarbone.
“You were happy to have us ogle topless strippers in public.”
“The only body I want to ogle topless is yours, Shannon.”
I make a noise that clearly indicates I don’t believe him.
“Think back,” he whispers, his lips skimming my skin at the hollow of my throat. “Was I drooling over them?”
I can’t quite breathe right any more, the chilly night air making my skin ripple with goose bumps, Declan’s seductive moves leaving me weak-willed.
“No,” I say. He’s right.
He kept looking at me the entire time. “Why did you watch me watching them?”
“Because I wanted to please you.”
“You took me to a nightclub where there were more bare boobies than a La Leche League meeting to please me?”
“I thought you were into it.”
I pause. I unpause. “Let me understand this. If I have a sexual...taste, let’s say, you want to fulfill it.”
“Of course.”
“So if I wanted you to whip me—”
“Oh, God, anything but that. Please don’t turn me into a billionaire cliché.”
“—or wear a chipmunk suit—”
“A what?”
“—or play The Fireman and the Dalmatian—”
“You’re veering into sick territory now, Shannon.”
“Hiring a belly dancer in a topless bar as a delicacy to meet your perceived notion of my sexual tastes isn’t sick?”
He groans. It’s the sound of my victory. “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”
“Nope.”
“How can I make it up to you?”
“I need to think about it.”
“That means you’re going to drag this out forever.”
He knows me so well, doesn’t he?
My stomach growls again. Geordi pulls up in the limo, confusion in his eyes, but he wouldn’t dare ask why we only spent fifteen minutes in the nightclub. We pile into the back of the limo and as the driver takes off Declan turns to me, gives me a wicked grin, and folds in half, laughing so hard I fear he’ll pass out.
I join him.
It feels great.
“Geordi?” I ask as Declan gasps and belly laughs, chortles and grunts.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Can you find us a tapas bar? T-A-P-A-S.”
He makes a little sound of surprise, as if he suddenly had a flash of insight. “Yes, ma’am,” he replies, his voice a little lower. “I certainly will. May I suggest Platos Pequeños?”
I brighten. That’s the one next door to Litraeon!
“Is it new? I haven’t heard of it,” Dec asks, his voice neutral.
“Well rated.” He names a celebrity chef.
“Sounds good.” And with that, we’re on our way.
On our way to coffee nirvana.
I mean, er, a good tapas meal.
As Geordi slows the limo at the light in front of the resort and makes a left turn, Declan lets out a sound of surprise.
“Wait a minute,” Declan says with a low, grunting sigh, turning to me with the deliberate, prowling look of a predator. “This is the resort next to Litraeon.”
I’m so busted.
“Geordi,” he asks evenly, “where is Platos Pequeños?”
Geordi’s answer is a simple right turn and a finger point. “Right here, sir.”
My beloved crosses his arms over his chest, his body curving away from me on the seat, his shoulders widening as he fills his lungs with air designed to fuel whatever outrage he’s feeling.
And it’s all pointed at me.
I’ve lost the self-righteous advantage, haven’t I? All it took was one left turn and—
“This was all a scheme to get your hands on that coffee. What the hell is so special about it?” As he asks, his frown deepens.
I open my mouth to explain, but he interrupts.
“Geordi, take us back to our hotel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dec, c’mon.”
He’s silent, tapping on his phone, and then:
“We’re having room service. One of the chefs at Litraeon has been experimenting with tapas. We’ll be his taste testers.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Declan says with a wolfish grin, shaking his head at me. He looks like he’s not sure whether to kiss me or throttle me. “He’s confirmed a Moroccan melon dish with fish and Mexican mocha.”
Before I can protest, he’s kissing me. Whew.
Being busted has its perks.
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning, I awake in Declan’s arms, his naked body pressed against my back. He’s breathing slowly, clearly still in some state of slumber, though one part of him most decidedly is not. We’d made love with abandon, a joyful enthusiasm triggered as much by the strangely erotic set of missteps between us as by the gradual recovery from the insanity of our almost-wedding back in Boston.
Last night was epic. Bizarre and ripe in all the ways regular life can’t be. Our misunderstanding took us both to places we’d never imagined, and left me looking at Declan with new eyes.
He certainly thought I’d changed.
Chaos loves a vacuum.
I throw on a robe and check my phone, finding more than enough messages from old high school friends, some college buddies, a former boss from an internship I had years ago—and they all include attachments of pictures of me.
With a Minion.
A little digging gives me the answer I suspect: the Minion chick sold that picture for five thousand dollars to an unidentified gossip website. A quick look at Jessica Coffin’s Twitter feed shows that she posted it ages ago.
Hmmm. Wonder who that “gossip website” is.
Declan will hit the roof when he sees this. Between the topless/tapas bar fiasco and now a pic of me with a painted, naked woman posing as a Minion, the viral story of the runaway billionaire groom just got more legs.
“Are you kidding me?” he says from the other room, his voice dark and sleepy, a little dangerous. He sleeps with his phone on his nightstand, so I can only guess what he’s seeing.
“Shannon?” he calls out. I wonder if this how Mom feels when she’s been caught doing something wrong. Except—this isn’t my fault. Dad snapped a picture and the woman took off. Preparing my defense, I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge, sighing.
“Did you really send back all those clothes?” He frowns. “Evie sent me an email explaining how sorry she was that she couldn’t help you find more than two outfits to your liking.”
“Wait. This isn’t about the Minion boob picture?”
His eyebrow arches. “The what?”
“Never mind.”
“What’s a Minion boob picture?”
I tell him the story in a rush. He doesn’t laugh. He sends Grace a few texts, then turns to me and says, “It’s taken care of. PR will handle it. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just an opportunist.”
“Great,” I say, picking up the corded phone by the bed. “Should I call room service for breakfast?”
He gives me a curt nod. I call and within a minute the deed is done.
As I walk away to go shower and dress, I expect him to follow. Shower sex—especially in a suite with so many shower heads—is a Declan delight.
But I shower alone.
As I dress, he jumps in the shower, and while I muddle through my tangled thread of thoughts, the staff delivers breakfast. By the time Dec’s out of the shower, toweling his wet, dark hair, I’m drinking coffee, legs crossed in a chair that faces the fountain and the fake Eiffel Tower on the strip.
“Is that one of the outfits Evie helped you with?”
I look down. “No. It’s a little from Marcello, and a little from her...” I don’t finish my sentence, because some element in his voice makes me pause.
He is angry.
Not this again. As I sit here watching the sun against the brush-covered beige mountains in the distance, the long metropolis before the base of the hills teeming with industry and debauchery in the form of skyscraper casinos and nightclubs, I feel a deep determination. Ever since we arrived here in Vegas, we’ve been prickly over any issue involving money.
His money.
Then again, we can’t really talk about my money, because that would be a three-second conversation.
His phone is the center of his attention now, as he stands in front of the room service cart, idly picking at a berry bowl and scrolling through messages. “Grand Canyon and solar panels,” he mutters. Must be
some new business venture Anterdec’s involved with.
“We need to figure out what we’re doing here,” I say. “I feel like I’m living in suspended animation. We got away from the crazy wedding mess back in Massachusetts, and we’ve been here in Vegas for three days. What’s next?” I figure this is safe territory.
“I don’t know. Dad’s sticking his nose in the resort VP’s face constantly and driving her nuts. Your mom and dad dumped us to go watch 1970s entertainers. And you’re rejecting me left and right.”
“You could have followed me into the shower!” I protest.
“That’s not what I meant.”
And I know it.
“I’m not rejecting you,” I say gently. I don’t stand up, instead gazing out at the horizon, my eyes going unfocused as the line between mountain and sky blurs. “I just don’t want all this.”
“You don’t want me?”
“Ha ha.”
“That wasn’t a joke.”
A chill whips through me so fast that I reel, the dissonance too great. “Of course I want you!”
“But not my life.”
“What?”
“I try to share my life with you, Shannon.”
“You are sharing your life,” I say calmly, my grounded tone entirely fake. I’m trembling inside. “We live together. We’re about to get married.”
“And when I try to give you a nice wardrobe, or share a wonderful meal from a new chef, or buy you fine jewelry, you—”
“Don’t you understand that every time I look at a designer dress you buy for me, I see a car payment. When you talk about going out to dinner at private clubs, I see a student loan payment. When we take Carol and her boys to Canobie Lake Park and you treat everyone to all the goodies in there, Carol and I secretly feel really strange, because we’re used to packing a cooler and eating on the cheap—because just the tickets alone were hard enough for Mom and Dad to manage. And—” I sputter, trying to make up for anything I’ve said that might offend him—“it’s not that I don’t appreciate it all. I do. I know it comes from the heart, but I can’t unfeel what I feel.”
All those words come rushing out of me like a flash flood on a mountain pass, debris rising with the water line, destroying the only path along the way.