Shopping for a Billionaire 3 (14 page)

S
teve makes me want to hiss and claw something. And yet I still say “
o
kay” when he doesn’t get the hint. Maybe my idea of a hint isn’t strong enough.

I haven’t told
Amanda
everything
about Declan. How he seemed jealous, so possessive, coming straight from New Zealand and tracking me down, taking me by limo to his helicopter, then riding around the city until we landed on the island.
How he was so charming and controlled at Mom’s yoga. The way he emotionally disarms her, but without being rude. The way he makes me feel so secure in just being true to myself.
 

I slow my pace a bit, wondering if I’m walking funny. I should
b
e. More tingles. I share everything with her, so this is new. Keeping it all to myself makes it have more meaning. Savoring what Declan and I h
ave
, and our combined desire to have so much more of it going forward, isn’t so much a secret as it is private.

Personal.

Ours
.

Mine and Declan’s, something we share with no one else. I want to hang on to that for just a little longer, before Mom starts booking reception halls and ordering roses dipped in dye that matches some obscure bra strap Kate Middleton wore at her third polo game with the future king.

“Why are you seeing
Steve
at all
?” Amanda asks.

“Masochism.” It’s an old joke, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

She speeds up until w
e’re walking at a fast clip and almost at the main door to the credit union. The building looks like every other brick business building with white trim, and a discreet white sign with the name is centered above a bank of glass doors.
Warning
s dot the entrance:

Remove all su
n
glasses, hats and hoods. You are being recorded.
 

Sometimes I think about flashing my boobies for the poor s
ch
muck whose job it is to sit in front of a bank of security cameras and keep an eye out for danger. A little light in a dreary job, you know? I made the mistake of saying this to Mom once. She did it.

Turns ou
t
my cousin
Vito
is a mall cop and was nearly blinded by the sight of Aunt Marie’s tatas.
He still calls her Aunt Antiviagra. She thinks he’s speaking an Italian endearment.
 

“Don’t flash the cameras,” Amanda hisses as we walk in. She really does know me too well.

“I won’t.”

Grabbing my arm, Amanda pauses in the foyer. “You okay?” The way she peers intently into my eyes mak
e
s me realize she’s really asking whether I’ve recovered from the bee stings.
From the enormity of everything with Declan.
 

“Yes.”

“You came back to work kind of fast.”

“I needed to. You ever been bed-ridden with my mom taking care of you?”

“
I thought Declan came by every day!”
 

“He did.” I smile at the thought. Mom was practically feeding me chewed-up food from her own mouth and giving me water from an eyedropper. That whole “Oh, my poor baby almost died” stuff required a rescuer. Declan had fit the bill.
Except for his time in New Zealand on that business trip, he’d been by my side each day.
 

A
nd then he’d swooped in on my dinner with Steve and taught me how much fun helicopters can be. I shiver with the memory.

“True love means having your boyfriend watch the
The
Sapphire
s
and
The Heat
three nights in a row with you,” Amanda says with a sigh.

True love means being made love to above the city lights
, I think, but of course I can’t say that.
Or in his apartment, which smells like fine cologne, pine, and a special soap. Someone in a suit steps through the doors and ignores us.
Then I realize what Amanda just said.

“What boyfriend?” I ask.

She looks confused. “Declan.
What other boyfriend do you have other than that electronic bedside-table monstrosity you call Edward Cullen?” Her face scrunches up. “And it’s about as old as him, too.”
 

I grab her hand and lace my fingers through hers. “You’re the only boyfriend I need, sweet
ie
.” Standing on tiptoes, I kiss her cheek.

She jumps back
l
ike I’ve poked her with a cattle prodder. “Greg better give us a bonus for t
h
is one.”

“He has to come with Josh and do the male-male shop, so I don’t think there will be any bonuses.”

“Poor Josh. They’ll look like a bear and a twink.”

My turn to jump like I’ve been electro-shocked. “Huh?
What’s that mean?
”

The receptionist is giving us nervous looks. Amanda nudges me. “Never mind.
You really don’t watch enough cable television.”
 

“What does that have to do with—”

She puts her arm around me and pushes us both through the main door into the cool, marble-floored bank, the scent of money filling the air. “
Let’s get this done and over with.”

“
I agree. I can’t be married to you longer than one hour.”
 

W
ithin ten minutes we’re ushered into a glass-walled room
with no real door,
filled with dark oak furniture, brightly patterned carpeting floors, and a no-nonsense balding man who looks like he eats entire rolls of antacids for fun.

Jim
Purlman
is the senior mortgage officer for the credit union and asks us how we met.

Amanda and I exchange confused looks. “You mean, like, how we were in the same class in third grade?” she blurts out.

Jim looks like he’s half Irish and half something else, with a beet-red nose and eyebrows that haven’t been ta
m
ed since 1977. The skin under his eyes is paper thin and baggy, and what hair he has is grey, grown in a combover style I haven’t seen anywhere other than in old square photographs from the 1960s in my mom’s photo albums. The p
h
ysical kind that smell like old cigarette smoke and liver spot cream.

But he breaks out into a kind grin and says, “What a wonderful love story. Sweethearts since you were little. Found your soul mate young. You two have kids?”
He leans his forearms against the glass-topped desk and waits in anticipation for our answer.
 

I’m struck mute. We’d been told this set of evaluations came at the
reque
st of the credit union’s board, a reaction to complaints. Jim’s response is absolutely not what we were expecting.

Amanda saves the day, reaching for my hand and stroking my wrist with her thumb. A tingling shoots through my body, and it’s not the last remnants of the
E
pi
P
en’s contents. Her eyes meet mine and holy smokes, ladies and gentlemen, we have some acting.

At least, I hope it’s acting. Because I am completely into Declan.

“Fate brought us together on the playground and we’re hoping it will be kind to us in the kids department.” She smiles so sweetly at me that my pulse races and my cheeks flush. There’s a settled passion in the way she carries herself, and Jim hunches slightly in his chair, as if relaxing from approval.

“I’m sure you’ll find the right man—” He shakes his head slightly. “Er, sorry. The right
path
to have the family you deserve.”

Amanda lets go of my hand and puts hers on my knee. Thoughts of Declan set my core on fire. Being touched at all like this, in a partner kind of way, seem
s
to set my screwy wiring into ablaze mode.

“You look like you’re about to cry,” Jim says.

I reach up and wipe a watery eye. “We’re still overjoyed we were allowed to be married,” I answer.

“When was that?”

“Two weeks ago,
at our town’s courthouse
.”

“So you have a marriage
certificate
?” he asks.

“Do you need to see it?” To Jim, Amanda’s shift in personality can’t be noticed, but I get what she’s doing now. Legally married heterosexual couples don’t need to show a marriage
certificate
to apply for joint income mortgages, so if he asks, we must note it on the evaluation.

“Oh, no!” he exclaims. “I just meant it must be great to know you can be married and have all those legal protections.”

And just then, someone taps on the glass. I turn toward the sound and my entire body goes cold, frozen like a popsicle.

Standing before me is Monica
Raleigh
.

Steve’s
mother
.

“Shannon!” she exclaims. Thankfully, I’ve used my real first name on the application here for the mystery shop. But I absolutely cannot break my disguise, and therefore Monica can’t know we’re here on an evaluation. Absolutely not. No failed shop for this one.

Even if it kills me.

I stand on shaky legs and she gives me a half-hug, the kind where you can’t tell whether the other person has a pulse or not. A cloud of Cinnabar perfume fills my nose and the back of my throat, the taste like rancid cinnamon.

“I haven’t se
e
n you in so long,” she adds. It’s been a year, yes. But Monica never liked me. Ever. Not one bit. Her fakery should be lauded, because she put on a surface act about me. Doing the bare minimum was her form of liking me.
A familiar, low-grade shaking begins inside my body, as if my bones were starting to rattle from the first signs of an earthquake.
 

She looks like a shrunken version of Steve, with the same
slightly negative set to her jaw, as if the world has to prove that any shred of positivity is possible. Her default is suspicion and pessimism.
 

I used to think that was a sign of intelligence, as if being pessimistic meant you just had figured out The Truth long before everyone else did. Now I think it’s just a nice cover for being a bit of an asshole and not knowing how to find your way out
.

She looks like Steve, e
xcept she’s a bird. All that’s m
i
ssing are wings. Her waist is thicker than her breast, her legs are sc
r
awny, her feet
s
play out,
and her resemblance to a bird wouldn’t be so sharply distinctive if she didn’t henpeck everyone.
 

She also has eyebrows that lift perpetually, making me think she’s questioning everything I say.

“Amelia!” she exclaims as she turns to Amanda, who leaps up and practically curtseys.
Monica does that to some people. She has the air of a queen and the snootiness of a social climber.
Steve and I dated for
how
many years and the woman doesn’t remember my best friend’s name?

Amanda doesn’t correct her. It would be like trying to correct King Joffrey. You’d be beheaded in seconds.

“What are you two doing here?” she asks.

“Hello, Monica,” Jim says, standing and coming around the desk. He looks like he’s part wolf, predator eyes devouring her. Monica’s wearing something stylish from one of the boutiques near Neiman Marcus in the Natick Mall—oh, excuse me, the Natick
Collection
. Can’t call it a mall. Every other town calls their enclosed shopping center a mall, but Natick’s developers appear to wish they were designing Rodeo Drive.

And Monica acts like she lives on it, even though she’s really a suburban mom.

“Why, Jim!” she exclaims, like Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind
. I half expect to hear
fiddle-dee-dee
come out of her mouth and for
South Boston
to burst into flames. Have the Red Sox lose in the seventh game of the World Series and that might actually happen.

“
Amanda and Shannon are here to apply for a mortgage,” Jim explains.
 

Amanda and I share a look of horror and professionalism, tenuously balanced at the half-and-half point.

“A mortgage? You’re buyi
n
g property?” Monica’s eyes light up. “
H
ow ambitious of you, Shannon. I thought you’d stay in that dead-end job forever and never show any chut
z
pah. Steve taught you some good skills, didn’t he? I’m sure you apprec
i
ate everything he did for you all those years.”

Screech
. Stop the merry-go-round, because someone needs to get knocked off her high horse.

I can’t let Jim know that I used to date Steve. Not, at least, until Amanda and I finish this evaluation from hell. I know I’m in hell because Monica is the queen here. She could marry Hades and have him whipped in no time.

Amanda’s all too aware of the predicament, but can also see smoke coming out of my ears, so she steps between me and Monica, opening her mouth, just as Jim says:

“The newlyweds are here to buy their first house together. Isn’t that something?”

You date a guy for a few years and you get to know his mother fairly well, even if she has a stick up her butt so long she could pick oranges with it.
Monica won’t leave now because she’s a bulldog with her teeth in my calf, and the charade has to be held up. Blowing our cover means alienating Consolidated Evalu-shop’s other major client. Greg has held on to this long-standing contract for years, and while we all joke about how boring evaluations for banks, credit unions, lending companies, and insurance can be, it pays the bills and keeps the marketing company where I work afloat.
 

When a steady contract is at stake, I’m willing to leverage my (not so big) sense of dignity to keep the client happy.

Unfortunately, I took the same approach with Monica all those years, letting her digs and condescension chip away at me for the sake of Steve.

“You’
v
e gotten married?” she gasps, craning her neck around the credit union, looking for an obvious suspect. “Where is he?”

Amanda reaches for my hand and pulls me close, her shoulder banging against mine as she bends down and kisses my cheek. “He is she. Me. We’re the newlyweds.”