Shopping for a Billionaire 1 Read online

  The unmistakable sound of a man taking a whizz echoes through the bathroom. I can’t help myself and look through the tiny crack in the door.

  It’s Mr. Sex in a Suit, his back to me. Thank goodness, because if I got a full-frontal shot right now then how would I answer the “aesthetically pleasing” question from a strictly professional standpoint?

  The tiny bit of shifting I did to peer through the crack makes my right foot slip, and I make a squeaking sound, then lose my grip on my phone as my arm flails.

  Ka-PLUNK!

  You know that sound, right? I know, and you know, that I’ve just dropped my smartphone in the toilet, but he thinks the man—he assumes it’s man—in here just delivered something the size of a two-hundred-year-old turtle into the toilet.

  I look down. My phone is still glowing, open to the question “Is the bathroom aesthetically pleasing?”

  Staying silent, I struggle to remain perched on the toilet and in balance. One palm splays flat against the stall door, one hand curls into a fist as it poises over the toilet water.

  Four-hundred-dollar phone

  or

  Arm in nasty men’s room toilet water.

  I have the distinct disadvantage of seeing every dried stain on the inside of the rim that my feet occupy, and I know that launching my hand into that porcelain prison means gangrenous death in three days after male pee germs invade my bloodstream and kill me.

  But it’s a $400 phone.

  A company phone.

  Closing my eyes, I lower my hand into the ice-cold water and pretend I’m Rose in the movie Titanic, bobbing on that miraculous door as my hand fishes blindly around the bottom of the toilet for my phone.

  I get it not once, not twice, but three times as it slips and catches, slips and catches, and then—

  The stall door opens toward me, sending me backwards with a scream, my arm stuck in the toilet as I fall down slightly, my back pushing against the toilet-flush knob.

  Whoosh!

  Chapter Three

  Mr. Blue-Gray Suit springs into action, jumping into the stall with me and planting nice, big, beautifully-manicured hands under my un-deodorized armpits and lifting me off the toilet. It’s like we’re in a toilet ballet, my body leaping up above his, suspended for a few seconds, and all I can think is My arm is dripping toilet water all over a cashmere suit that costs more than my student loan balance.

  My second thought: This will be one hell of a story to tell at our wedding reception.

  Our eyes lock as the toilet roars, and if we were anywhere else I could imagine this was a waterfall on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific, the two of us the only people inhabiting the island, forced by pure survival to have sex like monkeys and procreate to save the human race.

  A sacrifice we both suffer through.

  Except I’m not on an island with this man, whose arms don’t even seem to strain under my size-sixteen weight. My breasts bob as he makes split-second calculations without looking away from me. Somehow, he moves my entire body, which is now on fire from his sure touch and pure, animal strength, and sets me down without either foot falling directly in the toilet.

  The pain of the toilet handle digging into my shoulder blade when I fell back is making itself known, and my arm is dripping, but—but!—Mr. Death by Toilet Rescue is looking at me with concern, and almost as good:

  I am clutching my phone.

  This all took about five seconds, so I’m panting, and the top knot of my already unruly hair has come undone, leaving a curtain of long waves framing my face. The ends of some of it are wet.

  Oh, gross. Toilet arm, toilet phone—toilet hair?

  The first words we share finally fill the air. He initiates with a grin.

  “We have better seats out in the dining room, you know.”

  “My phone needed a bath,” I reply, combing my hair with my dry hand, and now it’s wet, too. I wonder what I look like right now, but I’m afraid if I look in a mirror I will crawl back into the toilet and try to flush myself out of this mess.

  “What, exactly, have you been doing with your phone to make it so dirty?” he asks with a leer.

  He steps back out of the stall with a gentlemanly sweep of his arm, green eyes filled with a mixture of mirth and guardedness. As he moves, he reveals a full-length wall mirror, giving me my own nightmare.

  Oh. That’s what I look like. Anyone have a spare coffee stirrer? Because I could stab myself in the eye and maybe bleed to death right here.

  Or embarrassment will kill me. No such luck. If embarrassment could kill, I’d be dead nine times over by now.

  I study myself in the mirror. Time seems measured by increments of incredulity, so why not make Mr. Toilet Rescuer think I’m even crazier by looking at my reflection like a puppy discovering “that other puppy” in the mirror? Long brown hair, wet at the ends in the front. Split ends, no less. Who has the money for a decent cut after I needed new tires for my ancient Saturn? My torn pink t-shirt and gray yoga pants make me look like your average college student, except my shoes bring me to a screeching mental halt.

  Yoga pants and one loafer, one open-toed shoe make me look like Mrs. McCullahay down the street, dragging her trashcans out to the road at 5 a.m. with mismatched shoes, a mu-mu, and curlers in her hair while an inch-long ash hangs out of her mouth.

  “At least I don’t smoke,” I mutter. Then I remember where I am, and look slowly to my left.

  Mr. Smirky Suit leans casually against the scarred, dented stall wall, his face settled into a look of amusement now, but he’s not going anywhere. Feet planted firmly in place, I realize he’s giving me that look.

  No, not that look. I’d take that look from him any time.

  I mean the look of someone who will not let me out of here without an explanation.

  An explanation I am contractually obligated not to give. Outing myself as a secret shopper is verboten. Unheard of.

  Grounds for termination.

  See, the first rule of mystery shopping is like the first rule of Fight Club: don’t punch anyone. Oh. Wait. No…it’s that you don’t talk about it. Ever.

  Though, sometimes, that not-punching rule comes in handy, because there are some really weird people in stores.

  And Mr. Suit looks at me like I’m one of them.

  “Let me introduce myself,” he says, taking the lead. His body moves effortlessly from leaning to standing, then he takes two steps forward and I retreat until the backs of my calves hit the toilet rim again. I’m backing away from him and I don’t know why.

  “Declan McCormick. And you are?” Instinct makes me reach my hand out, and he’s clasping mine before we both realize it’s the toilet-contaminated hand.

  He pretends it’s perfectly normal, keeping strong eye contact and pumping my hand like it’s the handle to a well. Except his fingers are warm, soft, and inviting, the touch lingering a little too long.

  His eyes, too. They study me, and not like he’s cataloging my features so he can file a police report or have me Section 35’d for being a danger to myself and others.

  I am being inventoried in the most delicious of ways.

  As a professional whose job it is to inventory customer service in business, I have acquired a set of unique skills—but more than that, I now have a sixth sense for when I’m being detailed.

  And oh dear…there goes that flush.

  And not the toilet kind.

  I realize we’re still shaking hands, and his eyes are taking me in. “Uh, Shannon. Shannon Jacoby. Nice to meet you.” I find my voice.

  He looks around the room and bursts out laughing, a flash of straight white teeth and a jaw I want to nuzzle making me inhale sharply. That laugh is the sound of extraordinary want entering my body, taking up residence low in my belly, and now waiting for a chance to pick china patterns and paint colors to really consider itself at home.

  Go away, want. I’ve banished you.

  Want ignores me and settles in, cleaning
out the cobwebs that have taken up residence where I used to allow desire and hope and arousal to live.

  Squatter.

  “Shannon, this has to be the strangest way I’ve ever met a woman.” One corner of his mouth curls up in a sexy little smile, like we’re on a beach drinking alcohol out of coconuts carved by Cupid and not in a ratty old bathroom with a fluorescent tube light that starts buzzing like a nest of mosquitoes at an outdoor blood bank.

  “You don’t get around much, then,” I say. My toes start to curl as my body fights to contain the wellspring of attraction that is unfurling inside me. No. Just…no. I can’t let myself feel this. You spend enough time trying not to feel something and all that work gets thrown away with one single flush.

  He does that polite laugh thing, eyes narrowing. I decide to just stare openly and catalog him right back. Brown hair, clipped close, in a style that can only come at the hands of a very expensive salon owner. The bluish-gray suit, textured and smooth at the same time, shimmering and flat as well under the twitchy light. Skin kissed by the sun but also a bit too light, as if he used to spend a lot of time outdoors but hasn’t recently.

  A body like a tall tennis player’s, or a golfer’s, and not my dad with his pot-bellied buddies getting in a round of nine holes at 4 p.m. just so they can have an excuse to drink their dinner. Declan is tall and sleek, confident and self-possessed. He moves like a lion, knowing the territory and owning it.

  Always aware of any movement that interests him.

  I’m 5’ 9” and he’s taller than my by at least half a foot. Tall girls always do a mental check: could I wear high heels with him? Steve hated when I wore high heels, because it put me eye-to-eye with him.

  “What are you doing in the men’s room?” he asks, smirking at me.

  I tuck my phone into the back waistband of my pants. If there’s a chance in hell it’s still on, he might see the screen and figure out who I am. My wits begin to return to me. A zero-sum game forms in my body: wit vs. a body part that rhymes with wit that starts with C and that stands for trouble.

  Wit is losing.

  “I must have gotten confused.” I fake-rub my eyes. “Forgot to grab my glasses on my way to class this morning.”

  His eyes narrow further, staring into mine. Am I imagining it, or did his face just fall a bit with disappointment? My heart shatters into a thousand tiny shards of glass that I feel like I just swallowed.

  “Class? You’re a student?” His eyes rake over me and there’s a flicker of comprehension there, like some details that didn’t gel are making sense to him.

  When you trap yourself into a corner, always take someone else’s out when you can. “Sure. Yes.”

  “What class?”

  My heart is still jumping around in my chest like my little nephews at an indoor trampoline park after drinking a full-caf frozen mocha. Now he wants to chat while we stand in front of a toilet? And ask me questions about a class I don’t really take?

  “Excuse me,” I say, gesturing with the grace of a three-legged moose on skis. “While I am certain that meeting over a toilet in the men’s room right after my hand has been in places that brothel workers in Mumbai won’t touch is scintillating, I would prefer to step out of here and escape Eau de Urinal.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.” He is immutable. Heat on legs. His pulse shows on his neck, right under the sharp curve of his tight jaw, and I want to kiss it. Press it. Feel it and let my own heartbeat join in.

  “I didn’t realize I was under your command, sir,” I retort, saluting him with a rush of sarcasm bigger than my pent-up frustration.

  His eyes deepen as he pivots just enough for me to get past him, our bodies brushing against each other with a heat that seems to treble with each nanosecond. I move into the area around the sinks and grab a paper towel, then turn the faucet on, careful to make sure my fingers don’t touch the gleaming metal.

  “What are you doing?” Declan asks. Why won’t he leave? Surely someone dressed so nicely has stocks to broker, people to doctor, or laws to lawyer. Women to wetten. You know.

  “Do you have any idea how germy bathroom sinks can be? I always do this,” I explain, even as my head screams invective and tells me I don’t have to explain anything.

  “Nice of you to protect the other patrons.”

  “Huh?”

  “If anything is germy…” His voice fades out into a low sound in the back of his throat. It sounds like something you’d hear in a locker room or at a hunting club. He gestures toward my arm.

  Damn. He’s got a point. I can’t even argue, because he’s right—but that never stopped me before.

  “Toilet water—clean toilet water, and that one had been flushed before I reached in—is surprisingly sterile.”

  “Sterile?”

  “Okay,” I backpedal. “Reasonably clean.”

  “Are you from the health department?” His question sounds like a threat.

  “No.”

  “You just troll men’s rooms and spout microbiology statistics like a professor for…kicks.” He says it in that maddening way men have of making everything seem like it’s a fact, even when they’re really asking a question.

  Which was worse: having him think I was Amy from Big Bang Theory or just some crazy woman who crashes men’s rooms and has a fetish for sticking her hand in the toilet?

  (Not that there’s anything wrong with Amy.)

  I finish washing my hands and turn to grab a piece of paper towel, only to find Declan holding one out for me.

  “Aha! So now I understand,” I say, nodding slowly as I accept the paper towel and dry my hands. “You’re the bathroom attendant. Where’s your tip cup? You’ve definitely earned a little something.”

  The air tingles between us, and it’s not the deodorizer machine spritzing the room. “I’ve earned a little something,” he echoes in a voice loaded with suggestion. It’s not a question.

  Just then, the door bursts open and Mark J. rushes in, eyes wild and frantic.

  He sees me and gasps, making a high-pitched noise that you would expect from a forty-something middle-aged pearl clutcher and not a guy who looks like he last starred on some cable reality television show called Fast Food Wars.

  “You!” he screeches. “A customer said they saw a woman walk into the men’s room. I didn’t believe it!”

  Declan reaches out for Mark J.’s arm. I lose track of time. How many seconds did it take for this to go from bad to worse? My cover cannot be blown.

  “She just wandered in by accident,” Declan explains. “Or she has a fetish. We’re sorting it out right now.” I glare so hard at him the hand dryer spontaneously starts.

  “Why is she covered in water?” My sleeve is soaked and the ends of my hair are wet. Mark looks at Declan and sees water spots on his jacket. “Oh!” The sound is so soft I barely hear it, but from the look on Declan’s face he hears it, too. His eyes close and jaw tenses. This is a man who is not accustomed to suffering fools gladly.

  So why is he even talking to me?

  “I see, now. Fetish.... I didn’t mean…” Mark J.’s eyes plead with Declan to help explain what is going on, because it’s clear from the worker’s panic that he has about three different theories, two of which involve me and Declan breaking public decency laws and one of which involves questions about my biological gender.

  None of his scenarios, though, involve my dropping a smartphone while completing a mystery shop, so I’m safe.

  “I’ll leave you two to whatever…it was…you were doing,” Mark J. says as his fingers scramble to open the door and get out.

  “What do you think,” Declan says, eyes still on the pneumatically wheezing door, “he thinks we’re doing in here?”

  “Twerking?” My mind races a thousand miles a minute, covering territory from remembering how many toilet paper rolls were in each stall to imagining Declan naked with a can of whipped cream and a bowl of fresh cherries beside the bed to reminding myself I haven’t
shaved in days.

  I am a modern-day renaissance woman.

  Maybe my eyes give me away during that nude vision of Declan, because the room rapidly becomes warmer and his eyes go dark and hooded as he takes another step toward me. Two more and we’ll touch.

  Three more and I could kiss him.

  “I don’t twerk,” he whispers, one hand twitching as if it wants to touch me.

  “I don’t do any of the things Mark J. thinks I do,” I whisper back. And then I cringe, because…

  “Mark J.? You memorized his name tag?” One of Declan’s eyebrows shoots up, and it’s the sexiest look ever, like George Clooney and Channing Tatum and Sam Heughan rolled into one.

  “He’s…uh…”

  “Oh,” Declan says, his nostrils flaring a bit, lips tight to hold back a smile. “I see. He’s your…” The words go low and Declan makes a few guttural noises and nose twitches that either mean he has a mild case of Tourette syndrome or he’s suggesting that I’m doing the nasty with Mark J.

  This is where the path diverges in the woods, and I? I took the path most likely to humiliate me.

  For the sake of being a professional.

  “Yes!” I shout as the door opens and in walks a very confused kid who looks to be about ten years old. He double-checks the main door, then gawks at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. I like that. Kids are honest. Declan’s all smoke and whiskey with me, teasing and playing with me, and I have been up since 4:12 a.m. being texted by secret shoppers who dropped acid and saw unicorns.

  Don’t play games with me.

  “Yes, that’s right! Mark J. and I are doing it,” I whisper in Declan’s ear as the kid runs back to his table and I work on my own escape. “We do it in the walk-in cooler, right by the salad bins. He lays me out over the break table outside and always throws the cigarette butts in the ashtray away. A true romantic. On uniform delivery day he’s right there in the truck with me, careful to keep the apron clean while meeting my needs. Mark J. is the man.”