Shopping for a Billionaire 3(5)
Author: Julia Kent

My mouth tastes like dry pencil shavings that have been sitting in Death Valley for a thousand years. “Where am I?”

She names a local hospital.

“Why am I here?” My mind feels like dry pencil shavings, too. I’m cold suddenly, and my legs begin to shake. I have no control over this, and soon my chin chatters.

Mom grabs a stack of blankets and starts covering me in them, in layers up and down my body. The thick, heavy warmth cocoons me.

“You were stung by a bee, honey,” Dad whispers, taking my other hand. I turn to look at him and his eyes are red-rimmed. Crying?

“Two, actually,” Mom says.

“Daddy, don’t cry,” I mumble. “I’m sorry.”

That makes Amy start to sob. “You don’t have to apologize for something you can’t control, Shannon,” she says. “And thank goodness you’re a paranoid freak,” she adds.

“It comes in handy sometimes,” I mutter, unsure what she means.

“You really scared us,” Carol says. Carol! Carol’s here, with a frightened-looking Jeffrey, who can’t seem to look at me. Geez. Why is my seven-year-old nephew here? Haven’t seen him in, what—a month? He’s getting so big, with those long eyelashes and—has he been crying?

“Hi, Jeffrey,” I croak out. He gives me an uncertain wave. I try to wave back, but a sharp stab of pain in my hand halts me.

An older female doctor with more salt than pepper in her hair strides into the room. It’s not really a room, I see—there’s just a curtain between me and another bed, where I hear two men talking in hushed voices.

The doctor looks at my chart and flips through pages, jotting notes. Her white jacket has little gold pins all over the lapel and she smells like freshly bathed dogs. Her face is tight. She looks up and realizes I’m awake.

“Shannon, that was close,” she says in a clipped British accent. “I’m Dr. Porter.” She sounds like Judi Dench playing an older female doctor in a Doctor Who episode, because there are so many tubes and bright flashing lights in the room that I feel like I’m surrounded by Daleks that have taken over the TARDIS. “Good work by you and your date, though his aim was remarkably better than yours.”

“Thank you,” says a deep, familiar male voice from behind the curtain. “I agree one hundred percent. And Shannon, I’ll never go target practicing with you. Ever.”

Huh?

“And no, Marie, all my equipment is in place and intact. She got my thigh,” the voice adds in a tone that makes it clear there is no follow-up discussion.

“Thank goodness!” Mom chirps. “Can’t have grandbabies if it falls off,” she whispers.

Maybe I’m the Dalek, because all I want to do now is scream EX-TER-MIN-ATE at her.

“I am five feet away and can hear every word,” he growls. The curtain whips back in one smooth movement and there’s Declan, alone, buttoning his jeans.

The memory floods me instantly. Wine. Hiking. Making out. Sex (almost…). Bees. EpiPen.

“I didn’t break your penis, did I?” I rasp through vocal cords that feel like painful ribbons. Because that would be the Epic Fail of Dates. I would have to become a nun if I broke a man’s penis. My name would become part of Urban Dictionary, like Lorena Bobbit. “Why’d you stop dating Jill?” “Because she tried to Shannon Jacoby me.” “No way, dude…”

“What, exactly, were you doing out there?” the doctor asks, one eyebrow arched perfectly. She sounds so disapproving and snobbish, the way only a British person can, the accent so intelligent. “And no, you broke nothing. You’re fortunate the denim on Declan’s jeans helped to reduce the injury from the injection.”

I try to hate her but don’t really have the energy. Mom’s words break through some of my angry confusion, but they leave me stunned and overwhelmed.

“No one broke anything, and I think everyone should go so I can take care of my daughter.” She looks so defeated. Where’s the sarcasm? The over-the-top exuberance and social cluelessness? The inappropriate oversharing? 

Mom’s eyes are swollen and hollow at the same time, and my throat closes again, except this time not from being stung.

I look at Declan, and he’s looking back with so much concern that I close my eyes, unable to process anything.

“I was stung?” I murmur. 

Mom scooches Amy over and takes my hand. Carol’s holding Jeffrey’s hand, with little Tyler perched on one hip, his eyes zeroed in on the television, which is set to Cartoon Network without sound. Jeffrey looks a lot calmer now, and he’s watching Declan with narrowed eyes, like he’s studying him.

Poor boy. His own dad never comes around, so maybe he’s just checking out the Daddy crowd. Not that Declan’s a daddy. Or is he? My head really hurts.

Amy and Declan share an inscrutable look. “Twice, honey.” She slows her speech down, her eyes watching me carefully. All her makeup is gone and the hand that grabs mine is shaking.

They’ve all been crying. How bad was I?

“Did I die?”

Declan’s face shifts to a quick expression of shock and he swallows, hard. He looks like he’s about seventeen suddenly, wide-eyed and frozen.

Dad stands up and points to him. “No. But only because of him.” Everyone turns and looks at Declan.

Steve would have smiled and taken all the credit if I’d been stung and he’d carried me out of there to an ambulance. As my brain starts to clear, I remember that Steve was there the previous time I was stung, back at UMass. That had happened on campus, and Steve had screamed like a little kid and run away, leaving me with my phone and my purse, digging furiously for the EpiPen.

He’d only come back after the paramedics arrived and I’d nearly passed out.

What Declan did was heroic in every sense of the word.

“We were half a mile—” I say. The rest of my sentence is choked off by my dry mouth.

Reading my mind, Declan grabs the pitcher of water on the tray above me and pours a glass that has a straw sticking in it. He hands it to Mom, who ministers it to me like I’m on my deathbed.

Am I?

“Early spring bees. Who knew they’d be out?” Dad says.

“That was my fault, sir,” Declan says in a low voice. Contrite, even. “I chose the picnic spot and didn’t think to clear the ground for bees’ nests.” He sounds angry. He should be. It was my fault for not telling him.