Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) (3 page)

I buzz her door. A small video screen shows Marie’s face, sudden and invasive, like a cat that has discovered a hidden video camera. One covered in tuna sauce. 

“Who’s there?” she asks pleasantly.

“MOM!” Shannon shouts. Her voice is tinny but a relief to hear. “We’ve told you not to answer for us at our apartment.”

“What? I’m being rude now because I want to help? When you lived with your sister you never cared if I answered the door for you.”

“No, Amy and I cared then, too,” Shannon says flatly.

“Then why didn’t you say something! I can’t read minds,” Marie retorts.

“We did say—” 

“Give it up, honey,” says a man’s baritone. “Don’t engage the crazy.”

Marie’s voice sounds like a teakettle. “I am not crazy—”

Bzzzz.

The foyer for this apartment building looks like something the Greeks built in Athens millennia ago, except with air conditioning and wireless security. A concierge desk sits to the right, with a flank of similarly-dressed women, all with their hair in updos, speaking in dulcet tones on wireless headsets.

It’s a little too close to Grey Enterprises for comfort. I’ve never snooped around Declan’s apartment, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a Red Room of Pain in there. 

When Shannon and Declan returned from New York engaged and ready for wedding planning, he’d set one simple condition: Shannon had to move in with him. She readily agreed and moved most of her belongings, except for Chuckles. 

Amy inherited Chuckles. Amy will never let Shannon forget this, and so in exchange, Shannon had Declan help Amy get a job at some high tech business incubator in Waltham where you not only can bring your pet to work with you, they have an on-staff pet groomer and animal shaman who will help read your pet’s past lives for you. 

Chuckles turns out to have been Vlad the Impaler in an earlier life.

I know, right? I’m not surprised either.

I ride a bajillion flights up to the penthouse, then pause just before the elevator doors open. I’m loopy and loose, and an ache in me lingers.

An ache for what?

Andrew.

His name floats into my head, an unexpected cloud on a sunny day.

No. I’m being silly. Anyone would look good after Ron the Dogbutt Whisperer. Even an animal shaman would be a better date. 

I walk into the living room. It’s all sleek, smoky grey and wide open glass lines.

“I now know way more about anal glands than any human being ever should,” I announce. 

“Another sex toy shop?” Marie asks.

“No.” 

“You’re working with anal, uh...glands...for fun?” Declan asks. He’s less perplexed than he used to be. I think we’re wearing him down. He’s dressed in the McCormick version of casual, which means his tie is loose. Does the man not own a pair of sweatpants or some cheesy, shredded concert t-shirt from 2003? 

“Proctologist mystery shops?” Marie muses. “Hmmm.” She turns to Shannon. “Your father’s due for his colonoscopy, and the co-pay is ridiculous. Do you think Greg could let Jason become a certified mystery shopper and give him a proctologist shop?” she asks hopefully.

“
Dog
anal glands,” I say with a mouth that over-enunciates.

“You mystery shopped a proctologist who works on
dogs
?” Marie asks.

All three of them stare at me like
I’m
the one who’s coming up with this stuff.

“No. I went out on a date with a guy who squeezes his schnauzer’s ass for fun.”

“Oh,” Marie says absentmindedly as she puts a yellow sticky note on a giant calendar. “I went out with one of those between dating James and Jason back in the day.”

“You mean there’s more than one out there?” I ask.

Declan quirks one eyebrow as the door buzzes. Taking his leave with a look of relief, he goes to the monitor, leaving me and Shannon to stare at Marie with twin expressions of confusion.

“What does that even mean, Mom?” Shannon asks as I go in for a hug. I haven’t seen her since she and Declan returned from a business trip that lasted for two weeks in New Zealand, and the hug goes on longer than it should. I’ve missed her. As she presses her hands against my back I can feel the cool hardness of her engagement ring band. 

The ring that has more intimate knowledge of Shannon’s body than even Declan. Shannon’s Twitter nemesis, Jessica Coffin, chronicled the, uh...transit of the three-carat diamond engagement ring after Shannon swallowed it during the proposal. The hashtag #poopwatch led to more than a little embarrassment for Shannon, but she weathered it all with grace.  

Marie raises her voice as if lecturing. “It means you never want to date a man who’s obsessed with his dog. They are worse than the ones who are attached to their mothers at the navel. Dog freaks will always put their pets ahead of their women.”

“Dad was a vet tech when you two met,” Shannon says as she pulls away from me. Her expression is a mixture of happiness and aggravation, which means Marie’s been here for a while. 

“Yes, but he wasn’t obsessed with, you know...” Obviously distracted, Marie’s voice tapers off as she looks at the giant dining table, a cross between a tornado and the president’s nuclear bomb briefing room. Have you ever seen those reality television shows about the preppers who buy things like coconut flour in 55-gallon drums, or who dehydrate 9,000 pounds of cherries for the day the zombies take over? 

Marie’s the prepper version of a mother of the bride. Except substitute chocolate fountains and Haggis for the cherries and you get the basic idea.

“Dog butts?” Shannon offers helpfully.

Andrew walks in just then. Of course he does. The man knows how to make an
exit
from my life. Over and over and over. That one he has down to a T. 

And now, apparently, he’s perfecting the art of awkward
entrances
. 

“Speaking of assholes,” I murmur.

There goes my heart, beating triple time at the sight of him. But this time, I have the upper hand. I’ve got the goods on him.  

And he knows it.

“You’re safe,” he says to me in a weird voice. Tight, as though angry, but relieved, as if he cares.

“Of course I’m safe. What are you talking about?”

“You disappeared at the marina.”

Now Declan, Marie and Shannon pay full attention to us, Marie dropping everything. Her eyes light up. Oh, no.

No no no no no.

She’s already busy planning
one
wedding. 

She doesn’t need another one, even just in her head.

“You two had a
date
at the marina?” Marie asks in a voice that goes up at the end like a wedding planning erection. Like all the blood in her body swells to fill Something Blue. 

“No date. In fact, I just happened to walk along the water and ran into Andrew talking about his new appointment as the C—”

Andrew’s across the room before I can finish, his warm, muscular arms around me, lips on mine. He tips me back, like a stage kiss, as if the way his hands press into my waist and back aren’t more than a surface-level gesture.  

He tastes like wine and nearly two years of questions.

I wonder if I taste like beer and nearly two years of frustration.

My thoughts quiver, then fade, as the kiss melts me. If this is just for show, he’s putting his heart and soul into it. And his tongue.
Definitely
his tongue. His hands snake down and one cups my ass, the other pulling me tight. His tongue takes its time, like he’s at the beginning of negotiations for the deal of his life.

Maybe he is.

The man is in no rush.

“I don’t understand,” I hear Marie say as if she’s a thousand miles in the air, floating on the wind with a hundred helium balloons clutched in one hand. “Andrew is Mr. Anal Gland Hands?”

The spell is broken.

“Does he even have a schnauzer?” she asks a gape-mouthed Shannon, who is staring at me and Andrew like she’s spotted Sasquatch and he’s snacking on little tempura versions of the Tooth Fairy and Santa’s elves. 

Andrew pulls away, his mouth covered in my lipstick. Plum Passion. Our eyes meet and he gives me the same damn jaunty grin he flashed the other two times we kissed.

He comes back in to nuzzle my neck. I can’t breathe, yet I’m panting. I’m panting so hard my lipstick should be called Panting Panty.

And then he murmurs, “Don’t say a word about my being named CEO.”

I freeze.

That’s
it
? That’s the only reason he chased me down and kissed me? To shut me up?

So I do what any self-respecting woman would do to a guy who has now kissed her twice in closets during crisis points in her best friend’s life.

I pull back and slap his face so hard my palm turns purple.

From the lipstick.

Marie gasps. Shannon lets out a little scream.

Declan smirks, the kind of smile that has zero mirth in it, and mutters something that sounds like, “Great. Asshole Boyfriend Summit coming tonight. I’m not getting any.”

Marie’s eyes narrow. Out of the corner of my field of vision, I see her walk up to the enormous stainless steel refrigerator and open the freezer section.

“Shannon,” she stage whispers. “We’re going to need more ice cream for this.”

“Not sure there’s enough for this situation, Mom,” Shannon answers in a high, reedy voice. 

It feels so good to slap the bastard. No, really. It’s as if my arm has been coiling, waiting like a hunter sits for days before slaying the perfect beast.

Andrew is a
beast
. A perfectly gorgeous, one-hundred-percent selfish, modern-day Adonis who thinks he can just kiss me in private and I’ll let him. Like I’m on a kissing retainer and he can access me at will. 

“I’ll thank you to stop kissing me. It’s not in the corporate contract between our respective companies,” I snap. My heart is pounding so hard it’s like it’s boxing with itself, my ribs the punching bag, my pulse throbbing in time with some rhythm set by the pure fury of being wronged by a man I can’t stop being attracted to.  

Damn it.

His jaw is open, his hand pressed to the growing red spot on his face where I hit him. My palm tingles from the scrape of skin against five o’clock shadow, and the humiliation of realizing all that passion I felt was just a game to him. Those deep brown eyes stare at me with an intensity that belies everything I’m feeling. 

“It should be,” he growls. 

And with that, he turns and leaves.

“I’ll walk you out,” Declan mutters.

Shannon gives him a look. Declan walks to the door Andrew’s just exited and sighs.

“Salted caramel this time? Two pints or three?” His fingers curl around the doorframe as he waits for an answer. 

She looks at me with the deep intensity of a psychotherapist analyzing a feral child. “One bag of marshmallows. One bag of Cheetos.”

Declan’s eyebrow goes up.

“Mom!” Shannon calls out. “Do we have any butter?”

“Yes. Two sticks,” Marie calls out.

Declan flinches. I can see the calculation in his eyes. Dare I ask about the butter? He’s a smart man, though, and chooses the path of least resistance.

Silence.

Andrew uses silence, too, I realize as I will my pulse back to a beat that doesn’t involve breaking the sound barrier. He uses his mouth to silence me.

Why?

“Fine. I’m buying marshmallows and, uh...Cheetos.” Declan’s hand is on the doorknob. He’s giving Shannon a look that says,
Please don’t make me buy tampons again
. 

“Aren’t you sending Gerald?” she asks in a surprised tone. Gerald is Declan’s primary limo driver. Notice that phrase?
Primary
limo driver. The man has back-ups. I’m sure the back-up limo drivers have back-ups, like understudies for Broadway show stars.  

Billionaires live lives of fluid grace, where other people are in charge of smoothing all the wrinkles, preventing any hiccups, and making sure they don’t, you know...

Have to buy marshmallows, Cheetos and tampons at a convenience store on a Friday night.

It’s a wonder Andrew didn’t just send his limo driver to kiss me and shut me up. When you hire someone else to do all your dirty work for you...

The tiniest sliver of panic blooms in Declan’s moss-green eyes. He controls it quickly. I have to give him credit.

“I could use some air,” he mumbles. “So I’ll just go.” 

“Coward,” Shannon says with a chortle.

He clears his throat meaningfully. “I prefer the term
ninja
.” A swift peck on the cheek and a flick of the wrist and Declan’s out the door before she can argue. 

Smart man. All the IQ points must have gone into him and his older brother, Terry. Andrew was left with a hot ass, that sultry grin, and a coal-covered soul that whispers evil sweet nothings to his conscience. 

Kiss her in the closet in your office
, it says.
Kiss her in the hospital closet
, it murmurs.
Kiss her to shut her up
, it hisses.

Bet it wasn’t expecting my little slap.

“I should feel triumphant,” I whimper as Marie rushes over, glass of white wine in hand, offering it to my lips like she’s a priest giving First Communion. “I stood up for myself. I made it clear in no uncertain terms that I am not a woman to be trifled with.”

“And it only took you two years,” Marie says, nodding. I guess that’s supposed to be comforting. Marie can be kind of hit-or-miss like that. 

“And three kisses!” I groan between guzzles of white Zin.

Shannon does a double take. “Three? There was a
third
incident?” She scrunches up her face, making her cute little rabbit nose poke out. “When did you—”

“Was it that time Jason and I saw you at the hospital during Poopwatch?” Marie asks. She’s wearing this gorgeous, flowing lilac silk wrap and her eyelashes are so long it looks like she contracted them out to an asphalt company. She leans forward on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, eyes wide and fascinated.

Shannon gives me a deadly stare. “You made out with Andrew while I was in the emergency room
choking to death
?”