Shopping for a Billionaire 3 (13 page)

“Can I see your childhood bedroom?” Declan asks. He’s relaxed considerably since he first arrived.

“
Want to examine my Barbies?” But I stand and reach out for his hand, leading him up the stairs. Jeffrey and Tyler are in the backyard shrieking and chasing Amy with little toy guns, shooting foam bullets at her. They miss every single time.
 

Dad has actually undone his belt and the top button of his khakis, and rests in a lounge chair like Al Bundy, one hand tucked in his waistband.

Mom’s in the kitchen fussing over the leftovers. There’s enough food to feed an army.

“My room isn’t anything special,” I explain as we walk up the carpeted stairs. When Amy turned sixteen Mom finally got her wish—cream carpet—and even now, more than five years later, it feels weird to me. I went away to college and the house had industrial green, flat carpet and came home to a
Better Homes and Gardens
spread.

“It’s special because it’s yours.”

We’re greeted, first, by the giant head of Justin Bieber on my bedroom door.

“Nice. You were a Belieber?”

“That’s a sick, sick joke from Amy.”

I open the door and Justin steps aside. “Voil
à
!” I sweep my arm around the room. White furniture, all of it “thrifted” and refinished by Dad. Simple sheer curtains. An entire wall of cork squares with push-pinned articles and pictures from teen magazines. A ton of shells from vacations to Cape Cod.

Nothing amazing. The amazing part, actually, is that Mom hasn’t made me clear it out yet. She claimed Carol’s old bedroom as a yoga studio a few years ago. My time is likely ticking.

Declan’s hands are all over me suddenly, his lips on my shoulder,
caresses in places that tell me exactly what he’s thinking, and he’s not thinking about Justin Bieber.
 

At least, I hope not.

“
We can’t have sex in here!” I hiss. Jeffrey and Tyler are thumping up and down the carpeted stairs now, with Jeffrey calling out numbers. An impromptu game of Hide and Go Seek is afoot, and I don’t want the kids to catch us hiding something of Declan inside Auntie Shannon.
 

“Why not?”

“For one,
my twin bed is
so small you’ll poke my eye out before you hit the target—”

“Is
this
the target?”

I
struggle to speak as electric jolts shoot through me like I’m mainlining a battery.
The heat pouring out of his rock-solid chest and hips that press into my own belly makes my knees go weak. Teenage Shannon who spent many fitful nights dreaming about this moment is clashing with Responsible Shannon.
 

“And for two, I don’t want anyone in my
family
to hear!”

As if on cue, Jeffrey shouts, “Ready or not, here I come!”

“I want to hear
you
say that,” Declan whispers as he bites my earlobe.

“You—I—what are you—oh my God,” I gasp as he slips his hands under my waistband and does unspeakable things.

“Then let’s go have sex in your car.”

“We can’t have sex in my
car
!” Teenage Shannon is, like, totally grossed out by the idea of finally having sex in her parents’ house but doing it in a car that looks like it should be sprayed down by the mosquito truck is even worse. All the Shannons agree on this point, even the pulsing little Shannon in my pants, the one that keeps screaming
Yes yes yes
even though she doesn’t have a mouth.
 

“Why not? We already had sex in mine, so fair is fair. Your turn.”

“I drive a car with a
dead insect
on top of it.”

“Maybe that’s my real fetish.”

“Oh, toilets aren’t enough?”

“I’ll show you a fetish or two.”

A rush of warm electricity fires out from my core through every single pore on my body, and I’m about to agree to whatever he wants and throw in a few of my own requests as well, when—

“
SHANNON!” Dad’s voice is joyful and blessedly ingenuous. “Let’s get ready for ice cream.”
 

“Ice cream?” Declan murmurs, fingers sliding up to find my throbbing point that makes me inhale so sharply a strand of hair gets caught in my nostril.

“It’s trad”—my voice hitches with arousal and groaning need—“ition. We stuff ourselves silly and then go out for c
h
ocolate-dipped cones. The local ice cream joint opens today. Then we go to the movies.”

“Ice cream and the movies on Easter? I love your family.”

“I love your fingers.”

“I have other long bits of me you might love, too.”

“THANNON AND DECLAN!” Jeffrey screams, right outside my door. Oh, no. Did I lock it? Did Declan? “It ith time for eyth cream!”

“I love eyth cream,” Declan says as he kisses me, his tongue probing deep, wet, and luscious. This is the kind of kiss a man gives a woman when there are no preliminaries, where you go right for the marrow and the soul, because all those surface layers peel away with a single touch.

T
he kind of kiss you can enjoy and tre
a
sure for the rest of your life without ever experiencing any other kind.

“Hey, Shannon, are you guys—” Amy barges through the door the same way she did when we were kids and living at home. Hell, the same way she does in our shared apartment
now
.

Declan smiles against my lips,
pulling his hands out of my pants, leaving me frantic and disassembled.
 

“Oh, you two are having a different kind of des
s
ert,” she mumbles, pulling back and closing the door, but not quite fast enough.

“Auntie Thannon! Declan! Eyth cream time!” Jeffrey bursts into the room and slides between us, wrapping his little arms around my waist. “Group hug!”

Amy snickers.

“Group hug?” Declan ruffles his hair anyhow, but the disappointment and skepticism in his voice makes me snicker, too.

“Ice cream and the newest Pixar movie will have to be a poor substitute.”

A spreading grin lights up his face. “No. A great substitute.”

I smack his shoulder. “Hey!”

“
We have all the time in the world,” he adds, pressing a kiss against my cheek.
 

“Groth,” Jeffrey mutters, pulling on my hand. “Eyth cream!”

“You owe me a double, kid,” I say as we all head downstairs to the waiting crew.

“
You are the worst wife
ever
,” I hiss to Amanda as we get out of the Turdmobile. We’ve parked a few blocks away from the credit union and she’s nattering on about strategy in between grilling me about my relationship with Declan. A quick glance at my car and the light bounces off a bunch of little sparkly things littering my floor. The Easter Bunny was good to Jeffrey and Tyler. A little too good. Plus, Mom still insists on giving her own kids a basket, so I have enough chocolate egg foil wrappers on the floor of my car to build three disco balls.
 

I
kill the engine and climb out of the car. A kid on a skateboard who looks like he’s about twelve, with a Justin Bieber haircut and a Minecraft t-shirt, waves as he skates past and says, “Your car’s a piece of shit.” His laughter trails off.

So does my self-confidence.

“
Ignore him. Focus on me. Tell me every detail about Declan. Your bedroom after Easter dinner?”We have both been so busy for the past two weeks. Amanda was at a big mystery shopper’s convention in Kansas City last week, and this is the first chance we’ve had to talk in person. It figures: I live a dull, boring life for freaking
ever
, and just when it gets good she’s not around. And now we can catch up, but we’re about to pretend to be married.
 

W
hile I describe my sex life.

Hmmm.

“No – Jeffrey stopped us.”

She frowns. “Did you seriously have sex in a limo, on a helicopter, and in a lighthouse?”

“Yes.”

“You can do it in a car. You can do it in a bar. You can do it with long hair. You can do it in the air. You can do it in a limo, you can do it—you’re a bimbo!”

“Hey!”

“You can do it in a lighthouse. You can…” Her voice trails off. “What rhymes with lighthouse?”

“Winehouse?”

S
he shudders, then laughs.
“Day-um!” She stretches the word out like it’s taffy. “Declan has the refractory period of a seventeen-year-old
if you had that much sex in one night
.”
 

I blush.

“In a
helicopter
?” she squeaks. Squinting, she rolls her eyes up, as if trying to imagine it. “How did you not fall out a door or something?”

“It was, um…one-sided.” My face is as red as her painted lips.

“
A one-sided helicopter?”
 

“A one-sided sex act.
On the way home.
”

“You gave him a—oh. Got it.” She gives me a high-five. I smack her palm back and feel a roiling sense of doom in my gut. Are we seriously talking about all the ways I had sex with a man—a very, very attractive m
a
n—while walking to a mystery shop in which we have to pretend to be married?

“So…I am guessing you didn’t go back to that Mexican joint to collect Steve. ”

I snort. “No.
Though Declan was shocked when Mom gave him a big old stuffed bunny and his own basket that contained half of the Walgreen’s candy aisle.”
 

She nudges me. “It’s getting serious if Marie’s making
Declan
a basket.”

“
And you’ll be proud to know I deleted
Steve’s
eleventy billion texts.
He’s such an ass.
Why did I ever date him?
”
Between her comment about Declan and Mom and my own feeling of detachment about Steve, I think I might be moving on. Finally.
 

She uses her hands to make it clear she agrees. “We’ve all been asking that question for years!”

“All?”

“Me. Josh. Greg. Amy. Your dad. Hell, even Chuckles would agree if he could talk.”

“Chuckles is an equal-opportunity hater, so his contempt for Steve isn’t surprising.”

“He was on Twitter and Facebook chasing you down. It was pathetic.”

“Chuckles?”

She makes a face. “Steve.”

I saw the tags and tweets briefly before he deleted them. I’m guessing someone got to him and convinced him that starting hashtags like #freeShannon and #billionaireaggression wasn’t exactly good for his business prospects.
I’m too aglow with the newly emerging relationship with Declan, from yoga to butter lambs, to care.
 

“I know.” The air is crisp an
d
clean after a morning downpour. A cold front
came in and swept out a bunch of oppressive humidity, leaving this spring day for sunshine and that damp-around-the-edges kind of world that feels like its just been baptized.
 

“You really like Declan.” Amanda pauses and looks closely at me. My heart soars and sinks at the same time. She’s looking
at
me. Not through me. Open-minded and non-judgmental, my bestie is trying to tell me something.

“I do.” How can I explain how much he affects me, the longing inside even when I just saw him twelve hours ago
at Easter
? The sour taste of Steve’s “date” with me is washed away by the rain. Whatever bitterness I’ve been clinging to
has
dissipated
these last few weeks
. Steve is a non-entity in my life now. He let me loose.

I should thank him, in fact, because I would never have broken up with him, and if he hadn’t set me free I would never have met Declan. Never have succumbed to this attractive
man
. Never made love in a limo or basked in the afterglow in a lighthouse on the harbor.
Never had Declan over for Easter, or had second dessert at his apartment long after the kids’ movie ended…
 

Never be
en
Toilet Girl.

She squeezes my shoulder. “I’m really happy for you.” Amanda pauses, then mumbles,
“Would a lesbian wear this shade of lavender?” Her hair is still black, lips bright red, and she’s wearing a conservative suit. It makes her look like something out of a 1980s music video.
Her question throws me out of my thoughts.
 

“Would you stop asking me what lesbians do?” I throw my hands in the air and lower my voice as passersby start to stare. “How would I know?”

She seems chastened. “Fine. I just don’t want to blow our cover.”

“We’re pretending to be two women married to each other so we can apply for a mortgage using joint income. I don’t think Greg could find a more boring mystery shop if he tried.”
The shop requirements were clear. The day after I came out of the hospital last week, Amanda and Josh had gone to a different branch of the credit union and posed as a married heterosexual couple. They were treated according to the institution’s protocol. Now the question is: will the bank officers treat a gay couple differently?
 

“Remember the vacuum cleaner secret shops?” she says in a voice laced with indignance.

I flinch. “Okay…so he could find something more boring.” Thirty minutes with a canister vacuum cleaner salesman
demonstrating dual-level suckage action had the potential to be nice and porny, but instead it was like bad sex.
 

You just want to grab your things and get out of there as fast as possible and
avoid
having your feet sucked on.

My phone buzzes. “Let me guess,” Amanda says, closing her eyes and touching her head with her envelope, like some old talk show skit. “It’s Steve.”

I check. She’s right.

We should do dinner again. Without being rudely interrupted,
h
e texts.

Okay
, I write back,
then indulge in a giant wave of self-loathing
.
Why did I say “okay”?
What else should I say? This is the
umpteenth
text from him
about that night in the Mexican place
.
Declan’s timely appearance and deliciously engaging pseudo-kidnapping makes my toes tingle right now, my body on fire with the memory. Like a cat in a hot spot of sunshine, all I want to do is stretch and purr.