Shopping for a Billionaire 1 (3 page)

He does that polite laugh thing, eyes narrowing. I decide to just stare openly and catalog him right back. Brown hair, clipped close, in a style that can only come at the hands of a very expensive salon owner. The bluish-gray suit, textured and smooth at the same time, shimmering and flat as well under the twitchy light. Skin kissed by the sun but also a bit too light, as if he used to spend a lot of time outdoors but hasn’t recently.

A body like a tall tennis player’s, or a golfer’s, and not my dad with his pot-bellied buddies getting in a round of nine holes at 4 p.m. just so they can have an excuse to drink their dinner. Declan is tall and sleek, confident and self-possessed. He moves like a lion, knowing the territory and owning it.

Always aware of any movement that interests him.

I’m 5’ 9” and he’s taller than my by at least half a foot. Tall girls always do a mental check:
could I wear high heels with him?
Steve hated when I wore high heels, because it put me eye-to-eye with him.

“What are you doing in the men’s room?” he asks, smirking at me.

I tuck my phone into the back waistband of my pants. If there’s a chance in hell it’s still on, he might see the screen and figure out who I am. My wits begin to return to me. A zero-sum game forms in my body: wit vs. a body part that rhymes with
wit
that starts with C and that stands for trouble.

Wit is losing.

“I must have gotten confused.” I fake-rub my eyes. “Forgot to grab my glasses on my way to class this morning.”

His eyes narrow further, staring into mine. Am I imagining it, or did his face just fall a bit with disappointment? My heart shatters into a thousand tiny shards of glass that I feel like I just swallowed.

“Class? You’re a student?” His eyes rake over me and there’s a flicker of comprehension there, like some details that didn’t gel are making sense to him.

When you trap yourself into a corner, always take someone else’s out when you can. “Sure. Yes.”

“What class?”

My heart is still jumping around in my chest like my little nephews at an indoor trampoline park after drinking a full-caf frozen mocha. Now he wants to chat while we stand in front of a toilet? And ask me questions about a class I don’t really take?

“Excuse me,” I say, gesturing with the grace of a three-legged moose on skis. “While I am certain that meeting over a toilet in the men’s room right after my hand has been in places that brothel workers in Mumbai won’t touch is scintillating, I would prefer to step out of here and escape
Eau de Urinal
.”

“You haven’t answered my question.” He is immutable. Heat on legs. His pulse shows on his neck, right under the sharp curve of his tight jaw, and I want to kiss it. Press it. Feel it and let my own heartbeat join in.

“I didn’t realize I was under your command, sir,” I retort, saluting him with a rush of sarcasm bigger than my pent-up frustration.

His eyes deepen as he pivots just enough for me to get past him, our bodies brushing against each other with a heat that seems to treble with each nanosecond. I move into the area around the sinks and grab a paper towel, then turn the faucet on, careful to make sure my fingers don’t touch the gleaming metal.

“What are you doing?” Declan asks.
Why won’t he leave?
Surely someone dressed so nicely has stocks to broker, people to doctor, or laws to lawyer. Women to wetten. You know.

“Do you have any idea how germy bathroom sinks can be? I always do this,” I explain, even as my head screams invective and tells me I don’t have to explain anything.

“Nice of you to protect the other patrons.”

“Huh?”

“If anything is germy…” His voice fades out into a low sound in the back of his throat. It sounds like something you’d hear in a locker room or at a hunting club. He gestures toward my arm.

Damn. He’s got a point. I can’t even argue, because he’s right—but that never stopped me before.

“Toilet water—clean toilet water, and that one had been flushed before I reached in—is surprisingly sterile.”

“Sterile?”

“Okay,” I backpedal. “Reasonably clean.”

“Are you from the health department?” His question sounds like a threat.

“No.”

“You just troll men’s rooms and spout microbiology statistics like a professor for…kicks.” He says it in that maddening way men have of making everything seem like it’s a fact, even when they’re really asking a question.

Which was worse: having him think I was Amy from
Big Bang Theory
or just some crazy woman who crashes men’s rooms and has a fetish for sticking her hand in the toilet?

(Not that there’s anything wrong with Amy.)

I finish washing my hands and turn to grab a piece of paper towel, only to find Declan holding one out for me.

“Aha! So now I understand,” I say, nodding slowly as I accept the paper towel and dry my hands. “You’re the bathroom attendant. Where’s your tip cup? You’ve definitely earned a little something.”

The air tingles between us, and it’s not the deodorizer machine spritzing the room. “I’ve earned a little something,” he echoes in a voice loaded with suggestion. It’s not a question.

Just then, the door bursts open and Mark J. rushes in, eyes wild and frantic.

He sees me and gasps, making a high-pitched noise that you would expect from a forty-something middle-aged pearl clutcher and not a guy who looks like he last starred on some cable reality television show called
Fast Food Wars
.

“You!” he screeches. “A customer said they saw a woman walk into the men’s room. I didn’t believe it!”

Declan reaches out for Mark J.’s arm. I lose track of time. How many seconds did it take for this to go from bad to worse? My cover cannot be blown.

“She just wandered in by accident,” Declan explains. “Or she has a fetish. We’re sorting it out right now.” I glare so hard at him the hand dryer spontaneously starts.

“Why is she covered in water?” My sleeve is soaked and the ends of my hair are wet. Mark looks at Declan and sees water spots on his jacket. “Oh!” The sound is so soft I barely hear it, but from the look on Declan’s face he hears it, too. His eyes close and jaw tenses. This is a man who is not accustomed to suffering fools gladly.

So why is he even talking to me?

“I see, now. Fetish.... I didn’t mean…” Mark J.’s eyes plead with Declan to help explain what is going on, because it’s clear from the worker’s panic that he has about three different theories, two of which involve me and Declan breaking public decency laws and one of which involves questions about my biological gender.

None of his scenarios, though, involve my dropping a smartphone while completing a mystery shop, so I’m safe.

“I’ll leave you two to whatever…it was…you were doing,” Mark J. says as his fingers scramble to open the door and get out.

“What do you think,” Declan says, eyes still on the pneumatically wheezing door, “he thinks we’re doing in here?”

“Twerking?” My mind races a thousand miles a minute, covering territory from remembering how many toilet paper rolls were in each stall to imagining Declan naked with a can of whipped cream and a bowl of fresh cherries beside the bed to reminding myself I haven’t shaved in days.

I am a modern-day renaissance woman.

Maybe my eyes give me away during that nude vision of Declan, because the room rapidly becomes warmer and his eyes go dark and hooded as he takes another step toward me. Two more and we’ll touch.

Three more and I could kiss him.

“I don’t twerk,” he whispers, one hand twitching as if it wants to touch me.

“I don’t do any of the things Mark J. thinks I do,” I whisper back. And then I cringe, because…

“Mark J.? You memorized his name tag?” One of Declan’s eyebrows shoots up, and it’s the sexiest look ever, like George Clooney and Channing Tatum and Sam Heughan rolled into one.

“He’s…uh…”

“Oh,” Declan says, his nostrils flaring a bit, lips tight to hold back a smile. “I see. He’s your…” The words go low and Declan makes a few guttural noises and nose twitches that either mean he has a mild case of Tourette syndrome or he’s suggesting that I’m doing the nasty with Mark J.

This is where the path diverges in the woods, and I? I took the path most likely to humiliate me.

For the sake of being a professional.

“Yes!” I shout as the door opens and in walks a very confused kid who looks to be about ten years old. He double-checks the main door, then gawks at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. I like that. Kids are honest. Declan’s all smoke and whiskey with me, teasing and playing with me, and I have been up since 4:12 a.m. being texted by secret shoppers who dropped acid and saw unicorns.

Don’t play games with me.

“Yes, that’s right! Mark J. and I are doing it,” I whisper in Declan’s ear as the kid runs back to his table and I work on my own escape. “We do it in the walk-in cooler, right by the salad bins. He lays me out over the break table outside and always throws the cigarette butts in the ashtray away. A true romantic. On uniform delivery day he’s right there in the truck with me, careful to keep the apron clean while meeting my needs. Mark J. is the man.”

I inch over to the door and sprint out to my car as Mark J., now safely behind the front counter, shouts, “Have a good day!”

Chapter Four

My hands shake as I climb in my unlocked car and rifle under the driver’s seat in search of my keys.

I find the giant screwdriver. Yes, that is my “keys.” The original key broke off in the lock a few months ago and my mechanic—AKA my dad—stripped out the lock and now I shove a giant flathead screwdriver into the ignition and turn and pray.

That’s the closest thing in my life to something being inserted into a hole every day.

The car turns over and I gun the engine. After backing up slowly, the car vibrates as I make a right turn onto the main road and head to the office.

The vibrations aren’t from the car, which runs smoothly once you actually get it started. Those are my nerves jangling a mile a minute, my body in some kind of post-urinal shock.

I examine my hand. The toilet hand. And then I lean back and feel a bulge at the base of my back. And not the fun kind.

Dirty hand reaches back and finds my sweaty smartphone. The screen is not glowing, and it seems to have developed a sheen of sweat. Or maybe that’s from me. Running from the restaurant to my car was about the most exercise I’ve had in months.

As the familiar roads come into view and I guide my car on autopilot back to my apartment, I try to unwind the crazy, jumbled mess of threaded thoughts that can’t untangle just yet. Hot guy. Hiding in the men’s room. Dropping my phone in the toilet. Being caught with my hand in there. Being rescued and dripping toilet juice on Hot Guy.

And that was the good part of the morning.

My phone makes a creepy bleating sound, like baby seals dying at slaughter. The screen flickers like it’s the last known electronic signal after nuclear war.

I try to shut it off but it just continues making an anemic whirring sound. This is what robots sound like when they die. The noise will invade my dreams for the next few weeks.

A deep breath will cleanse me. No dice. How about two? Nope. Nuthin’. Ten don’t really help. By the time I’ve tried twenty-three deep breaths, I am home and feeling a little faint, with tingly lips.

Let’s not add syncope to my growing list of Very Bad Things That Happen on a Mystery Shop.

I park in my assigned spot next to the trashcans, kill the engine, and slowly bang my forehead against the steering wheel. Twenty-three bangs actually calm me. Dented brow and all. By the time I stop, I feel like I can handle a basic shower.

That’s more than I was capable of ten minutes ago. Other than a shower with Mr. Suit.

Who are you
, a voice asks me,
and what have you done with asexual Shannon?

Sitting out here with my dented head and confused heart won’t get me anywhere. Amanda’s probably frantically trying to find me, and a search party worthy of a missing Malaysian jet is about to be triggered if she calls my mom.

My mom can be a bit dramatic. A bit. The way Miley Cyrus can be a bit controversial.

I sprint into my house, holding the phone like it’s a bomb. My apartment is a garage. Mostly. I live above a two-car garage in a neighborhood right behind a college, a one-bedroom place I share with my sister. It requires actual exertion on my part to enter and exit. Twenty-seven nearly vertical steps get me to my front door. An actual key (as opposed to a screwdriver) opens the front door, and then
bam!

I’m assaulted by a glaring cat.

My cat makes Grumpy Cat look like Rainbow Brite. If glares could peel paint, I could hire out Chuckles to a paint contractor and quit my job, living off my pet’s singular skill.

People who think animals have expressionless faces are like people who can ignore an open package of Oreos.

Not quite human.

Chuckles—who probably started glaring after we named him as a puffball kitten ten years ago—sits primly in front of the door, a sentry serving as witness to some oversight of mine.

With a guilty look, I survey my kitchen, which is the first room you walk into in my apartment. Water dish full. Food dish half full.

Litter box—full.

Ah. “I’m sorry, Chuckles. I was too busy putting my hand down a human toilet today. I’ve had quite enough of excrement today. But I’ll change it anyhow, because if you look at me like that much longer I’ll burst into flame and they’ll find us in a few weeks, you noshing on my crispy legs.”

“You should think about the fact that you say more to your cat than you do to your own mother,” Satan says from behind my ficus plant.

I scream. Chuckles screams. I pick up Chuckles and fling him at the plant, which serves exactly three purposes. First, it reveals my stupidity. Second, it makes Chuckles plot my death on a whole new level. And third, it makes my mother sidestep the whole fiasco with the fluid movement of a woman who teaches yoga, leaving her to glare at me with a look that makes me realize exactly where Chuckles learned it from.