Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee (30 page)

I like Boston moonlight on this ring even more.

Chapter Twenty-One

The engagement party is over. Everyone enjoyed a night of food and wine, and at some point, Consuela hired a piano player to come and we even danced, Dad twirling Pam, Amanda awkward in my arms. “I’ve never actually
dance
danced with a guy!” she protested, as the piano player pounded out some old dance hall tunes. All the dance lessons Mom forced me to attend came to fruition, Amanda’s body light and fine in my arms, even as she stepped on my feet. Shannon giggled as Declan led her through their own clumsy steps, while Josh turned Terry’s offer down with a blush and a stammer that made Terry’s sonic boom laugh appear.

And then Terry hogged our women, proving just who really is the best dancer out of all the McCormick brothers.

Dad showed him up, though.

Yes, we’re a competitive bunch, but I’m the winner tonight.

The true winner.

My fiancée and I are home now, exhausted and exhilarated. My place. I have to stop calling it that. Now it is
our
place.

Amanda’s work outfit hangs in the closet. Her toothbrush is on the counter in my bathroom, along with hair-styling crap and a bunch of creams that smell good but that she doesn’t need. She’s beautiful and perfect right out of the shower, no artifice, no adaptation.

Just as she is.

Naked and real.

Like right now.

Amanda and I are in that space that you learn exists only when it finds you. No amount of searching helps you to locate it. This space appears at the intersection of awareness and volition, of love and permission.

Where the wiser mind waits patiently, waiting for you to visit.

We stand at the edge of the bed, the slider door open, the ocean air tickling our bodies. The same air that welcomed Amanda’s
yes
at Consuela’s rooftop restaurant just hours ago is joining us in this deeper
yes
here in my bedroom.

Our
bedroom.

Her hair falls in straight lines, ending with a slight curl at her shoulder, framing a face with eyes that look at me from galaxies afar. I stare openly, my own eyes eager to take her in, watching my hand as it cups her jaw, feeling the enormity that comes from knowing my skin touches hers, and that we are bonded forever.

Such a revelation seems both impossible and inevitable, a paradox I only reconcile when she kisses me, standing on tiptoe, the press of nude flesh against nude flesh a startling reminder that this is really in the moment. It unfolds before me like an hourglass clock, each grain a kiss, a sigh, a breath.

Moonlight shines on her ring. Soon I will wear one, too. My thumb finds the soft spot at the base of my left ring finger and worries it. Not much longer, I tell myself.

Soon.

“You proposed,” she whispers, her smile a universe of its own. “We’re getting married.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be your wife.”

“Yes.”

“Amanda McCormick,” she says, as if trying on the name like a dress in a store.

I relax. “Sounds perfect.” My body moves closer to hers, seeking the softness, but without urgency.

“You want kids.”

“Yes. 6.5,” I joke as I just watch her.

“Split the difference between four and nine?”

I shrug.

“Maybe we should start practicing now.”

“You told me
maybe
isn’t part of my vocabulary.” I move her back against the bed so she drops, sitting on the edge, and we love in long, languid shifts until we’re lying parallel to each other. Her breasts drop to the bed cover, gravity pulling them the way Amanda pulls me to her, making me change shape. We’re open and on display for each other, hiding nothing, baring all.

We are real.

“When you touch me,” she says in a low, strong voice, “all the pieces of me that hum throughout the day go silent. All the chatter in my mind halts. You ground me, Andrew. You fix me.”

“Fine praise coming from a true fixer.”

“I’m not broken, though.” Her palms start at my wrists and slide up my forearms, caressing the outer edge of my arms, coming up my shoulders and making goosebumps ripple across me like fire and ice in one stroke. “You fix me in ways that enhance.”

“Good.”

“You potentiate.”

“And you exponentiate.”

She laughs. “This isn’t a contest.”

“I’m not joking. And I’m not competing.” I trace the outer edge of the circle of her nipple on the breast that falls against the other. Her skin tightens, and so do I.

“We’re greater than each other when we’re together,” she says before she kisses me.

She is every fantasy in front of me, a fusion of hot flesh and intelligence and maternal promise and a life’s journey I don’t have the script for but want to live anyhow.

Amanda is mine.

And she wants me right back.

Her ring shines as she reaches up and slides her hand against the back of my neck.

“Then competing is foolish. We need to collaborate.” I kiss her shoulder.

“Work together,” she gasps as I move down, taking that same nipple in my mouth. The vibration of that noise she makes in the back of her throat drives me crazy.

“Find a rhythm,” I growl, mouth still on her, talking around the pink delight.

“Oh, yes,” she sighs, fingers threading in my hair. “Most definitely that.”

I revel in the perverse pleasure of knowing this body that moves beneath me, that responds to my touch and tease, is the only body I’ll know intimately until my dying day. Perverse because I should be horrified, mortified and sad to reduce my pool of female flesh down to a single woman.

And yet it’s the depth of the water that makes the swim so divine.

She comes with a cry of my name like she’s drowning and only I can save her, yet I’m the one who’s sent her into this helpless state, floating and gasping, and as I come up for air she grabs me with such fiery need our mouths crash into each other, her strength so arousing we become damn near violent, the kiss desperate and drawing. Amanda’s body changes after climax, turning warmer and looser, more expansive and distilled into a pink heat that covers her like a magnetic force field drawing me through, captured and captivated.

I’m drawn to it, invited to come into a world where no one else gains entry. A world that only exists when we’re this close.

Her hand runs from my neck down over my pecs, the touch lightening at my abs, fingers tickling the thick hair trail that leads to an even thicker destination. As her hand traces lines on a map that lives only in her mind, I close my eyes, inhaling deeply, tasting and smelling her.

The cool metal on her ring finger warms from my body heat. This ring is permanent. I’ll pair it with a wedding band, one that matches a thicker one on my own left hand, and we’ll be bonded forever.

We’ll make formal what we already know.

A deep tingle pulses through me at the thought, at knowing the search is over, and as Amanda reaches for me and wraps her hand, stroking with her palm, sending a roar of desire shooting through my bloodstream at the speed of light, I open my eyes and look out the open balcony door to find the cityscape staring back, blinking in color and white, the dull hush of wind outside a whisper that chants approval.

And then I grab her, pulling her on top of me, the jumble of legs and arms and moans and gasps settling as she straddles me, then envelops with a welcoming warmth and a pensive smile, her face hovering over me, hair spilling onto my forehead.

“You’re mine,” she says, moving until I groan.

“That’s my line.”

“It can be mine, too. We can both feel it.”

“I’m feeling it.” I move up until she arches back, her control tenuous. I love how her body looks in the moonlight, the landscape full and round, uninhibited. She’s a goddess.

We quicken, the emotion urging us forward, need replacing love at some point, all of the emotions converging until lust takes over our pulses, time becoming meaningless, pushing us to an explosive release, all pretense of the polite shells we wear in public shed like old skin.

Coming together has new meaning now, and as she relaxes on me, her cheek buried in my shoulder, her ass in the air, my hips tight and my hands and feet half numb, the wind pushes the curtains into the bedroom again, the edge brushing against my toes.

“It might rain again,” she says, dazed and slow. A kiss on my ear makes me smile.

“Let it rain.”

I look at the clock with an exaggerated head move.

“What are you doing?”

“That took thirty-nine minutes,” I say, stretching my neck like a rooster strutting.

She smacks my breastbone. “It’s not a competition!”

But it is.

For the record: I am not making the next part up.

Fireworks explode outside the window, the high-pitched whine of a bomb on its trajectory piercing our hearing in the split second before the firework explodes.

Amanda moves and looks out the window as a shower of red and white light dots fills the night sky.

“I knew I was good in bed, but
damn
,” I say.

She laughs as she moves next to me, hip to toe touching me as she cuddles against my chest and we watch whatever show was long-ago scheduled, timed serendipitously for our engagement night.

Our coming together.

Our declaration of dependence.

Epilogue

Two Months Later...

“Mr. McCormick? Your brother is on the line? He wants you to stop ignoring his texts and talk to him?” Gina’s standing in the doorway, waving at me.

I look up from my computer, where I’ve just ended an online meeting with the very happy Sultan of Al-Massi. A nine-figure meeting that will leave our board of directors very happy as well. Amanda and I have been invited to attend a sprawling gala on the grounds of his estate. Professor Kensley-Wentingham will be there as well, as historical consultant.

I think I’ll have my tailor do my own pants this time.

“What does Declan want?”

“Something about the local news? How you’re on it?”

“What?”

She shrugs. “Pickup the phone and ask him?”

I do.

“Did Amanda freak out yet?” Dec asks, dispensing with the preliminaries.

“Freak out over what?”

“Turn on New England Cable News. The Walden Pond story.”

“The
what
?”

“Just watch.”

“Why should I watch a—” I click on the television in my office, rattle through channels filled with nothing but bad daytime soaps and old movies, and then:

LOCAL WOMAN FINDS THREE-CARAT DIAMOND RING IN WALDEN POND

Bzzz.

Texts start pouring in.

“Lucky you, Amanda’s in Chicago on business. You’re never living this down,” Declan says. “Shannon’s laughing her ass off.”

“Amanda won’t care,” I lie. We’ve been engaged for two months, just starting to make wedding plans for next year. I wondered if anyone would ever find that ring. 

He snorts. “You really don’t understand women, do you?”

Click.

“Gina!”

“Yes, sir?”

“If a guy went to propose to you but lost the ring before he had a chance to propose, then bought another ring and proposed later, but never told you about ring number one, would you be upset if you later learned about it?”

She just blinks.

“And if the story made the local news, would that be upsetting?”

“Mr. McCormick?”

“Yes.”

“You are the weirdest boss I have ever had. And I worked in academia as a temp, which is the very definition of workplace dysfunction.”

That’s two declarative sentences in a row. I’m on Gina’s shit list now.

“But I’m never boring.”

She laughs and walks out of my office.

Ring!

An actual phone call. It’s Amanda.

“Funny how some woman found a three carat engagement ring in Walden Pond. Wonder if she found the Tesla key fob, too.”

She has picked up the rude habit of starting conversations midstream from my brother.

“What are you talking about?” I lie.

“Don’t play that game.” Her voice goes soft. “Declan told Shannon who told me.”

The modern equivalent of the party line.

“You think I have something to do with this?” I put the television on closed captioning.

“Andrew.”

“You have a ring, right?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful.”

“Then why do you care about some crazy story about some stupid guy who lost a ring in Walden Pond?”

“He isn’t stupid.”

“You know him?”

“I might.”

“Sounds stupid to me if he decided to jump in the pond and re-enact a classic scene from nineteenth-century British literature and wound up unable to finish the job by proposing.”

“Loose pockets?”

“Something like that.”

Her breath catches. “News reports say the ring has an inscription. You can guess what it says.”

Damn.

“You were going to propose then?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Have you met my ego? He’s the size of Vince, and doesn’t exactly run around admitting to monumental mistakes.”

“I was so mean to you about losing your keys.”

“Yes, you were.”

“And your pants.”

“The hair on my thighs is starting to grow back in.” And it itches. I don’t get how women wax everything.

“And it turns out you were freaking out because you’d lost so much more.”

“It was just a ring. What I couldn’t bear to lose was you.”

“You have me now.”

“Yes.”

“Forever.”

“Soon.”

“We need to set a date.”

“How about next week? When you come home. We’ll just go to the courthouse, get the license, and quietly run off.”

“My mom would kill me.”

I think of Pam, who would be devastated if we eloped. My dad, on the other hand, would just be angry that we deprived him of a public relations boost.

“Fine. But I draw the line at cats acting as flower girls.”

“My mother would never do that!”

“Good.”