Shopping for a Billionaire 2 Read online

  Shopping for a Billionaire 2

  by Julia Kent

  This New York Times bestselling series continues as mystery shopper Shannon and (near) billionaire Declan explore a relationship (and each other) as they deal with a jealous ex-boyfriend, a new perk at work that makes Shannon rethink her job, and a cat that offers up quite a present when Declan takes Shannon out for their first non-business date.

  Copyright © 2014 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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  Chapter One

  I wake up to the sight of three pairs of nostrils bearing down on me.

  How much did I drink last night? Am I in some kind of Shayla Black/Lexi Blake dream where it’s three on one? Mmmmmm.

  One set of nostrils is decidedly feline. The other two are human.

  None is male.

  Damn.

  “How did it go?” Mom and Amanda ask in unison. Both are hovering over me like a traffic helicopter at rush hour after a chicken truck crash on the Mass Pike.

  “You brought a condom last night, right?” Amy shouts from the kitchen. I look up and see that my bedroom door is open. My eyes travel to Chuckles, who somehow manages to leer at me. Then he licks his absent balls.

  Okay, so I guess one of the pairs of nostrils is male after all.

  Sort of.

  “Or more than one condom,” Mom adds with a giggle. She sits on the edge of my bed and tilts the entire world toward her.

  “What are you people doing in here?” I mumble, pulling the down pillow over my head and molding it around me like a space helmet. How much wine did I drink? Mom and Amanda make themselves at home in my bedroom, and I hope Amy is making me a coffee right now. I need about twelve of them.

  “Inquiring minds want to know. Did you kiss him?” Amanda asks in a voice so brimming with cheer that I want to remove her vocal cords with a lobster pick. When did the garage door start banging into the concrete over and over like that?

  Oh. That’s my pulse.

  “And why did Steve text me last night and tell me how much he misses you?” Mom asks in a staged voice designed to turn her into the Queen of All Juicy Gossip.

  Amy races into the room so fast that the cup of coffee in her hand sloshes on her thumb and she yelps. Chuckles pauses his vaguely obscene self-hygiene routine and narrows his eyes as if she’s offended him.

  “Steve?” Amy says with incredulity. “The snake senses when someone else wants her.”

  “When Declan McCormick, mover and shaker, wants her,” Amanda adds, that peppy note in her voice transmuted into something like the evil witch in Snow White. Steve better not eat any apples today. Maleficent is on the loose.

  “I like Steve!” Mom declares.

  “You like Harvard degrees,” I mutter.

  “You can fall in love with a successful man just as easily as you can fall in love with a narcissistic slacker who convinces you that three jobs is fine and zero for him is the natural order of business,” Mom sniffs.

  She’s describing our older sister Carol’s ex-husband, who seems to have singlehandedly proven that there is an inverse relationship between how good a father is and the quantity of publicly displayed tattoos he has of his children’s names.

  Though, to be fair, we only have a sample size of one.

  “Did you kiss him?” Amanda asks.

  “I am not speaking to any of you until I’ve had my first latte, three ibuprofen, and a hacksaw for my head.” I press my palms against my temples to show them my pain. No one seems impressed.

  “You drank red wine, didn’t you?” Mom says, not even waiting for an answer because she knows me too well.

  I grunt in the affirmative.

  “You know you can’t handle the sulfites or the sulfates or whatever it is you can’t handle. Why did you drink it?”

  “Because it goes with beef, and because Declan didn’t know about me and red wine. But I switched to white halfway though.”

  “Even worse!” Mom chides. “If you mix red and white it curdles everything in your stomach and you’ll end up with diverticulitis.”

  Amanda gives her the crazy-lady look and says, “No, it doesn’t. The two are completely unrelated, and curdling…what?” She gives Mom a look Amy and I patented.

  “Mom’s been reading health articles on websites with medical experts who moonlight on psychic hotlines,” Amy explains.

  “Don’t even try, Amanda. It’s like her myth that eating the crusts of your sandwiches will curl you hair,” I say, pulling my hands away from my head and hoping the seams of my skull remain in place.

  “Worked for Amy!” Mom insists.

  “Or that chewing your fingernails constipates you,” I add with bitterness. Where’s my coffee? What good are these pity groupies if they don’t deliver hot caffeine? I refuse to trade my pathetic life stories for anything less than three lattes this morning.

  “Those fingernails absorb all the water in your body, and when they pass through, it’s like Freddy Krueger’s claw on your intestines.” She shudders.

  “Who?” Amanda, Amy and I ask simultaneously.

  “Freddy Kru—oh, never mind.” Mom rolls her eyes and walks into the kitchen, mumbling something about being old.

  “So did you…” Amy waggles her auburn eyebrows. She looks like Rose from Doctor Who, but with curly hair and bright blue eyes. “You know?”

  “We kissed. And I think my hand memorized which side he dresses on,” I confess. “Not one more word until I have a latte in my hand!”

  Amy scurries off to the kitchen, where I hear her and Mom giggling and talking about me. How do I know they’re talking about me?

  Because they’re both alive.

  “You didn’t sleep with him, though, did you?” Amanda asks. She clearly is both horrified and titillated by the idea.

  So am I.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m the one who runs a CORI background check on people who take care of my cat. I Google search through fifty-six pages of results. I practically ask for a credit report and a physical exam before I’ll go to second base.” I laugh, amused at my own joke. It makes my head echo with the pulse of an elephant.

  She doesn’t laugh, but instead nods solemnly.

  “That was a joke.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” she adds in a pitying voice, patting my hand like she’s expressing sympathy.

  A flash of last night bursts into my pain-filled head. Declan’s arms around me, my back up against the heavy oak panels. The glow of a candle in a tiny Tiffany lamp attached to the wall, making shadows of our connection, projecting every move in temporary reflection. The sharp intake of Steve’s shocked gasp as he discovered us, Declan’s hand following the split seam of my skirt, my own hands buried in his thick hair, waves of heat pouring off us as we touched and tasted and took.

  That thumping elephant in my head decides to do the Funky Chicken and the Hokey Pokey at the same time. Damn elephant wedding dances. Who replaced my blood with flammable molasses?

  I force myself to remember last night. Steve’s strangled groan of recognition. The smile I felt on Declan’s lips as we both heard it. How I tried to pull aw
ay and Declan tightened his grip. The hiss of his whisper as he said, “He has no power over you. He discarded you. Don’t give him that power back. You are worth so much more.”

  The hurt look in Steve’s eyes, the first genuine emotion I’d seen in him in over a year.

  My own heart tugging me toward Steve, in search of more of the real him. Being torn between the two men, and letting paralysis win, which made it seem like, by default, I’d chosen Declan.

  But…

  “Earth to Shannon!” Amy says, bringing me my beloved nectar o’ java. I take two large, hot sips and sigh, grateful. Amanda becomes my beta in the best-friend hierarchy. Blood—and coffee—is thicker than best-friend water.

  Mom re-enters my bedroom and I get a good look at her. Lilac yoga pants cut to fit curves. A V-neck cotton white shirt with some lycra to it. A sports bra underneath. White Crocs. She looks so fitness-perfect. Her hair hangs in light layers around her face, cut with a whisper touch by a new stylist she found in Wayland. I can see why she makes the drive—he’s that good.

  There’s a glow in her face that makes me think life is going well for her. I don’t often think of her as Marie Jacoby. She’s Mom. Just…Mom. Not an actual human being with feelings and hopes and her own tangled inner and outer life. Always a parent, my bedrock Mommy who attended to skinned knees, made Elmo cupcakes for my birthday treat when I turned five, and who steadfastly combed through my lice-ridden hair after my failed prom date gave me an apologetic kiss on the cheek.

  And a bad case of lice.

  Lice. Bad jokes. Declan. Last night. His mom dying the day after his prom. Tears threaten the edges of my eyes and a wellspring of unbridled emotion hits me, hard. The blend of his touch, his restrained storytelling, but the look on his face that said he wanted to talk, to share, to connect. Losing your mom so young had to make you vulnerable. Losing her the day after your senior prom must have been a form of torture.

  A blast of clarity cuts through my throbbing head and makes me see how beautiful Mom really is.

  “You look like an AARP ad,” I say, admiring her.

  Mom takes one perfectly manicured hand and places it over her heart, her face a mask of horror, my words clearly having the opposite effect as I’d intended. She’s wearing very little makeup right now, which means she’s still wearing more than I wore last night on my big date. Er…business dinner.

  “What a cruel thing to say, Shannon!” she cries out, tears in her eyes. Mortified, I sit up, a cold rolling pin running from the base of my neck to my ass. I didn’t…I wasn’t trying to…oh, hell. I can’t get anything right this morning. The tears choke my throat, my brain and body sending mixed signals through synapses and nerves and veins, rendering me stupid with heart palpitations and a sudden sweat that makes my armpits feel like swamps.

  I take more sips, needing reinforcement, willing my internal disappointment at myself away.

  “What? That was a compliment!” My words are sharper than I want them to be. I have to snap, or the tears will take over.

  “AARP is for people fifty and older, Mom,” Amy says, trying to help. “You look great for fifty-two.”

  “That’s like telling a chubby girl she has such a nice face,” Mom says. She’s clearly recovered from her offended state and the claws are coming out. Chuckles winks at her. My tears dry up.

  “Hey!” me and Amy shout, both representing the “chubby girl” sector in modern American society.

  “See?” Mom says, triumphant. She’s a chubby girl, too. “That’s what the AARP comment felt like. A reminder that society has oppressive expectations for gender and age norms.” She crosses her arms over her ample lilac bosom and gives me and Amy looks of disdain. She’s Gloria Steinem in yoga pants and 3-D mascara.

  “Mom’s been reading Jezebel again,” Amy says.

  “You don’t really think I look old enough to be an AARP member, do you?” Mom asks me.

  “You are old enough to be a member, Mom. In fact, you have a card. I see you use it to get ten percent off groceries at the gourmet market on Tuesdays when they have their senior citizen days.” What else am I supposed to say? My shoulders slump and I feel like I’m carrying Steve’s ego on them. You try to give a person a compliment and suddenly you’re the Antichrist.

  Mom scowls, then winces when I say senior citizen. “That’s different. That’s financial optimization.”

  “No one is insulting you, Marie,” Amanda adds. She’s been watching this unfold. “And all they’re doing is deflecting Shannon from spilling the truth about her date last night.”

  All three sets of eyes zero in on me. Bing! My brain struggles to keep up with the constant topic shifts. It’s like listening to Russell Brand talking about politics after drinking three shots of espresso.

  “We kissed! We touched,” I confess. “Steve walked in on us kissing and touching. And then the Ice Queen made fun of Steve’s penis and bank account, and by the time Declan and I got to the table, they were gone.”

  “Who was gone?” Mom asks.

  “Steve and Jessica.”

  “Back up! Back up!” Amy announces, holding her palm out like she’s a cop directing traffic. “Let me understand. You were kissing Declan—your business associate—and your ex-fiance walked in on you?”

  “That about sums it up,” I say meekly.

  A slow smile broadens my sister’s beautiful face. “That is the best revenge story I’ve ever heard.” She reaches her palm out to high-five me, and I give it back. Except I miss and go flying across my bed, falling flat on my face as Amy rescues my coffee. A mouthful of high-thread-count Egyptian cotton from my sheets fills my mouth.

  Mom just gives me the evil eye, as if I shouldn’t still be so out of it. You try absorbing last night and all the permutations and implications and wines and not wake up in the morning with a coordination problem.

  “He’s dating Jessica Coffin,” Amanda says to Mom and Amy, her eyes wide and knowing. The attention is suddenly off me, and I sit up and steal back my coffee.

  “Oooooh!” they squeal in unison. Why do they act like I’m supposed to know who she is?

  “Jessica is the society-pages chick in Boston Magazine,” Amy explains, eliminating the need for me to ask. “Her family’s foundation is doing malaria research in Africa. She goes on these huge expeditions and helps.”

  “Does she singlehandedly provide air conditioning when they’re out in the field? Because that woman is cold as ice. Disney should have cast her instead of Kristen Bell for Frozen.” They all look at me like I’ve poured battery acid on top of chocolate mousse. I can take a hint, so I slurp coffee and take deep, knowing breaths.

  “I heard she can make or break a new restaurant,” Amanda adds, continuing to ignore me, her attention on Amy and Mom. “There was that little Asian fusion place in Wellesley that she went to and a picture of her appeared on The Hub. BAM! Now you can’t get a reservation for weeks.” Mom, Amy, and Amanda all nod soberly, as if acknowledging Jessica’s power.

  Pffft. I can go to any restaurant that Consolidated Evalu-shop has a contract for, munch on half a cockroach in a Cobb salad, write up an evaluation, and get the health department to condemn it in forty-eight hours flat. Now who has the power?

  “Do you follow her on Twitter?” Amy gasps. Both of them nod—both! My mother can’t figure out how to juggle two different open windows on a single screen on her MacBook but she has a Twitter account? And follows my ex-boyfriend’s snotty girlfriend?

  “A tweet that mentions a stylist or a product means insta-success for that person,” Mom gasps. “Look at my hands.” She holds them out as if we’re supposed to admire them. They look like…hands.

  “Nice moisturizer!” Amanda squeals. They are speaking in Aramaic as far as I am concerned. I am not fluent in spa-speak. I think I am missing the part of my brain that most women are born with, the one that can tell the difference between cerulean and aquamarine, or between beige and taupe. Once they start talking about moisturizers and al
pha-hydroxy acid bases and foundation creams, I might as well take a long nap because it’s like they’re speaking some foreign language I’ve never even heard of.

  “She’s a Botoxed Barbie with a superiority complex and no sense of boundaries,” I blurt out, looking in desolation at my empty coffee cup. I need more. Nineteen more cups and I’ll be closer to human. And I still have to go to work.

  Is it seriously only Tuesday? Yesterday feels like it lasted a week. Greg should give me the day off for landing the account. I should call in sick for the level of stomach-churning experiences I faced. I slip my head under the covers and fake-pretend to ignore them all. Like that would ever work.

  “Meow!” Amy says. Chuckles looks up and sneers at her like she’s an American trying to speak French in Paris.

  “What?” I demand, mouth muffled against my comforter. What’s catty about what I say? “It’s the truth.”

  “Did she make a pass at Declan?” Mom guesses. Damn. How does she do that?

  “No!” They all stare. “Okay…yes.” Declan. The feel of his jaw against my cheekbone. The way our bodies touched and I could inhale his essence. The push of his hips into mine as our skin tingled with anticipation. I just…

  “Did he accept it?” Mom asks. Her words say one thing, but her pleading eyes say, Farmington Country Club wedding. PoshTots. Beacon Hill in-law apartment.

  “He didn’t think she was worth one iota of attention,” I say, distracted by my own pleasant tactile memories, memories quickly fading away as Mom’s question makes me remember the rest of the night. Steve had huffed off, but given me a gesture, using his hand to create an old telephone, held it to his ear, and he’d mouthed, Call me.

  Bzzzz. We all jump. My phone.

  “Jesus—that thing has been buzzing all morning,” Amy groans. It’s about an inch away from falling off my nightstand.

  I come out from under my bed fort and grab my coffee mug, wiggling in the air between me and Amy. She laughs and grabs it. She really is my new best friend. Amanda can suck it. Whoever brings me coffee gets my loyalty on this fine, post-Declan morning where I am bombarded by meddling people who know more about Jessica Coffin and moisturizer cream performance on veiny hands than they do about the new healthcare law or campaign finance reform.