Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee (17 page)

She scrunches up her face in contemplation, her eyes relaxed and happy, her body loose and half-exposed between the twisted sheets. “Ferret?”

“Hmph. How about a nice, big hug?” I say, not giving her the chance to reply in the negative, jumping on the bed and covering her with wet kisses.

She screams, wriggling under me, and damn if I’m not getting hard again.

“You’re salty!” she says with a laugh. “My lips are stinging.” I’m kissing her, face coated in rain, and she slowly stops her giggles and lets them dissolve into little sighs.

There we go.

The storm outside can rage on, but the one in here has its own tempo, too.

“I love you,” I whisper, kissing her neck.

“Love you, too,” she says with a little sound of contentment. “But I need coffee.”

“You need coffee more than me?”

“Only sometimes. Especially at 6:17 a.m. on a Friday.”

I squint at the clock. Oh, hell. “You’re as bad as Shannon.” But I let her go, enjoying the view as she stands and walks to the door, grabbing my robe. Watching her put it on gives me a sense of pride. Possession. The robe swallows her. The gesture is domestic. Casual. Understated and assumed.

Wifely.

“If I’m as bad as Shannon, will you buy me my own coffee chain?”

“You have to marry me to get that. Dec bought it for her as a wedding gift.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Every part of the room tilts. My blood stops pumping. My mind stops racing. The crazy rain outside sounds like white noise. A ringing forms in my ears, and it’s like I’m watching her through clear, transparent molasses.

Wife. Marry. Wedding.

Those words make an appearance again.

Bzzz.

She groans. “Your phone? Again? Can’t you just turn it off?”

“Between Dad’s inability to turn over the CEO role to me in full, and now Declan’s resignation, work is crazier than ever. I only have so many hours in a day.”

“Some of them should be for me!”

“What do you call what we just did?”

“Seventeen minutes.”

“You
timed
it?”

“I happened to look at the clock right as you woke me up, and then, uh, after.”

Seventeen minutes, huh?

I can do better.

I
will
do better. I reach for her, cupping her sweet, creamy breast, the curve of it so—

Bzzz.

But not now, apparently.

I grab the phone and check texts, fingers flying as Amanda sighs, gets up, and walks out of my bedroom, removing the robe and walking into my bathroom. I hear the shower turn on.

What a difference a few weeks makes. The first time she spent the night, she was more shy, more inhibited, and clearly working to figure out the lay of the land—physically and emotionally.

We’re more comfortable with each other now.

Which is why I can ignore her and work.

The glow of my phone screen is all I need as the storm rages outside. Sitting upright, under the covers, I crawl into the phone, tapping and answering texts from Dad, Gina, Grace, my IT guy, and a host of other people. I try to keep it simple, but within ten minutes my laptop’s on a pillow in front of me, email open and my phone cradled between my shoulder and jaw just as Amanda walks into the room, now hair wet and freshly combed, framing her face in a dark wall, carrying two cups of coffee.

I get an epic eye roll from her.

“Get off that damn phone!” she hisses. “It’s like Shannon’s vibrator!”

“What?” I drop the phone onto the bed, horrified by the comparison.

“Declan calls Edward Cullen her secret lover.” I now know way too much about my sister-in law.

“You’re comparing my working on my phone to my sister-in-law’s electronic substitute for my brother?” Flashing her a smile that I hope makes up for this work episode, I take the coffee, grateful.

Truly.

“Yes. Both are things you turn to when you’re frustrated and need to feel a sense of accomplishment.”

I open my mouth to respond. Women must view orgasms very, very differently than men.

 Accomplishment? No.

Therapeutic? Yes.

Amanda grabs my phone from my neck and shoves it down the front of the robe.

“What are you doing?”

“Hiding your phone.”

“And you think I’m
not
going to find it there?”

“If it’s out of reach, you can’t be on it constantly.”

I grin. “I have no problem playing hide and seek.” Her breasts rise and fall as her anger intensifies.

“And then what? Will you text over my shoulder in the middle of sex? What’s next, Andrew—an emoji instead of a groan?”

“Would that turn you on?”

She takes an angry sip of coffee. Where’s the ire coming from? I always squeeze in work between every other part of life. Amanda should be used to it.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” she asks, faltering, the anger draining out of her. “Dating you means accepting that you live your job.” A crack of lightning punctuates her words as she bends down for a sip, suddenly contemplative.

“I—”

“Shannon told me it’s like this with Declan. Said she comes second most of the time.” Amanda blinks rapidly, her face a series of tiny muscles under the surface that seem to rotate through scores of emotions, trying one on for size and discarding it over and over. “I’ve been sympathetic for the past few years, but now I see I never really understood.”

My hands stop over the keys, mid-stroke, eyes stuck on the screen. Our chief financial officer has a report on a huge lawsuit we’re currently losing, and the financial fallout could hurt our quarterly projections.

But not paying full attention to Amanda right now would hurt even more.

I close the laptop and set it aside. My mind’s in work mode, so this is harder than you’d think.

Much harder.

Compartmentalizing means that Sex Brain Andrew, once satisfied, is ready to move into the CEO Andrew box, and once I’m in that compartment, going into Relationship Andrew is harder than you’d think.

Like learning to play piano while unicycling.

“Talk to me,” I say, unable to find the right words to even start. I drink my cup of coffee and the image of all those unread emails taunts me, each line etched into my mind. The curse of having a photographic memory.

“I am.” She gives me a bitter smile and slowly opens the robe, revealing my smartphone tucked neatly under one breast. She must have magician’s genes in her. How does it stay in place?

I reach for it, the metal warm, the glass slightly wet with her perspiration.

“Tell me what’s going on behind those beautiful eyes.”

She looks up, coquettish yet guarded. “Shannon says they fight all the time about Declan being a workaholic.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“And that you’re worse.”

“Worse?”

“You work even more hours than he does.”

“I do. That’s how this works. I’m CEO now. It’s not a job—”

“It’s a life,” she says, echoing me.

“Dec says that to Shannon, too?”

She nods.

I tip her chin up. “I work so hard and so many hours because I’m taking over Dad’s legacy. But truly? I’ve always worked so much because I didn’t have anything else in my life. Anterdec was it. Until now. Until you.”

She melts.

I knew she would.

All I want is to spend the day in bed with her, our only interruptions the delivery people bringing food. How many orgasms can we generate in a twenty-four-hour period? My competitive nature rises up.

Among other things.

“I know your idea of work and my idea of work are in different columns,” she says seriously. “Work is what you do to get ahead. To pay the bills. To find meaning.”

“Work isn’t some separate category,” I add. “It’s integrated into who I am. I am Anterdec now. I am not just the face of the company, Amanda. Being a CEO is different than having any other job on the planet.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying that to be arrogant, or brag.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me, Andrew. I understand.”

“Do you? Really?”

“I’m trying to. Your reality is different from most people’s. Your family lives a life very removed from most of us.”

“You make me feel like I’m exiled,” I say, half joking.

Half.

“In a way, you are. Sometimes I feel sorry for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Not in a poor-little-rich-boy kind of way. But fame and fortune have costs I never realized before.”

“Like what?” I settle in, setting aside my work mind. I’m intrigued.

“It’s not just the busyness. Not just the demands on your time, or the fact that, like you said—you are Anterdec. All of you except Terry. I’m seeing that better now. Your company isn’t some institution your father created to make money. It’s like giving birth to a child and raising it. And you’re being handed your father’s baby.”

“Is this part of the whole ‘you’re bad at analogies’ problem? Because
I
am my father’s baby.” Sounds weird to say it that way, but truth is truth.

She laughs. “So is the company. And you’re struggling with the transfer of power. You’re in massive transition right now.”

“In more ways than one.” I take her hand and watch as she reacts, changing before my eyes. “We’re in transition, too.”

“Yes.”

“Each of us, separately, and both of us, together.”

“Mmm hmmm.” Her mouth is full of coffee.

“What about you?” I ask. “Did you always want to be a mystery shopper manager? Work in marketing?”

As the words come out of my mouth, her eyes change from purely curious to suspiciously confused. “What?”

“Was this your career goal?”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No. Why would I joke?”

She sighs. “Exhibit #1, Your Honor.”

“I’m on trial? For what crime?”

“Being exiled.” She frowns. “I went into marketing because it was a job. With a paycheck, and the holy grail of full benefits. I didn’t set out to be in this field, Andrew. I found it out of necessity.”

“What did you want to do? When you were younger?”

“You mean, what’s my heart’s work? Follow your bliss and all that?”

I groan. “God, no. I hate that phrase.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because no one actually finds meaning and money in their bliss. You can’t. It’s like...” I fumble for the right words.

“Trying to orgasm and pee at the same time?” she offers.

“Exactly like that.”

“Maybe I don’t suck at analogies after all.”

I kiss the top of her mussed head. “No. You do.”

We chuckle as the wind whips the rain against my closed balcony slider. It sounds like a phalanx of kids with BB guns shooting at us.

Amanda looks at the rainstorm. “Glad I don’t have to go anywhere immediately.”

“I can just have Gerald or Lance take you wherever, anyhow. You never need to set foot outside.”

She gives me a funny look.

I drink my coffee and shut up.

“I assumed you’d have your pick of careers. You were raised with wealth. Access. The finest educations and all that. I’d assume kids raised the way you were raised could major in basket weaving and not worry about money.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Illuminate me.”

“Maybe it works that way for some of the kids I went to Milton with. But if it did, I didn’t know any of them. The rest of us had the pressure put on us in preschool. Like a fire hose aimed at your permanent record nonstop.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why did our parents hold us to high standards?”

“Yeah.”

“For Dad, it was about making sure we could take over the company. Keep the McCormick name in stellar shape. Grow Anterdec and turn it into an international giant.”

“So far, so good.”

I shake my head. “It’s been Dad, mostly. Dec’s done some good deals for the hospitality branch, but it’s all on me as we move forward.” A rush of responsibility fills me, like the crush of a crowd trying to make it to the front of a stage at a huge rock concert. Thousands of work details, big and small, shove at me.

“You’ll do well. James wouldn’t have picked you if he didn’t believe in you.”

“You really think that?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I think Dad picked me to punish Declan.” There. I said it. Amanda’s the first person I’ve ever confided in.

“Really? He’s still mad? After all these years?”

“It’s never going away. Never.”

“I don’t understand that kind of anger. Why keep it inside? Why let it eat away at you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know any different.” Amanda finishes her cup and plucks my empty one from my hands, turning away, walking through the door.

Leaving me dumbstruck.

I grab my phone. Text from Vince. 

Outdoor session canceled. Meet me at your office. Will turn you into a puddle indoors.

I snort.

Or whimper.

It’s hard to tell the difference.

I am still texting just as she returns, steam spooling up from the two fresh coffees in her hand.

“Work?”

Need to talk. Want to know the rest of the story
, I text Terry.

“Yes,” I say, smiling as she hands me the coffee, dipping down for a kiss.

By the time Terry replies, I’m buried.

In her.

Chapter Fourteen

“I can’t believe we have to suffer through this,” I grumble as we climb out of the SUV, Gerald dropping us off at Declan’s building. We’ve been home for two weeks, barely enough time to catch up, and now we have to spent a rare Saturday night being tortured by my brother’s mother-in-law. 

I am not legally related to her.

But crazy has its own gravity, flowing from older brother to younger.

“You’re the best man. I’m the maid of honor. We have to go to the wedding-gift-opening party.”

“Terry
was
the best man, technically.”

Amanda gives me a look that says I’d better shut up or I’m on the fast track to a no-sex night.

I shut up.

“Dec and Shannon have nearly seven hundred wedding gifts to open, and we’re all going to help them.”