She craned her neck to give him a curious stare. “Is that your fantasy?”
He nodded. “It is one of many.”
“Maybe someday, handsome. Maybe someday.”
“I have another fantasy,” he murmured softly in her ear, tugging her closer as they spooned.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Falling asleep with you in my arms.”
“I think that’s about to become your reality.”
“Lucky me.”
Chapter Twenty
The pancakes were as delicious as she’d promised. With breakfast finished, they walked past a block full of graffiti art and consignment shops in the Mission district. An up-and-coming neighborhood full of hipsters and Internet startup folks, the shops here bore the evidence of the clientele, but there was an element to these few blocks that bothered him. He didn’t like the idea of her living in a neighborhood still plagued with crime and trouble, even if the numbers were improving. She was an independent woman though, and it wasn’t his place to criticize where she lived.
“You like living here?” he asked, keeping the question casual.
“Sure,” she said with a laidback shrug as they sidestepped a sleeping homeless man. “There’s a kickass bakery a few blocks over, some fabulous coffee shops, and lots of boutiques that my sister loves, so I get to see her more often.”
“Maybe we should all do something next time I’m in town,” he suggested, and couldn’t deny the touch of nerves in his chest. Last time he’d asked for something more, she’d gone running. But maybe dinner with her sister was something she could handle.
“I would love that,” she said, and his nerves departed with her simple answer. “And you’re going to love Chris. He’s the best.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him in person,” he said, checking the time on his watch, “in about twenty minutes.”
“Let’s get your bag so you’re not late,” she said as they turned onto her block, passing a vintage clothing shop a few doors down. His driver waited in a town car by her building. Clay gave him a quick wave, then headed to her third-floor apartment. Her cell phone was still on the kitchen counter. She’d left it there all morning, and he’d been grateful to have her undivided attention, a luxury he’d rarely had with Sabrina. He grabbed his suitcase and tapped her metal table. “Good table. That’s a keeper.”
“I was planning on framing that table because I love what we did on it so much,” she said, and then led him back down the stairs and out of her building.
She stopped in her tracks and cursed under her breath. “Fuck,” she muttered and ran a hand through her hair.
“What is it?” he asked, and his shoulders tightened with worry. He zeroed in on her eyes then followed her line of sight to a large man built like a slab of meat pacing a few feet away. The man had black hair, with a white streak down the side. He was scanning the street and quickly set his eyes on Julia.
Instantly, Clay reached for her, draping an arm protectively around her. He turned to look at her, holding her gaze tight with his own. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said in a thin voice as the freight-train-sized man walked toward them.
“You know him?”
“Sort of.” She pressed the tip of her tongue nervously along her teeth.
“Julia,” the man barked as he reached them. “You don’t answer your phone? Is everything okay?” He sounded strangely concerned, almost paternal, and that irked Clay.
“I was out to breakfast,” she said through tight lips. Clay glanced from Julia to the man and back, wanting to know who the hell he was and why he was talking to her like he owned her.
“Charlie needs you tonight.”
Julia didn’t answer him, and Clay sure as hell didn’t like what he was hearing.
“Julia,” Clay asked carefully. “Who’s this?”
The man held out a hand, flashed a toothy smile. “I’m Stevie. Who are you?”
Before he could answer, Julia squeezed his arm tightly, some kind of signal, it seemed, then started talking. “This is Carl. Carl and I met last night at the bar. He’s just heading home now.”
Why the hell was she lying about his name? What was going on? He had no idea, but Julia shot Clay a pleading look, asking with her eyes to go along with the lie. He burned inside, but the need to protect her was stronger than the desire to know the truth.
“Nice to meet you, Carl,” the other man said.
“Likewise,” Clay said, calling on his best acting ability. He had no idea why she needed him to lie, and he didn’t like it one bit, but he wasn’t going to make things worse for her in the moment.
“When you don’t answer,” the man said, tilting his head and explaining in a gentle voice that didn’t match his size, “Charlie gets worried.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, and her voice was strained, her body visibly wracked with fear.
The man nodded, seeming satisfied with her answer. “I’ll tell him. See you later. And nice meeting you, Carl.”
He walked away, his big frame fading down the block. Clay turned to her and did his best to keep his frustration in check. “What was that about? Why did you tell him we met at the bar last night?”
Something dark and sad clouded her eyes. “I don’t want him to know who you really are.”
“What the hell, Julia?” he asked, his heart thumping fast and furious. “What kind of mess are you in?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said in a broken whisper, a guilty look in her eyes. “You just have to trust me on this. I couldn’t say anything about you or use your real name.”
“Because?” he asked, annoyed as hell now because she was giving him no reason to think this was acceptable. Lies were never acceptable.
“Just because.”
“Who are these people, Julia? Why does Charlie need you tonight, and why is Stevie delivering his messages?” He wished he were in a courtroom because he usually knew the answers to the questions he asked. Now he was swimming blind, without a clue as to his direction.
“There’s something I have to help Charlie with,” she said, and it was one of the most dissatisfying answers he’d ever heard, and it left an acrid taste in his mouth. He was ready, so damn ready to get the hell out of town. A knot of anger rolled through him, but then he swallowed it away.
His feelings for her ran too deep to just walk.
He softened, cupping her shoulders. “If you’re in trouble, let me help you,” he offered, doing his best to let go of his past with Sabrina and to trust the woman in front of him, especially after last night and how she’d seemed to finally open up. “If there’s something going on, I want to help you. I know my way around.”
“I can’t. I have to do this on my own.”
“Why?” he asked, the word strangled in his throat.
“You have to trust me on this.”
“You’re making it awfully hard to trust you,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Her lower lip quivered. “I know,” she said, and her voice was starting to break.
“Tell me,” he said, pleading now. “Tell me what is going on. Tell me what they want from you. What they have on you. Let me help solve this for you.”
She worried away at her lower lip, and he wanted to gently kiss her fears away and tell her it would all be fine. But he had no way of knowing that, because she’d given him no reason to put faith in her words.
“You have no idea how much I want to take you up on that. But I can’t let you do it.” She squeezed her eyes shut, so tight and hard as if she were in pain. Then she opened them, and it was like looking in a mirror—her eyes were etched with the same kind of desperation he felt. The problem was, she held all the cards, and he didn’t even know what game they were playing. “I just need you to trust me. That’s all. I need you to. I swear I need you to.”
He ran his fingers gently through her hair, wanting, wishing to trust her. To go all in. But the moment was
far too familiar, and it felt like a flashback to his worst times, especially when she clutched his arm hard.
“I need to go.”
Grabbing his suitcase, he got in the car. He’d have to sort this out later when his head was clear.
The driver took off, but when the car reached the end of the block, Clay’s instincts told him to slow down, to check on her once more. He craned his neck out the window, and his skin prickled.
Stevie.
Again.
Heading in Julia’s direction.
Clay noticed a bulge by the man’s shins, the unmistakable hard, square barrel of a gun held in place with an ankle holster.
His pulse ratcheted. Julia was in danger, and no matter what she was hiding, he had to help her.
“Stop the car.”
Julia and Clay’s story continues in After This Night, available everywhere! Buy it on Amazon.
There are SEVEN other sexy alpha billionaires in this box set. Want to discover another heartthrob? Read on.
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancée
Julia Kent
All of our best dates end up in the emergency room....
I planned the perfect proposal. Plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. The perfect setting. The perfect woman.
The perfect everything.
Dad gave me my late mother’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore. Shannon wouldn’t care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond designed to impress.
But my future mother-in-law, Marie, will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked backside on the internet.
I was going to make it perfect, from the color of the tablecloth to the freshness of the roses.
And it was perfect.
Until Shannon swallowed the ring.
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancée gives near-billionaire Declan McCormick the chance to tell his story in this continuation of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Shopping for a Billionaire series.
AUDIOBOOK NARRATED BY ZACHARY WEBBER!
Table of Contents
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancée
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue (sort of)
Chapter One
Shannon has no idea how many layers of beauty she has. And that’s exactly why she’s so exquisite.
When I was sixteen, the year before my mother died, Mom took me and my little brother, Andrew, to New York City for a long weekend. Pulled us out of school over the objections of the headmaster at our academy. Mom didn’t care. We spent three nights at the Waldorf Astoria, skated at Rockefeller Center, had the best seats at the top Broadway musicals, and dined on the finest footlongs you could get for $3. Loaded with mustard and sauerkraut, plus a cream soda or two.
(Do you have something against footlongs? Too bad. Two teenagers can only handle so much caviar and lobster.)
What I remember most about that trip, and what Shannon reminds me of every moment I look at her, was our trip to the Museum of Modern Art. Mom insisted we go, and Andrew and I rolled our eyes like sets of dice at a craps table.
And then.
And then I got it, right there in front of a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece. In art history class we’d covered this painting in detail. We were taught the biography of van Gogh, how he came to create the series of paintings, his motivation, and his flaws. We’d dissected the meaning so thoroughly that I felt like I could recreate the art by automation, our elite prep school instruction clinical and impeccable.
Standing in front of the painting, a few feet away, with my eyes trailing the curve of brush strokes, my mind taking in the nuance of color, my senses dazzled by the sheer essence of the whole, I halted. Froze. Was completely in the painting’s spell.
You can study something in the abstract. Know it’s real somewhere out there in the world, and understand intellectually that what you read in a book or what you’re told by someone else is true.
You have to stand in front of it and have it stare back at you, though, to really know it.
That’s how I feel when I look at Shannon. Every single time my eyes find her. Shannon’s smile is warm and sweet, yet better every time she flashes it at me. Her honey-colored hair shines in the sunlight but looks richer when it’s tangled, in bed, highlighted by the moon and messed by me. Those warm eyes see only me when we’re together. That luscious body craves my touch. My hands. My...all of it.
When I’m with her, the world is more nuanced. Deeper. Authentic. Real.
She’s a work of art, one of a kind. And one I get to hold next to my body, tuck away in my heart, and...grow old with.
I have planned the perfect proposal. No footlongs and sauerkraut, unfortunately, but plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. (What is it with women and tiramisu? It’s cream, cheese, sugar, cake and rum, not some magic potion that generates mouth orgasms. My Y chromosome scratches its head in confusion, but hey, if it’s her favorite...I give my woman what she wants.)
Dad gave me Mom’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore, a monstrosity he’d bought for her nearly four decades ago as his business took off. The ring is designed to impress. I doubt Shannon would care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond.
And, frankly, I don’t care, either. But the thought of my Shannon sharing such an important part of my mother’s life makes my chest swell. Only Shannon—and my mom—can do that. Only love can do that.
Plus, Marie will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked ass on the internet.
“It’s not as if your brothers are planning to tie themselves down to one woman anytime soon, if ever,” Dad had said when he gave it to me. He’s about as sentimental as a pet rock. After having it resized to fit my future fiancée, it was ready to rest on yet another McCormick woman’s finger.
It was going to be calculatedly perfect, down to the color of the tablecloth and the freshness of the roses.
And it was perfect.
Until Shannon swallowed the ring.
Why do all our best dates end up at the ER?
And who the hell called her mother?
Chapter Two
One week before the proposal...
Grace taps her knuckles on my doorway. For some reason, the door is ajar, the muffled sounds of copiers buzzing and people talking to each other a dull roar in the distance. They all annoy me.
“Declan? The jeweler called. The ring is ready.”
My blank stare is all I can muster.
She smiles. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Ready.” Grace looks like she could get into a catfight with Honey Boo Boo’s mom and come out the winner. When she frowns, something deep and primal in me clenches.
That’s why she’s the best damned admin a guy could have. No worries about office sex (Grace is a lesbian married to a rugby player) and in a pinch, she can act as a bodyguard.
“Ready for a meeting?” Based on the look she gives me, I am not with the program this morning. Frankly, I am not on the planet this morning. Between a helicopter ride from New York that was so choppy I might as well have been riding a bucking bronco, and no sex at all from Shannon for three entire days (due to busines
s meetings in NYC), I am lucky I can read a basic stock report and tie my shoes.
“Ready to get married.”
Oh. Yeah. And then there’s that.
Did I mention the no sex part? Because that’s really occupying my addled brain more than the whole pick-one-woman-for-the-rest-of-your-life thing.
And only one woman.
It’s not so hard to pick one woman to be with for all eternity, right? Grace did it, so I can, too. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
“You look sick. Not ‘ready’.” Grace steps in my office all the way and gently closes the door, holding the doorknob like it’s a ticking time bomb, waiting for the gentle click before turning to me with that look.
You know that look. The look older women give you, their eyes going soft and concerned, like you deserve to be the object of pity, the recipient of chicken soup and completely unusable advice.
Three thin, gold bracelets jangle against her freckled, wrinkled skin. She’s nothing like my future mother-in-law, and—
My entire body tenses for no apparent reason whatsoever. It’s as if the Ghost of Testosterone Past has slipped into my office unannounced.
Future mother-in-law.
Marie.
“I’m fine,” I insist. This is getting old. I have three video conferences with accounts, a business lunch with a client who thinks tequila shots confer the same health benefits as a field greens salad (and by the fourth shot, I always agree with him), and a woman right here in this building who I need to locate, pull into a supply closet and bang senseless.
(That would be Shannon, for the record.)
“Declan, I’ve known you since you were in high school, and I’m going to take off my admin hat for a moment and put on my not-quite-mother hat,” Grace says, complete with hand gestures, as if she’s pretending to wear a hat.
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