by Julia Kent
“Your bouquet had a smartphone holder?” Declan asks.
“I know, right? Stupid feature.”
“Actually, no. That’s a great feature, and perfect for the weddings at Anterdec’s hotel chains. I need to get ahold of our director for events and—”
“DECLAN!” Andrew shouts into the phone. “I am in hell here. I have your mother-in-law demanding that I ground your jet and have you arrested.”
“Arrested for what?” Declan’s voice cracks like a teen boy in puberty on the last word.
“Kidnapping.”
“Again? I am here willingly!” I shout at the phone. “She already tried to ground the helicopter. What the hell is she thinking? I’m here of my own free will!”
“I know that. You know that. Marie damn well knows that. But she’s all over cable news claiming that you stole Shannon.”
“We saw her being interviewed,” I explain. “She doesn’t blame Declan. She blames the president.”
“You saw her being what?” Andrew barks. Declan and I share a confused look.
Amanda’s voice comes through, clearly.
“OH MY GOD, ANDREW, THE COURTYARD IS FULL OF NEWS PEOPLE. MARIE IS BEING INTERVIEWED BY—” Muffled sounds come through the receiver as Andrew returns.
“Who’s interviewing her?” Declan asks. The jet engine begins a low hum, and a knock on the door interrupts us. Declan scrambles to pull on his kilt, which now looks like a jawa that went through a wind tunnel in the rain, and opens the door just as Andrew answers.
“Geraldo Rivera.”
The flight attendant gawks at the phone. Declan pivots back, tight jaw now loose and practically on the floor.
“Mr. McCormick? You and Mrs. McCormick need to fasten your seat belts.”
“In bed?” I eye the mattress with a new sense of respect.
“No, Mrs. McCormick.” Mrs. McCormick. A chill runs thorough me. She points to two upholstered chairs next to a lovely oak table. “Those are the takeoff and landing seats.”
“GERALDO RIVERA?” Declan shouts, the non sequitur confusing the poor attendant.
I give her a gentle nudge out the door and assure her we’ll be fine. The hum of the engines is revving up and I tug on Dec’s hand, leading him to the seats. He grabs my phone and takes it off speakerphone.
“Listen,” he snaps. “We know that Marie knows we’re going to Vegas. How in the hell did that happen?”
Mumble mumble mumble mumble.
“She looked at Amanda and figured it out?” Declan says with a derisive snort.
I knew it. Amanda is the weakest link after all.
Declan looks at me. “Should we reroute?”
“Reroute? What?”
“Go somewhere else to get married. Not Vegas. They know we’re headed there.”
My hand brushes against a black remote control and I look up, seeing a small screen attached to the wall. Pushing the power button on, an action I will deeply regret in a moment, I flip to the news stations.
My mother’s giant head fills the screen.
“Have Andrew lie. He can tell her we’re going to Atlantic City instead.”
Declan’s face brightens and he mutters into the phone as I take my seat. A few exchanges later and he hands me my phone, settling into his own seat for takeoff.
“She’s not stupid,” he muses, thinking this through. “She’ll figure it out soon. And Anterdec has a great property in Vegas.” He puffs up like a silverback gorilla protecting a harem. “The finest resort on the Strip. We can hide there.”
“Daddy will try to talk some reason into her. Besides, it’s not like she and my father have piles of money to come chasing after us,” I say, giggling with the absurdity of all this. “They will run out of funds faster than Anterdec will.”
Declan blinks. “Andrew’s letting her use the other jet.”
“What? I thought it was in Central America on a humanitarian mission!”
“It happened to finish early. Landing in Boston in about three hours.”
“Then assign it to another mission!”
“That’s not how this works.”
“Make it work that way! Lord knows there’s always another natural disaster somewhere that needs your plane to deliver supplies, and if there isn’t, create one.”
“I can’t create a natural disaster, Shannon.”
“Sure you can! Corporations do it all the time! Conglomerates are more powerful than governments! Mom can’t have access to an entire corporate jet, so do whatever it takes.”
“She can when she’s driving Andrew nuts. He’ll say anything to get her to leave him and Amanda alone.”
“What does Amanda have to do with this?”
His answer is eaten by the roar of the plane engines as we lift off, the rumble of the plane’s effort to stay steady and adjust to the cross-winds turning my already-jangled nerves into a ball of nausea. So much of the day has turned into a circus. A farce. An abomination and distortion of everything I know, and as the plane takes off the ugly tears hit me, driving hard through my body, sending me into a wretched, breath-holding sob that feels like I’m dying.
Declan’s face, etched with alarm as he watches me, breaks my heart, because I’ve never seen him so helpless.
He comforts me the only way you can when you’re on a private corporate jet, escaping your own wedding.
In bed.
Chapter Five
Bedrooms on planes should be a requirement. Like landing gear, seat cushions as flotation devices, and microscopic packets of peanuts, bedrooms need to be on every plane.
“I’m officially a member of the Mile-High Club,” I crow, snuggled next to Declan, both of us naked under the sheets. If I smoked, I’d totally be sucking off a Camel right now.
Okay. That sounds so wrong. Let me rephrase that...
“Round Two was decidedly longer,” he says. That’s it? That’s all the man is going to say?
“You’re still fixated on being Mr. Two-Minute Man when we got on the plane?”
He bristles.
“That was your fault.”
“How was it my fault?”
“You primed the pump, so to speak, back in the helicopter.”
Trying to fix my faux pas with a well-timed kiss, I melt into the connection of our mouths, the rumble of the jet plane making it hard to truly relax. Even a smooth flight like this one, aboard a skillfully-flown private jet, isn’t the same as being on the ground and in a bed that isn’t moving at a rate of six hundred miles per hour.
At least, um, most of the time we’re in it.
“You can’t just kiss me every time you say something objectionable and think I’ll let you get away with it,” Declan says with a condescending sniff.
“Since when?” I ask, agog.
He frowns. “Huh. Good point.” His cheek grazes against my bare breast, face skimming my nude body until I’m giggling, then gasping, and finally moaning his name again.
And again.
“One hour to arrival time, sir,” says the attendant outside the door. Declan sighs. We’ve been in a bubble for the past four hours, dozing off, making love, and trying to ignore my smartphone, which has been buzzing so much it might as well be a vibrator.
“In an hour we’ll land and take the limo to the resort,” Declan says, watching me dress, face tense but a smirk tickling his lips.
“Resort?”
“Anterdec owns two of them on the Strip in Las Vegas. But one is so much better.” There’s that smug smile again.
“Which ones? I know about Litraeon.” Which sounds like a citrus car. Every time someone at Anterdec mentions it I think of a giant lemon on wheels. “What’s the other one?”
He snorts. “A total dive at the bad end of town called Louie’s Stiff One.”
“Is it a brothel?” I shimmy back into my wedding dress. We don’t have anything else to wear. Neither of us expected to escape the wedding, so we packed no bags. I’m lucky to have my phone and wallet, and Decl
an’s sporran has his basic ID and credit cards, I assume.
Wherever we’re going, we’ll have to go like this.
“Not a brothel. Even Dad won’t let us own whorehouses.”
“‘Whorehouse’? What is this, 1984? Are you Burt Reynolds?”
He looks at my half-clothed bosom. “If that means you’re Dolly Parton, I sure am.”
I throw a loose chair pillow at his head and miss. Green, mischievous eyes laugh at me.
“That’s what Dad calls them!” he protests, tossing the pillow back, but in a playful manner. This is my Declan. I haven’t seen this side of him in ages. The wedding has taken every spare bit of oxygen from our relationship and left it spasming, choking and gasping for air.
Now we can breathe.
“James isn’t exactly the epitome of pop culture knowledge.” The man still refers to his “briefcase phone” at times and drinks Tab.
“We’re not going into the sex trade, so it doesn’t matter what term we use.”
“You own those O spas,” I remind him. “Those are super-close to being in the sex trade, if what Mom and Amanda reported is true.”
“The guy strippers don’t actually have sex with the women. It’s different.”
Before we can continue this scintillating discussion about the finer points that differentiate male strippers from female prostitutes, Declan jumps out of bed and starts dressing.
“Once we’re at the resort, I’ll order a shopper to bring you a proper wardrobe,” he says, pulling up his socks.
“I have a proper wardrobe.”
“Back home, sure. But not here.”
“I can find a Target or a T.J. Maxx and get a few things,” I counter. “I just need some basics.” I perk up. “What about thrift shops? Are they any good in Vegas?”
“No,” he says slowly, giving me a long-suffering look. “The resort has one of the best retail sites in the world attached to it. You can get what you need at Prada, Chanel, or Armani.”
“Why would I buy anything there? We’re not going to a fancy ball, are we?”
“No. But you deserve some nice clothes for our wedding. And honeymoon, wherever we end up.” A few seconds pass as he eyes me. “Hell, any clothes at this point. That dress is close to rags, and I can’t have you running around Vegas naked.” His hand goes to his mouth, eyes narrowing. “As appealing as that might be.”
The enormity of what we’re doing catches up with me. I don’t have a stitch of clothing that wasn’t picked out by my mother, including the plaid butt floss masquerading as underwear. Speaking of which, the tartan thong is hanging off the handle of the fire extinguisher.
“I can buy my own clothes.”
“A professional shopper will deal with all that,” he says with a wrist twist. “It’s what they do. They’ll make you look stylish.” The instant the words are out of his mouth he winces, realizing what he’s said.
“I see.” You could use my voice during physical therapy sessions to ice a hundred knees.
“I meant—”
“A long time ago, Declan, you told me you always mean what you say.”
“I do! It’s just—”
I stomp across the bedroom, fling open the door, storm out and slam it. The air pressure on the plane makes the door close with an anemic pffft.
That was so unsatisfying. If you’re going to storm out in a huff, do it with better props.
I charge out into the cabin and realize I have about sixteen paces before I reach the cockpit. Damn. He follows me, his heavy sigh a clear sign that this is an argument he’s not going to stop having. The fight between us over money is so irrational I can’t quite find words for it.
Oh, yeah. I can.
He’s a billionaire. Officially, even. His stock options matured enough recently, along with trust holdings, for Declan to call himself one. It’s real. I’m about to become a billionaire’s wife.
On the surface, that’s great, right? You’re doing a crazy football cheerleader routine complete with pools filled with fifty-dollar bills and Tiffany necklaces as lamp chains at the idea of being engaged to a wealthy man, but halt right there. I’m just a girl from Mendon, who grew up in a tiny Cape Cod dormer house, who shared a one-bedroom garage apartment with her sister until two years ago.
My last car looked like the Iron Giant dropped trou after a double-double and pooped on it. And the car before that started by shoving a big-blade screwdriver in the hole and turning until the engine groaned.
You try shoving a long, tapered instrument in a dark hole and getting something to turn on.
Um. I mean....
“Is this about the money?” Declan’s words slice through my thoughts. We’ve had the same argument for two years. He wants to indulge me. I feel uncomfortable. He argues I’m not letting myself enjoy and it’s a reflection of low self-esteem. I assure him my sense of self-worth has nothing to do with not wanting a two-hundred-dollar hot stone massage or a $2,500 pair of shoes, thanks, and maybe he should check his own privilege at the door and see if his need to be a big spender is compensating for something.
That last bit kind of ticks him off.
“It’s about wanting to wear what I want to wear. Not what some professional shopper picks out for me. The last time we did this she dressed me like a porny version of Hello Kitty.”
“Pink leather is in.”
“I looked like a walking labia, Declan. With glitter.”
“Maybe that’s a thing?”
“Maybe you wish it were a thing.”
“Maybe if you’d just accept a gift from me, I wouldn’t feel like you’re holding back trust.”
Whoa. What?
“You really believe that?”
He has the decency to look uncomfortable. “No. But it was worth a try.”
“Declan,” I groan. I hate this conversation. And yet I have a disquieting feeling it’s rearing its ugly head now because this is a cornerstone of our relationship. The clash between our backgrounds took a backseat to all the similarities between us, and the complementary ways we fit into each other’s lives. Now, under conflict, we’re finding the fissures.
“Beginning our descent,” the pilot announces. “Please take your seats, Mr. and Mrs. McCormick.”
The unearned title makes me smile, a bashful grin that twists the corner of my mouth up, the other held in place by my teeth as I bite the inside of my lip. The tension between us eases as we strap in, a bottle of chilled sparkling water in a silver bucket on ice on a table next to him, the bucket’s twin next to me, filled with a bottle of bubbly.
Without asking, because he knows me so well, Declan opens the sparkling water and pours me a glass. I’ll sip it during the descent to pop my ears over and over. His fingers brush against mine and I give him a soft smile.
“I love you,” he says, as if he feels I need to hear it. I don’t. I know.
“I love you, too.”
“And you were a smoking hot Hello Kitty,” he adds with a wolf whistle as the plane’s nose turns downward, taking us to the next step in our hare-brained escape plan.
Chapter Six
Vegas is big and bright. Duh, right? But I mean BIG. And BRIGHT. It’s like Times Square on steroids sprinkled on top of a big dose of Molly with a case of Red Bull thrown in for fun.
I crane my neck, plastering my face against the limo window, looking up.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been to Vegas,” Declan says for the fourth time in ten minutes.
“C’mon. Not everyone has the means to travel like your family.”
“You never took family vacations?”
“We did. Camping. To the beach. I don’t think dragging three girls to a place where toplessness is legal and Santa Claus carries an LED sign on a backpack with crotch shots really qualifies as a family destination site.”
He frowns. “Anterdec’s resort is trying to do just that.”
I look out the window and see what appears to be Chewbacca from Star Wars receiving o
ral sex from Elmo.
“You have your work cut out for you,” I reply, pointing to the scene.
“May the Force be with you,” he mutters.
The limo halts at a red light. Famous performers whose names I’ve heard growing up have their faces plastered all over the sides of skyscrapers, the buildings jutting up like towers of Babel in the desert. I’ve seen movies about Vegas. Watched a few documentaries. Even had friends come here and return home with wild stories of gambling and reckless sex.
Until you’re driving down a palm-tree-lined boulevard with wide streets, broad sidewalks, and outdoor escalators leading to catwalks that span the road every block as far as the eye can see, with choreographed water fountains, beggars, old ladies wearing stripper-joint t-shirts that say Girls, Girls, Girls and handing out free passes to nudie bars, you don’t really get a sense of the electrified chaos and the extraordinary overstimulation of it all.
I’m beginning to think that coming here was a bad, bad idea.
As if he reads my mind, Declan scoots me by my ass across the seat, where he nestles me in his warm arms. He smells like sweat and sex, like remnants of his morning shower’s soap, like my deodorant and the sweet grapes we ate on the plane before dashing to this limo. I’m so used to having Gerald or Lance at the helm. Geordi is our driver, and he looks just enough like Harrison Ford with purple streaked hair under his hat to make me wonder if this isn’t one big movie set and Declan’s playing an elaborate practical joke on me.
“Hey. It’s not all like this.”
“What isn’t?”
“Vegas. This is all for show. For the masses. We’ll drive into the underground garage and take the private elevator to our room. You won’t have to see a thing.”
“See what thing?”
He laughs. I elbow him.
“I meant the casino floor. The indoor gardens. The shops you clearly don’t want to patronize,” he adds with a touch of saccharine. “The craziness.”
I twist in his arms and look at him. In the neon glow of nonstop blink and change from signs like Tokyo, he looks well worn. Tired. His guard is down, and a piece of me loves him a little more for it. My mouth stretches open with a noisy yawn and he laughs, then yawns as well.
