Shopping for a CEO's Wife (Shopping for a Billionaire Book 12)

by Julia Kent

  Amy shoots Carol a sidelong glance. Carol glares back. The shift in mood makes all the tiny hairs on my body start to rise. We’ve gone from excitement to suspicion in under a second.

  I keep my head steady but my eyes dart to them both. “What?”

  “What?” they ask in unison. Carol moves her hand behind her back. Amy tracks the movement.

  “You two are suddenly behaving in a very weird way. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” they say together.

  “You’re acting like Marie.” The universal insult for the Jacoby and McCormick families. Works every time.

  Amy’s mouth sets in a firm, white line, lipstick bunching in a wavy wiggle between her lips.

  “Fine.” A long sigh comes out of Carol as she thrusts her left hand at me. “Here.”

  I look. It’s like any other hand, the fingernails a little out of date on the manicure, her index and ring fingers exactly the same length, her pinkie finger --

  “OH MY GOD!” I gasp, grabbing her hand. “You have an extra finger!” The tiny, slim appendage is attached to the outside of Carol’s pinkie finger, a little fingernail at the tip, hardly larger than the size of half a Tic Tac. It’s a miniature version of a pinkie finger, and it’s adorable.

  A long, aggrieved sigh pours forth from Carol. She’s clearly had to deal with this kind of response her entire life. “Yes.”

  “How did I not know this?”

  Amy gives Carol a knowing look. “Because we’re sworn to secrecy.”

  “Marie is incapable of keeping a secret.”

  “I made her. She pinkie promised,” Carol insists.

  I snort. Can’t help it. If I can’t control my giggles at funerals, I definitely am not mature enough to let that accidental pun escape my inner teen.

  “She really did!” Carol’s indignant now. “When I was five and went off to kindergarten and Mark Rufujian made fun of my finger and nicknamed me Stubbie, I came home and told Mom I wanted to cut off my hand. That was the first time I realized I was really different. Mom was home juggling two little ones and I was insistent. Even went out to Dad’s shed and found a saw.”

  The image of five-year-old Carol holding a handsaw conjures up a few Stephen King movies.

  “She told me we could go to a hospital and a doctor would cut it off. We even went to a few doctors and they carefully explained that they could do the operation, but I might lose movement in my pinkie and ring fingers. I was already playing piano by then, and Dad patiently explained the consequences of the surgery. That night I made them both pinkie swear -- ”

  Snicker.

  Carol glares at me, but continues. “ -- never to talk about it. Amy and Shannon have had it drummed into them since they were little.”

  “But how have I known you all these years and never noticed?” My mind searches through the archives of all my interactions with Carol. “Hey – wait a minute! You wear fingerless gloves all the time.”

  “The Madonna years were good to me.”

  “So you don’t really suffer from constant cold hands?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Jeffrey is a blabbermouth like Marie. How did you keep him quiet?”

  “Bribery,” Amy and Carol say in unison.

  I look at her hand again. It’s not obvious. I can see how she’s hidden it all these years. It’s obscure, yet now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t unsee.

  Can’t stop staring.

  “Do you feel it?”

  “No.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Does it come to life at night while you’re in bed and try to strangle you?” Amy asks.

  Carol shuts her up with pursed lips and a sarcastic, “Where is that lost virginity t-shirt, Amy?”

  Before Amy can cut her sister down, I speak up. “Stubbie, huh?” I can’t help myself. I have to ask.

  “I know ye’re not talking about me,” Hamish says loudly. “Which of yer boyfriends did ye nickname Stubbie?” He says the word with a long O, like “stoobie.”

  A sharp yank on my arm snaps me out of my fascination with Hamish’s mouth, a marvel of nature that really ought to be a crime. Lush lips with a thick beard, groomed into a neat goatee in the off season, the guy exudes sex -- but add in that voice. The way his lip curls when he teases.

  “Hello,” says Andrew, who sees me watching his cousin. He glares at Hamish as he pulls me away, hand going to my ass. “You’re looking at the wrong McCormick.”

  “What?”

  He’s a little rough as his hand slides up my skirt, tickling my thigh. “You made me a promise. Time to fulfill your commitment.” The words comes out in a whisper, hot breath against my neck as he moves in behind me, pressing hard enough for me to feel his erection.

  “My what?” Alcohol and Hamish intoxication leave me a little stupid, I’ll admit, but I like where this is going.

  The spin and kiss catch me off guard, Andrew’s power so strong I drop my empty wine glass, thankful for the thick Persian rug beneath our feet in the hallway. His hold on me is so tight, so passionate. He’s holding me off the ground, arms like banded steel, tongue like hot, molten lava in my mouth, setting me ablaze.

  “Where’s your bedroom?” I gasp, needing him in me, now.

  “Upstairs.” He grabs my hand and pulls me, running, up a set of stairs as a double-spiral staircase unfolds before us, all marble and polished wood. My heels clatter on the stone stairs, the sound like my heartbeat, skipping madly.

  The body memorizes its way when it walks the same paths repeatedly, and Andrew’s body is a machine, knowing exactly where it’s going. Each ankle pivot, every brush of fingers against railings, the final door opening under his hand as I sense it all in one long blur of rush and exhilaration. I’m on my back, a cool comforter greeting the bare backs of my legs, and then Andrew’s kissing every bit of bare skin along my collarbone, his hips between my legs, his shirt unbuttoned, collar dragging against my jaw as he comes in for a real kiss.

  “What’s the hurry?” I finally say through panting breaths, body ready to explode. “We have plenty of time. It’s not like we’re hiding in Declan’s walk-in closet to squeeze in a quickie.”

  “It’s exactly like that. Only better.”

  “Better?”

  “Because you’re about to exorcize all those years of fapping.”

  “Fapping?”

  “Do you have any idea how many times I jerked off in this bed, Amanda?”

  I don’t want to take a black light to this comforter, do I?

  “Is that rhetorical, or are you asking me to compute that number?”

  “Take the teen years, multiply by 365 days, then estimate how many times a day I fantasized about girls...”

  “So a few thousand?”

  “Radical underestimate.”

  “Geez. How often do teen guys masturbate?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  “I mean, more than once a day? Isn’t that overkill?”

  “Have you ever been a teen boy?”

  “No.”

  “I can tell. Trust me. Whatever number you’re thinking, multiply it by a factor of five.”

  “You never fantasized about me, though. Not in this bed.”

  “No. Plenty of times in my own bed at my place, but no. Not here.”

  “If you did have a fantasy about me, what would it be?”

  “I can’t pick just one. It would be like choosing a favorite child,” he says, completely serious.

  “I wish I’d known you then,” I say, my bare inner thigh scratching against the wool fabric of his pants, our bodies delightfully inelegant as we make out on top of his bed, disheveled and not caring one whit. Our eyes meet and I brush his hair off his forehead, reading his face. “I wish I’d known you when you were younger.”

  “I was a pompous jerk. You would have hated me.” He props himself up on one hand and looks down at me, face eager and open. “I can’t believe we’re reall
y doing this.”

  “Making out? It’s not exactly novel for us.”

  “Having sex in here. I have a girl in my bed and we’re about to do it.” He bites his lower lip, raises his eyebrows, and does an impressive imitation of a teen boy.

  I laugh so hard I nearly push him off the bed.

  “You’re adorable.”

  “You’re amazing. I wish I’d known you in high school, too.”

  “If you had, you’d have ignored me.”

  “What? No. No way.”

  “You would have been the rich, popular kid. I was a band geek.”

  “Every high school movie starts that way, Amanda.”

  “Oh, I know. Trust me. I’ve memorized every geeky-girl-gets-the-hot-guy movie out there. Sixteen Candles. She’s All That. American Pie. Ten Things I Hate About You. You name it, I’ve seen it, know all the best lines, and I’ve written really melodramatic poetry in a journal somewhere about it. But that’s fantasy. Not reality.”

  He moves against me, our clothes snagging, his shirt riding up, belly touching mine. Andrew is taking his time, the delay intriguingly sublime. We can be naked and making love in seconds, any time we want. Delaying it and opening up to each other about years long gone feels like a new kind of foreplay. “We both have teenagers trapped inside us. All those years of wanting.”

  “It wasn’t about the sex,” I start to explain.

  “It was for me!”

  I chuckle, simultaneously present-day Amanda and transported back in time ten years ago, when I was Mandy. He punctuates his protest by taking my left breast into his mouth, a teasing tweak ending with my moan. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of our movements, no sexual choreography at all. Pure joy and forbidden fruit drive us to touch each other because we can.

  “Both of our fantasies are coming true right now,” I say. “Did you ever imagine you’d find love like we have? Like this?”

  His answer is wordless as he enters me, mouth soft and wet, slow and tantalizing. The juxtaposition of the slowness with his racing heart pressed up against my breast makes this all the sweeter. My nose fills with the faded scent of Drakkar Noir and I’m transported back to my own teen years. So awkward. So needy. So yearning.

  Andrew stops, looking deep into my eyes, studying me as we make love, the power building with each stroke, my thighs tingling as he moves, gripping his hips, widening for him. Having illicit sex, half clothed and skin starved, is its own kind of glory, one I’m finding irresistible.

  “All of my fantasies are coming true every day I spend with you,” he says. “Every damn one. You’re everything I ever hoped for and more.”

  There it is again, that timeless sense I only feel with him. Clothed or naked, angry or happy – it doesn’t matter. Just him. Only Andrew.

  Only us.

  I move against him, arching up, bowing my body to get closer. Our kisses alter course, the rising crest coming soon, Andrew’s breath turning to short groans that impel me to come join him, catch up to the climax so we can share in ecstasy together. What started as an intimate joke, an impish interlude to fulfill a horny teenage boy’s memory has gone deeper, and as I whimper beneath him, struggling not to make too much noise as I come, I bite his shirt collar, tasting salt and, I swear, a little Drakkar Noir.

  “Amanda,” he groans, nose in my hair, strong arms holding him from crushing me, his thick strokes coming in long and hard until he tenses and we both go to a safe place where words aren’t needed, blood pumping hard, nerves tingling until they’re spent. His chest expands as he breathes hard, the buttons pulling against their buttonholes, the stress of his effort coming out in heartbreakingly beautiful ways.

  I kiss his jaw, enjoying his disheveled self above me, brow tight and eyes unfocused as Andrew lets himself be. In my arms, he isn’t a CEO or a son or a brother or a media figure. He’s a half-naked guy who smells incredible, who just kissed every inch of my skin that is bare while we made love in his childhood bed and tipped our hats to his adolescent (wet) dreams.

  And I’m wearing his engagement ring.

  “How was that?” I ask, dragging my fingertip down his jaw, the emerging end-of-day stubble that of a mature man.

  “So much better than humping a hole in a rolled up towel.”

  I whack him on the shoulder. “Oh, you smooth-talking man, you. So glad I can act as an upgrade.”

  “Honesty is the best policy. What did your teenage self think?”

  “My teenage self was more obsessed with being kissed in public and going to prom and dancing than she was with how it would feel to have sex with a guy in his bedroom. But my current self is very pleased.”

  “Current self is the one who matters.” He reaches for my hand and threads our fingers, staring at the stone in my engagement ring. “Soon you’ll have a wedding band next to that.”

  “And you’ll wear one, too,” I remind him.

  He closes his eyes, inhaling slowly, the muscles of his face relaxed. His skin is red, still colored by exertion, and his hair is a mess. “My old room. Feels so weird to be in here and with you at the same time. Good weird, but weird. I half expect my mom to walk in and tell me to do my homework.”

  “You don’t talk about her very much.”

  “That’s because it hurts.”

  I kiss his cheek gently, knowing I can’t say the right words to make any of this better. Silence and presence are more precious. Right now, giving him me is the best I can do.

  A shout, raucous and cheerful, rises up from the party downstairs.

  “We should get back to the gathering.” We peel away from each other, Andrew pivoting to the side of the bed, standing to pull up his pants and tuck in his shirt. I watch him put himself back together again with the same hands that just dismantled me, then I take in the room.

  “Angelina Jolie?” I comment, pointing to a Lara Croft poster.

  “Oh, yeah. Hot as hell when I was a tween. Still is.”

  “That’s your female obsession? A woman with six kids?”

  “She didn’t have six kids when she was Lara Croft, but yeah,” he says softly. “I could handle a woman with lots of kids.”

  “How many is lots?”

  “Six is lots.”

  “You want six kids?”

  “I have two brothers. I’m from a family of three kids. I’d be happy with three or four.”

  I press my hand against my belly, below my navel. “Four?”

  “And a mix of kids. Boys and girls.”

  “Really?”

  “Every guy needs a daughter to spoil. ‘Daddy’s little girl’ and all that.”

  My heart seizes all at once, as if someone reached through my bones with a fishing lure and hooked it with a great big yank. I can’t breathe. How can I breathe when my heart’s been ripped out of my body by words that remind me of what I never had?

  Andrew’s back is to me. He’s tucking in his shirt, chattering away about kids and joking, his voice rising with amusement. He doesn’t know I’m dying, inches away, my throat closed with emotion and fat tears littering the bones of my face, pooling in my ears. A dull pain starts in my gut, rising up until it turns into a loud sound, so hard to push down that nausea is the only way it can settle.

  The pressure is too great. I let out a sob.

  He turns and looks at me, alarm turning his face from the relaxed happiness I was so proud to trigger in him to a horrified worry.

  “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you? Was the sex – did I -- ?”

  “No,” I choke out. “I’m not hurt.”

  “Like hell you’re not. Something is wrong. What is it?” His soothing arms wrap around me. I’m still half dressed, his put-together self a stark contrast to my unkempt appearance.

  “Kids.”

  “You don’t want kids?”

  “I do. Talking about daughters. Daddies and daughters. It made me think,” I say, trying not to cry. “Made me think about my dad.”

  He tenses, then relaxes, shoulders slum
ping with emotion. “I didn’t even think about what I was saying. I’m so sorry. Of course it would hurt you. Oh, Amanda, I was just thinking about us. Kids. Our kids. Our daughter.”

  “I know.”

  “But it was insensitive.”

  “No, It wasn’t. It hit me in a way I’ve never thought about before. This is the first time I thought about our daughter. Your daughter. That one day, I could have your daughter. And she’d have you for a daddy. She’d be your ‘Daddy’s little girl.’ We’re going to give her something I never had.”

  “We’re going to give our kids many, many things we never had.”

  “Doesn’t every parent say that, though? And then plenty of them fail.”

  “There is no son or daughter that we could ever produce who won’t have me in their life forever.”

  “I know.” I can’t say what comes to mind. I can’t.

  Andrew says it for me.

  “And I’d imagine my mother thought that, too. When she was alive.” His words are devastating. His solar plexus curls in as if he’s punched himself. We both have these unexpected soft spots inside us.

  “How would she have handled our wedding?” I ask on impulse. “If she were alive?”

  “What you’re really asking is how she would have handled Dad.”

  “I guess.”

  “She’d have spent most of her time getting to know Pam and you. Mom had her own social calendar manager. Like an assistant. Joanie would have done most of the legwork and scheduling. And Mom would have told Dad to ‘stop this nonsense’ and go back to doing what he does best.”

  “Being a CEO?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes are troubled. “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  “What?”

  “That he’s not CEO of Anterdec anymore. He has too much time on his hands, and more than enough money to get himself in trouble.”

  Muffled giggles outside Andrew’s door makes us both turn and look. Then a thump.

  “Someone’s out there,” I hiss, pulling myself together.

  “So? The door’s locked. And it’s not like we’re going to get grounded or have our phones taken away for doing it.”