Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee (21 page)

“If it doesn’t happen, I’m not doing my job.”

“You use a lot of offensive language.”

“Maybe you’re just a sensitive pussy.”

“Jesus, Vince.”

“What?”

“Why are you knocking pussies? Of all the parts of the body you could use for an insult, I don’t get it.” Never got it.

“Right about now, the comparison fits. You’re hot, soaking wet, pink, and you have buttons I can push that make you scream.”

I’m glad my lungs have turned into flopping salmon on a rock by the river, because I have no response to that. Finally, I croak out, “You have a way with words.”

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks. Notice how you haven’t scanned the horizon for the past five minutes, and you’re not flinching every time a mosquito zips past?”

He’s right.

“You’re doing this, man.”

“Shut up, Vince.”

His only response is to pick up the pace and shout over his shoulder, “You’re a walking vagina, man.”

I’ve been called worse.

“And this is my last wasp session with you. You’ve graduated,” he declares.

And then that asshole takes off at a sprint, and keeps the ridiculous pace for the final seven miles.

Ridiculous.

* * *

Vince and I make it back to my building. That last mile nearly killed me, but I can’t admit it. We take the front elevators at Vince’s insistence. He says my employees need to see me being a strong leader.

I think he wants to parade me around like a Derby winner, sweat-soaked and foaming.

“Oh, gross. You’re dripping sweat all over my desk!” Gina exclaims, as we walk past her station toward my office door. Her wrinkled nose makes her look even more like a timid little rabbit.

“That’s not sweat. Those are Andrew’s tears.” Wink.

Before I can smack him down, Gina mutters, “Maybe you should use lube next time,” and walks away briskly, her Bluetooth turned on, arms full of files.

With Vince staring after her, gaping.

Maybe I’ve underestimated Gina.

“Wow,” Vince finally says.

“I know,” I snort, pulling at my soaked shirt, greedy for the cool air that slaps my abs. "Because you’d be the catcher if we were together.”

Vince turns and stares at me as if he’s an eighteenth-century hangman evaluating my neck.

“You’re a dead man.”

“Dead men can’t cry.” I make a fake pouty face.

“But they can spin. See you Friday. Get those chicken legs ready.” He stares at my calves, then punches my arm and walks down the hall, chest so big and wide his forearms graze against the hallway walls. Turning sideways, he lets someone walk down the hallway, coming from the other direction.

Amanda.

“What was that about?” she asks, eyes wide and open, mouth pressed in a prim line. She’s wearing a green wrap dress that makes her eyes extra sultry, and all I want to do is get sweaty with her in my office again. She looks just enough like Christina Hendricks in
Mad Men
to drive me wild. My pants tighten and threaten to cut off circulation to everything below the navel. I want to turn the glass desktop into a Slip ’n Slide.

“We were talking about Vince and I having sex.”

“So your usual 2 p.m. meeting?”

There’s only one way to respond to that.

I kiss her.

Hard.

She squirms in my arms, hands flat against my sweaty chest.

“It’s like you swam in sweat!”

“Pretty close. Vince had me run eleven miles on the trails.”

Her whole body pauses. “Outside?”

A swell of pride fills me. “Yes.”

“Andrew!” she squeals, pulling me in for a wet hug. “Congratulations! That’s wonderful!”

“I don’t need praise for being a human being. It’s not like I climbed Mount Everest. ” But her sweet softness isn’t a bad prize.

“You need recognition for being brave.”

“I went outside, Amanda. That’s second to respiration. No one needs an
I Did It!
ribbon for that.”

“How about a celebration at your place? Tonight? I’ll give you a major award.” Wink.

I don’t know why, but I blurt out, “Pack a bag. I’ll clear out a drawer.”

She frowns. “A drawer?”

“You can start keeping some stuff at my place.”

“Some stuff?”

“Clothes. Toothbrush. Stuff. So you can spend the night more.”

“You mean—what—huh?”

“I want you to spend more time at my place. With me.” A single drop of sweat chooses that moment to dangle from the end of one curled-up piece of my hair onto my cheekbone, making me feel like I’m crying.

I’m not.

“Are you asking me to—” Amanda can’t say the words, so she just narrows her eyes and waits me out.

“To bring some of your stuff over. Keep it in my apartment. For convenience.”

“Convenience.”

“Right.”

“How much stuff?”

“As much as you want.”

“For a man whose entire company functions as a result of his painstaking clarity, you really suck at this conversation, Andrew.”

“If I asked you to move in with me, would that help clarify?”

“You’re asking me to move in with you?”

I guess I am.

I shrug.

“We were practically married. I’d marry you if I thought you’d bite.”

“I was closer to being married to Chuckles than you, Andrew. Or should I say,
Ayndrough
.” She’s using a light tone, but I can tell she’s covering for deep feelings that I’ve stirred up.

Mine are churning, too.

“If it’s too much, just start with an outfit. A toothbrush. Some makeup.”

“I get my own drawer?”

“And a hook. I’ll install a single hook in the closet for you.”

“So generous!”

“Hey, you can have the entire closet if you want. I don’t want to scare you off.” I know not to say it, but I can’t help myself.

“You’re not scaring me. You’re just...this is fast.” She’s skeptical.

“Fast?”

“We never really dated.”

“Of course we dated! We went to Consuela’s, and...” I snap off in mid sentence. We also went to... My mind goes blank.

“See? You can’t even—”

“Fenway Park!” I snap my fingers. “We went to a game.”

“And that day turned out so well.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. That was a terrible day. Trapped between business associates and Amanda’s obvious distress as she unraveled from something I didn’t understand, I failed her. Fear (fine, I admit it) of going outside and following made me a prisoner of my own failure.

“I found you at home.”

“You did.”

“And as I recall, we did just fine after that.”

“Until you dumped me.”

“I didn’t—” The truth hits me, like a foul ball gone funky.

“You did.” The finality of her words feels like a shattered baseball bat.

“I did.” I accept the truth of how much I hurt her that day. I know it hurt, because it pierced me to do it. When you trap yourself inside a double bind in your own mind, an irrational emotion can lock you up forever, because it’s self-justifying. All the reasons you’re wrong are overridden by this perfectly reasonable, absolutely rational set of rules that make sense.

Only in a closed system.

When you turn your heart into a fortress, you can defend it against anything.

Including love.

“And I was wrong,” I choke out. “I’ve lived a life so closed off from any hint of openness. You felt expansive, like I would be carried off in the wind, floating out of control, carried by the whims of Mother Nature, exposed. That’s how loving you feels, Amanda. Like every part of me can’t quite catch its breath because I’m dissolving, becoming part of everything else.”

She reaches for my hand. I thread my fingers in hers. Our eyes meet.

“I’m going to screw this up,” I confess.

“Say it anyway.”

I nod.

“It’s barely been a week.”

“It feels like a month.”

“Like eternity.”

“We’re not competing for a Hyperbole Prize here, Andrew.”

“No. The stakes are higher.”

“Much higher.”

“Stratospherically higher.”

She punches me.

“Is your only objection that we haven’t dated long enough?” I press. Because if that’s it—really, truly the only problem here—then there is no real conflict. No true doubts. If Amanda’s hesitation comes from a sense of disbelief that I can feel great certainty in the face of being together for a short time frame, then this is a done deal.

I am the master of persuasion.

I need to apply my boardroom skills to the bedroom.

Convincing her that I am sincere and sure will be a pleasure.

“I don’t know.”

Shit.

I don’t know
is the cockblocker of all negotiations.

“You don’t know whether we’ve dated long enough, or you don’t know whether your only objection is that we haven’t dated long enough?”

She blinks, her face changing expressions, trying a few on for size, her inner state written all over her face. I love that she’s comfortable enough to drop her masks more and more with me. Meanwhile, my inner state is a war zone, complete with bombers on an air raid and artillery exploding all over the place as I try to keep my emotions in check and figure out the lay of the land here.

“I can’t wrap my head around the fact that you pushed me away less than a month ago and now you’re certain you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”

Oh.

That.

“Clarity.”

“You’ve achieved emotional clarity like
that
?” She snaps her fingers.

“Yes.”

“And you expect me to be so clear, too.”

“Of course.”

“Of course?”

“I’m not fooling around here, Amanda. You have nothing to worry about. This is it. You’re the person I want to be with forever. All I need now is your buy-in, and we’re good to go.”

“Buy-in?”

“Your agreement.”

She peers at me with such incredible concentration that I feel something loosen, an internal
aha!
that tells me I’m finally getting traction.

This is a done deal.

“You make it sound like a detail in a business negotiation.”

“Marriage is a merger.”

The incredulous look she gives me makes my confidence falter. “Whatever happened to the guy who quoted Dickinson on our first date?”

I point to myself. “Same guy.”

“And now you’re describing the biggest emotional commitment of my life as a buy-in?”

“When you know, you know.”

“Maybe I don’t know.”

Blood pounds through my body like a clock, measuring time by my pulse, each second profound and painful, achingly slow and ponderous.
I don’t know
chimes over and over.

“You don’t have to know,” is all I can croak out. I’m dying. This is how it feels to have blood pump through a heart that is collapsing, cell by cell. Slow motion makes it all so much worse.

And then our eyes meet.

“I propose a traditional courting,” she says, as if a light bulb just went on inside her head.

“A
what
?” Don’t mind me. I’m just pretending to be alive.

“Court me.”

“
Court
you? Is that a new sex thing?”

“No, Andrew. It’s a very old-fashioned love thing.”

“Courting? Like something from a Jane Austen novel? You want me to turn into some Regency-era duke with rules and calling cards?”

“And breves. If you’re going to go to the trouble to get calling cards, make sure your liveryman brings me breves, too.”

“I highly doubt the Darcy and Bennet families drank breves during calling hours.”

She arches one eyebrow. “Your knowledge of Austen and Dickinson is so hot.” She fans herself.

“You and the breves. They’re like tiramisu to most women.”

She gives me a coy smile.

Oh, no.

She’s
serious
.

“Amanda. I don’t have time to play games. Either we’re dating, or we’re not.”
Either you love me, or you don’t.
 

“And if I said ‘not’?”

My entire body turns into a bundle of frozen meat filled with icebergs in my blood. The Titanic crashes on one of them.

“Is that what you want? To not date? To not—” I can’t say it.
Not be together
.

“No.”

“No, you don’t want to date, or no, you—”

“I want to be with you.”

I breathe again.

“But with courting,” she adds brightly, giving me an amused grin, eyes flashing.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need clarity, too. You already have it. I don’t. Figure it out, Mr. CEO.” She gives me that damn finger-shoot Declan uses when he’s being extra sarcastic. “You’re a sharp guy.”

And with that, she walks out of my office, the view of her sashaying ass turning the ice in my blood up to a boil.

Courting?
Courting
?

“How do you court someone you’ve already been almost-married to?” I mutter to myself.

“I guess we’ll find out,” she calls back through the door.

Bzzzz.

“Mr. McCormick? An official from the FCC is on your line? He says you’re ten minutes late for a conference call?” Gina’s voice startles me back to reality.

“Gina. I want you to research courting and have a report for me in my inbox by EOB.”

“Courting?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a new sport?”

“No. An old one.”

“Courting?” I hear the tap of keys. “Do you mean courting, as in wooing a woman for marriage?”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to research this for you?”

There’s a distinct tone of sarcasm in Gina’s voice. That’s new.

“Yes.”

“You realize this is something most women want the man to do on his own. Having your admin research how to court a woman is kind of impersonal, Mr. McCormick.”

Huh. That did not sound like a question. Gina’s marked change in vocal patterns troubles me.

But not enough to do anything about it.

“And make sure none of the courting ideas involve being outdoors during the day.”

“But Mr. Mc—”

Click.

I’ve never looked forward to an FCC conference call with so much relief.