by Julia Kent
Shopping for a CEO’s Honeymoon
Julia Kent
Contents
Shopping for a CEO’s Honeymoon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Acknowledgments
Other Books By Julia Kent
About the Author
Shopping for a CEO’s Honeymoon
by Julia Kent
He says we never had a proper honeymoon.
So, instead, he’s giving me… a prepper honeymoon?
Who knew billionaire preppers were a thing?
I guess I’m about to find out.
He gave her a house–his family’s estate!–as a wedding gift. But when Amanda suggests they stay home and nest for two weeks, Andrew takes her idea and gives it more power.
WAY more power. Home remodeling never looked so good… or felt so hot.
Julia Kent’s New York Times-bestselling romantic comedy series continues as Andrew and Amanda settle in to married life… and so much more.
Chapter 1
Amanda
I am eating a piece of grilled white asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, drizzled with melted manchego cheese and coated in crushed pistachio, when my friend and co-worker Josh ruins my culinary orgasm by bringing up my honeymoon.
More specifically, my lack of a honeymoon.
And all I can do is grunt.
“I’m just saying,” he says with a sigh as he waves his bacon-wrapped, goat-cheese-stuffed date around on its toothpick like he’s the conductor of the Boston Pops doing a tapas bar gig, “you married a freaking billionaire. You deserve a honeymoon.”
“It’s not about what Amanda does or doesn’t deserve,” Carol insists on my behalf. As I chew, I give her a look that either says thank you or is so indecent, I need a cigarette and a fan, because damn, that asparagus is good.
“What is it about?”
“It’s about what they want. I mean, my God, Josh! Andrew bought her an estate as a wedding gift. I think he’s got all the good-husband bases covered.”
“Pfft. That? He’s a billionaire! That’s to be expected.”
“You’re pooh-poohing my husband’s gift to me? An estate in Weston, Massachusetts? It’s one of the most expensive zip codes in the country,” I say, parroting his affect.
“Hello? Billionaire? For him, that’s like buying a cheap condo behind the railroad tracks in Clinton. Declan bought Shannon an entire coffee chain.”
“This isn’t a competition,” I say, alarm making my pinot noir taste like vinegar.
“And he managed to give her a nice honeymoon in Hawaii.”
I lean in. “Define nice. Because those two still refuse to talk about their honeymoon.”
“Isn’t that weird?” Carol says, affirming my gut instinct. “Shannon’s normally easy to pry information out of, but she’s so close-lipped on this.”
“Maybe they had an orgy,” Josh ponders.
“On their honeymoon?” Carol’s right to be skeptical.
“Weirder things have happened.” Josh wraps his arm around my shoulders. His armpits smell like lemon and coconut. “I was married to Amanda, you know. We had a honeymoon.”
“We had a panic-filled hour in a Las Vegas hotel suite after being poisoned with psychedelic-contaminated wine. You, me, Andrew, and Andrew’s Vegas chauffeur all woke up together wearing wedding rings.” I wrench his arm off me. “Don’t compare the two.”
“I am so glad I’m not actually married to you!” Josh sniffs, then his sniff becomes more emotional than judgmental. “But I sure do miss Geordi.” That’s Josh’s ex-boyfriend.
“I’m sure you do. But quit comparing.”
“I’m just saying, maybe Shannon and Declan are being private about their honeymoon because it’s, you know.” Wink wink. “Private.”
“Declan doesn’t strike me as the swinger type,” Carol declares.
“Right,” I add. “He’s not the sharing type. Have you ever tried going to a tapas bar with him?”
Josh straightens up, frowning at me. “Did you just say topless?”
“What? No! Tapas. Declan won’t even share small plates. You expect him to share his entire wife?”
“Scratch that theory off the list,” Josh mutters.
“Why did you,” Carol says, pointing to me, “and my little sister both land billionaires for husbands, and all I got was a tattooed ‘musician’ who turned MLM pyramid schemes into an art form and tried to convince me that lube made from tea tree oil was an aphrodisiac? Where’s my billionaire?”
“Oh, God, not this again,” Josh groans. “Carol must be on her third glass of sangria.”
She shakes the ice cubes at the bottom of her glass. “How’d you know?”
“Drink #1: This is great! I love hanging out with friends. Drink #2: I’m hungry. Drink #3: Why can’t I get a billionaire?” Josh says, ticking off the list with his fingers.
“What’s Drink #4?” Carol asks.
“I hate Drink #4,” he says, turning red. “It’s when you start to tell us how long it’s been since you’ve had sex.”
“I do not!”
“Do too,” I inform her. Josh’s eyes jerk like his brain is riding a bucking bronco. “And then there’s Drink #5.”
“We won’t talk about that!” Josh squeals.
Carol gives him a head tilt and raised eyebrows, her sangria paused halfway to her mouth. “What on Earth? I don’t have five drinks when we come out like this!”
“No, no, it was Mathilda’s wedding. Remember? She invited everyone in marketing to her wedding when she and Dryden tied the knot.”
“The reception? The one that was all about candles in mason jars and a goat as a flower girl? On the farm in West Boylston?”
“That one,” Josh says primly, turning even redder.
“I did drink heavily that night. I’d just gotten my second child-support check from Todd, ever, from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Twenty-three dollars and twelve cents. And then we came to the wedding and–what did I do after Drink #5? Talk about my dry sex life?”
Josh looks like he’s choking on a cocktail stirrer.
“You asked Josh to sleep with you,” I blurt out. Might as well get this over with.
Carol laughs. “Did not!”
“You did,” he says, twisting away, his neck at an unnatural angle, like a swan procreated with a pipe cleaner. “You were, uh, very specific about what you wanted.” He makes a face like he’s imagining eating something he doesn’t like.
Carol’s turn to blush. “I did not hit on you! You’re not my type, Josh. Sorry.”
“But. You. Did.” Josh grabs the edges of the table, which is made of stone, dark and grooved with deep scratches and years of sweaty glasses.
“If I did, I was clearly beer goggling it.”
“Vodka goggles. Not beer,” I correct her.
“I’m sorry, Josh. Sorry I offended you. You’re definitely not my type, so it would take that much vodka to get me to hit on you.”
“You manage to turn an apology into an insult like it’s programmed into you.”
Carol laughs. “Blame my mother.”
Josh huffs and steals the last goat-cheese-stuffed date with a flourish.
“Anyhow, we got way off track.” Carol looks at me. “About that honeymoon you never had...”
“It’s fine. I’m not exactly suffering.”
Josh and Carol snort in unison, and just like that, everything between them is mended. Never underestimate the power of a
common jealousy target.
“When you marry a guy like Andrew, the word suffering is stricken from your vocabulary,” Carol instructs me. She’s always had that tone the eldest child gets when talking to a younger sibling. No, we’re not biologically related, nor did her parents officially adopt me, but I’m basically a de facto little sister.
Which means I get all the irritation of a big sister and none of the long-term benefits.
“I don’t need a honeymoon,” I say flatly.
“Your life is no longer about what you need, Amanda,” Josh intercedes. “Seriously.” His palms go up in a gesture of supplication. “I’m not poking you.”
Carol snickers.
He gives her a death glare. “I mean that your life is all about wants now. Not needs. The needs are covered. So think about what you want. Heart of hearts, if you could have a honeymoon anywhere in the world with Andrew, where would it be? Because he can give you that. He can give you anything.”
“Heart of hearts?” I ask, still a little stung for reasons I don’t quite understand.
Carol gives me a genuine grin. That, or she’s been lying about how many drinks she’s had, because she’s suddenly touching and friendly. I want to confide in her.
“If I could go on a honeymoon with Andrew, anywhere? For how long?” I clarify.
“Two weeks,” Josh says. “I would say three weeks, because that’s how Europeans go on vacation, but people in the U.S. are weird about long vacations.”
“That’s because we don’t get six weeks’ paid time off,” Carol says.
“Six weeks? Two weeks? Hah!” I chortle, the sound simultaneously exactly right and terribly disturbing. “I’ll be lucky to get forty-eight hours alone with him, and half of that will involve his phone and answering texts.”
“No. You get two weeks of nothing but him and his attention,” Josh emphatically declares.
“I think that is a really, really big dose of Andrew.”
“You can’t handle that... big a dose?” When Josh tries to be deeply inappropriate, it always comes out like Mr. Rogers is hitting on you. It’s simultaneously flattering and soul destroying.
“Please. Stop.” Carol sets down her skewered grilled shrimp covered in basil. “You sound like Pee-wee Herman.”
“I do not!” Josh protests, adenoids performing a cheerleading routine.
“You prove me right every time,” she says, grinning.
“Back to your honeymoon,” he grumbles. “Two weeks.”
“No way! He runs one of the biggest companies in the world! The one that provides you with a salary and benefits,” I point out.
“And you deserve two weeks of time from your new husband,” Josh emphatically replies.
I give them suspicious looks. “You just want me out of the office for two weeks straight. Why?”
“So you can have fun!” Carol chirps.
“So we can clean all the orange stains off your desk,” Josh replies honestly, nose wrinkling in disgust. “Our current repertoire of chemicals isn’t cutting it.”
“Is that why my desk smells like bleach every morning?”
“Someone had to intervene.”
“I don’t eat that many Cheetos!”
“Show me your cuticles,” Josh demands.
I sit on my hands. “I am not a piece of meat for you to view at your pleasure,” I inform him.
Carol and Josh give each other conspiratorial looks.
I did it again.
I just strengthened their alliance.
“How is Shannon?” I ask Carol, changing the subject.
“She’s fine, I guess. Don’t you see her more often than me, Cheeto Fingers?”
“I haven’t seen her for two weeks or so. She was hiding Ellie from the world after the poor baby got a cold.”
“Right.” Carol yawns. “She called me last week in a crying panic, blabbering about bulb syringes and baby saline solution. I think Declan is close to convincing her to hire a night nurse to help them out.”
“You think? How did he manage that?”
“When she called me at three a.m., crying, I said to her, ‘You are insane to say no to a night nurse. She could be doing all of this for Ellie right now and you and I could be sleeping.’”
“You think that worked?”
“She hasn’t called again.”
I look at Carol. Then Josh. Slowly, I pull my hands out from under my butt.
Not orange.
I waggle my fingers at them. “I told you.”
“That just proves you’re good at covering your tracks,” Carol scoffs.
“Or that you get good manicures more often than the rest of us,” Josh adds, examining his cuticles with vexation.
Carol does a double take. “And to think I actually hit on you.”
“Men can get manicures!” Josh protests.
I come to his defense. “Andrew does. So does Declan.”
Carol shows us her ratty fingers. “I am not judging men for getting manicures. I’m judging men for having nicer nails than mine.”
Josh stares. “Is that glitter nail polish on the edge of your index finger? When was that from? 1987?”
“Tyler did it,” she says. “Part of Unicoga.”
“You weren’t there!” I point out. Carol’s mom, Marie, posted a poorly worded ad on Facebook that led to scores of swinger couples attending her yoga class. “Unicorn yoga” is fine, but when swingers think you’re their kind of unicorn, all the single women in the room are up for grabs.
“Only because Dad couldn’t help with the kids that day. From the sound of it, I would have been popular.”
We snicker. She’s right.
Narrowing his eyes, Josh challenges me with one of his patented lizard looks. “I think unicorns are overrated.”
“You didn’t in Vegas. When we were almost married,” I remind him.
“We’re not talking about that,” he says, sniffing. The sniff turns sad.
“Oh,” I say, instantly remorseful. I rub his back. “I didn’t mean to bring up Geordi again.” Geordi was our Anterdec chauffeur in Las Vegas, during Shannon and Declan’s wedding. Andrew and I woke up in a hotel room with Geordi and Josh, all four of us wearing wedding rings, about three years ago.
Yeah. I know. It’s as weird as it sounds.
“I cannot believe Geordi never told me,” Josh says, sniffing more. “Who knew he would join the Peace Corps! Most of the time, when guys ditch me, they just ghost. Or leave a note that they ran off and joined the circus.”
Carol laughs.
“No. Really,” he says, pensive. “My old boyfriend Remington swallowed fire. Nice guy. No gag reflex whatsoever.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Carol says, gagging.
I pour the rest of the sangria and hog it for myself, suddenly wishing tapas bars served Cheetos.
“Look,” Josh says, pulling himself together. “You need a honeymoon. If you won’t do it for you, do it for us.” He points between himself and Carol.
“For you two?”
“Shannon has never, to this day, told me what happened in Hawaii. I deserve to live vicariously through a billionaire’s honeymoon. My sister won’t do it, so it’s all on you,” Carol declares.
“That’s not fair!”
“Life isn’t fair. But I’ll bet it’s way more fair when you’re married to a wealthy man.”
I start to argue. I close my mouth.
She’s right. They both are.
I need to go home prepared.
“If this backfires on me, I’ll blame you two.”
“How could it backfire?” Josh asks. “It’s the perfect plan.”
The perfect plan.
What could go wrong?
Andrew
Making love on top of a down comforter dragged in front of a roaring fire is as romantic as it seems.
Doing it in your own house is even better.
We’re completely naked, stretched out next to each other, the fire�
�s glow making Amanda’s bare skin a work of art. For a split second, I can imagine her as a movie actress, the camera panning over the slopes of her perfect curves, shadows and light playing on my wife with a majesty reserved for only a handful of ethereal beings.
I turn to her, feeling rugged and powerful, the scent of cedar and oak as it burns reminding me of ski lodges, high school wilderness treks, and now–my own home.
My childhood home is rapidly becoming ours, the shift slow in coming.
It’s not that I don’t have the money to change the grounds, the interior, the exterior. All of that is doable. What I don’t have is time.
Or, to be blunt, the will.
Every day I walk through the door, I feel a pull to the past. A tug, as if I’m being drawn back in time. Not decades. Not even years. Just a small, intangible sense that destabilizes me for a few seconds before I can consciously right myself. Ghosts are the manifestation of spirits with unfinished business, they say.
Maybe that unease is the gentle yank of a ghost, pulling on my arm.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Amanda says, making me startle slightly. I look at her, smiling at me, nuzzled into my side.
“You need to increase your offer,” I inform her.
“A dollar.”
“Make it a bitcoin and you have a deal.”
She laughs softly, breath blowing against my chest. That feeling needs to be bottled. Captured. Drawn upon in times of difficulty. It’s a light, warm brush of her essence against the skin and bone over my heart. That feeling is the closest sense I have of direct love from her, one breath at a time.
“Seriously. What’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours? Calculating profit margins again?” she pokes.
“Thinking about ghosts.”
She tightens against me, body suddenly tense. “Is the house haunted? You never told me that when we moved in!”
“No, no,” I assure her. “It’s not. Just... I have my moments here, you know?”
