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

by Julia Kent

  “Once your father sells the house, you mean.”

  “No. You’re my only. I never brought other women home, and I’ll never be with another woman, so you’re it, Amanda. Treat me well, because no one else ever will.”

  “That goes both ways.”

  Making love in six feet of water is a more complex engineering production than you would think if your only experience with it came in the form of watching couples do it in movies. We end up on the tiled floor, which isn’t nearly as heated as the pool, but has the added advantage of allowing for leverage. As soon as we’re done, we slip off the deck into the water like seals, plunging headfirst and giggling, lost in the otherworldly heat and our own endorphin rush.

  “It’s a shame James is selling this place,” I say, looking up at the glass dome. “What a wonderful home.”

  A flicker of recognition passes through Andrew’s eyes. “It is. We have time before it goes on the market. He’s not in a rush. We can come back and swim again.”

  “And sit in front of that fire.”

  He jolts, moving behind me, lifting himself out with a mighty pull, feet on the deck. “That’s right.” He walks to a spot on the wall and pushes a button. Water starts pouring from a shower spigot I hadn’t noticed. I fold my hands on the edge of the pool, tucking my chin in, and look.

  “The patio doors slide open in the summer?”

  “Yeah,” he calls out, rinsing the water off. “Do you want me to leave this on so you can rinse off?”

  Sighing, I pull myself out, the chill of the warm air still too much. By the time I reach the shower, he’s toweling off with a towel from a stack on a chair, smiling at me.

  Five minutes later, we’re dressed and back in the living room.

  “Fire looks nice,” I comment. “Want me to grab some wine?”

  He pokes at the burning logs with a fireplace poker. “Sure. I checked the fridge yesterday. Lots of food in there, too.”

  As I walk to the kitchen, half sure I know where I’m going, I can’t stop smiling. Time like this, together, without an end point or some mental deadline for the next responsibility, is so rare with Andrew. Most couples spend entire weekends like this, week in and week out, whiling away their leisure time with minute-by-minute experiences that just roll out from each other, drifting along an agenda that isn’t imposed from the outside.

  Going antiquing, seeing a movie and grabbing dinner from a food truck, or building a fire after a swim feels like true luxury. Not Andrew’s limos or necklaces or financial adviser allotments.

  Here. Now. This is the treasure.

  Him.

  After rummaging in the fridge and finding two bottles of his favorite beer, I come back to discover that he’s dragged an oversized wingback chair and an ottoman really close to the fire, his long body stretched out under a silk and down comforter he must have found on his own. Firelight reflects in his brown eyes as he looks up, expectant, smiling with gratitude as I hand him a glass of beer. I haven’t seen his face so content, so relaxed, in ages.

  If ever.

  “You really love this, don’t you?” I ask, wiggling my hips as I burrow in next to him. He pulls the blanket up and we wedge ourselves into the chair, my legs draped over his lap.

  “I do. I’d forgotten how comfortable this house really is.”

  “Comfortable? More like imposing.”

  “Really?”

  “For me. I think my entire childhood home could fit in your kitchen.”

  “Mom taught me how to make cookies in that kitchen.” His voice is tinged with memory.

  “So much of who you are was forged here.”

  “It was a great place to grow up.” The fire is warm, the beer is cold, and Andrew’s body is a pillow. A thick, muscular, heat-radiating pillow, one I can curl into. We spend a long time breathing together, sipping beer and watching the fire as if it’s telling us stories.

  “I can’t believe Dad’s selling the house,” he finally says. “I never thought about it being someone else’s.”

  “It happens. We sold my childhood home in Mendon and moved to Newton.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “I’m not sure I’ve forgiven Mom, and it’s been nearly ten years.”

  “I was born here. Not here, but in Boston, at the Brigham. This was the only home I knew until I went to boarding school and college. Terry remembers other houses, but I don’t. I’m imprinted here.”

  “So many firsts,” I say tenderly.

  He strokes my shoulder. “Like the cocktail party.”

  I’m taking a swig of my beer and nearly choke. “I was thinking more along the lines of learning how to walk, losing your first tooth – that sort of first.”

  “Ha! Firsts!” He lifts his glass and clinks it against the neck of mine. “Here’s to being the first to have sex in my lap pool.”

  “How can we be first? Terry said -- ”

  “The pool was built after Mom died. Terry’s never set foot in there.” Smug victory permeates his expression.

  “Is that why you brought me here today?”

  “No. Just a perk.”

  I snuggle in, then slowly, very slowly, reach for his nipple and twist it.

  Calamity breaks out. I’m unceremoniously dumped out of his lap and onto the carpet, laughing uncontrollably as he tickles me breathless, then smothers me with kisses.

  “You make me laugh again. Here. I haven’t laughed at home in so long,” he says, intermittently tickling my ribs until I nearly pee myself.

  “You should do it more often!” I gasp.

  He stops, eyes narrowing.

  “Yeah. I should. We should.”

  “Do it while you can.”

  Bzzzz. Andrew’s phone. We both groan.

  “I knew it,” I sigh. “Real life. Can’t avoid it forever.”

  “No,” he says with a kiss. “But we can make them wait while we finish what we started.”

  “What did we start?”

  “Making love by the fire, on this rug.”

  “But that won’t be a first.”

  “It will for me.” Kiss. “And you.” Kiss. “And that’s all that matters.”

  Chapter 11

  I open my banking app, checking my monthly bills. Recently, Andrew had me meet with his financial adviser, the elusive Sterling. Sterling Abercrombie – poor guy had no choice but to go into finance with a name like that, because it was either finance or professional butlery, who set me up with an automated system that rivaled my own perfectly fine, perfectly functional bill-tracking process. Andrew insisted that we needed to streamline.

  And by “streamline,” he meant blend our finances.

  Now, blending finances when you’re in the same financial class makes a certain amount of sense. Given that Andrew has about seven more zeros after his net worth than I do, though, this was a recipe for disaster.

  Before I’d even logged into our joint financial management dashboard for the first time, I’d gone to pay my student loan and the system informed me my balance was $0.

  Same with credit cards and car payment.

  Here I am, logging in, feeling unmoored. I have my own bank account. We’re not married yet, so we’re in limbo. I have access to our joint money – which is really Andrew’s money. He respects my need for my own account, my paycheck deposited into the same bank account I’ve had since I was thirteen.

  But today I check my bank account and find an extra twenty thousand dollars that should not be there.

  What would you do if you had twenty grand you knew wasn’t yours suddenly make your bank balance look more like your car loan balance?

  If you’re dating a billionaire, you interrupt his business meeting by marching into his office, pulling his earpiece out, and shoving your finger in his face.

  “What did you do to my bank account?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” With a preternatural calm it will take nine lifetimes for me to achieve, he deftly puts the earpiece back in and presses
the Mute button on his phone, eyes catching mine with an open strength I can’t quite read.

  “You put twenty thousand in it! Money I don’t need.” I don’t tell him it’s the exact amount I joked about when Shannon and I went to lunch a while back. That’s too creepy.

  A little too coincidental.

  “I didn’t do that. Sterling did.” He’s so…rational.

  Men.

  “Sterling works for you!”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t do this!”

  “Do what?”

  “Go all Christian Grey on me.”

  He rakes his hand through his hair and points to his phone, as if I’m supposed to defer my wealth crisis for his conference call.

  “So?” I challenge. I know, Not exactly management guruspeak, but I’m a little blindsided.

  Confusion clouds his eyes, but his silence gives me a moment to take him in. He’s wearing one of my favorite suits, charcoal grey, with a pink tie that brings out the dominant in him. His edges seem hard and sharp, like he’s more real than anyone has a right to be.

  Fitting for a conversation like this, I think to myself.

  I wonder if he chose it on purpose.

  Finally, he says, “I don’t know what that means, Amanda. I just told Sterling to make sure you get the same monthly allotment for incidentals that I get. My salary is already substantially larger than yours, which isn’t equitable.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars for incidentals? How do you incidentally spend twenty thousand dollars a month, Andrew?”

  “How do you not?”

  The chair I fall into appears out of nowhere, placed under me by some kind of guardian angel. The patron saint of financial immigrants. The mascot for middle class expats. That’s exactly how this feels. I am in a new land of money, one where I don’t speak the language, everyone dresses differently, there are unwritten rules of conduct, and it even smells a little funny.

  Good funny, but...foreign.

  “You want me to have that much money – every month? -- to spend on...what?”

  He rotates his wrists, palms up in a gesture of possibility. “Whatever you want. Clothing. Meals. Personal care. Your mother.” He frowns. “Unless you want a separate allotment set up for her? Other than having Sterling pay off her mortgage, I haven’t thought to -- ”

  “YOU PAID OFF MY MOTHER’S MORTGAGE?”

  One finger comes into view as Andrew turns his phone back on. “Sam? I need to continue this call later. Sorry. Something came up.” He ends the call, stands, and comes to my side of the desk, kneeling beside me, looking up into my face. There is no concession there. We’re not in a back-and-forth about this.

  I know I’m in the wrong. I need to be the one who adapts.

  “I paid off Pam’s mortgage. Yes. I figured it was the least I could do after the paparazzi mess and Spritzy.”

  “Most people would send a bottle of wine or flowers. Not pay off a house note!”

  “Are you going to be like Shannon about money?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Declan says she can’t handle it. You love the gifts I give you. I assumed you’d be different.”

  “I do love the gifts!” I really do. My hand goes to the necklace he gave me, fingers worrying the stone.

  Relief washes over him. “Good.”

  “I just – this is a lot of money. Every month?”

  “It’s not a lot to me.”

  “But objectively speaking, it’s a lot.”

  “Not to me.”

  I let that sink in. He’s right. I’ve always thought that Shannon’s been ridiculous about Declan and their class clashes. She digs in too deep, too hard. No one needs to make this a negative. In fact, if I’m honest with myself, I’m giddy inside. It just feels so wrong.

  A little dirty.

  You might even say filthy.

  As in...rich.

  “It’s a surprise. I think I’m caught off guard.”

  “The money will be there every month. Do what you want with it.”

  “Whatever I want?”

  “As long as it’s not illegal.”

  “Damn.” I grab my phone and pretend to type. “Cancel that twenty-thousand-dollar marijuana order from Mexico.”

  His chuckle is deeply gratifying, the feel of his fingers against my bare forearm reminding me that we’re partnered, in this together.

  “Marijuana may be legal in Massachusetts, but even I think that is excessive.”

  The impulse to say something bubbles up inside me, words I’ve never considered speaking before, but that must have been lurking all along. Why these words? Why now? And yet the compulsion to say them is so powerful. Swallowing doesn’t make them go away. A creeping sense, antsy and almost painful, makes me feel like the words will come out somehow, and if not through my mouth, by whatever means necessary.

  My skin feels like it might split if I don’t say something.

  “You know I’m not with you for your money,” I whisper.

  There. Spoken.

  “Good God, of course I know that.” His voice is deep, intense, and vibrating with reassurance. “I wouldn’t trust you with Sterling if I didn’t know that. Hell, I wouldn’t marry you if I thought you were with me for the wrong reasons. You don’t have to say it, Amanda. I know.”

  “You may not need to hear it, but I do need to say it. I need to know I said it. And I mean it.”

  He nods, smiling. “That’s exactly why I want to share my life with you – and that includes my money. Letting you inside is part of being better together. We become closer when we show each other all the parts of our lives, inside and out. I was born with money. Have grown up with it my entire life. Benefitted from it, too. I’ve grown what was given to me and made my money my own. One day, our kids will benefit, too.”

  Our kids.

  I lick my lips, mouth dry, the conversation stirring a strange assembly of emotions inside me. Andrew stands and pulls me into a ferocious hug, squeezing me tight.

  “Our kids will live a life so different from mine,” I confess, unsure whether it’s an observation or a concern.

  “As long as we fill their lives with love, it won’t be so different.” He smells so good, a mix of soap and lime and the coffee that he just drank. As he talks to me, his lips spread in a grin against my cheek. I look up and give him a kiss, a short, sweet acknowledgment.

  But then I pull back, serious. “I want a better life for my kids. Our kids.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I love my mom. She’s been great. Being an only child, with her depression and fibromyalgia, though – it’s been lonely. Hard. Being the cheerful fixer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Having my mom die when I was a sophomore and Dad turn into an emotional iceberg who cracked the ambition whip was so much fun,” he says, deadpan.

  “We both have issues.”

  “Everyone has issues. The question is, how do we fix them?”

  Fix. There’s that word again.

  “It sounds like you use money to fix problems.”

  “I’m not having Sterling set up the allotment because there are problems with us, Amanda.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I say, keeping my voice neutral. “I’m not judging, Andrew. I’m really, sincerely trying to puzzle through something so alien to me. I think this is how you grow together,” I add, the thought coming to me unbidden and surprising. “By talking like this. At least, that’s what I think.”

  “I think we grow together by experiencing as many variations of orgasms as possible, and piecing those together to make a fabric of intimacy.”

  His damn dry wit makes it impossible to tell if he’s mocking me.

  “Your currency is orgasms? Too bad I can’t have Sterling deposit twenty thousand of those a month in your sperm bank.”

  “Twenty thousand a month? That’s nearly seven hundred a day.” He grabs my hand and pulls me to the couch at the far end of his expansive office.
“We’d better get started now.”

  “Oh? Are you ready to make a withdrawal?”

  “Withdraw? No, no. A deposit. Many, many deposits.”

  “How did we get from the topic of money to sex?”

  “Aren’t they the same thing most of the time?”

  He’s got me there.

  And there, and there, and oh, move your finger there.

  “You can’t just change the subject by luring me into sex.”

  “I can’t?”

  “Well, you can. I mean, it’s obviously working. But you can’t do it all the time.”

  “Is that a challenge? You know I love a challenge.”

  “Yes. I can see that you clearly are rising to the occasion.”

  “Shhhhh. I have my work cut out for me.”

  “Work?”

  “I have to find a way to give you 667 orgasms.”

  “You round up? I love a man who rounds up.” He moves his hips against me, curling up as I stroke him, making him groan. No amount of repetition makes that sound boring. I’ll spend the rest of my life covered in goosebumps whenever he whispers my name in my ear as I touch him.

  “Technically, though, it’s just 666.”

  “Why?”

  “You get to count your own orgasm in there, Andrew.”

  “How gracious of you.”

  “I’m good at relationship math.”

  “Me, too. Let me show you how I can find the area under a curve.”

  After a few close calls, Andrew added a remote-controlled locking device to his door, so I know we’re safe, and can relax into the deep attention he’s giving me, using his tongue to perform complex calculus that leads to solving for X. And he finds it. Over and over, my hands threaded through his hair as his mouth teases me to the brink, my hips finding a rhythm to match his tongue as I shut out the rest of the world.

  Office sex is a policy violation, I know. But it’s such a turn-on.

  “I need to have you right now,” he whispers as he stands, unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his pants, the sound of the zipper as he opens it like his tongue in my ear. I’m wearing a skirt, so this part is easy, and given the fact that my panties are currently hanging off the end of some piece of modern sculpture on his bookcase, the preliminaries have been done.