Page 45 of Shopping for a CEO's Fiancee
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.”
“She would use Spritzy.”
“That’s supposed to be better?”
“Spritzy is a dog. Not a cat. A cat as a flower girl is crazy. A dog is just silly.”
“You have a spectrum stored in your mind that is calibrated in ways I cannot fathom.”
She ignores that and says, “Montelcini Flowers is not doing our wedding.”
“Agreed.”
“This is really happening, Andrew? You’re sure?”
“You keep asking me that. I’m going to stop answering. I’ll have Gina make a big sign that says Yes, I’m sure and I’ll just hold it up whenever you ask.” I wish she were here so I could look her in the eye. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I weren’t sure.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. I know that. And I’m not uncertain. I think I’m just reeling.”
“Me, too.”
She laughs. “Can we have the wedding at Consuela’s?”
I grin. “Perfect. When you come home, we’ll pick a date.”
“I can’t believe you lost a three-carat ring while trying to court me.”
“I can’t believe you made me court you.”
“It worked, didn’t it? We’re engaged.”
My office door flies open and there’s Amanda, on her cell, dragging a carry-on bag.
“Surprise!” she says in stereo, in person and on the phone.
“What’s this?”
She hangs up. “Client meeting ended fast.”
“For good or bad reasons?” I give her a peck on the cheek. She pulls me in for a long, slow, wet welcome kiss that makes me wonder how quickly Gina can clear my next meeting.
Or ten.
“I’m a fixer, right? We closed already.”
“C’mere, fiancée.”
“You c’mere, fiancé.”
The kiss. The taste of her after spending a week apart. It’s like taking that first breath when you break the surface after swimming underwater until your lungs are about to burst.
Like a male drone’s penis during sex.
