Shopping for a Billionaire 1(18)
Author: Julia Kent

His date looks like she just ate a lemon.

“Jessica Coffin, this is…” Steve pauses. Declan’s hand clasps mine hard. “…an old friend, Shannon Jacoby.”

Old friend? All righty, then. If you call the woman you went shopping for engagement rings with and f**ked for the better part of two years an “old friend”…

I don’t stand. She reaches out and shakes my hand with a cold salmon she pretends is a palm and fingers. Coffin is an old New England/Mayflower family name. It fits her.

Steve looks at me, then Declan, then me, then Declan, clearly expecting me to introduce them. His eyes land on our clasped hands.

I’ve never seen a coyote at the moment its ears pick up the sound of doomed prey, but as I watch Declan watching Steve, I feel like I’m pretty close right now. It’s like When Animals Attack: Boston Brahmin Brawl—coming soon on The Learning Channel, right after Honey Boo Boo!

Steve clears his throat. Jessica looks like a Scandinavian Barbie, bored to tears. Finally, Declan stands and lets go of my hand, but plants a very territorial paw on my shoulder. He gestures with his other hand.

“Why don’t you join us?” I swear he growls. Just a little.

Chuckles would be so cowed by the look I give Declan. In fact, I think I’m channeling my cat via astral projection, because I become pure evil via my eyes.

Declan just winks.

Winks! How can he wink when I am killing him with my laser death stare?

Steve rushes to sit down next to Declan, leaving Jessica to stand there, the right corner of her lip twitching. Or a bubble of Botox broke free. Hard to tell.

She clears her throat. Steve ignores her, about to open his mouth and say something to Declan. He looks like a golden retriever puppy who can barely control himself from pissing all over the foyer as he waits to be let out.

“Ahem,” Jessica says again, looking at Steve with an icy glare that even he can’t ignore.

Declan remains standing the entire time and gallantly walks over to her chair, pulls it out, and inclines his head. Her face cracks into chunks of ice the size of glaciers, and a smile that could act as a backup disco ball emerges from her head.

Steve is oblivious. It’s his job to remain so. He’s a player, a mover and shaker, a guy with one foot on the next rung of the ladder no matter where he’s at—as he reminded me a million times while we were together—and he’s got his eye on the prize, and the prize isn’t Jessica any longer.

It’s Declan.

Who looks at Steve like he wants to deworm him.

Meanwhile, my heart is dancing the cha-cha and my legs start to shake from nerves. Just then, the waiter comes to offer wine.

“We’d love to get another bottle of whatever Declan’s ordered,” Steve says in an arched tone, one he reserves for interacting with “the help” when we’re in front of bigwigs. That makes Declan pause and look down at Steve, who is now sitting across from me with a look that says, Don’t blow this.

Declan recites a few words of French to the waiter, who turns as if to go.

“One moment,” I say. The waiter stops. “I would prefer a lighter white wine.”

“You ordered the beef,” Steve says, frowning. “Of course you drink red with beef.” He knows I’m a steak girl, but the way he says it makes me bristle, a streak of self-loathing fury rising in a straight line up from belly to throat. The assumption that I’m a rube who can’t possibly know what she’s doing was part of the foundation of our entire relationship.

Worst of all? I reinforced it. Not the rube part, but the belief part.

Declan says something else in French to the waiter, who nods to me and walks away. Then he turns to Steve and says, “You know my name?”

Steve laughs in his fakey-sophisticated way. He doesn’t seem to realize how obviously pretentious he is. I see it, Dad saw it from the first handshake he had with Steve, Amy sees it, but so many people Steve worked with never saw it.

It was my mom’s job not to see it. All she saw when she looked at Steve was Harvard and Farmington and little MBA-fathered babies all lined up and cute in their matching Hanna Andersson pajamas while sleeping in their PoshTots nurseries.

Declan’s tight jaw and cold eyes tell me he sees it quite clearly.

“Everyone who’s paying attention in this town knows who the McCormicks are,” Steve says blithely.

Wrong answer.

Jessica is sitting across from Declan and I’m across from Steve. Declan’s hand slips under the table and he leans toward me, hot palm landing on my thigh. Although everything below my waist is obscured by the table, it’s damn obvious what he’s doing to anyone observing.

Steve’s face turns a pale pink I don’t recall ever seeing, and Jessica’s eyes roll so hard she burns twenty calories with the motion.

“Paying attention is a good quality,” Declan says, turning his eyes to me. He gives my thigh a squeeze. I put my hand on his and try to move it.

It is granite.

Something in me snaps and floods at the same time, desperation and attempts at maintaining an illusion of control all melting away with a rush of pleasure. Maybe it’s the wine I guzzled. Maybe it’s the feel of Declan’s hand on my leg, half on the cloth of my skirt and half on my stockings. Yes, the split was that bad.

Bad never felt so good.

Steve is cataloging me now, his eyes done with resting on Declan, instead looking at me as if he’d underestimated the value of a discarded possession.

The waiter picks this exact moment to return, carrying a bottle of white and four glasses. He pours a small amount in a glass. Declan does the necessaries, sipping and nodding with approval. I receive a nice, healthy glass of white wine and then the waiter pours a twin glass for Declan.

He offers some to Jessica, who nods.

Steve declines.

After replacing the chilled bottle in its ice container in a stand that now sits at my left elbow, the waiter asks Jessica for her dinner order.

“I’ll have a small field greens salad with vinegar and oil and the tilapia.”

Declan makes a noise of amusement and I try not to laugh. Salad and fish. Boy, did he call it. The only way not to start giggling is to drink my wine, which I do. All of it. Like it’s Gatorade. I decide right then and there to order the biggest dessert they have on the menu and eat it with gusto.

Because I can. And it won’t have maple in it.

Steve’s eyes bug out of his head while Jessica keeps her bored expression, Maybe it’s a new Xanax-Botox combo. Perhaps they inject the Xanax directly under the skin, because whatever it takes to achieve a flat affect that is so utterly devoid of emotion can’t be organic. It must be manmade. Someone patented that.