Shopping for a Billionaire 4

by Julia Kent

  “I meant your allergic reaction to the stings. That you were in the hospital. In a hospital bed,” he stammers. “My son was very worried.”

  “Your son was the only reason I’m here,” I say gently. The amusement is gone from his expression, replaced by a kind of sad intrigue, his body uptight and loose at the same time as if it can’t make up its mind.

  But control and authority prevail as his mask reappears and he turns away from me with a dismissive wave. “I’m glad Declan could do what he needed to do in a crisis. That proves he’s matured.”

  Andrew’s neck snaps toward his dad, a red fury pouring into his skin so fast it seems he’ll burst. I turn toward Declan to find him in the threshold, one hand curled into a gripping claw on the door’s trim, close to snapping the wood in half.

  What the hell is going on? This conversation suddenly has nothing to do with me and Declan, or with Twitterhead Coffin, or with my credit union shop. There’s a subtext here I don’t understand, and it stings.

  Declan lets go of the door with a loud smack of his palm against the wood and slowly, with a little too much control, moves out. I can’t even admire the undulating grace of his anger or ask him why he and his dad are speaking in Angry Man Code, a language that seems designed to neuter the other man and stuff his balls down his throat.

  But this isn’t just macho bullcrap. James’ comment about Declan and crises and maturing resonates somewhere inside Declan, but he’s wound so tight, and I’m skating on thin ice already.

  There’s no way to be open and just ask what’s going on.

  He spins around so abruptly that I stagger and fall against the wall, banging my hip on a piece of trim. “What do we need to discuss?”

  How could the same man who told me I was beautiful, who put his mouth in places where only speculums have gone, look at me like I’m a gnat that should be swatted out of existence?

  “Can we have coffee and talk?” I can’t think of what else to say.

  He just blinks. No answer. I stare back, unyielding, even as my mind screams in childlike sadness. Something is broken, and it’s not just me. I didn’t break it. He’s not telling me something and it’s between us, without shape or form, taking up all the known room, and yet it has no name.

  “Coffee?” He makes a strangled huffing sound. “How about at one of my stores?” His voice is acid. “I hear we’re testing a new peppermint mocha with wasabi syrup. Oh, wait—you would know better than I do.”

  I actually flinch and pull back as if he’s slapped me. If he had, it would be easier. “I-I-I just want to talk. About the pretending to be gay thing, and the Jessica Coffin thing, and—”

  “I know you’re not gay.” His voice carries a bit as he punches that sentence out with a tongue made of steel, his face so tight you could turn it into a drum.

  “I guessed as much. It shouldn’t have been hard to figure out.”

  He makes a sour face and glances at an imaginary watch he isn’t wearing. Either he really does have another meeting or he’s in a hurry to be done with me, and the latter feels like ice picks in my gut.

  “Shannon, I don’t know what your game is. Maybe the other night was all acting—”

  “No! I swear! No game!” An ominous layer of straight-up terror begins to cover me like a blanket that brings no comfort.

  “You’re paid to act,” he says viciously. “Act. You’re paid to pretend, right? To go into a business setting and pretend to be something you aren’t, all while observing every nuance, every detail. You’re a chameleon who changes to meet the expectations of the people in that setting, with the ruthless efficiency of an international spy.” His breath is heavy and full of anger. “You’re quite proud of it.”

  “But not with you,” I plead. “Never with you.”

  “How am I supposed to know? You’re a bit like the boy who cried wolf, honey.”

  My head ricochets back. Honey. That’s what he called me in the hospital.

  “You told that blowhard’s mother you’re just dating me to close a deal. Well, you did.” He motions toward the closed door. “My dad just gave you a plum new assignment. Your company makes more money, we get a crack corporate spy, and everyone goes home happy and satisfied.”

  He’s baring his teeth now in a smile that is so ferociously barren of compassion or caring that it mesmerizes me. I can’t turn away, but at the same time I want to curl up into a ball and cry.

  “You really think that about me?” I whisper quietly. Mercifully, the tears are behind a wall of summoned self-righteousness. I need it right now. I know every word he says is dead on in its own twisted way, but I can’t let it be true, because there’s a larger Truth with a capital T right next to his smaller truth.

  “What else am I supposed to think? You told me yourself in the lighthouse that you’re ‘shopping for a billionaire.’ You told your ex-boyfriend’s mother that you’re dating me to close a business deal, and some screwed-up game of grown-up telephone ends on Twitter with a high-society wannabe trying to embarrass me on a social media platform so silly it uses bird metaphors.”

  I snort nervously.

  Pity fills his eyes. Oh, no. This is end game. I know this look, because it’s the same expression Steve had when he dumped me. No. No. No.

  “I can’t do this, Shannon.”

  No. Please.

  “You’re just too…much.”

  Great. So he lied to me about loving my abundant body.

  “Too many layers to tease through, too many what-ifs, too many half-truths and un-truths—”

  Wait! He’s not slamming my curves. He’s slamming my integrity! Hold on there, buddy. You can make fun of my fat (which he didn’t), but—

  “That is bull,” I thunder back. A receptionist at a desk at the end of the hall cranes her neck forward, peering at us. Like a turtle, she snaps it back, hidden.

  When Steve dumped me I just sniffled and took it, curled into myself on a park bench near my apartment, sitting on the lawn of a local college. No way am I cowering now. If this is over, it’ll be over on my terms. Or, at least, I won’t go down without a defense. A fight.

  Words.

  “There’s bull here, all right.” He’s breathing hard, and if this were a sitcom or a Nora Ephron movie this is the part where we’d shout at each other and then he’d grab my face, hard, and kiss me like I’ve never been kissed before, until my muffled protests are drained out of me by the sudden clarity that only hot lips can provide.

  “You spend your life trying to get everyone else to believe you’re something you’re not, Shannon. And when you’re not play-acting, you’re begging for validation. You change yourself to become whatever it is you think everyone wants you to be.” He runs an angry hand through his thick hair, the dark waves spreading across his forehead as pained eyes finally show me a tiny bit of the tempest inside him.

  A mail clerk trundles by with a squeaky cart. We’re blocking the hall. He stops and waits, staring dumbly at us, one finger in the air like he’s about to interrupt in the geekiest way possible. He reminds me of Mark J., and that? THAT fact is the one that makes the tears almost pour out, because it reminds me of the day I met Declan, of how Mr. Sex in a Suit looked that morning, so crisp and unknown, and how in the short expanse of one month I could go from hot, liquid lust for a guy I don’t know to this.

  Arguing in a hallway at work about whether I’m sincere or not.

  “You don’t know me.” It’s the only sentence I can form right now.

  “You didn’t give me a chance! I took a chance on you, and you just—” Some primal emotion without name blinds me. “Which Shannon am I supposed to date—the one lying in the men’s room, the one lying at the credit union, the one lying about her allergy?” His voice breaks.

  Screech. The mail dude nudges the cart, then jumps, like he’s scared himself.

  I scooch out of the way and the squeaky cart rolls on by.

  “I didn’t lie about my allergy! And what the hell do you me
an you ‘took a chance’ on me?” I can think of plenty of ways to interpret that remark, and not a single one is good.

  His voice feels like a sharp blade being dragged just gently enough across my throat to leave a scrape. “You lied by omission.”

  Declan’s lips are tight and his eyes are anywhere but on me. There’s nothing I can say, is there? He’s decided in his own rat brain that he’s done with me. All this “which Shannon are you?” crap is just that—crap. He’s hiding something, and it’s pretty damn obvious. To me.

  I was good for a screw in the limo and the lighthouse and…well, for that, but I’m not good enough to date in front of Daddy. He’s just like Steve, only the stakes, and dollar signs, are bigger.

  Did I mess up? Sure. But his reaction is so utterly out of proportion with the facts.

  Plus—I’m done. Done explaining myself to irrational people who seem to care only about proving they’re right. If who I really am doesn’t fit into his image of who I am, then he can go suck it.

  “I can’t make you believe me,” I say with a voice that is surprisingly even. “I don’t want to.”

  That makes him look at me. Really look at me. The first sign of hesitation flashes in his eyes.

  “In fact, if you can’t even listen to me try to explain what’s happened over the past day, then we never had one iota of what you claimed we had.”

  His eyes soften.

  “You said a lot of things to me, too, Declan. And I remember every one of them. And you know what I’m remembering most of all?”

  He just stares at me.

  “When we were kissing at the restaurant that first night, you said: He has no power over you. He discarded you. Don’t give him that power back. You are worth so much more.”

  Declan’s turn to look like he’s been slapped.

  My own eyes narrow into tight bands as I take my time, letting his own words thrown back at him sink in. His jaw grinds but he says nothing, though his eyes are so conflicted.

  “You know what? I am worth so much more. You don’t want to hear me out? Too bad. Coffee offer rescinded. Deal off and over. Everything’s off the table. Good day, Declan. Have a nice life.”

  “Shannon,” he says as if making an involuntary sound. It’s not a groan or a growl or even a question. Just a statement.

  “I’m either authentic and real or I’m fake and cunning. I’m one or the other. You don’t even get to choose anymore, Declan. You took that choice away from yourself.”

  I turn on my heel to leave, and then casually throw my final words over my shoulder.

  “You can’t have both.”

  “I don’t want both. I want the real Shannon. And since you don’t know who that is…”

  A tingling red ball of rage takes over. Steve dumped me because I wouldn’t turn myself into a pretzel and stop being myself. Declan insists that the “real” me, whatever that is, isn’t enough either. I can’t win.

  So I’m done playing.

  “You know what, Declan?”

  Silence from him. Just that cold, green resolve in eyes that used to smile on me.

  “Go validate yourself.” It takes everything in me not to give him the bird as I walk away.

  Chapter Three

  “This is the part where I’m supposed to say he’s an asshole and she’s so much better off without him,” Amy whispers to Amanda as I go through my seventh tissue in five minutes, “but I can’t honestly say that.”

  I am on my bed, wearing an old pair of velour pants that I think my grandma left at Mom’s house before she died. My torn pink shirt—the same one I wore the day I met Declan—is technically on my body, but I’ve been wearing it for three days straight now. It could animate of its own accord and walk away. Can bacteria become sentient? If so, my shirt has become a form of artificial intelligence.

  And I smell like bacon and cookie dough. Don’t ask.

  “Whoever said breakups are a time for honesty?” Amanda whispers back.

  “But I can’t even lie about Declan!” Amy insists. “The guy’s really perfect.”

  Amanda murmurs something in agreement.

  “I can hear you!” I wail. “And you’re right! That’s why this hurts so much!”

  Amanda rushes over with the half-melted pint of ice cream. I can’t even bring myself to take a bite. That’s how bad this is—a breakup where I don’t eat myself into oblivion.

  It’s the Breakupocalypse.

  “Get it away from me,” I mutter. Chuckles comforts me by settling in my lap and rubbing his puckered asshole up and down my arm. Nice. Not only have I not showered in two days, I can’t touch ice cream, but now I smell like cat butt.

  I wonder if I feed him coffee cherries if I could make cat poop coffee from it and—

  Then I remember Declan is the one who told me about cat poop coffee. I can’t even look at Chuckles’ butt without being reminded of the biggest mistake I ever made.

  I make another mistake by saying that aloud. “Chuckles’ butt reminds me of Declan.” I sniff.

  “She’s turning into our mother,” Amy whispers to Amanda without moving her lips.

  “So it’s bad enough I lose Declan, now I’m turning into Moooooooom,” I wail. “That’s like learning your dog died and you have a bot fly larva growing on your labia.”

  Amanda peels my laptop out of my fingers. “Someone’s been watching way too many zit-popping videos on YouTube today,” she mutters.

  “She’s been holed up in here all weekend, logging in to work and doing reports. She says she doesn’t need to step outside for anything for at least nine days because of a batch of new, overeager mystery shoppers who will do all the in-person work for her and she just has to manage paperwork,” Amy tells Amanda.

  “When did you get a penis?” I ask my sister.

  All the eyebrows in the room except mine hit the ceiling. “When did I what?” Amy asks.

  “You mansplained that perfectly. Over-explaining something that didn’t need to be over-explained, with just enough condescension to make me hate you. Perfecto!”

  “She’s losing it,” Amanda murmurs out of one corner of her mouth.

  “I already lost it. Lost him. Lost my dignity. Lost…everything.” I lean forward in a slumping motion. A cloud of fleas bounces around me.

  I really am ripe.

  Or Chuckles is infested.

  “He’s a shallow asshole!” Amanda says with about as much sincerity as Mom telling me she really liked my hair when I dyed it purple in eleventh grade.

  “He’s not. He’s so damn amazing, and I—he—we…” I snatch my laptop back from Amanda and pop it open. “I just don’t know what the hell happened. None of it makes any sense. All I know is it’s all Jessica Coffin’s fault.”

  I navigate to a zit video that features a man who appears to have a white-nippled breast growing out of his love handle. A woman bearing a heated pair of tweezers and wearing purple latex gloves performs backyard surgery while a group of relatives sit around a picnic table eating ambrosia salad.

  My people. These are my people. This video will be—

  “AUGH! GROSS! TURN THAT CRAP OFF!” Amy screams. Chuckles gets up and sits on my keyboard, making the video fast forward with no sound. No satisfying mashed potato goo coming out of the skin of people who view pus as entertainment.

  People like…me.

  “What have I become?” I moan. “I’m one of those weirdoes who watches zit videos.”

  “You’re a woman who doesn’t understand why her asshole ex did what he did,” Amy soothes.

  “And a weirdo,” Amanda adds.

  “That was last year. That was Steve. How can this happen to me again. How? Something is wrong with me. I’m damaged somehow. Invisibly damaged. I’m doomed to never understand why men flee from me. Why I’m not good enough. What the fatal flaw inside me is that drives men away.”

  “It might be the lack of showers,” Amanda says softly.

  I throw Chuckles at her and walk away
.

  “That was not supportive,” Amy hisses.

  “I was about to shove Vicks VapoRub up my nostrils.”

  “So it wasn’t just me?” Amy sounds relieved.

  “I CAN HEAR YOU!”

  “Then go shower!” they say in unison.

  “A few more emails,” I mutter. A batch of new mystery shopper applications has come in. I routinely process them. It’s a formality, just a series of emails I have to open and read because—

  “Marie Jacoby?” I shout. Does one of the emails really say my mother’s name on it?

  Amanda presses her lips together to hide a smirk.

  “Mom is now a registered mystery shopper with Consolidated Evalu-shop? What the hell?”

  “She wanted to do the marital aid shops, and some others, so I walked her through the steps for certification.” In order to get the really good mystery shopping jobs, you have to take an online certification course. It’s not hard, but it’s no cake walk, either.

  Pay a fee and boom—certified for a year.

  “Mom did all that? It’s bad enough Carol does some of my shops, but MOM?”

  “She said that if the company’s paying for her to try out new warming gels, sign her up.”

  “I refuse to be her supervisor,” I say flatly.

  Amanda looks alarmed, and then we both find the answer. “Josh!”

  “Josh is a techie,” Amy says.

  “He handles overflow,” I explain.

  “Josh is so cute.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “I know!”

  “So Josh can take over with Mom,” I say, forwarding her info to him. There is no way in hell I am mystery shopping nipple clamps with my mother. The sad part is, she’d be better at those shops than anyone else I know.

  Sad.

  “Quit stalling and get in the shower.” Amanda takes the laptop from me and shuts it firmly.

  “I showered regularly for Declan!” I protest. “That’s not why he dumped me.” The steam rises from the shower head as I strip down. Amy and Amanda are in the threshold, like I’m on some sort of watch I don’t know about. Are they worried I’ll harm myself? The worst damage I could inflict would be eating two entire packaged of peanut-butter-stuffed Oreos, and if they think their presence will prevent that, well…