Shopping for a Billionaire's Wife (20 page)

I sniff mine. It has hints of cinnamon and cherry. “No placenta?” I joke.

“I can get you some,” Evangi says, darting for the door.

“No! It’s fine.” The coffee’s not nearly as good as Grind It Fresh!, and Amanda and I share a knowing look, but I keep my mouth shut. Caffeine matters. Origin does not. 

I want the scoop on Jordan and
Lüq
.

Mom brought him and his weird little dog into the wedding planning just after Amanda went on a work date with him and saved the tiny Chihuahua from being a hawk’s Pu Pu platter. Someone videotaped the rescue, and for whatever reason, Jordan blames Amanda for the little dog being in danger, and considers my mother to be the true rescuer. 

What the hell do Lüq and Jordan Montelcini have in common?

“Are you from Boston?” Marie asks hu. 

“No. I am a citizen of the world.”

Even I roll my eyes at that, and so does Gagai, except when she does it her chains rattle and she sounds like one of the ghosts in
A Christmas Carol
.

“I met Jordan at a rave,” Lüq starts, looking at each of us, as if this tidbit were an anchor for the rest of the story.

What’s a rave?
I mouth to Amanda. She shrugs. Hmm. Maybe it’s a fast food joint?

“He had this lion’s mane of hair, wild and rainbowed, and he looked just like Boy George in his heyday.”

Mom and Pam sigh.

Old people stuff
, Amanda mouths.

I nod.

“Ours was an affair of passion—”

“Hold on. You
dated
Jordan?” Amanda asks with an incredulous squeak.

“Yes.”

“But he’s straight!”

“How would you know, my dear? And besides, love has no gender.” Lüq spreads hu’s arms wide, the long arms like wings when draped by hu’s muumuu. Hu looks like a butterfly. A bald, aging butterfly with a Grateful Dead complex and tattooed-on eyeliner. 

“I went on a date with him after being matched together in an online dating program,” Amanda declares, blunt and bold. 

Lüq freezes. “Le Hawk has made love with my ex?” Hu’s jaw shifts slightly, a tongue rolling in hu’s cheek, and Lüq gives Amanda a creepy once-over that is about as thorough as Jeffrey licking clean a pint of ice cream. 

“Good for you,” Lüq finally says. Amanda is still speechless. 

“I didn’t sleep with him!”

“Pity. Your loss.”

“What?
His
loss! HIS!” Amanda screeches.

“I sense an imbalance in your energy, Le Hawk.” Lüq sighs.

“That was me,” Mom says. “Sorry.” She reddens, and turns to Elle. “What was in that latte?” She stands, makes a very embarrassing sound, and asks, “Where’s the bathroom?”

Elle points. “The latte is made with the finest breast milk provided by the—”

Pam, mid-sip, sprays the contents of her mouthful everywhere.

“Le violence!” Lüq cries out. “Is your life force in anguish?” 

“I think Marie’s bowels are,” Amanda mutters as Mom sprints for the facilities.

“There was breast milk in that latte?” Pam asks me, her voice anemic and shaky.

I shrug and whisper, “I’m sure Anterdec would never—”

“Of course,” Lüq says. “Research shows that it is a vital source of anti-aging nutrients. I drink it every day.” 

Amanda gives me a look. “It halts your aging?” The guy is easily in his fifties, so—

“Yes. I am eighty-one years old. Do I look it?”

“You’re
eighty-one
and you dated Jordan?” Amanda is still stuck on this, while I’m left wondering if pregnancy and lactation might hold some key to immortality. “Jordan’s in his forties!”

“I might have to rethink that whole breast-milk-drinking thing,” I mutter. My stomach seizes, rising up in anarchy. Okay. No. I’ll take the wrinkles. 

“Love knows no age,” Lüq sniffs. 

“No age. No gender. Love doesn’t know shit, does it?” Amanda whispers to me.

“And Jordan Montelcini is a blood-sucking little worm.” 

“Agreed!” Amanda crows.

“What did he do to you?” I ask Lüq. 

“He broke my heart.”

I pat Lüq’s hand. “It happens to all of us at least once. Sometimes love just isn’t enough.”

“Ain’t,” Mom says, returning to the group.

“Ain’t what?”

“Sometimes love just ain’t enough. If you’re going to quote cheesy love songs, get the titles right.”

I ignore her.

“Why do you hate him so much? His very existence bothers you?” I ask Lüq.

Lüq gives me hu’s compete attention, my eyes falling into hu’s. “Do you not understand, child? Only from great love can come such anger. We find ourselves impaled by rage only when we feel betrayed by big love. If we are lucky, we experience so much love that one day—” Hu’s voice hitches with emotion and I’m overcome, grabbing the first person I can touch, needing connection. 

The hand I squeeze is Mom’s.

“—that one day, we burn with hatred like Hades himself, consumed wholly by the power of all that is vile, wishing our former soulmate a pain-filled, loathsome death worthy of a beggar stewed in excrement.”

That
went in an unexpected direction.

“Jordan Montelcini is an ass,” Lüq sobs. “But he was
my
ass, and now I have to go through the rest of my life assless.”

“Me, too!” Mom wails. “It all just flattens out like a fat pancake after fifty.”

“That’s not what hu meant, Mom!”

“But it’s true! I could bend over and you could use my ass as an end table, honey. I could sell this ass as a level in the tool department at Home Depot.” 

What’s the SKU number for whackadoo?

“It’ll happen to you, too, honey. Genetics.” She gives Amanda a sympathetic blink. “And you.” 

“Me?” Amanda squeaks.

“Just look at Pammy,” Mom says, shaking her head with pity. Poor Pam reaches around the back of her chair to pat her own ass.

“What about my tushie?” Pam is alarmed. 

“It’s been more than twenty-five years,” Lüq says with a sigh, hu’s eyes glassy and unfocused as hu interrupts. Hu is clearly caught in the reverie of the ’80s. “His mother made him break up with me, and then that wretched wench destroyed my floral designing career. She wanted Jordan for herself.” 

Amanda looks like she just licked the top of her Turdmobile.

Lüq claps, switching gears like nothing. “The ladies are here for a relaxing spa day, not a tour of my broken heart’s four chambers. You, my dear,” Lüq adds, touching my hair, lifting the long strands like they’re drugged snakes being readied for medical testing, “need a complete intervention. Top to bottom.” 

“Bottom?” I gulp.

“Anal bleaching,” Mom whispers, then winks. “It’s a thing. Guys love it.”

I start to dry heave.

“Anal bleaching is
soooooooo
2013,” Lüq says drolly, making Mom redden and turn to hu in reverence, all ears to learn what this year’s trend might be, and how to use it as a form of torture against me. 

“Let us start with the top,” hu says. “You poor, poor child,” hu mutters, pulling me over to a hairstyling command center. “What on earth happened to your hair?” 

“I, uh—”

“And these fingernails!” Lüq picks up my index finger on my right hand like he’s plucking a leech from a cadaver. “Tartan? What abomination is this?” 

Mom slowly slides her hands under her pancake ass.

Gagai picks up Amanda’s hand and points.

Lüq’s eyes widen and hu gives us all sympathetic looks. “Who is the Scottish monster forcing this crazy pattern on you? You are tartan hostages who need love, sympathy, and a proper fill to recover from the psychic trauma of these hands, which scream desperation and haggis.” 

Mom doesn’t say a word.

I love Lüq. 

* * *

Two hours later, I need a break.

When I return to our hotel suite, I mistake it for a high-end boutique and back out slowly. The room is filled with eight racks of women’s clothing, forming a corridor behind the sofa. A gold-painted vanity is in front of the left side of clothing, and I see three distinct stacks of shoe boxes on the floor beneath the hanging clothes. 

“I’m so sorry! I must have the wrong room!” I call out, hoping I haven’t offended the occupant.

“Mrs. McCormick?” The voice is female, with a French accent, but one much more cultured than the spa pixie.

“Um, not yet. This is Shannon, though.”

“Mrs. McCormick, I am Evie.” A rail-thin replica of Coco Chanel herself, circa 1920, reaches for my hand, warming it between both of hers. Dark hair coiffed in a retro wavy look that frames her face. A suit that is Tiffany Blue, a color I now know. Pale, unlined skin that is timeless. Warm brown eyes. The kind of cultured appearance that could make her thirty or sixty.  

“Mr. McCormick leaves his regrets—he is at a business meeting—but he asked me to assist you in finding the wardrobe that best suits your needs.”

I’m going to kill him. An image of Hello Kitty in a Georgia O’Keeffe painting slams through my thoughts. 

“Declan sent you? You’re a professional shopper?” 

“I prefer the term
stylist
.” 

“Oh. Sorry.” Great. There’s a
vocabulary
for this. It’s one thing to have undeclared behavioral expectations when it comes to buying new clothes, but now I don’t even have words. 

I’m a Fashion Preschooler.

Evie moves like her feet are a hovercraft, her bones in perfect alignment. I am an injured giraffe in comparison. I reach up, wondering what I look like, feeling oily skin and ragged hair. Lüq had me do all the spa treatments first, then let me come up here to grab a book so I could tolerate another three hours in hair-color hell before getting a cut and style and having my makeup done. 

“I do know that Lüq is expecting you, Mrs. McCormick, so I will not take much of your time. We need your measurements, your weight, to take a small scraping of your skin, and to pluck some hair samples.”

Horror fills me. “Why? So you can clone me?”

She laughs. “
Non
. We can best find colors that enhance your skin tone, the contours of your body, and to allow shadow and light to work for—and not against—you.”

“You realize I buy most of my clothes at Savers and the Salvation Army.”

She gives me a blank look. “Are those new boutiques? You are from Boston, I know. Perhaps these are local to you?”

“They definitely have an eclectic set of offerings,” I reply. “And a diverse clientele.” 

She reaches for a smartphone and taps on the glass screen with—of course—perfect nails. “I will investigate. Thank you for the information. I am certain we can find you some outfits that are as nice as those you find at Savers and the Salvation Army.”

No kidding, lady.

Bang bang bang
.

Someone pounds on the door, the racket so loud you’d think the hotel was on fire.

“Shannon! Open up! I know you’re in there!” 

Mom. Surprise. 

“If you think sneaking out of Mr. Lüq’s spa before you’re done is going to work, you’ve got another think coming. Declan told me to babysit you and make sure you get every single treatment on the spa menu!” she bellows.

“Your mother?” Evie asks, sympathy filling her voice.

I nod.

“And that includes the vajacial!” Mom shrieks.

Evie looks like she’s about to faint. No worries about Hello Kitty fashions from her.

I wrench open the door to the suite and grab Mom by the salon drape, yanking so hard she flies face-first into a dressmaker’s bust. Mom’s getting highlights and lowlights, so her head is covered with foil. She looks like she belongs in Roswell, New Mexico, at an alien encounters convention. A cigarette with a long ash and a story involving anal probes and she’d fit right in. 

Actually, now that I think about it, the
only
thing she’s missing is the cigarette. 

“No one is getting anywhere near my labia with steam or anything else!” I declare. “And that includes Declan,” I add in a low voice.

“Saving that for the wedding night?” Mom whispers with a wink. “Smart girl. Make him hold out until he wants it even more. And a fresh set of lips will really—”

If I pretend she isn’t real, she’ll go away, right?

Hold on.

She’s carrying a coffee.

From my favorite coffee shop next door.

“Where did you get that?” I’m more outraged that she didn’t get me a yummy latte than I am by her comments about anal bleaching, which is not happening. Nope.

“Lüq got it for me, Pammy and Amanda.”

“What about
me
?”

She lifts one shoulder and imitates his accent. “He said that if you didn’t care to stay, why should he get you the divine nectar?”

“I’m here to get a book! To have something to read while I go through all these treatments.”

“You always have to be
different
, honey. Lüq has plenty of things to read in the spa.”

“They’re all pictures of hair styles or magazines in French.”

“You took middle-school French. You should be able to read them.”

“The pictures make it clear the magazines are all for high-colonic industry workers.”

Evie gives a low sound of acceptance. “Everyone has a fetish.” Her hand moves in a distinctly French way, the nonchalance so engrained, the lift of one corner of her mouth imperceptible. 

Mom looks at her as if finally noticing her and grins nice and wide. She looks like an extra on
Steel Magnolias
. “Yes. Everyone does. Hello. I am Marie. I’m Mr. McCormick’s mother-in-law.”

“That’s how you’re introducing yourself now, Mom? Not as ‘Shannon’s mother’, but as ‘Declan’s mother-in-law’?”

“I’ve got to use my connections, dear. Declan has more clout here than you.” 

“Listen to yourself! That’s so shallow.”

“Oooo, Prada!” Mom says. Clothes are a shiny for her. She’s like a magpie. “What’s this all about?”

“Declan’s forcing me to work with a professional shopper.”

“Stylist,” Evie hisses.

Mom beams. “Will she get you another outfit like the last shopper? The one who dressed you in that gorgeous Hello Kitty outfit?”