by Julia Kent
Men.
Just....men.
“We’re not pawns! And we didn’t plan a damn thing. Escaping from the wedding was all about my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“My mom. Marie. The Momzilla? The one who made me wear a tartan thong. Who dressed a cat up as the flower girl. The one who sabotaged my bachelorette party and who made the guys go commando in their kilts and use Fresh Balls lotion and—”
James frowns. “I thought that was for tennis balls. No wonder my game was off this morning.”
“AND!” I shout over him. “AND, the one who invited Jessica Coffin and my ex to my own wedding, all so she could—”
The realization hits me between the eyes.
“So she could get free press and gain status and make people pay attention to her creation,” I say pointedly.
Declan’s attention cuts from me to his dad to the phablet. His gaze lingers longingly on the phablet, those numbers enchanting him, a data-driven mistress I can’t quite compete with.
“Surely you’re not comparing Anterdec’s trending prominence with your mother’s petty need for a mention in Boston Magazine’s society page?” James asks with a smirk.
“I am. You are being just like my mother.”
James and Declan inhale sharply together, like I just stabbed them both between the ribs and punctured a lung.
Declan and James exchange a look. “That was low, Shannon,” my future husband says.
“She really does have claws,” James says with a whistle, giving Declan a look that tells me they’ve discussed this, and that James is only now believing something Declan told him. “No spray bottle though, right?” The corner of his mouth curls up with a confidence only a sixty-something, self-made billionaire can possess.
“If the shoe fits...” The dawning realization that I’m still in the hotel-provided bathrobe hits me as I pick up the discarded mate to the high heel my Mom took. Tightening my sash, I walk away, grabbing the coffee pot and a pitcher of cream and going to the one place where I can have some peace.
The bathroom.
Muted, heated discussion takes place outside the closed, and locked, bathroom door before I turn on the bathtub faucet and drown out those testosterone-pumped vocal cords. Just as I turn up the water, I hear James say, “Jesus, Declan. You always ran around the house naked as a little kid, so the underwear is an upgrade, but put on a robe for decency’s sake.”
I snort.
A wave of emotion starts below my navel, tightening like a wire being pulled taut between two fists. Paradoxically, I bend, curling inward, my body twisting. The world makes it unable to remain straight and upright. This involuntary muscular reaction carries a weight to it that seizes me, highlighting all my senses. The rushing water becomes millions of individual drops pinging against ceramic and marble. The bubble bath that froths in the water becomes a field of fresh lavender. The lights in the bathroom glare like searchlights on a helicopter searching for a fugitive.
Fugitive.
I am an emotional fugitive.
My throat clamps shut and I can’t breathe. All I am is one enormous, rigid body, the air trapped in my lungs, my mind nothing more than a tornado filled with emotional debris, whirling and traveling at breakneck speed without anyone driving the funnel.
And then I break.
Giving myself permission to cry, I let it come, ignoring the arguing men outside the door, forsaking my robe, dropping it to the ground and perching on the marble edge of the luxurious tub, the room all glitter and sparkles and opulence. The keening sob that bubbles up is the sound of my self. It’s the sound of choosing me.
It’s the sound of grief.
I am grieving the loss of the Shannon who would have just taken what Mom dished out, and done so with a tight smile. Until Declan, that’s exactly how I operated. I told myself my mother meant well. I convinced myself that she acted from a good heart, from a mother’s core within that wants the best for me.
And that’s true.
My ugly cry continues, my face a mask of red streaks and tears in a mirror that’s meant to reflect back cultivated beauty, in a city designed to make people feel special as a direct result of their possession of money.
Mom means well.
But that doesn’t mean she’s right.
Leaving my own wedding was my idea. I own it. Declan made it happen, but I asked for it. I did.
Me.
I’m a different person now, and that choice to subvert my mother’s will has consequences.
Consequences that are leaking out of my body at an alarming rate, through tears and spasms and visceral sensations that remind me, yet again, that I am human. So much of my life involves thought and analysis, process and procedure. The body, though, demands space. Time. Attention.
And it remembers everything.
Tap tap tap.
“Shannon? Honey? Dad’s gone. You can come out now. No one’s here. We’re alone again.”
I open my mouth to speak but all the words are trapped in an airlock between my heart and my throat. My skin crawls with heat, the steam from the tub filling the room, brushing against my flushed, naked body like butterflies landing in staccato beats.
Bang bang bang.
“Shannon?” Declan’s louder voice is tinged with worry. “Are you okay? Say something.”
I can’t.
But the body knows what it needs.
Shaking, I stand and walk three steps to the door, unlocking it. Before I can twist the doorknob, Declan’s pushing against the door, opening it gently, his concerned eyes meeting mine.
“Oh,” he says, one syllable that carries the weight of our entire relationship in it. I’m in his arms, Declan bending one knee to reach down and turn off the bathtub water, the layer of joyful, relaxing foam so close to the edge it’s about to erupt in a massive spillover that will cause unremitting chaos and mess.
Just like me.
“Shhhhhh,” he whispers into my hair, his hands following the well-worn paths across my back, down to my hips, his fingers like a brush in the hands of an artist who uses love, not paint, to make a picture of how the world should be. In his embrace I can let it go, sob and keen, seethe and quiver, invoking my own ire and outrage at a world I can disrupt, but can’t steer.
I did this.
I did all of this.
My power turns out to be so much more than anyone ever let me know.
Except for Declan.
He knew.
He knows.
“She—she—thinks I’m supposed to feel s-s-s-orry?” I finally choke out, the words garbled as my lips press against his shoulder, my tears viscous against his skin. “Like this was my fault?”
“She’s wrong.”
The room is so warm, like a soft cloud inside a cocoon. The only sound is my sniffles.
“I know that! But she thinks it’s okay to tell me I’m expected to apologize to her!”
“You can’t control what she thinks or says. Only how you respond to her.”
“Maybe you can be that way, Declan, but I can’t! She shouldn’t be this way.”
He stays silent.
We just breathe.
“Did I—was I—did we—are we in the wrong? We left all those people in the lurch. Your dad’s happy because we’re a trending story on all the major news outlets and getting all this free, positive press for Anterdec,” I say, laughing in spite of myself, giggling against Declan’s bare chest, my arms tightening around his waist. “And my dad didn’t say anything bad, but that’s Daddy. He just goes along with whatever Mom says. He’s her lapdog.”
A decidedly male sound emerges from Declan’s throat. “I wouldn’t quite say that. Jason has more backbone than you think.”
“Hmmm.” I’m not sure what he means by that.
“Shannon, don’t second-guess yourself,” he mumbles into my temple, giving it a little kiss that makes me cling harder. “What you did back there in Massachusetts was brave.”
“Brave?”
“Yes. You stood up to her. You stopped her. You—and only you—gave Marie the first hard ‘no’ that woman has heard in a very long time.”
“I didn’t do it alone! You got the helicopter and the jet and called Grace and—”
“I was your operations manager. You were the decision maker. You decided. I just made the logistics line up.”
The first hard ‘no.’
I take three, four, five deep breaths, the humid air making it hard to breathe, the lavender bubble bath aroma soothing and stifling at the same time. Tender and deferential, Declan guides me to the tub, urging me to slip in. I do. He joins me.
Miraculously, the water doesn’t overflow.
“Ahhhhhh,” we say at the same time, catching each other’s gaze and smiling. My eyes sting, so I rub them, hard, the skin around them so raw it feels like wet tissue paper.
“You did it,” he repeats. “You. And I’m proud of you.”
“Proud? For making us a media spectacle and leaving the Boston Wedding of the Year in shambles?”
“Yes.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Your mother is nuts. I am unorthodox.”
I sniffle-laugh, but his words resonate.
“Shannon, do you remember that very first date we had?”
“Which one? The business dinner date or the picnic date where I nearly pierced your penis with my EpiPen?”
His thighs close in, sloshing a little water over the edge. “Christ. Please don’t bring that up.”
I throw a handful of bubbles at him. He dunks his head under, then pops back up, a tuft of white foam on the tip of his slicked-back dark hair.
“What about our first date?” I ask. He looks like a hot seal. “I’ll concede it was an actual date, and not the business dinner we both pretended to share. You brought me a corsage, after all.”
We share a smile only two people in love can volley back and forth.
“You were so, so insecure,” he says, his voice changing, the register dropping into a deep territory of musing. “Steve had convinced you that nothing inside you was of any value. His need to be the authority in every situation turned you into a vigilant puppy.”
I freeze.
“People take the deepest good inside others and use it to meet their own needs. If you’re lucky, you find someone who reciprocates. Who potentiates. Like you.” He’s frowning slightly, so mired in the tangled web of parsing through his point that he doesn’t realize it. The tub is huge. I can’t just reach across and wipe away the tension from his face.
I also don’t want to interrupt him. Some piece of this is resonating within me. I have a lock inside me, and the key is out there, one of a thousand on a big, fat metal circle of keys that Declan holds. For the next six or so decades his job is to pick out a key, try it in my lock, and keep going until the right one fits.
I have no idea what happens when we reach that point.
But I know I hold a corresponding set of keys for his lock, too.
“I was about to tell you that you’re stronger than you think, but those aren’t the right words.” He leans back, resting his head against a small rolled pillow on the tub’s edge, his eyes closed, face tipped up to the ceiling. “People say that all the time—you’re stronger than you think. What they mean is that you have to learn to suck it up. That’s not strength. That’s being groomed to accept suffering.”
His words are like a call to arms.
“You, Shannon, are more powerful than you think. Your mother just got a lesson in that. Don’t back down now. Don’t second-guess. Don’t waffle.”
My stomach growls.
“Mmmm. Waffles,” I say. The joke falls flat. I don’t know why I make it.
Yes, I do.
Because what Declan is saying is dangerous.
“I’m not threatened by your power,” he says softly.
“What?”
“I’m attracted to it, in fact. You are never more alive than when you harness it.”
Oh, God.
“I can’t make you use it, or access it. Only you can, honey. But that no you just used yesterday—that big, fat screw you that you reached inside yourself to find—was mesmerizing in its beauty.”
“It—it was?”
He sits up so fast that a small wave crests over the side of the tub, carrying a shelf of white foam onto the floor, soaking the area rug. He’s kissing me, and I’m melting into him, our bodies wet and slick and floating and entwined, limbs ending and beginning in a Gordian knot that starts with my mother and ends with a clean, simple cut of the sword of our love.
We show each other our combined power, and I swear, in the distance, I hear the sound of metal against metal, the click of steel against unyielding tumblers as yet another key is tried, and yet another lock remains unopened.
Chapter Nine
I manage to find a decent outfit and shoes—if by “decent” you mean a Vera Wang dress and Louboutins—among the maze of clothing that the tailor delivered, though Declan’s clearly unhappy with my “limited” options.
“I’m sending a stylist up to work with you,” he says, calling Grace and muttering a laundry list of issues for her to tackle as he walks around our suite, freshly showered and shaved, his naked body on display for me. He’s so much easier on the eyes than the hand-picked interior-decorator-selected original art throughout the room.
I take the opportunity during his twenty-minute call to clean up and check my nine thousand text messages.
Lunch? Amanda’s text asks. Andrew says meet us at the private club on the roof.
Guilt twangs through me like an untuned guitar string. For the past year, Amanda’s been my maid of honor, my rock, my stable bestie who helped me through this farce of a wedding, and how do I thank her?
By ditching it all after she nearly drowned at the very wedding I escaped.
Where are you? I text back.
You don’t want to know, she replies instantly.
Huh?
I’m naked in bed, she texts.
Oh. She’s right.
I really don’t want to know. We’re in new territory now, because she’s naked in bed with my almost brother-in-law, who has seen me naked.
And I’ve seen Amanda naked.
I look at naked Declan, who is the only person in this quad not to have completed a number of naked-viewing transactions.
Let’s keep it that way, shall we?
Lunch in half an hour? she answers.
K, I reply, just as Declan gets off the phone with Grace and starts dressing, morphing from my Declan to the world’s Declan.
You ever watch a man go from naked to fully dressed in a business suit? It’s performance art. Truly. Declan slides those muscled calves into his black boxer briefs, the soft cotton clinging to toned thighs covered in coiled hair, the color of his skin fading to a soft pale I can almost feel. He eschews a t-shirt under his tailored business shirt, buttoning up but leaving the cuffs alone, for those require his cuff links, which come much later in the process.
I take a seat on the small bench at the base of our California King bed and watch. Forget Cirque du Soleil downstairs.
This is the real show here in Vegas.
And it’s a command performance for one.
Socks—a funky pattern with accents of hot pink mixed with adobe, which Marcello swears is the latest fashion—then the sound, oh the sound of those strong, muscled legs swishing against cashmere woven and tailored for his body alone.
Button. Zip.
And then the belt appears.
It’s a classic, simple black leather with an understated silver buckle, but the precision handling and mastery in Declan’s capable fingers makes my mouth curve in a secret smile as he finishes. The jacket is next, then out come the links, old heirlooms passed down from his mother’s father.
I pick out the tie, a lovely grey that has flecks of adobe.
“That’s the one Marcello recommended,” Decla
n says absentmindedly, clearly unaware of my besotted, enraptured observation of what is, to him, a basic set of procedures to enter civil society.
“Then he has good taste.” I lick my lips. Can’t help it. Watching him dress reminds me of my very first look at him two years ago, when he was Mr. Sex in a Suit, walking into the men’s bathroom at the bagel chain store Anterdec owns, and all I could do was caress him with my eyes and undress him in my mind.
I reach out.
He’s real now. My fingers walk up the fine weave of his suit jacket, squeezing his arm muscles, finding bone and hard flesh.
And it’s mine.
All mine.
“What are you....doing?” he asks, perplexed and intrigued.
“Touching you.”
“I see that. I feel that,” he adds as my stroke goes under the open suit jacket, hand splayed across his ribs, his heat radiating out and warming me. “Why?”
“Because I can.”
The low, sexy rumble that comes out of him makes me lean in closer and inhale, smelling aftershave, soap, coffee and the scent of a man I can breathe in for the rest of my life.
“I think you’re part man, Shannon.”
“Would that turn you on if I were?”
“Nothing could turn me on more than you, as you are, right now.” The way he responds to my touch, twisting toward me, sensuously running his hands up and down my spine, his nose in my hair, his lips twitching with a smile....
Oh.
“Nothing?” I sigh.
“Not one damn thing.”
His kiss makes me regret getting dressed, makes me wish I’d never said yes to this lunch date, makes me spin and grow dizzy in my mind as blood races to all the parts he’s touching right now. Maybe we could postpone...
Bzzzz.
Or not.
“What the hell?”
Moment transformed. Real life intrudes.
“Grace?” he snaps into the phone. Poor woman. It’s not her fault.
I focus on myself, straightening my skirt and running a useless comb through my hair for a moment, trying to fix the mess as Declan barks orders about a variety of media-related wedding crap. Part of me wishes Grace had come to Vegas, but part of me is glad that the long-time executive assistant to the McCormick family is back in Boston holding down the fort.
