A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  And with that, he stalks out. I start to follow him, but Amanda and Greg appear.

  “He can’t do that!” I sputter to Greg. Back me up, dude, I think.

  James McCormick comes out, a bemused look on his face as he stares at me. “Ms. Jacoby, I assume you can give a good show for Declan tonight?”

  Show? What am I now? Who cares about this stupid account? I’ve been turned into a boy toy in seconds by Mr. Asshole in a Suit, and I’m about to give the McCormicks a piece of my mind.

  Greg pipes up, finally. Good. Here we go, boss. Defend me.

  “Shannon would be delighted. I’m sure Declan will love whatever she shows him tonight.”

  And with that, James McCormick leaves us, disappearing back into the football-field office.

  I spin in outrage to Greg. “Thanks for pimping me!”

  He shrugs. “The guy said business meeting. If that’s what it takes to land this account, you can talk about process flow and customer satisfaction over candlelight, right?”

  “You ever been told by a VP of marketing to ‘wear something nice’ and had a limo sent to your home for a business meeting?”

  Silence.

  “Look at it this way,” Amanda says, slinging her laptop over her shoulder and shooting me a sympathetic look. “It has to be better than the way you met for the first time.”

  “And you!” I hiss. “‘Hot Guy’? Seriously? You just…I don’t even know you people. It’s like you’ve become my mother!”

  They both shudder. “That’s kind of low, Shannon,” Amanda mutters as we walk to the elevator. Greg scurries over to Stacia the receptionist and I hear him giving her my address. My God. It’s like my mother has been tutoring him.

  “And whoring me out to the VP of Anterdec Industries isn’t?”

  “I’m sure he won’t do anything inappropriate,” Greg says as he catches up to us.

  “Bummer,” Amanda says.

  Greg’s turn to look outraged. He’s old enough—barely—to be our father, and while most of the time he acts like a peer, this isn’t one of those moments. A paternalistic air fills the space between the three of us. It’s more what I’d expected back in that meeting, and I would have appreciated it then, but I’ll take what I can get.

  “You absolutely do not need to go to this business dinner tonight,” he says, resolute. Amanda’s neck snaps back with surprise at the firmness of his words. “I’ll go instead.”

  “Wear something nice,” Amanda chirps.

  He scowls. My stomach sinks. I want him to say that, but I don’t want him to follow through. Being alone with Declan on a date—er, business dinner—sounds like heaven. This is my big chance to prove I am more than Toilet Girl. More pragmatically, if we can mix business and pleasure, why not snag a multimillion-dollar account, too, while I am at it?

  The entire conversation taking place in my head makes me need a shower to wash off how dirty I feel and to need a shower with Declan. Mmmm, Declan in the shower, soaping me up, and—

  “See how distraught she is!” Greg whispers to Amanda. “Look at that blank stare.”

  Amanda snorts. “I think she’s drooling, Greg. That’s the look of a woman dreaming about Hot Guy.”

  He looks offended. “Why would anyone be…you women are so…I don’t understand…” We climb on the elevator and he pushes the Close Doors button. He’s still sputtering when we hit the parking garage level where his car is parked. “And besides, what do you think your mother would say if she knew?”

  “She’d offer me up just like you did, Greg. And go home and cut an extra foot up the slit of any dress I have. She’s a better pimp than you when it comes to dating a billionaire.”

  “He’s not a billionaire,” is all Greg can come back with.

  “He will be when he inherits his share of Anterdec.” Amanda speaks with the authority of someone who has snooped through every nook and cranny of a man’s Google results.

  A dizzy wave of overwhelm makes me cling to the iron-pipe bannister of the concrete steps near Greg’s car. “A billionaire?” Mom would get her Farmington Country Club wedding and more if I…

  STOP!

  “You feeling faint, Shannon?” Greg pauses, looking at me intently. “You seem fragile today.” A look of sheer horror passes over him while I struggle to keep down my bites of all those early-morning bagel sandwiches. “You’re not…you couldn’t be…you know?” He mimes a basketball in front of his already-basketball-sized belly.

  “What? A sumo wrestler?” Amanda mimics with startling brutality.

  “Pregnant,” he whispers. The two of them look at each other with twin expressions of shock and dissolve into hooting laughter, the kind where you wipe your eyes and hope you don’t pee your pants.

  “Not funny,” I say.

  “We know. You can’t be pregnant. It would be the immaculate conception,” Amanda squeaks.

  My dizziness passes. “Done making fun of me? Let’s get going.”

  They compose themselves and Greg beeps his car to unlock it. We climb in. I take the front seat and Amanda grumbles. I summon a Chuckles-worthy glare and she cowers, climbing in without another peep.

  “What’s your rush?” Greg balks as I tap my foot impatiently.

  “I have to find something nice to wear tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You snitch!” It’s 6:45p.m. and I am being held hostage by terrorist extremists with a list of demands that make Al-Qaeda look like preschoolers playing pirate.

  “I didn’t mean to tell her,” Amanda insists. “She asked me about Hot Guy and—”

  “I can hear you. I’m two inches from your mouth,” Mom says, waving an eyeshadow wand like she’s conducting the Boston Pops. Occasionally it actually hits my eyelid. She won’t admit she needs bifocals; her glasses are pushed so low on her nose they might as well be in Albany.

  She can’t see a thing, and I’m rapidly fearing I look more like Pennywise the Clown than Olivia Wilde. Mom promised me she could make me look like her, or Scarlett Johansson, or Jennifer Lawrence with enough time and high-end makeup.

  Right now I’d settle for retaining full vision in my left eye, which she has now poked twice with the eyeshadow wand.

  “You have to look good to catch a billionaire’s eye,” Mom says. Then she frowns and, Lord have mercy, puts down the eyeshadow wand.

  “I know,” I simper.

  “What about the rest of you?” Her eyes comb over her work so far. I think she’d like to produce the Mona Lisa, but is going to have to settle for Lisa Simpson.

  “The rest of me? I shaved my legs and armpits. Plucked my eyebrows—”

  “Is that’s what’s different? What did you use, honey? A weed whacker?”

  I look at her. She flinches. I swear the corners of Chuckles mouth turn up a tad.

  “You can leave now,” I say for the umpteenth time. “It’s a business dinner.”

  “Did you shave…you know?” She points vaguely at my crotch area.

  “My knees? Yes.” I’m playing dumb on purpose.

  “No! Your pink bits.”

  I choke and cough uncontrollably. I am not having this conversation, am I? Seriously? What did I do in a past life to deserve this? I was Eva Braun, wasn’t I?

  “All the girls your age do it. You’d think having a pubic hair or three was some kind of social crime.” She’s talking, and the words are coming out, but I can’t hear her over the lambs screaming in my head. “Then again, men your age have come to expect a smooth Chuckles, so…”

  Chuckles arches his back, the hairs rising on end, and he opens his mouth, hissing.

  “A smooth what?”

  “Chuckles,” she whispers, enunciating the word. He hisses at her.

  “Huh?”

  “P-u-s-s-y,” Mom spells out. “That’s the word your father likes to use now that we need to spice things up in the—”

  “Hari-kari! Give me a kitchen knife!” I shout just as my sister, Amy, walks in the door.
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  “To kill Mom, or you?” She’s carrying a bag of groceries and an extremely large foam hand.

  “Either. Both. Mom was just telling me allllll about how Dad likes to talk dirty in bed.”

  Amy blanches. “Mom? Boundaries! Please!”

  “What? It’s not like that time I told you about needing a new diaphragm because it kept slipping during sex and making those strange sucking sounds.”

  I think even Chuckles turned pale at that one.

  Mom keeps going. “Your father said the sounds reminded him of Darth Vader. So then we had this whole role-play thing going on with Princess Leia and Han Solo….”

  My cell phone rings with a text. Sweet Jesus, thank you. Saved by the limo driver. “Gotta go!” I say. “What’s with the foam finger? You got a date with Robin Thicke?”

  Amy gives me a look like a dog having its eyes poked out by a toddler. “Where are you off to?” She tosses the foam finger at Chuckles, who flees. She never answers my question, though, because Mom decides to be the town crier.

  “Shannon has a date with a billionaire!” Mom exclaims.

  “Oh? And I’m engaged to the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms cereal!” Amy replies, clapping her hands with fake glee.

  I’m out the door before I can hear more.

  Except the limo driver isn’t who greets me when I get down my twenty-seven steps in high heels made of what feel like five-inch hatpins.

  It’s Declan.

  Mom insisted I wear a little black dress, with an emphasis on “little.” I’m a DD up top. Her spaghetti-strap ensemble left the equivalent of Girl Scout badges covering my boobs.

  My tailored blazer with scalloped edges works well. Mom’s borrowed diamond necklace and earrings make the picture. As long as I don’t twist an ankle or take out a small pet with my high heels, I should be fine.

  Declan is wearing what looks like a tuxedo, but without the tie. He approaches, and there’s a moment where the setting sun is behind him and frames his body, the hues of rose and violet streaking the gray sky. He saunters toward me with a look of total absorption, eyes only on me, hungry and appreciative. My core tightens and fills with an unfamiliar feeling.

  Desire.

  He reaches for my hand and just holds it. He smells like soap and cloves and aftershave. I want to taste him. He looks like he wants to devour me.

  “Hello!” says someone from behind me. I close my eyes and wince as my mother breaks her You should rule and calls down to us from the top of my stairs. “You kids have fun.”

  “It’s not the prom, Mom,” Amy shouts through my open apartment door.

  “Of course it’s not,” Mom snaps. “Shannon had those really bad cramps that night and her date got lice, so it’s not like she ever even went!”

  Amy’s face appears at the door for a fleeting second before she drags my protesting mother inside. Slam!

  I blink three or four times, silent. Declan’s thumb begins to move back and forth, slowly, maddeningly, like it’s gentling a spooked horse.

  His hand is shaking a bit. Not from nerves.

  Because he is laughing.

  I jerk my hand away, remembering myself. This is a business meeting. Business. Pure business.

  “I promise I don’t have lice,” he says.

  I almost snap back, And I don’t have my period right now, but I already want to crawl into a hole and die. Why add to it?

  “Not having lice is a great quality in a VP of marketing. Especially since so many of them are louses.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Hey, I aspire to be one someday.”

  “Shannon Jacoby, head louse.” His face hardens as he realizes what he’s said versus what he clearly meant.

  “That just sounds all kinds of wrong, Declan.”

  “How about we both stop talking and just get in the limo.” It’s not a question. His hand lands on the base of my back and we both freeze again. Electricity travels in a full circuit between our two bodies. His pulse becomes mine. The tiny hairs on the wrist I can see stand up slowly, as if summoned, just like—

  Well, just like something else on his body, I imagine.

  The hand on my back slides up my spine, over the fine wool of my jacket, sinking into my loose hair, respectful but sending one hell of a signal. There is no pretense here. I don’t have to guess whether he’s interested. And my signals are so clear that the only way I could be more obvious would be to rent a billboard and hang a twenty-foot color photo of myself naked with the caption “I WILL SLEEP WITH YOU, DECLAN.”

  It can’t be this easy, can it? My mind spins as his fingers move along the tender skin of my neck, making me gasp. I’m looking up at him and his lips look soft. Tender. Commanding and tasty.

  A distant sound of ringing glass fills the air. It’s distinct and cuts through the spell between us.

  Declan looks back toward my front door. My mother is standing next to the open window with a wine glass and a spoon, gently chiming it like she’s at a wedding reception and calling for the bride and groom to—

  “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” she chants.

  Declan looks at me, and with a deadpan expression says, “I think your mother wants us to take this nice and slow.”

  Amy yanks Mom out of the window and I hear muffled yelling. I grab Declan’s hand and pull him to the limo door. The driver opens it and I climb in so fast and so inelegantly I hear my skirt split up the seam in the back.

  Declan hears it, too, but sits back in the beige leather seat and ogles the vast expanse of creamy skin my mishap now exposes. A scene from a movie I saw recently, where a couple has sex in a limo, the woman in a ball gown, straddling the man, picks this exact moment to make a re-entrance into my psyche, plaguing me.

  “Nice legs,” Declan says.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the marketing coordinators.” He starts to say something, and I add, “And to none of the marketing vice presidents.”

  He thinks about that for a second and says, “You got me there.”

  Chapter Nine

  Our eyes lock.

  “Where are we going?” It’s a relief to make simple small talk.

  He names a restaurant I’ve always wanted to try, but needed to date a billionaire to afford.

  Oh.

  “Sounds good,” I say, nodding. Leaning back against the buttery leather, I try to take in my surroundings without looking like a major gawker. The leather seats hug my body better than any knockoff Tempur-Pedic memory foam like Mom and Dad have on their bed back home. A small fridge and a few decanters of what I assume are spirits dot the edges of the enclosed space. The limo looks like it could seat six comfortably, eight in a pinch.

  With just two of us in here, there’s plenty of room to stretch out.

  Go horizontal.

  Or straddle.

  I close my eyes, willing the sensual images that flood my brain to stop. Declan’s steady breath doesn’t help, cutting through me like he’s syncing it with the pictures in my mind. The scent of him fills the air between us and I feel charmed.

  And doomed.

  Declan chooses to say nothing, just watching me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. His eyes take me in and I wonder how I appear to him. Loose, long hair. Makeup mostly where it’s supposed to go. A curvy body in a dress meant to ooze sophistication. A tailored, feminine blazer that says I might be sexy underneath, but I’m all business on the outside.

  My inner world is crumbling, brick by brick, and Declan’s holding the sledgehammer that demolishes me. Women like me don’t ride in cars like this. We don’t get invited out for a dinner—business or pleasure—by men like Declan. And we certainly don’t entertain wild ideas about happily ever after with men who will go so high in the business world that women like me are just, well…coordinators.

  Whatever delusions I hold inside about his attraction for me are there only because he’s looking at me like he really means it. As if I am as beautiful and desirable as his look says.
r />   He’s very good at pretending that I’m worth the attention.

  His phone rings, making me jump. His breathing stays the same, and his sleek, fluid movement impresses me. Nothing seems to rattle him. With dulcet tones, he talks to someone named Grace, the cadence of their conversation quickly familiar to me. Scheduling helicopters and private jets may be out of my realm, but I know a logistics talk when I hear one. Grace is probably his executive assistant. Something about New Zealand, a reception, and then a return flight to the west coast pops up through their twenty-minute conversation.

  I spend the time willing my heart to stay in my chest.

  If I weren’t such a cheap date I’d knock back a shot of whatever is in the crystal decanter at my elbow, an amber liquid that looks good. But two drinks and I’m quite tipsy. Three and I’m drunk.

  Four and I’m singing “Bad Romance” at full blast in a really cheesy karaoke performance. Whether there’s a karaoke machine or not.

  Declan shoots me apologetic looks every so often, and I just smile without teeth. A shrug here and there helps communicate that it’s okay. I get it. And I do.

  In fact, the phone conversation helps me to bring my overwrought self back to center. Business. This is business. I’m not on a date with him. We’re talking about a few million dollars a year that his company wants to spend for a specific value premise, and my company would love to receive that money to offer services.

  That’s it.

  This is a transaction. Not a relationship. And certainly not an affair.

  “It’ll be at the restaurant?” Declan murmurs into the phone, then his face goes neutral but the skin around his eyes turns up a touch, like a smile without his lips moving.

  Grace says something. Declan replies, “Good,” and hangs up abruptly. It would be rude if it weren’t shorthand. I’m sure Grace is doing a dance she and Declan know all too well, keeping the ship running smoothly through the careful discarding of unnecessary social expectations for the sake of ruthless efficiency.

  He tucks the phone inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket just as the driver slows the limo, bringing it to a gentle halt. I look out the window. We’re here.