Shopping for a Billionaire 4

by Julia Kent

  Declan’s eyes follow mine. His arms drop. He blinks rapidly, focused on me now entirely, still maddening. Still not answering.

  “Surely you haven’t changed your name to Alfredo and taken up plumbing,” I joke, regretting the intrusion instantly.

  He gives me a wan smile. “Maybe I’ve become a mystery shopper.”

  I shrug, trying to hide how my heart is trying to break free and go hug his. “I’ve worn plenty of uniforms before during evals. You wouldn’t be unique.”

  “So I’m not special?”

  I measure my answer carefully as a cloud of calm coats me. He’s here, and I want him so much, but I can’t bridge that gap without an apology. Or even an explanation. Letting men waltz back into my life and resume as if there aren’t pieces of broken, bloody glass made up of my soul isn’t working for me lately.

  Isn’t working for me ever.

  “If you mean are you like all the other men I’ve dated? No.”

  He flinches, guarded eyes showing a series of quick snapshots of hurt, confusion, atonement.

  “No? I’m on par with Steve?” He says his name like a curse word.

  I can’t do this. I cannot have this conversation with Declan right here, right now. Who does he think he is? My mind scrambles to come up with a pithy comeback, witty repartees that will make him regret what he’s cast aside, but instead I fall back on the one approach that comforts me most. That makes me feel real.

  The truth.

  “What are you doing, Declan? I’m not playing games with you. I don’t play games. You chose to break up with me because you didn’t know who the ‘real’ Shannon is. Because you thought I was using you to get ahead in business. Because—”

  “Because I’m an idiot,” he interrupts, taking one resolute step forward, bridging the gap between us by half. A thick gust of wind billows the stiff curtains inward, the sun flashing off some piece of glass on the desk, and the scent of seawater, the rush of cool air makes the moment seem so ripe with possibility.

  “Idiot?”

  “Idiot.”

  One more step. Please take one more step, I think. The Shannon inside me that knows I can’t be walked all over is fighting with the part that wants him to kiss me, that wants to lose myself in his touch, our lips, a joining of bodies that banishes the clashing of minds.

  Does it have to be either/or?

  Declan’s own struggle is reflected in his eyes, one strong hand moving to his hip, the other reaching up to push through hair I wish I could stroke. I still don’t understand what happened a month ago in the hallway outside that meeting. Probably will never understand. But if he could just give me one reason, one tiny sliver of—

  And now he’s kissing me.

  Good reason.

  Very good reason. I arch into him, absorbing his warmth, lips parting to let him taste me. As my body softens against him I feel the pull of my heart toward his, like a magnet gathering iron shavings, as if his touch could summon the disparate parts of me and bring them together, whole.

  Yes, with just one kiss. And then another. And another, until there is no separation between them. No divide, no marking point where one warm, soft sigh and brush of a tongue and an eager embrace begins and ends. They all blur together, like seconds blur into minutes, minutes into hours, hours and days into the woven cloth of a life well lived.

  And loved.

  He smells so nice, like Declan. His own branded scent, like tasting him in the air. Hot, eager hands pull me to him like he’s planning never to let me go, and the rush of being so close, so deliciously close to him doesn’t subside when it should.

  If this were a movie, I’d pull back, smack his face, and he’d yank me close and kiss me again.

  But this isn’t a movie. And he still has not answered my question.

  I pull back, the kiss lingering on my mouth like a layer of silk as I ask, “You broke up with me because of your mother, didn’t you?”

  Another kiss replaces his answer. I slide my hands around his waist and there is this one spot where his shirt has pulled up just enough from his waistband to give me a glorious inch of hot, taut skin to touch, my thumb caressing it, my palm wanting so much more. Bold now, my fingers track upwards along the ropy muscles that parallel his spine, feeling the power of his shoulders as his arms envelop me.

  Damn it. He did it again.

  Breathless, I pull away just as he steps forward, pushing me gently until the backs of my calves hit the bed. I want to bend. Oh, how my knees want to fold just enough to sink us both into the down-filled duvet, to wake up in the morning with pillow mint wrappers stuck in my hair, and not because I ate a bag of them alone while watching the first episode of Outlander repeatedly and crying about how there are no good men like Jamie.

  “No,” I whisper, making him look at me. “Not yet. You can’t waltz in here like this and expect me to let you pick up where we left off, because you left off in a spectacularly crappy way.”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose and steps back, warm breath coming out in waves as he fights to control his panting. “Yes. You’re right.”

  “That’s a good start,” I mumble. The United States of Shannon is a federation of states all working together, but a few parts of me—all below the waist—are calling constitutional conventions to discuss secession.

  Traitors.

  “Are you going to listen to me, or just crack wise?” Declan asks in a tight voice.

  Record-scratch moment. Screech! Hold on.

  “If you’re here because you want to get back together, you have some explaining to do,” I say, ignoring my clitoris, which is attempting to call the secession meeting to order for a vote. Man, is it banging that gavel. Hard.

  “So do you.”

  “Me? What do I have to explain? I tried to explain. No, I never wanted you for your money or for business contracts. No, I’m not a lesbian. Yes, I have a bee allergy. What else do you need to know? Those are all parts of the very real Shannon who is standing right in front of you.”

  He points a finger at me.

  “Don’t muddy the waters. The problem is that you took what could have been a simple situation and twisted it into Gordian knot-like complexity,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone.

  I have no desire in this exact moment to admit that I have no idea what a Gordian knot is, so I say, “How did I make it complicated?”

  “You caught Jessica’s attention. Anytime she tweets about someone it has to have triggered a rash of rumors so strong it gets back to her,” he declares.

  “That’s my relationship crime? That my ex’s ex who is hot for your rod tweeted about my pretending to be gay? You broke up with me for that?” I laugh. I’m genuinely not upset, because that explanation is so freaking lame that I know it’s not true.

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because you never bothered to tell me about your allergy.”

  “It was our second date! Don’t you think you’re being a bit unreasonable? Allergies aren’t a second-date thing.”

  “Second-date thing?”

  “You know, kiss on the first date, show your student loan debt on the second, intercourse on the third. There’s a timetable for these things. Deathly anaphylactic bee allergy isn’t slated until date number seven, filed under Batpoop Crazy Relatives and Genetic Predispositions to Hammertoes.”

  Peering intently at me, he ponders this. I can tell he’s debating, his eyes moving rapidly even open, his teeth sinking into the soft inner flesh of his lip. I’ve made a cogent point and he has to either react with reason or—

  “Not good enough.”

  Assholery.

  “Not good enough? You get to unilaterally declare my explanation ‘not good enough’?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “No!” I blurt the word out and whip around, grabbing the mints on the pillow and unwrapping them. The erstwhile wrapper goes flying near the wastebasket, wafting down as I shove the cho
colate in my mouth, fuming at him.

  “Cute. We can argue and shout ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at each other all day, Shannon, but you have to admit to yourself that—”

  “I remind you of your mother, who died from a wasp sting, and you can’t handle that.” In finishing his sentence for him I’ve chosen a path that leads either to the end of everything between us, or a real beginning.

  Real.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Google.” I let the tension release from my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

  “What else did you read?” His voice is so tight he could string a guitar with it.

  “There isn’t anything more,” I answer, bewildered. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t dig anything else up. And Jessica was of no help.”

  “Jessica?” His carefully constructed facade begins to crack, his face betraying him as he starts to show a few slivers of emotion beyond desire. “What the hell does Jessica have to do with my mother?”

  The whole scheme sounds ridiculous now, but I figure I should share. “We thought because she’s a gossip girl, she might know what happened ten years ago, so I asked her. Got no response whatsoever. I guess she doesn’t know.”

  “No. She knows what happened. Her non-reply is because she can’t stand you.”

  Nice. At least he’s being truthful.

  “Then why can’t you just tell me, Declan?” I ask in a quiet voice. “You’ve told Jessica. But not me? This obviously has a lot to do with us.”

  “Us?” The second that syllable is out of his mouth I deconstruct it, finding 17 different meanings when you include vocal inflection, tone, and pacing. “And I never told Jessica,” he says with a growl. “She found it out on her own and confronted me with it.”

  “Confronted?” What is the big secret?

  He storms away from me, onto the balcony, bracing his arms on the railing, leaning into the wrought iron in a way that makes his arm muscles bulge, his shoulders spread. Tipping his head down as I join him, he can’t—won’t—meet my eyes.

  I touch him, my hand on his shoulder. He twitches just enough to make me remove it.

  “Are you sure you’re safe out here?” he asks in a flat voice.

  “Safe from what? Flying vibrators?”

  He laughs, clearly against his will. Yet he won’t look at me. His gaze shifts to the water, eyes tracking a sailboat that glides smoothly on the waves.

  “No. From a bee sting.”

  Anger pours into me like it’s been attached to an IV drip bag and administered as medicine. “You can’t let it go, can you?”

  His head snaps up. “What?”

  “You can’t let go of the fact that I have this...thing. This allergy. This curse.” I feel the rant coiled deep inside, ready to unfurl. “It’s not like I have a choice. I didn’t ask for this. It’s part of who I am, and I take every precaution imaginable—”

  “Not every precaution.”

  I tilt my head and stare at his profile. Red dots of fire kiss my cheeks. Blood courses through me like a tsunami.

  This? This is what’s stopping him?

  “You liar,” I spit out.

  His eyes light up with a mixture of confusion and indignation.

  “Liar?”

  “Yes. Liar. You lied to me a month ago. You told me that you thought I was a chameleon, that I wouldn’t reveal the real Shannon.”

  “What does that have to do with my lying about—”

  “This is the real Shannon. The real Shannon can die if she’s stung by a bee. The real Shannon has boobs that touch the bed when she lies on her back. The real Shannon needs to wear spanx to fit into a comfortable size sixteen. The real Shannon hates Transformers movies. The real Shannon thinks Jessica and Steve and your father and fake people who have overinflated egos and are out of touch with reality.”

  He isn’t showing even the tiniest hint of emotion as he listens, expressionless. His hands are tight fists, though, held close to his thighs, and his nostrils flare as he breathes silently. No reaction.

  Oh, yeah? I’ll make you react.

  “And the real Shannon thinks you’re a total emotional wuss for thinking that hiding your emotions makes you more of a man,” I add. A parting shot, if you will. I want to kiss him again and knock some sense into that handsome face, using my tongue and hands and heart if I have to, but I see, now, that it’s no use. He’s clinging to his secret and if he won’t tell me what’s going on, I can’t keep playing this game.

  My heart isn’t a toy.

  And with that I storm out of my own room, snatching my purse and instruction sheet.

  It’s time to evaluate the bar.

  * * *

  It’s an icehouse in here.

  This time—literally. I’m fuming and so red-hot on fire that as I walk into the carved-ice bar I fear I’ll melt the entire place down with my very presence.

  As I step into the sculpted ice room, I realize it’s like a cave. The bar has barstools—made of ice. The bar itself is one round-edged sheet of ice. Shelves? Ice.

  It’s magical.

  My nipples tighten from the cold and I look down. All I’m wearing is the thin white silk shirt I have on, the one that got wet a few minutes ago. My soaked sleeve is like a frosted blanket, and I can see my own breath as I exhale. My jacket is back in my room (with Declan) and my skirt is split up to my panty line.

  No wonder the girls just went tight and high. It’s cold in here.

  I don’t care. My mind can’t stop spilling over with a thousand words, most of them profanity-laced diatribes about Declan.

  How dare he?

  How dare he!

  Show up and interrupt the most important job I’ve ever had, mock my profession by pretending to be a maintenance man (yeah, right...like Amanda put him up to it!) and then have the audacity to kiss me. A lot. And then blame me for not telling me what on earth his dead mother has to do with his dumping me!

  I need a scotch. Bad.

  I sit down gingerly on the cold, hard, ice-topped bar stool. The bartender’s back is to me, and he’s whistling some tune I don’t recognize. The lighting in the bar is a series of cool blue LED bulbs carved into the ice. The entire room is like something out of the set of a new Star Trek film.

  The music is soft jazz with a jaunty, bluesy tone to it. The kind of music that gets you warmed up to go to bed with someone. To throw inhibitions into the wind and let your impulses carry you to a new place.

  Like a hotel room upstairs.

  My skin tingles from the rush of emotion that clings to me, my lips raw from those kisses, my heart shredded and beating like it holds time itself together. Like my heart is responsible for the counting of seconds that pass.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  That’s too big a burden.

  Need to drown it in alcohol.

  I clear my throat. “Excuse me? Could I order a—” As the bartender turns around and I get a look at his face, I cut my own words off.

  It’s Andrew.

  Declan’s brother.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, incredulous. A few heads, all male, turn toward the sound of my fairly-loud, and quite demanding, voice. They turn back to their drinks and conversation when Andrew leans in toward me and puts his hand over mine, like we’re old friends.

  Where Declan is dark and intense, Andrew is fair and blank. Generic. Now that I’ve seen pictures of their mother, I understand who Andrew takes after. He’s not quite blonde, and the eyes are pale brown, like a fine whisky. The broad planes of his face are Declan’s, though.

  “Would you keep your voice down? When you go undercover you’re supposed to blend in.”

  “I’m blending in!”

  “I meant me. I’m acting, and this is my first time, so don’t blow it.” He’s mocking me, pretending to be serious. “I don’t want to have to pretend to be a lesbian and have that blow up in my face,” he adds.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Nice language
.”

  “Wait until I have my two drinks in me.”

  That makes his face crack open in a smile and he sweeps an arm toward the myriad bottles on shelves in front of a highly-polished ice wall. “How may I serve you?”

  “Two fingers of scotch. Neat.” I’ve heard my dad order this way at fine bars, so why not?

  He pours about two big shots into a tumbler and slides it to me.

  I take a sip. The burning feeling does not square with the ice cold chamber I’m in, so I decide to go all-in and just chug it, slamming the glass down on the bar.

  “That’s it? Two warm shots in a glass?” I gasp as the liquid feels like lighter fluid pouring into my belly button.

  “That’s what you ordered. Want a wine cooler next time? Or a drink with an umbrella in a coconut?”

  I glare at him. “Anything that might attract the attention of a bee would be great.”

  His eyes go cold, but he looks around the room, then says, “Not in here.”

  “Not anywhere in your life, so I’ve been told.”

  “Dec never was good at keeping his big mouth shut,” Andrew shoots back, which makes me snort in surprise. If Declan’s too talkative about, well, anything, then what kind of family did they grow up in? The handful of sentences I can pry out of him about his feelings, his past, his mother are the exact opposite of what Andrew’s saying. As the alcohol hits me and fills me with a loose sense of curiosity, I decide that alienating the one person who might give me some insight into Declan McCormick might be a mistake.

  A big one.

  “He’s pretty good at keeping his own secrets close to the vest,” I say in a conspirator’s voice.

  Bingo!

  Andrew leans in. “Yes, he is.” This gives me a chance to get a good look at him. He’s wearing a white, collared shirt, a black vest, and a name tag that says “Jordan.”

  “Why are you and Declan pretending to work here?” I ask. Not the original question on the tip of my tongue, but right now I’m feeling all squiggly and casual with him. Aside from staring across a board room table at him and hearing about his OCD-crafted life to avoid being stung by a bee, I know nothing about Andrew.

  “Your friend set it up. Amanda.” His lips spread in an instantaneous smile that he tries to turn into friendliness as her name pours over his lips, but I’m not deceived. Two questions fight for positioning in me, and the one that wins is: