Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire #7)(9)

Marie inhales, the air whistling past her back teeth. “No, he didn’t! He said he’d love a cake made in the shape of bagpipes as much as he loves me.” She gives Shannon a doe-eyed look. “There’s only one way to interpret that comment.”

Shannon and I exchange a look and say, in unison, “Right.”

My phone buzzes again. I look.

Mom.

Please respond before I call 911, she texts.

Declan walks in just as I’m texting back the words, I am fine. Will be home late. This time, the text goes through. Whew.

He plunks the marshmallows and Cheetos on the counter. Shannon opens the refrigerator door, bends down, and searches for the butter.

Declan “bumps into” her from behind and bends over her, whispering something I imagine is quite dirty in her ear, given the Lauren Bacall laugh that emerges from her.

I watch them, my earlier beers fading, the taste of Andrew McCormick lingering on my tongue, the burn of his cheek etched into my palm.

Shannon gets it all. The awesome, charismatic mother. The billionaire fiancé.

A father.

I don’t even have that. Mine left when I was five.

The green cloud of jealousy that fills me feels like a smoke bomb, as if emotional terrorists appeared out of nowhere in a flash mob and pulled the pins, tossing the bombs like hail in a sudden storm cell.

I’m jealous. I can admit it. It’s not as if there’s something wrong with that. I can hold two opposite emotions in my heart at the same time. I am capable of feeling joy for Shannon and her new life and sorrow for my own trainwreck. Life doesn’t have to be either/or. It can be both/and.

As Declan nuzzles Shannon’s neck and touches her ass in ways that make me feel like I’m watching the opening to a Showtime after-hours special, I text my mom back with a single line:

In twenty minutes. On my way.

“I have to go,” I announce.

Marie’s face falls. Shannon and Declan are butting up against each other like horny goats in springtime. I’m seriously worried about how they’re both eyeing the stick of butter in her hand.

“But we were just about to look at the plaid gel nails for the bridesmaids!” Marie whines, holding up a full-color brochure from a local spa with—yep—plaid gel nail fills.

“You seriously want the bridesmaids to have fingernails that look like kilts?” I ask, knowing the answer.

“Everything will look like kilts!” Marie gushes. “I’ve even found plaid matching bra and thong sets for the bridesmaids. And a garter for Shannon.”

I swear I hear Declan mutter the word elope. Then he distinctly says, “Garters?” in a gruff voice.

“Will we throw plaid rice?” I joke.

“Is there such a thing?” Marie gasps.

“Check out Etsy,” I say as I walk toward the door, trying to ignore the lustfest going on in the kitchen. My phone buzzes over and over. Probably Mom, whipped into a panic. “You can find anything on Etsy.”

Even if you shouldn’t be able to.

“Hey! What about the Cheetos and marshmallows?” I hear Declan call out as the elevator doors close.

I close my eyes and slump against the elevator wall, wondering how my night opened with dog butts and ended with plaid fingernails.





Chapter Four


Living with Pamela Warrick is a physical, and emotional, landmine. She’s always been high strung. Neurotic. Tightly wound. A Museum Mom. So anal retentive you could put coal up her butt and get a diamond.

But only in private.

Mom’s OCD is like tree pollen in Massachusetts in May. It is just there, a fine layer that coats every surface, appearing with a spectral green hue when it is at its worst. It makes your eyes water and your throat itch, a malady you can’t escape. No amount of drugs can stop it. Trust me. I tried, back in high school. And not the kind you buy at a drugstore.

I have heard—and told—all the jokes about her uptightedness.

But when you add the fibromyalgia that hit her my senior year of high school, it’s like taking obsessive compulsive disorder and living with that on double speed.

With pain.

When she’s so picky I can’t do anything right, including breathing, I remind myself it’s not her fault. And it’s not. Getting rear-ended in a compact car by a guy driving the biggest SUV on the market and who didn’t even apply the brakes isn’t something anyone causes.

Except for the * driver who was—that’s right—texting.

Sexting, we learned, in the trial. You really do not want to watch those exhibits being paraded around a courtroom.

Neither did his wife.

Because the sexy pictures he received while texting weren’t from her.

Mom’s settlement covered her medical bills, some of her ongoing massage and physical therapy, and about half my college tuition.

But there’s never enough money to cover the change in her.

I extracted myself from Shannon’s place with promises to return tomorrow. They’re not empty assurances, though Declan’s look of appraisal made it clear he didn’t care so much about the fool’s errand of buying weird grocery items at the buttcrack of the day, but did find my flimsy excuse for leaving to be about as sturdy as Donald Trump’s sense of feminist principles.

I get out of the cab and walk up the front steps of our house, a rented duplex in Newton, the journey as familiar and comforting in a damning sort of way, as if my life is on infinite repeat and all I can do is march along the deep grooves that my own feet created long before this moment.