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

by Julia Kent

  “That’s gonna cost you. Three hundred plus for a first pressing, but an autographed one?” He makes a strange hissing sound, as if his brain can’t contain the computations and guesstimates he’s trying to do, so it comes out through his mouth.

  “Price isn’t an issue,” I say without even thinking about it. Andrew says this all the time, generally with an annoyed frown, when he’s driven to get what he wants. I’m working on acquiring the same breezy approach. It really isn’t about the money.

  It’s about getting what I want.

  The way the clerk reacts reminds me how much my life has changed in such a short time.

  “Must be nice,” he mutters, coming around the counter, eyeing us appreciatively. We’re not being ogled. He’s trying to figure out how we can make a declarative statement about money not being a factor.

  Because let’s face it – no one in our economic class does that. No one. People don’t waltz into stores like this and say what I just said. I made myself an outsider, the “other,” the second I told him that money isn’t an object.

  I am now different.

  Shannon and I have jumped class. Is that the right phrase? People lose economic standing all the time. Job loss, addiction, divorce, a super-risky investment gone bad.

  But in the middle class, money is glue. We think about it constantly. Talk about it more than any other topic, really. Stop for a second and reflect on the last conversation you had at home, or your Mom’s house, or at a friend’s place, all in a group around the kitchen table, drinking coffee or tea.

  Money came up, right? A lot.

  Andrew cleared out every penny of debt I owe with about an hour of his executive assistant’s time. I argued, but when he laid out how small my cumulative debt was to him – no matter how big that number felt to me – it forced me to have a financial ‘come to Jesus’ moment.

  And now I’m standing in front of a guy who could be an extra in a Kevin Smith film as he rifles through a display of scarred and battered vinyl record cases covered in plastic sleeves, trying to find a 33 with music I could easily download off iTunes in three seconds.

  But that’s not what I want.

  “We have a reprint. Plenty of them. But we definitely don’t have that original in stock. I can do a special custom order for it, though,” he says, offering me his hand. “I’m Brady.”

  Shannon looks him up and down. The guy is big and burly, like a bear in human form, but young. He can’t be more than twenty, but with a very full beard.

  “Amanda.”

  “Are you working?” he asks, still trying to figure us out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is this something your boss wants?”

  Shannon’s expression goes from neutral to WTF?

  “My boss?”

  “That album is going to cost you close to a grand,” he declares.

  “Right.” I’ve done my research. Three hundred to a thousand dollars is the rough range for what I want. Getting a first pressing with signatures from all of the band members is like finding a needle in a haystack. I expect to pay through the nose.

  Andrew’s reaction will be worth it. What do you buy for the man who can buy himself anything he wants? Something no one else has.

  A low-grade discomfort fills Brady’s big, soft eyes as he realizes he’s completely misjudged me. “Okay. Cool.” He covers for it with a long series of nods and a slow, controlled sigh. “You want me to put out feelers?”

  “Feelers?”

  “I can put out a call to other dealers and ask around. Or you can keep going to stores like this and search on your own.” His shrug makes it clear he doesn’t think that’s the best approach.

  “I’ve looked on eBay and called a few places.”

  “You mean we could have just called and not subjected ourselves to this odor?” Shannon says, grumbling. She peers at a shelf, her eyes going wide. “Ooo, I haven’t seen a Tamagotchi in ages!”

  Squeals follow.

  Brady and I share our contempt through eyebrow semaphore.

  “If I find one, I can call you. If I don’t, then I have new info in case someone ever wants to buy the same album. It’s pretty rare. Ever since Squire died, we’ve seen more interest in it. Like Bowie.”

  “Like Bowie?”

  Brady seems to have an entire language made up of nothing but shrugs. This one is more sheepish. “After Bowie died, everyone wanted Bowie stuff. You should see the price of Labyrinth merchandise now. It’s insane.”

  “Maybe we should start stocking up on death pool merchandise,” Shannon jokes. “As a form of investment.”

  One shoulder goes up as Brady peers at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Like, Betty White is in every death pool these days. Any celebrity or musician who might die soon – just go out and buy their merchandise now while it’s still cheap, then wait.”

  “That’s really morbid,” I say.

  “That’s really smart!” Brady exclaims.

  “Just don’t bother with Keith Richards merchandise,” I add. “Because he’ll outlive us all.”

  “My mom is going to wonder why I’m using her credit card to buy Golden Girls memorabilia,” Brady ponders as he walks back around the counter and grabs a good old-fashioned pad of paper and a pen.

  “Maybe she’ll assume it’s a fetish,” Shannon jokes.

  He takes that at face value. “I saw a sub-reddit for that once. Betty White F/F Golden Girls fanfic. Epic shit in there.”

  Shannon looks at me and mouths, Get me out of here.

  I give Brady my contact info and thank him. As we leave, Shannon whispers, “He’s going to make a rag doll out of pieces of your body and a Betty White blow up doll.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “No, I mean literally impossible. You can’t cut into a blow up doll and use pieces of it in place of body parts.”

  “Sometimes you’re just like your mother. So literal.”

  “And sometimes you’re just like your mother.”

  Shannon comes to a grinding halt on the pavement, right in front of a street performer who is playing Bruno Mars on a broken plastic recorder and a scarred five-gallon drum. “You take that back.”

  “No.”

  “I’m nothing like my mother.”

  “Why does everyone think that’s an insult?”

  “Have you met my mother?”

  “Of course I have. C’mon, Shannon. Marie’s not that bad. You know she’s not. Everyone makes all these jokes about how awful she is, but she helped you with your wedding, threw herself into it, was a great mother who was really invested in experiencing the wedding planning and the joy of preparing you for a new life with Declan.”

  Shannon’s looking at me like she looked at Brady a few moments earlier. My heart rate soars and my throat tightens. I can’t control whatever’s taking me over, and after about three seconds I give into it, letting emotion wash over me, unraveling on the spot.

  “And I think Marie is highly underrated! She’s so dynamic and sweet and yes, she overshares and can be a bit domineering in her own way, but you know she loves you no matter what and she cares and she’s not this completely weird mother talking about walrus tusks and penis size or how bees lose their penis or whale sperm ratios and salinity. Your mom doesn’t calculate the risk of death every single time she steps on an escalator, or remind you that when you touch a doorknob your chance of touching some E. coli is fifty percent.”

  “You have a really short memory, Amanda.”

  “What?”

  “I had to escape my own wedding in a borrowed helicopter. Declan had to lie to my mother and pretend that the president of the United States was attending our wedding in order to get the hell away from her craziness. She invited Jessica Coffin to my wedding. On my first date with Declan, she told him about my lice and prom.”

  “Never a dull moment with your mom.”

  “I’d trade crazy for dull
any day.”

  We stare at each other, hard.

  “If you bring up lice around my mother, she’ll tell you that the average adult louse is capable of laying four eggs per day and about ninety in her lifetime.”

  Shannon starts laughing.

  “I’m not kidding. She once calculated the chance of getting head lice in a school nurse’s office for some liability insurance project. For a month, all she talked about was nits and nymphs and the claws on head lice. When she got into a discussion of crabs, I had to draw the line. Mom can’t talk about sex without practically fainting, but give her a project with pubic lice and actuary tables and she turns into a talk show host.”

  “Pam’s endearing. But she’s always been kind of...” As she bites her lower lip, Shannon’s eyebrows turn down. I know she’s struggling to find the right words.

  “Detached?”

  “No! No. Pam’s loving and warm. It’s just...I don’t know.”

  “Every time I ask her about wedding details, she tells me she doesn’t care. That I should do whatever makes me happy.”

  “And you’re complaining?”

  “Yes! Just because my experience is different from yours doesn’t mean I can’t vent!”

  “Okay. That’s fair.”

  “Thank you!”

  “But you definitely got the saner mom.”

  “That I agree with.”

  We walk past an Ethiopian restaurant, the aroma of curries making my stomach growl.

  Ten minutes later, we’re seated in front of a wicker table with spiced coffee, waiting for injera and cooked goat.

  “How’s Grind It Fresh! going?” I ask, using the question as an inroad into my real inquiry.

  “It’s going great! We’re opening more stores everywhere, and we have a solid human resources team in place. Pretty soon we’ll shift dairy suppliers to smaller Vermont and Maine farms. But that’s not what you’re really asking me, is it?”

  “What?”

  “You want to know something about Declan and me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t even try to hide it. Spill your guts.”

  “Andrew’s making me accept all kinds of money.”

  “Yeah.” She leans in. “Declan makes me take something like that, too.”

  “And it makes me feel like I’m beholden to James.”

  “Whoa.”

  “You don’t feel the same way?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “Because he’s the one who created the company.”

  “If you want to feel beholden to someone, feel it toward their mother. Elena’s money is what helped James get Anterdec from a small local real estate company to the massive enterprise it’s become.”

  “Oh.”

  “But why do you need to feel beholden to anyone?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “When we were in Vegas and the guys were showering us with gifts, you didn’t have a problem with it. In fact, you loved it. Ate it up. What’s changed?”

  “There’s a big difference between being given a necklace or a Fair Trade coffee farm vs. this!”

  “Not to them. There isn’t a difference.” Shannon’s eyes go soft. “Mom and Dad finally let Declan help them out.”

  “Andrew wants to pay off Mom’s mortgage.”

  “Listen to us. Are we complaining? Do you know how many women would kill to be in our position?”

  “I’m not complaining!”

  Shannon gives me the stink eye.

  “I’m not! Really.”

  “Yes, you are. And it’s okay. You can complain. Just because we’re marrying into unbelievably abundant circumstances doesn’t mean our problems go away.”

  “Exactly.” I let out a long breath. “That is the problem.”

  “That we still...have problems?”

  “That we’re expected to keep our mouths shut and be happy because we have all this.”

  “You feel that way?”

  “Shannon, we can’t exactly go into work and stand around the coffee counter bitching about our twenty grand a month, can we?” I pick that number out of the air as a joke.

  “Twenty-five,” Shannon says softly. “When Declan found out Sterling had set you up, too, he raised my allotment.”

  I just stare at her. “Who is Sterling? And I was kidding. It’s not like Andrew’s going to -- hey. Wait a minute.”

  Her hands fly to her mouth, covering it. “Never mind. You’ll find out soon.”

  “Shannon.” I resort to my threatening voice, the one I used to pull out when she wouldn’t give me a fair turn with the nail polish drying machine when we were kids.

  She throws her hands up. “What? It’s not my fault. Declan has to beat his brother at everything! You’ll see. Sterling, Vegas, sex...”

  Still stuck on the mysterious Sterling, I mutter, “It really is in their DNA, isn’t it?”

  “Except for Terry. Skipped him.”

  “What’s his deal? I know the basics of the back story, but why isn’t he part of Anterdec?”

  “Because he’s smart?”

  “Seriously.”

  “He and James had it out right after Elena died. James blamed Declan.” A shadow fills her eyes. “It wasn’t pretty. Apparently, Terry stepped in to protect Declan.”

  “Protect? As in physically protect?”

  A sad gravity fills her. It weighs me down, pulling me into the orbit of memory. She doesn’t have to elaborate. Poor Declan. I know the story, but I feel like there are elusive pieces missing. “Terry was being groomed for CEO. Dec says he’s smarter than all of them put together. Does Andrew say that?”

  I shake my head. “He doesn’t talk about him much.”

  “Terry ditched everything. Lives entirely off his mother’s family trust. Which Declan considers to be a form of poverty.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s more than twice what my mom and dad make combined.”

  “Yeah. I know. Their sense of financial proportion is a bit skewed, isn’t it?”

  “That’s like saying Josh is a little bit gay.”

  “Speaking of Josh, he’s become a tugger. Told me the other day after I was on the elevator with him at work and when he shifted his weight, a long piece of elastic attached to a bell fell out of his pants leg.”

  My sentence hangs in the air as the server delivers an enormous plate, round and loaded with overlapping injera pancakes topped with salad, potatoes and carrots, lentil dishes, and spiced goat. We wash our hands with hot, wet cloths and dig in.

  With our hands.

  “Did you say ‘tugger’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I really want to know? Is this some kinky sex thing? Elastic and bells? What would a man do with a bell?”

  I have to finish my mouthful of food. The seconds tick by, Shannon’s face growing increasingly weirded out.

  “Yes,” I finally say. “Sort of. He wants to restore his foreskin.”

  “Because...?”

  “Because he’s Josh.”

  “And you know this because you’ve seen his penis?”

  “No!” I shudder. “Hell, no. Geez, Shannon. I am eating. Do you mind?” My stomach flip-flops.

  “Then how does he restore it?”

  “By tugging. Literally stretching the tiny bit left after being circumcised, until it covers, you know...”

  “The mushroom cap?”

  At that exact moment, the server delivers a steaming bowl of – you guessed it.

  “Ingudai tibs!” she announces. Normally, the dish made with berbere spices, mushrooms, tomatoes, green pepper, and red onions makes my mouth water.

  Right now? Not so much.

  We thank the server. Shannon plucks a big, fat mushroom out of the bowl and pops it in her mouth, eyes on me the whole time.

  “You’re sick, Shannon.”

  “What? You’re the one telling me about how Josh is trying to do the impossible. How does that piece of skin stretch?”

  “I don’t kno
w how. I’m still traumatized by hearing the what.”

  Having been raised by Marie, who openly discusses her DivaCup usage at the breakfast table, nothing fazes Shannon. She picks up a juicy, flat slice of beef and asks, “How do you restore something that was cut off? Are foreskins like lizard tails?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, lizard tails. You cut them off and they regrow?”

  “Now I’ll never be able to look at a penis without thinking about lizard tails. Thanks. And you sound like my mother again.”

  “Your mother would know the biological term for lizard tail loss, the exact number of days it takes to regenerate a tail, and could describe the statistical certainty of whether a lizard will lose its tail in a hailstorm in Costa Rica in January.”

  “Meanwhile, your mother would tell us all about how you can buy dried-up lizard tails at some local Reiki center and turn them into a cream that enhances your sex life.”

  Shannon covers her ears. “STOP!”

  “Sorry.” But I’m not wrong.

  “How did we get to this point?” she asks, wistful. “My mom is finally calming down. Yours barely has a pulse when it comes to the wedding. Mine was so invested, she might as well have been a hookworm.”

  “And then there’s Katie the wedding planner.”

  “Katie Gallagher? She was so nice. Mom wouldn’t let her do anything for our wedding.”

  “Well, it’s the opposite for me. Katie’s done everything. James rubber stamps whatever she plans.”

  “You’re in charge. Stop her.”

  “I haven’t even met with her yet!”

  “When you do, just calmly inform her that your future husband, the CEO of the company that pays her salary, doesn’t like whatever it is you don’t like. Turn Andrew into the bad guy.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Will he care?”

  I think about that for a minute. “No.”

  “Then what’s the harm?”

  I peer at her. “You’re good. A schemer. You’re much smoother about it now.”

  “I have to be. Look at the family I married into.”

  I pat her hand. “You were my wife long before you were Declan’s. I’ll always be your first spouse.” A slow lean toward her ends with a kiss on the cheek that makes her snort.

  “Pretending to be your wife for that credit union mystery shop way back when isn’t exactly one of the highlights of my life,” Shannon says drolly, but her twitching lips contradict those words.