Shopping for a Billionaire 3

by Julia Kent

  Declan and I arrive and immediately change the demographics in the room:

  1. We lower the average age by a mere two years, but hey, we’re outnumbered…

  2. Declan alone increases the average income by five figures.

  3. He adds a male to the group. The only male in the group.

  Mom urges us to get in the front row, and I scout it out carefully. Yoga freaks have this thing about their space. No one actually, officially, claims a space, but they do in their minds, and no matter how much yoga is supposed to be about awareness and acceptance and detachment and flow, so help you bloody GOD if you take a yoga freak’s spot in class.

  Namaste, motherf—

  “I am so glad you’re here!” Mom squeals as Declan rolls out his mat. We’re barefoot and I can’t stop peeking at his feet. For a guy, they’re remarkably nice and athletic and groomed. “Metrosexual” is not the word I’d use to describe Declan, but his feet scream manscaped! I imagine them sliding up and down my calves…

  He starts to stretch and smiles at me, beckoning with his eyes to join him. I bend down to unroll my mat and a popcorn popper goes off.

  Wait. That’s just my joints.

  And twenty old ladies’ necks all turning at once when they realize there’s a man in the room, and he’s not on Viagra.

  (At least, I assume he’s not. And it’s no thanks to me. One inch in the wrong direction with that EpiPen and…)

  I shudder and he reaches over to give me an affectionate caress. “You cold?”

  Twenty sighs fill the air. Mom appears up front, setting up her blocks and yoga mat. This is Restorative Yoga, which means everyone in the room pays $17 each to lie around on a foam mat and fall asleep. How Mom ever got into this business is still a mystery to me, but anyone who can get paid to make her customers zone out and snore and be praised wildly is pretty freaking brilliant as far as I’m concerned.

  He leans over for a kiss.

  Twenty moans rise up behind us.

  And then—scuffling sounds.

  “You know Marie will have us do Downward Dog and Cow,” someone hisses. A chorus of voices all say “Ooooooh,” followed by a whispered frenzy. Those are yoga positions where you shove your butt in the air.

  Hold on a second…

  “I’ll pay your class fee if you give me the spot,” says Agnes. I only know her name because the last time I was here all the other women were gossiping about her because allegedly she’s a bit of a loose woman. How you label a ninety-year-old woman “loose” is beyond me, but all I can think is GO AGNES.

  When I’m ninety I hope I’m still doing yoga and that my libido cries out for a piece of a man, Viagra or no Viagra. The clitoris does not have an expiration date. The hard part must be finding a man with similar interests, a similar life timeframe, and one who isn’t in a lovely white cardboard box on someone’s mantle.

  “You think you can always get everything you want, Agnes,” one of the other women hisses. “Not everything has a price.”

  “Some views are priceless,” another woman sighs. “I’ll pay for two classes if you – ”

  As I turn to watch the brewing fight behind us, Declan’s lips are twitching. He leans over and says, “Ten dollars says Agnes ends up leading a Senior WWF brawl back there.”

  “MMA is more her style.”

  “Corrine, I swear!” Agnes shouts. “You can stand there like a mule all you want and refuse to budge, but I know about your bone density levels.” Her voice carries an ominous tone.

  “You wouldn’t!” Corrine cries out. She’s seventy-something going on fifty, with a wig from Farrah Fawcett’s day. She looks like she’s in a wind tunnel. Oh—no. That’s just really bad plastic surgery.

  “I’ll nudge you just enough to fall and you have a hip that’s more fragile than Putin’s ego.”

  Wait a minute here. These old ladies are threatening bodily harm and broken bones so they can sit behind my boyfriend and ogle his ass?

  I crane around behind him and take a good look.

  Yep.

  Totally worth it.

  “Ladies! Ladies!” Declan stands up without using his hands to even touch the ground, displaying ab and core strength that makes everyone freeze, drool, and sigh at once. Someone back there might even have farted.

  He holds his hands in the air, palms out, to get the group to pay even more attention to him. “Let’s make it a bit more fun, shall we?”

  Mom stops her preparations, her finger about to push the button to start the sonorous soundtrack.

  “If one of you can guess how Shannon and I met, you can win the—”

  Twenty women shriek, “TOILET GIRL!”

  “MOM!” I howl.

  “Don’t shake her hand,” Agnes whispers to Corrine, who stares resolutely ahead and doesn’t give Agnes a millimeter as my mom comes over to me and Declan with an Oh, shit look on her face.

  “It’s such a charming story!” she says in a stage voice. “My daughter being a professional at the top of her game in business, meeting the billionaire son of James McCormick—”

  “The Silver Wolf,” Corrine gasps, giving Declan the once-over with eyes like a Terminator robot from one of those movies, evaluating him for specific fleshy characteristics that meet her mission’s criteria, which I suspect involve twisting her body against his in non-standard yoga positions. “You look like him.”

  “My father has a nickname?” he mutters, then mumbles quietly to me, “A sexy nickname? Gross.”

  “Your father is a gorgeous hunk,” someone calls out.

  “Dad doesn’t date anyone over thirty,” he says under his breath.

  “Oh, goody. My timer doesn’t pop for six more years,” I hiss.

  He flinches, and I can’t tell if it’s from the radioactive sarcasm in my voice or from the idea of my dating his father. Hopefully, it’s both.

  This is not restorative.

  “Ladies! We’re running out of time!” Mom calls out, now back in place at her mat. She gives me a fake helpless look and mouths What can I do?

  More therapy, I mouth.

  She gives me a hearty thumbs-up, then leads the class through a series of warmup poses that leave me sweatier than Mom during the height of menopause. Declan hasn’t broken a sweat. Six women are trying to share one yoga mat behind him, though.

  Soon we’re all on our backs, stretched out on the floor, listening to Pink Floyd. If they handed out little LSD stamps before class, this part would be even better. Instead, I hear light snoring, the high-pitched whine of someone’s uncalibrated hearing aid, and the sound of Every. Single. Woman getting up at least once during full-body relaxation mode to pee.

  The bladder does not acknowledge Restorative Yoga. It’s an anarchist when it comes to Savasana pose. No snooze for you!

  In the dark, “Comfortably Numb” comes on, and I feel something brush against my hip. Declan’s hand finds mine and he interlaces our fingers. I relax immediately at his touch, layers of tight muscle giving way, and as his warm palm reminds me that he’s there—really there—I wonder if it is true love when you finally find someone else who thinks cilantro tastes like detergent.

  His hand, fingers woven into mine like a web, goes slack, too. We’re shedding layers through touch, and maybe there’s something to this whole Restorative Yoga thing, I think, as a warm cloud of deep bliss surrounds me. Declan shifts his arm so slightly, his palm sliding against mine, and I can feel him smiling.

  Sinking deeper, the world fades out and all I am is my hand, touching him, and it’s so much more than enough that I dissolve into a state of harmony that slips into a peaceful darkness.

  Chapter Ten

  “I hope you two die just like that.”

  Mom’s words make my eyes snap open. She’s standing over me, the yoga studio’s lights on full blaze, and there are about ten other sets of eyes boring down on me.

  Us. Me and Declan. I turn my head, confused and fuzzy now as I come out of my slumber, and see he’s out c
old, still. A big patch of drool covers one side of my mouth and even my hair is a bit soaked at the jaw line.

  “You hope we—what?” Instinct tells me to sit up, to run away, to escape from being the focus of the yoga version of Ray Bradbury’s The Crowd.

  “I hope you die just like you are, right now. So cute.” All eleven women staring at us like we’re part of some modern art exhibit sigh in unison.

  Declan’s right eyebrow shoots up and he says nothing.

  “You want me to die?” I ask, incredulous. “In your yoga class?” He squeezes my hand and I try not to laugh.

  “No, I mean, you know, in sixty or seventy years. That you two die after a long, happy marriage and plenty of kids and you’re peaceful old people who die just like that.” Mom’s elaboration doesn’t help.

  “I wanted that, too,” Agnes says. “But my husband, Jerry, had other plans.”

  “How did he die?” Mom asks. But she asks as if she knows the answer already.

  Agnes looks at me. “He got his hand stuck in a toilet and couldn’t get out. I was on a tour of Niagara Falls with my church group for three days and he starved to death.”

  Declan groans, his body curling in a bit. He’s trying not to laugh, and he shakes, abs rippling against his tight Lycra shirt, his ass tightening.

  “Ooooh, keep it up. Nice glutes,” someone says. That just makes him laugh harder. Now I sit up and let go of his hand. For some reason, I’m jealous—jealous!—and don’t like all these people eyeing my man candy.

  He’s mine.

  “Your husband didn’t really die like that, did he?” I’m cynical enough to think there’s no way that story is true, but just gullible enough to worry that if I assume it’s a joke, and it isn’t, that I’ll destroy an old woman’s feelings.

  “No. He died porking a retail clerk at the mall. They were on the elevator. He was a security guard. Heart attack. The man didn’t touch me for seven years and then he goes and sticks it to the pretzel stand girl.”

  That makes me bark with laughter as Mom waves her hands behind Agnes and mouths It’s true.

  Oh, hell. I can’t win.

  “I hope I die in the arms of someone I love,” Mom announces. Declan’s laughter comes to an abrupt halt, the change so distinct it makes the hair on my arms prickle. Something in Mom’s declaration hit a nerve with him, and it makes me see how little I really know about him.

  He stands, fluid and graceful, then yawns. This is no normal yawn, though. It’s a lion’s roar, with arms stretched nice and high, his belly button exposed as he reaches for the sky, stretching and extending his muscles and joints. The body on display for us all is, decidedly, the nicest eye candy ever. Fine, Swiss eye candy. Candy made from slave-free, ninety-percent cacao farmed by happy rural cooperative workers working to save the whales.

  “Can I just touch him, once?” someone asks. “It’s like all those Nike ads with the sweaty, hot men come to life, within reach. I thought they were all done with trick photography. This—this is like learning Bigfoot is real.”

  A green wave of mist covers my vision. What is wrong with me? I’m jealous of women who haven’t needed to use birth control since the moon landing.

  But yes—I am.

  “Bigfoot is real, Irene,” Agnes says to the owner of the disembodied voice. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel last week.”

  “You’re so naïve, Agnes. That show is just trick photography and some guy with too much hair on his body. My Dave was that way. The man could go around the house without a shirt on and you swore he was wearing a mohair sweater. That’s all Bigfoot is.”

  The two descend into bickering as Mom shoos the crowd out, thanking them for coming and talking about seeing them next week.

  Declan snuggles up to me. “You like what you see?”

  “Mmmm, eye candy. Zero calories and better than licking a lollipop.”

  “I’ve got a lollipop you can lick.”

  Mom, of course, happens to walk over to us just as he says that, and she pretends to be shocked, then pretends she heard nothing.

  “So, Declan, did Shannon invite you over for Easter dinner?”

  Huh? We never discussed this. Why is Mom acting like I—

  “No, Marie, she didn’t,” he says slowly, not making eye contact with either of us, his body bent in half as he rolls up his yoga mat. We’re greeted with the mighty fine view of his ass, and we sigh in unison.

  I elbow Mom—hard.

  “I can’t help it!” she hisses.

  “You better help it. It’s icky.”

  “You’re right! You’re right.” She appears to take me seriously. “It is icky. I’ll stop right now.” She gives me a look that’s genuinely contrite.

  “Well,” Mom says loudly as Declan turns and faces us, “even if Shannon didn’t invite you, I’m inviting you.”

  His eyes travel slowly from my face to Mom’s. “When is Easter?” he finally asks.

  “This Sunday!” she sputters. “In three days.” With a frown, she says, “But I’m sure you have plans with your family.”

  “We haven’t celebrated Easter in more than ten years,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “How awful!” Mom exclaims, grabbing his arm. Her eyes almost glisten with tears, and she’s truly shocked. She pauses. “Are you Jewish? Is that why?”

  “No.”

  The lack of additional information unsettles both me and Mom. Declan has this way of being shut off. He’s not cold, exactly. It’s more like talking with a lawyer who isn’t going to give one single additional bit of information than is necessary in court.

  Except we’re not in the middle of a legal proceeding. We’re in my mother’s yoga studio, talking about a holiday where the Easter bunny and a giant ham prevail. What’s up with him?

  “Mom, if he were Jewish he wouldn’t have celebrated before. He just said it’s been more than ten years since…” I turn to him. “Since your mom died?”

  He nods. But nothing more. He’s so…wound, suddenly.

  “Will you be there?” Mom asks, her smile so sweet and warm. “We have a loud, crazy family and I’m the queen of it all. And I make a killer ham.”

  “You buy it from the ham place down the street,” I say. “The kind with the crusted sugar on the edge, all spiral sliced, and then she makes the sweet potatoes with little marshmallows…” My stomach growls.

  He thaws. “Who can pass that up?” Eyes that were green tundra seconds ago warm up, and his body loosens. “Thank you, Marie. What time?”

  “Two for dinner, and at three we do the Easter egg hunt.” Mom looks happier than Martha Stewart being told that Gordon Ramsay’s coming for dinner.

  “What can I bring?”

  “Your helicopter.” She is practically jumping out of her skin with excitement.

  “Um, I was thinking more like a bottle of wine, Marie.” Declan wraps his arm around my waist and presses an absent-minded kiss against my temple. He smells like sweat and comfort, spices and safety.

  “Okay, fine. The helicopter would be one hell of an entrance.” She just doesn’t know when to stop.

  “Where would he land it, Mom? In Dad’s garden?”

  “Why not? He hasn’t planted anything in there this season yet.”

  “How about I arrive in my own SUV, wearing something other than a suit, and I bring suitable Easter egg hunt items and a bottle of wine?”

  “And your Batman costume,” I add with a smirk at Mom.

  “Leave our sex life out of this,” he stage whispers.

  Mom turns pink and stammers. “I—I’m so glad you’ll be there!” She skitters off to the office.

  I hit Declan in the pec. My fingers crack. “Why did you say that?”

  “Because I like to beat her at her own game.” His smile is so impish I stand on tiptoes and give him a grateful kiss.

  “You’ll never win,” I say, sighing.

  “Never say never.”

  * * *

  “You need to
pee,” Tyler says as Declan walks in the front door of my parents’ house on Easter afternoon. It’s two o’clock and my boyfriend (that still gives me shivers to say it) is punctual. And, as promised, he drove his SUV, is wearing a long-sleeved, blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and jeans that fit him achingly well, and holds a lovely bottle of wine.

  Declan bends down to be at eye level with my four-year-old nephew, who has his standard, serious look on his face. Little bow-tie lips, short brown hair, and brown eyes fringed by eyelashes so long they reach the ceiling.

  “Thanks, buddy, but I don’t need to pee.”

  “You need to pee!” Tyler insists as Carol comes running from the kitchen and whisks him away to the bathroom.

  I get a questioning look from Declan and try to explain. “Potty training. And Tyler has a language disorder, so right now he confuses ‘you’ and ‘I.’”

  The lights go on for Declan. “I see. So he was saying ‘I need to pee.’” He laughs. “I hope he made it.”

  Carol starts clapping and cheering from afar.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Declan’s kiss is polite and brief, so routine it warms my heart. That is the kind of kiss you give someone you’re becoming very comfortable with, and I love it.

  Love him.

  “Declan! You’re here!” Mom comes barreling out of the kitchen wearing a red apron that says “Will Cook for Sex.” She gives him a warm, motherly hug. He’s a head taller than her and yet she’s the one enveloping him. He closes his eyes and surrenders to the embrace. A tiny corner of my heart grows a little more.

  “Wine, as promised,” he tells her, handing off a bottle of something white. Looking artfully around the empty front room, he says with some care in a whisper, “And I have a bunch of plastic eggs stuffed with candy and toys out in my car. Where should I put them?”

  Mom’s grin splits her happy face and she gives him a big kiss on the cheek. “You sweetie! When we’re ready for the egg hunt we’ll just grab them and hide them.” She holds the bottle away from her, squinting to read the label. “Jason! Come see Declan and take this chilled bottle out of here!”

  Dad walks down the hall and joins us. He’s wearing a matching apron, khakis, and no shoes or socks. I think Dad is allergic to socks and shoes.