Shopping for an Heir (7 page)

“
L
et
me tell you about my crazy day,” Suzanne’s friend Kari announced as they settled on Suzanne’s couch in sweats, munching their way through a bag of chips. Blonde like Suzanne, Kari had honey-brown eyes with thick, short lashes and a permanently curious expression on her face.

Smoochy, Suzanne’s bichon frise, wriggled a spot between them, staring at her with begging eyes.

“Sorry, Smoochy,” Kari said with great affect. “Your mommy won’t let me give you a potato chip.”

Getting a dog had been Suzanne’s latest move in her ongoing attempt to pretend to have a real life. Smoochy was a rescue, a seven-year-old whose owner had been moved into a nursing home down in Florida about eight months ago. Once a month, Suzanne dutifully sent printed pictures of Smoochy to Elizabeth, her old owner, who was slipping further into Alzheimer’s. But then once a month, so far, Smoochy received a letter from Elizabeth, which Suzanne read aloud to the dog.

Smoochy blinked and looked at Kari, giving her a tiny plea. The whining sound was so cute that Kari relented. Smoochy munched on the tiny piece like it was a feast.

“Your crazy day? Pfft. Bet mine beats yours.” Suzanne shoved her paw into the chip bag and halted. Potato chips and her low carb diet didn’t mix, damn it. Reluctantly, she left snack nirvana to Kari and walked to the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge.

“Did you have to pretend to have IBS so you could schedule a colonoscopy and inspect the cleanliness of a probe while avoiding being caught?” Kari asked pointedly. Smoochy shivered suddenly, her whole body doing a shimmy, as if she were emotionally reacting to Kari’s words.

“I would trade doing that for what I actually went through.” An anal probe vs. Steve Raleigh? No contest.

“That was a crazy date. I give you credit. But an asshole versus a guy who looks at assholes all day for a living? C’mon.”

“I saw Gerald for the first time in ten years,” Suzanne said, as if holding her place in the lineup of horrors to be shared.

Kari and Suzanne had met back in college, at freshman orientation, when Kari was a student and Suzanne the instructor. They’d been fast friends since, though their paths had diverged radically. Suzanne’s ROTC scholarship led her off to war the week after she’d graduated at twenty-one, while Kari had gone into fashion design, then merchandising, and finally mystery shopping management. She managed a big division for Fokused Shop-rite, one of the biggest mystery shopping and consumer optimization companies in the country.

Right now, though, she was using her breasts to catch broken potato chips, so...

“No way! Way to bury the lede, Suzanne. What happened?”

“I saw Declan McCormick naked, served Gerald with inheritance paperwork that might be worth nine figures, and went on a date with a blowhard who makes Donald Trump look like Mother Teresa.”

Kari stared at her, mouth open, like Dory the fish.

Smoochy walked out of the room, curled into a ball in her dog bed, and covered her eyes with her paws.

“I know. It’s a lot,” Suzanne said with a laugh, grabbing her bag of carrot sticks, dipping them in sour cream and crunching away.

“You saw Declan McCormick naked?” Kari gasped. “Is he as hot in the flesh as he is in a suit?”

Suzanne’s cheeks went pink. The taste of Gerald, the brush of his lips, the sweep of his tongue in her mouth and those hands, oh those hands on her back, so masterful and yearning, had completely driven the vision of Declan McCormick’s nude body out of her mind.

Okay.
Mostly
driven the vision of Declan McCormick’s nude body out of her mind.

There might be a tiny remnant of memory remaining.

Or
not so
tiny.

“Suz!” Kari whapped her arm. “Get out of your drool! Spill! Share details!”

“About Gerald’s kiss?”

Kari inhaled sharply, hands on her chest, her palms beginning to flap in overeager excitement. “He kissed you! Was this while Declan McCormick was naked?” Her eyes flew wide open. “Was this a threesome? Omigod, you had a threesome with Declan Mc—wait. He’s married. I know Shannon. We’ve worked together on an account. She’s going to be devastated!” Kari alternated between glaring at Suzanne as if she’d
actually
had a threesome with Declan McCormick, and processing her disappointment if Suzanne
hadn’t
.

“I did not have a threesome with Declan and Gerald.”

Kari’s face fell. Disappointment won.

“Well, at least I don’t have to be the bearer of bad news for Shannon,” Kari muttered, staring at the carrot in Suzanne’s hand. “And yum! When did you start eating that combination?”

“Desperation. This no-sugar, no-grains diet is making me try damn near anything.”

“Combined with your lack of sex, your desperation meter is about as high as can be.”

Suzanne pulled out her fiercest naval recruit stare.

“That—that doesn’t work—on me. Oh, damn.” Kari shielded her eyes. “You could play Nurse Ratched if they ever do a remake of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.”

Suzanne snorted. “She was an amateur.”

“Or Dolores Umbridge.”

Better.

“He broke your heart all those years ago.” Kari gave her a sympathetic side-eye. “You finally stopped talking about him a few years ago.”

“I know.” Suzanne shut herself up with a carrot.

“And stopped going to therapy.”

Smoochy made an adorable snoring sound from her little bed.

“Right,” she sighed, the food turning tasteless.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Suzanne answered honestly. “He kissed me. Twice. But no explanation. No offer to talk. Just kissing.”

“That’s more action than you’ve gotten in a while.”

Suzanne opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. Kari wasn’t wrong.

Letting out a shaky sigh, she closed her eyes. “Seeing him was brutal.” Her throat tightened. Suzanne wasn’t a crier. When she got emotional, she became angry.

Sadness washed over her, making her hungry.

“Want to go on an ice cream run?” She asked Kari on impulse.

Kari’s eyebrow arched. “Run? As in, running? Because the last time you broke your low carb diet, you ran three miles to justify the sugar. Last time I ran three miles was, um, never. Does
never
work?”

Suzanne gave her a pitying pout. “C’mon! I’ll run, you Uber. Let’s go out for a big, fat sundae.”

“Only if you promise to tell me exactly what happened tonight. And listen to how I got asked for my phone number by a hot proctologist.”

“Kari, ‘hot’ and ‘proctologist’ don’t go together.”

“Neither do running and ice cream.” Kari gave her a hard stare.

Laughing, Suzanne went to her bedroom, quickly threw on running clothes, and began stretching at the front door. “Toscanini’s?” Suzanne lived in Charlestown. The Cambridge ice cream-slash-coffee shop was exactly 2.9 miles away. Yes, she’d clocked it.

More than a few times.

“Fine. I think you’re insane, but I’m not turning down ice cream and your story.”

“If you won’t turn down a proctologist, why would you turn down anything?”

“Hey. If you had seen this guy...” Kari began fanning herself.

“He looks up people’s buttholes for a living.”

Kari shrugged. “I don’t judge.” She got a dreamy look on her face. “Maybe he knows his way around that part of the body better than—”

“STOP!” Suzanne gently led Smoochy to her little crate. The dog was so obedient. So passive. Suzanne had never heard her bark. Not once. She settled into her bed and resumed her nap, chin on paws.

With an evil laugh, Kari tapped on her phone screen, clearly requesting an Uber as Suzanne ran out into the dark night, needing to pound away the racing thoughts about Gerald.

Please
, he’d begged at the arts center.

Please what?

The words became a chant inside her as she ran,
please what please what please what
taking over until she was nothing but feet, knees, hips, arms, lungs, a body in motion staying in motion, running to make the mind less important than tendon and bone. If she could just get her emotions to step back, step down, and let her body assume center stage, then the temporary relief of setting down the burden of the past might give her a break.

Pushing herself, she found a comfortable six-minute-mile pace, and in under eighteen minutes was done, panting and covered in sweat, but ready to feast.

Kari was inside, flirting with a bearded counter guy with a man bun, her spoon already deep into a sundae.

This man bun fashion had to end soon, right?

Right?

“Hey! Here’s my crazy friend I was telling you about,” Kari said to Man Bun, who looked at her with a grin. Bright green eyes, thick brown beard. He was what—twenty?

Why did all the guys in Cambridge look like fetuses?

On second look, she realized what appeared to be a man bun from outside was actually a nest of snakes.

The guy had long dreads curled up into a festering pile of hair.

Give Suzanne a freshly shaved recruit any day of the week.

“Hi. Salted caramel and pumpkin two scoops in a cup with hot fudge,” she ordered.

The guy snapped back and saluted. “Yes, ma’am!”

Kari snickered.

Suzanne frowned.

“What was that about?”

“You pulled out your commanding tone, Suzanne. You sounded like a drill sergeant.”

“No, I didn’t! I just asked for ice cream.”

“You have no idea how you come across sometimes. Especially when you’re pissed.”

“I am not pissed! I just want some damn ice cream!” The glare she shot Kari should have melted the store’s inventory.

“Right. Totally not pissed,” Kari murmured, rolling her eyes. She flashed a sweet grin at Snake Head, who winked at her.

“He’s too young for you,” Suzanne said in a judgy tone. She owned it.

“Is not!”

“He only wants to date you so you can smuggle him into R-rated movies.”

“Suzanne!”

“And buy him cigarettes.”

“He’s twenty-four!”

“Which is ten years younger than you.”

“Rawr.” Kari pretended to be a cougar. “Young guys are impressionable. Experimental. Adventurous in bed.”

“Is that all a euphemism for inexperienced? No, thanks. I don’t want to have to play the sexual version of Pokemon Go with my body as a gym and my clitoris a rare Pokemon.”

Kari looked at her in horror. “Way to ruin Pokemon forever! Ew! Now your clit will be in my brain forever as a Charmander.” She paused, deep in thought. “But erotic Pokemon sounds like a great business idea.”

The store went silent. Suzanne turned and looked around.

Everyone was staring at them.

“Uh, here’s your ice cream,” Snake Head said, trying to suppress a smile.

Suzanne handed him a sweat-soaked bill. Kari took the change. They skedaddled, bursting into giggles on the sidewalk, wandering toward Central Square. Just as they composed themselves, a siren pierced the air, the fire station across the street opening up and a big fire truck making its way down Mass Ave. A police cruiser turned on its blue lights and left them flashing.

Sudden sirens no longer triggered Suzanne, but the damn flashing lights drove her eyes crazy. Cutting down a side street, she hurried to get away from the flashes. Kari followed quietly, knowing exactly why Suzanne made the route change, not saying a word. They’d been through this before.

“I,” Kari declared in an arch tone, “am totally calling that guy.”

“The butt guy or Snake Head?”

“What?”

Suzanne laughed through a mouthful of ice cream. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“You invented nicknames for men I haven’t even dated yet?”

“You don’t want to date them. You want to sleep with them.”

“Same difference.”

Suzanne shuddered. “I didn’t sleep with my date tonight. Can you believe I ended up on a date with Steve Raleigh?”

Kari frowned. “That name sounds famil—wait! Oh, my God! He’s that super pompous guy who was all over Jessica Coffin’s Twitter stream when he was dating her, right? Couple years ago? This is all ringing a bell.
He
was your date? I didn’t put it together when you called.”

Suzanne shrugged. “I didn’t research him. Just knew his name was Steve and he worked in the financial sector. Met him in public, so....”

“That’s bad?”

“I need to bathe in plane wing degreaser after spending an hour with him.”

“Sounds like a rough night.”

“You got the phone numbers for two different guys tonight.”

“You got kissed.”

“Yeah,” Suzanne said through a sigh, restraining herself from touching her lips. Gerald. “What am I going to do?”

“Let him make the next move. He certainly owes that to you. All these years, and not a word. He just dumped you?”

Suzanne nodded, eating her sundae. Memory has a funny way of protecting the psyche at all costs. It pulls out every stop, like a mother sensing danger near her child. The will to survive trumps all, and in Suzanne’s case, memory protected her heart.

But it wasn’t infallible.

“He did. He got his discharge before I did. Sent me an email.”

“I know. You told me. A single fucking email, and then he disappeared.” Hearing it from Kari’s mouth always made it seem as stark as it felt. Confirmation from another person that pain was real made bearing it slightly easier.

“Not his style at all,” Suzanne mused. “Never was. Gerald was direct and forthright, completely blunt.” She smiled, her mouth twisting with bitter reverie. “It made him perfect for me.”

“Because you’re the epitome of passive-aggressive,” Kari joked.

“We were a pair.”

“A powerful pair, I’ll bet,” Kari said, smiling, giving Suzanne a look only a good friend could give. “You must be reeling.”

Suzanne held a full spoon of carbs aloft. “Exhibit #1, your honor.”

“And he’s a client.”

“Not quite.” Suzanne paused. “Okay, he is. Sort of. The billionaire’s estate handed this portion of his will to our firm. I’m just passing on the information to Gerald.”

“He’s a client, Suzanne. Don’t mince words.”

“I’m asking to be reassigned tomorrow. I can’t take this.”