Shopping for a CEO (Page 34)

I look at the clock.

6:13 a.m.

I slump back on the pillow and will my heart to slow down. Remarkably, it listens.

If only Andrew McCormick were so easy to tame.

By 6:21 a.m. it’s hopeless. I pad downstairs in search of caffeinated relief.

“What does your day look like today, honey?” Mom asks. She’s up and showered, drinking coffee in front of her tablet, which bodes well. Maybe she’s coming out of this pain flare.

“Oh, the usual.” I grab my phone and look at my schedule. “I have to go on a date with a man who breeds German shepherds. Then I need to get the oil changed on the Turdmobile, talk with Greg about a new account we have at a hospital, and do a special sex toy shop with Marie.”

Her hand twitches at that last comment, sloshing coffee onto the table, which she cleans up before I can even take a single step. Paper towel, wipe, in the trash—bam!

Mom’s a cleaning ninja. An OCD cleaning ninja.

“What about you?” I ask her.

“Spiders.”

“Spiders?”

“My entire day involves assessing spider bite and injury risks for a movie set that involves using more than five thousand live spiders for a scene.”

Spiders. I shudder and say, “Did you know that the average person eats eight spiders a year?”

She sighs. “No. That’s not true. That’s one of those Internet memes someone made up and now everyone accepts it as fact.”

“Whew.” I push the buttons on the coffee machine and wait for my morning cup.

“However, you do eat ground up cockroaches when you drink most coffees.” She picks up her mug and holds it out to me with a gesture of Cheers.

My stomach lurches.

“What?” Being the child of an actuary has its downsides. This is the single worst incident, though, by far. You will pry my coffee from my cold, dead, non-twitching hands.

“That is true.”

“You’re making it up!”

She taps her tablet screen a few times and brings up a story from NPR about…cockroaches in ground coffee.

If NPR reports it, it must be true.

I let out a little scream. The scent of my freshly brewed cup wafts across the kitchen like an instrument of torture.

“But we’re fine.” Mom makes a point of taking a huge gulp from her mug. “As long as you use whole beans and grind them yourself, you aren’t eating bugs.”

I grab my cup of ambition and take a sip. Ah, what the hell. Life is full of risk.

“You have the best job ever, Mom.”

She bursts out laughing. I like the sound. Her face turns ten years younger and she relaxes, her body changing. People have told me my entire life that I look like my dad. Mom is shorter than me and rail thin, with one exception: wide hips that mold into what a friend’s father once called an “ass that belongs on Jane Mansfield,” whoever that is.

“I think you do, Amanda. Massages and free oil changes and a free car and restaurants and hotels.” She pauses and squints. “Minus the, um…”

“Dildo shops?”

“Amanda!”

I laugh. She’s so easy to embarrass.

“What’s your evening like?” she asks. “There’s a sing-a-long for Grease at that wonderful old film house in Arlington.” Mom loves show tunes and for some reason, Grease and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are her absolute favorites.

I freeze.

“Amanda?”

“I, um, have a date.”

“Another doggy date? Or with Andrew? He seemed fine enough.”

Do I lie? It would be so easy to lie right now. And fine? Andrew is so much more than fine.

“With Andrew.”

Her eyebrows go up. “An actual date? Not in a closet? He must like you. Or maybe he’s making up for lost time after ignoring you for so long.”

Bitterness, meet Mom.

“We’ve talked that through.” Not really, but a defensiveness is rising up in me.

“Good. I hope if I’ve taught you nothing else, I’ve imparted the idea that you don’t let men walk all over you.”

No. You let men walk out on you.

I don’t say that. It’s one of those statements that cracks an emotional planet in half and you can’t find enough superglue to put it back together.

Ever.

I cannot think about this right now. I have work to do, mystery shops to manage, dogs to date…er, dog owners to meet, and for the next twelve and a half hours I have to try desperately not to think about whether to sleep with Andrew McCormick tonight.

That alone is a job itself. A pretty major one.

The not thinking about it part. Not the actually sleeping with him part. That’s not a job. That’s a pleasure.

And here I go…thinking about him.

“Gotta run, Mom,” I say, stuffing all my emotions into my chest and trapping them there with a big, deep breath. They line up neatly on the shelf inside me, dutifully color-coding themselves and categorizing. Compartmentalizing.

Maybe Andrew and I aren’t so different after all.

* * *

“Amanda!” Greg bellows as I walk into the office. He’s sitting in the reception area with Josh, who looks like someone made him stick his tongue in an electric socket. “You’re pregnant!”

“I’m what?” That’s news to me, and I think I’d know long before Greg.

He thumbs toward Josh. “And he’s the father.”

I laugh. “That’s not possible, Greg. Josh is gay.”

“Gay men can sleep with women,” Greg insists. “My Uncle Angus did for fifty-seven years while he was married to Aunt Joy.”