Shopping for a Billionaire 4 (11 page)

It’s so much more.

Declan’s face goes slack again.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I wish this could be different, but my father is right.”

And with that, he grips my hand hard, his face filled with regret, then lets go, the hard clap of his shoes on marble like gunshots.

Chapter Twelve

Limping up the steps to my Soviet-bloc business building makes me feel like one of those over-muscled women on the weightlifting team for Belarus. Except I’m limping and whimpering, and I feel like my pectoral and gluteal muscles have been sent to Siberia for re-education.

For the past three weeks—since right after I saw Declan—my life has been a series of gym shops. Forty-seven of them in twenty days, to be exact. That is more than two per day, which equates to screaming quads and exposing more cellulite per hour than you see on a Cape Cod beach in August.

Rumors of ongoing and persistent underperformance by personal trainers at a particular chain of gyms in the area mean I have to pretend to be a new customer who wants to try the “first hour free” promotion. The gyms generally send the least-senior personal trainer to do these jobs, though the one I just left was quite different. I got a seventy-eight-year-old professional female body builder who had more muscle than my dad, Steve, and possibly Declan combined, and whose skin was the color of the old leather armchair in dad’s Man Cave. 

Smelled like it, too.

Her teeth had gleamed like polished Chiclets gum and her eyes were remarkably alert and bright for someone born before WWII. No loose skin under the eyes, no bags at all. Her jaw was so muscled she looked like an aging bulldog.

That woman worked me like Jillian Michaels with a group of mouthy teens sent to some Christian re-education camp in Utah. I haven’t had my inner thighs quiver like this since…

Declan.

Damn it. I was trying so hard not to think about him, but leave it to my overactive adductor muscles to make him float into my mind. Three weeks have passed without seeing him, hearing from him—and yet he’s in my mind, embedded in my skin, deep in my heart.

Still.

I use both hands to physically lift my right leg up the first cement stair. There are nine of them. Nine. As in my legs are screaming “
nein!
” Pain makes me bilingual. 

I’m on stair number four when Josh appears next to me. His legs function. He can hop up those stairs like Richard Simmons after drinking five Red Bulls.

“What’s wrong?” he asks with glee, knowing damn well why I am limping. We can’t pawn any of these gym shops off on him because the assignment requires female guests.

“Not enough fiber in my diet,” I mutter.

His face goes blank. “I thought it was all the gym shops you’re doing.” He snorts. “I know it’s not from really good sex.”

“At staff meeting today I’m telling Greg he needs to give you the role of supportive father-to-be on all those cord blood bank shops that are coming up.” 

His pale face makes me grin inside, because Josh can’t stand hospitals. “You wouldn’t!”

Before I can reply, he puts up a palm and shakes his head sadly, “Actually, you would,” he says, leaping up the remaining stairs like Peter Pan and holding the heavy door open for me.

“Thank you. Just stand there for about thirty-seven more minutes and I’ll get there.”

A strange scuffling sound from behind us makes us both turn. It’s Amanda, kicking a box the size of a small ottoman across the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” Josh calls out.

“I no longer have arms,” she whines. “Just shredded, noodly appendages.”

“Gym shops?” I shout. Using my diaphragm makes the muscles between my ribs hurt. Now it hurts to talk? I need combat pay for this job, I swear.

Josh drops the door handle and runs down the stairs.

“Hey!” I protest.

“
Please
,” he calls back. “I could drive to Starbucks and get us all lattes and return and you’ll still be on the eighth stair. I can help Amanda.”

He’s got a point. I feel like a turtle with fibromyalgia. 

Josh comes whizzing up the staircase with the box in his hands like he’s Superman. Balancing Amanda’s stuff on one arm, he uses the other to hold the door for me.

“Show-off,” Amanda and I say in unison. I look at her and gasp.

“What are you wearing?”

She looks like the human embodiment of the coffee bean/piece of excrement on the top of my car.

“Car wash uniform. I have to go and pretend to be a counter employee for the rest of the day.”

“With non-functioning arms?”

“That’s what I said! Greg’s being unreasonable.”

“And that’s the uniform?” Josh squeaks, laughing. “I haven’t seen that much polyester since I watched the movie
Boogie Nights
with my boyfriend.”

Amanda and I pause, which isn’t hard. “Boyfriend?” We’re in stereo.

Josh blushes. “Well, you know—YES! I have a boyfriend!” he squeals.

We all squeal.

Greg opens a window and sticks his head out. “You guys sound like you’re replaying that scene from
Deliverance
. You okay?”

“We’re just talking about our cars and how much we love driving in tin cans of humiliation,” Amanda shouts back.

Thwack
. The window snaps shut.

Josh starts to tell us all about Cameron while I make it to the seventh step and realize that Josh—geeky, smart, goofy, socially deficited Josh—has a boyfriend.

And I don’t.

Tears prickle at the edges of the soft skin around my eyeballs, taking the immediacy of my aching muscles away from my attention. I inhale slowly through my nose and grasp my leg, pulling it up. Eight. One more stair to go. Just don’t cry until—

Too late.

“You look great!” Josh says as I pull my leg up to reach the top. “All these gym shops are toning you.”

“It’s all neutral. I’m eating more ice cream to compensate.”

“For what?” Amanda snorts. “You’d have to work out thirty-seven hours a day doing CrossFit to make up for the amount of ice cream you’re eating.”

I’m about to answer but she makes it up the stairs and is right behind me, nudging me with her shoulder. I’m forced to stumble forward and take three steps in a row.

“You look like you could star in
The Walking Dead
.” 

“You sound like you could star in
Honey Boo Boo
.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I was aiming for ‘offensive.’”

“You sailed right past it and hit the ‘lame’ target.”

We get to the stairs. No elevator. Josh and Amanda slip past me and I am grateful for the peace. It takes me seventeen minutes to get to the office. I’m late for the staff meeting.

Just as I walk in, I hear Greg say two different sentences:

“Shannon and you can go to the Catch My Vibe store with her mother.”

and

“The Fort shop goes to Shannon per James McCormick’s instructions, no matter how much you threaten me, Amanda.” Greg flinches just enough to show he’s worried. 

Both freak me out, though not enough to drown out the screaming pain in my legs.

“Wait—what?” I ask. Three faces turn toward me, Amanda’s hostile.

“She can barely move!” Amanda argues, gesturing wildly with her head, her arms immobile.

“Pick up your pen and write your name,” I say in a quiet voice.

She’s been taking glare lessons from Chuckles, I see.

“It’s done,” Greg announces. “You get your shot later in the summer,” he explains to her. She leans down to drink out of a straw someone shoved in her can of diet soda.

As I bend to sit in my chair, I hear my hamstrings snap like a high-tension cord on a crane.
Ping!
 

Greg eyes us warily. Josh adjusts Amanda’s straw.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Greg finally asks, though he sounds about as eager to know the answer as I am to know the specifics of my parents’ sex life. And, like me, Greg is about to hear more than he ever imagined.

“I just had more weight swinging in and out between my legs than you could ever imagine,” Amanda wails.

All the blood in Greg’s face drains out, like low tide during a tsunami, rushing back in so fast that he looks like a big red beet.

“Um, I meant what’s wrong
professionally
. I don’t need to know about your sex life,” he clarifies.

“This
was
for work! That Bulgarian ex-Olympian at the gym on Union Avenue made me do forty-pound kettlebell reps until I couldn’t stand it anymore!”

Greg sighs with relief. “
That
kind of weight between your legs!” He’s so relieved.

“What did you think I meant?” she demands.

“Never mind,” me, Greg, and Josh say. 

“I thought you were upset about The Fort.”

“I’m upset about that, too,” Amanda adds. “But mostly I just want to get laid.”

“Don’t look at me,” Josh says, palms out.

“Or me,” Greg murmurs so quietly only I can hear him.

“I think we’re swinging away from professionalism,” I whisper in her ear.

“It’s the damn sex toy shop I did with your mother!”

“Anyone want coffee?” Greg shouts. Josh jumps up with him and they rush out of the room.

“Note to self,” I say. “Mention sex life, get free coffee from men at work.”

 “Oh, and here,” Amanda says, as if uninterrupted. She flails one arm toward her a giant Vera Bradley bag, hands hanging down like a T-rex, ineffectual and useless. Normally I would take pity on her, but I’m kind of enjoying her pain. 

After what feels like an hour, she pulls out a water bottle. One of those big, pink-and-white plastic water bottles that…

Has a giant mushroom cap on the end of it, and a Power button.

“Is that a—OH MY GOD, AMANDA!” I scream, shoving the monstrosity out of my way. It falls to the ground and in the impact, the Power button is pushed. A slow vibration rubs against my foot.

“What? It’s from the sex toy shop. You act like you’ve never seen a vibrator before!”

“Not at work! Here! With Greg and Josh around.” I’ve never met a vibrator I didn’t like, frankly, but this is a bit much.

“Your mom used part of her product allowance to give this one to you.” Mom’s been assigned to seven different sex toy shops now because of the way she handled my breakdown in Northampton. Her evaluation was perfect and the client asked for her to do most of the rest of the shops. 

I’m so proud. It’s like having your mother win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Almost.

I stare at the buzzing monstrosity and I just…I don’t…words disappear. The earth implodes. A supernova of nothingness replaces my consciousness. I did not just receive a hand-picked vibrator from my mother.
Nope nope nope
.

“See? It has a ‘D’ on the tip. Marie wanted it to remind you of Declan.”

“Remind me of...what?” 

“Plus, the curvature of the letter makes hitting the G-spot easier.” She says this the way a home party product specialist might describe a decorative candle.

“Shut up.”

“Why are you so hostile?” 

“Some product designer actually thought this was a good idea?” I challenge.

“Your mom said the sex toy shop owner told her it was so your man could leave his mark in an intimate place.”

“Where? On your
cervix
? That’s like being branded! You know a man designed that,” I fume. 

The vibrator twitches on the ground, but I can’t stop it. My legs won’t move. I’ve been sitting here just long enough for atrophy or entropy or oldladykickedmyassery to set in, and all these gym shops have collectively rendered my leg muscles so useless I can’t even kick a vibrator with enough power to make it come within range of my hand so I can turn it off.

Bzzzz.
“Amanda, can you help me? Reach under there and—”

“Reach? REACH? You ever bench-press eighty pounds, then do ten minutes of high-intensity rowing on a rowing machine while a Bulgarian screams in your ear? I’m lucky my arms are still attached.” She looks down. “Okay, good. Still there. Hello, hands. I love you!” She looks up at me. “Just checking.”

Bzzzz.

“Greg and Josh will be back any second, and I’d really prefer neither of them has to pick up a vibrator that my mother gave me.”

“It’s pretty impressive,” she says. “Has an anal probe attachment that’s shaped like an octopus tentacle.”

Greg walks in as she says the end of that sentence. He stops so quickly that hot coffee sloshes out of the tiny sipping holes in the tops of the two take-out cups he carries. His ears perk up and he tilts his head, searching for the sound.

And then his eyes find it.

“Is that a robot vacuum cleaner?” he asks, poking his head under the table to catch a look. “Judy’s been mentioning getting one. Says it could really make things better at home, because I’ve been slacking, and we need something bigger.”

“Uh,” is all I can say. Just as he bends down, Amanda kicks the vibrator, hard, but her aim is off.

It hits Josh squarely in the shin as he walks in carrying two more coffees. Josh looks down at the bleating white-and-pink flesh penis, then looks at Greg, who has a perplexed look on his walrus-like face.

“That doesn’t look like a robot vacuum,” Greg says.

Josh is nonplussed by the non sequitur. He looks at Amanda, then me, and asks:

“Do they make that in purple?”

Chapter Thirteen

No amount of begging, pleading, or offers to clean anyone’s shoes with my tongue—including Chuckles’—has made a difference. I am stuck driving my poop-topped car to my mystery shop for The Fort.

Why does this matter, you wonder? Because when you mystery shop a hotel, most clients want a detailed evaluation of every service offered in the hotel. For high-end luxury properties, that begins with valet parking.

That’s right. I have to hand off my Turdmobile to a guy who makes more in tips parking Teslas and Ferraris in a day than I make in a week.

And while I’m sure these valets have seen some novel vehicles, including electric-powered Hummers and cars with batwings for doors, a compact car with a big, brown coffee bean that looks like a piece of feces is going to be a new one in their repertoire.