Page 13 of Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee
“And getting a marriage license for my girlfriend to marry a cat was part of that strategy?”
“You have to admit it was clever.”
“It was stupid. And you made me look like I might have married a guy.” Or two.
“I thought you were enlightened.” His voice has a mock-chiding tone.
“I’m fine with guys marrying guys. Just not marrying me.”
“Gay CEOs test well, Andrew.” His pregnant pause makes me groan.
“I’m not changing my sexual orientation to get free PR, Dad.”
I am very, very done with this day. My three hundred text messages are starting to look like the most relaxing part of my life.
“There’s something to this technique, Andrew. Using the 24/7 media to boost our corporate image. All those free logos plastered all over the news. The helicopter lifting away from Farmington Country Club was even on BuzzBuzz and The Garlic!”
“Buzzfeed. The Onion.” My head starts to hurt again.
Amanda motions for me to put the phone on speaker. I do. Might as well share the pain.
“I’m pretty sure Johnny Carson came very close to covering it.” What’s next? Did Dad use his slide rule to calculate the value of all this free press?
She frantically waves her hands at the phone in a gesture that I assume means, Turn off the speakerphone.
I snicker.
“All right, Dad. Got it. Point made.” It’s not worth correcting him.
“Any chance Shannon’s pregnant right now? Because that would—”
Amanda’s eyes bug out of her head.
“DAD! Stop!”
“When you’re back, let’s have a conference about ways we can leverage our personal lives for this kind of coverage.”
“You sound like Marie.”
A grunt comes across the phone. “That was low. Your brother said that, too.”
“You know you’re on the wrong track when Declan and I agree on something.”
Another grunt.
I look at the ring on my hand. Amanda’s still wearing hers, too.
“You’ve spent most of my life teaching me how to remain private. How not to let the media use me.”
“I was wrong.”
I burst out laughing. “Good one, Dad.” Never heard those words out of his mouth.
“Andrew, I—”
I cut him off. “We’re about to take off. I just found out I’m not married to three different potential candidates. My girlfriend almost married a cat because of you. I have three hundred text messages waiting for my attention, and my new admin is about as polished as a piece of coal. Worse: it turns out Declan’s new coffee chain does have better coffee than Litraeon. Goodbye, Dad.”
Click.
Amanda laughs softly through her nose. “He’s a piece of work.”
I do not want to talk about my dad.
“Want to join the Mile High Club?” I inhale slowly as I reach for her delicate wrist, my ringed hand gliding up, her skin so soft and smooth.
“Holy topic change, Batman!”
I shrug.
“Really? Here? Now? After everything we’ve been through?”
If I just sit here in silence, the idea will grow on her, right? Something on me is growing.
“That’s not going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?”
“Thinking you can wait me out and I’ll magically throw myself at you and we’ll join the Mile High Club.”
We? I start to correct her, then shut my mouth. Fast. The past is the past, and bringing it up now is about as safe as stealing in North Korea.
She glares at me.
“Fine. Me.”
Oh, hell. She reads minds. Mine, at least. The funny part? It’s as if I have no past. No other woman has imprinted herself so thoroughly on me as Amanda. No other woman evokes more of me—the true Andrew—than this very pissed, extremely angry, deeply simmering woman sitting next to me on a plane, a day after learning we’re not married.
Why are we not married?
I squeeze her hand, careful around her wounds. It’s only been six days since she rescued the animals in the pool at Dec and Shannon’s wedding. Six days.
We’re been back together for six days, and this is the first time we’ve had an extended stretch of time to just talk.
Mile High Club, or deep discussion? C’mon. Which one would most guys pick?
I pick deep discussion.
No, really. Seriously. I do.
I do.
Those words have too many meanings. Too bad they’re so loaded. A wall has formed between Amanda and me, an instant barrier between us, as if erected by the impossibility of true love. People aren’t supposed to find their one like this.
It’s a pipe dream.
We’re drunk with pheromones and adrenaline, still a little off-kilter from psychotropic hallucinogens we never intended to consume, and maybe Amanda’s right.
Maybe I really am an asshole for suggesting sex mid-air.
And maybe I just don’t deserve her.
See that? Those bricks? The seconds that tick by are like little time masons, adding to the wall.
Faces change when emotions churn under the surface. You have to watch carefully. Dispassionately. Most people let other people’s emotions trigger their own. Back and forth, they lob their inner states like a game of high-stakes Hot Potato.
If you watch someone morph through their own reconfiguration, it is heartbreaking.
It’s also revealing.
Revelations bring power.
Declan deals with other people’s emotions by turning his own off.
I just watch.
And learn.
But there’s one thing I don’t do: reveal.
Because when you reveal, you cede. There’s a reason why poker is such a popular game. The money is an afterthought.
Poker faces reveal nothing, but that doesn’t mean they don’t reflect the truth.
And the truth is that there’s a roiling boil beneath the surface, waiting to come out if you give it the smallest chance.
Amanda doesn’t play games, though.
Which means the stakes are that much higher.
We’re playing for keeps.
At least, I think I am. And it terrifies me to think she’s not.
I open my mouth to say something smooth. Suave. Caring and articulate, hot and emotional. The perfect words to make her know how authentically I love her, and that makes up for the craziness of these past few days.
“I dated Jessica Coffin.”
See? The perfect words.
For a man on death row.
Her breath catches in her throat, and she blinks, over and over, as if trying to clear her vision. I expect her to yell. Shout. Turn red with anger. Snap at me, incredulous.
Instead, she nods slowly and says, “I wondered.”
Oh, hell.
I’d rather have her yelling.
“You wondered?”
“The race.”
“Race?”
“Oh, come on. The race? The one I volunteered at and Anterdec sponsored, two years ago, when Declan was being such a jerk to Shannon?”
“What does some charity we support have to do with my dating Jessica?”
“I saw you talking to her and—” She pauses and looks at me. Her face is impassive, a sheet of glass with two enormous, closed-off eyes that blink slowly, methodically. Unnerved, I watch her watching me. Amanda generally shows all her feelings in a big pile of emotion in her eyes, which now narrow.
“Did you sleep with her?”
And here we go.
“No.”
Amanda just blinks.
“You don’t have to lie.”
“I’ve never lied to you before. I wouldn’t start now.”
“Why are you telling me this, Andrew? If you’re trying to have a Mile High experience with me, this isn’t the best form of foreplay.”
“It’s not? Because Men’s Health magazine says that spilling your guts about your past girlfriends is the best aphrodisiac.”
“Girlfriend? She was your girlfriend? You told me you never had a serious girlfriend!”
“Part of my junior year of high school, yes. For about a month.”
“Oh.”
“Right. Doesn’t count.”
“Who broke up with whom?”
“I dumped her.”
“Why?”
“Does it matter?”
She shrugs. “Probably not, but it will kill me not to know. You can’t just blurt out that you dated my best friend’s nemesis and not expect the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Ready for takeoff,” the pilot announces. “Estimated flight time five hours and twenty minutes.”
This is going to be the longest flight of my life, isn’t it? Longer than that Boston to Hong Kong leg.
“Who was the first guy you ever slept with?”
Her mouth drops open.
I actually don’t want to know the answer. In fact, the minute she spills the name, I’ll have Gina create a hot sheet on him and he’ll find himself signed up for every nasty porn site and political volunteer list in the U.S.
But I ask because I need her to stop looking at me like that. Like my past is ruining my future.
She smiles.
“You.”
My mouth drops open. My balls fall through my seat cushion and dangle with the fuselage.
“Ha! Gotcha!” She sighs. “Fine. Don’t tell me why you broke up with her.” She wiggles in her seat, her head turned away from me, tilted down for a nap. “I don’t need to know.” She yawns. “I love you no matter what.”
This is the difference between men and women. Not the ovaries vs. the balls. Not the breasts vs. the pecs. Not even the up-down toilet seat controversy or the Period Errand vs. the Morning Wood.
