Shopping for a Billionaire's Wife (21 page)

Evie nearly faints again.

“No,” I say curtly, offering Evie a glass of sparkling water from her little snack station, which she gulps.

“Mom, I’m coming right back. Promise. Evie’s going to take my measurements and I’ll be right back in the spa.” 

“Ooooo!” Mom says, giving Evie an about-face and pouring on the charm. “Can I get measured too? What’s Declan buying us?”

“Me. Declan’s buying
me
something. Not you.”

“How do you know? There are an awful lot of clothes here in an array of sizes.”

“Because Declan told me he wanted to do something special. For me. And only me.” Territoriality emerges in the strangest way. Evie listens to Mom intently, eyes bright, cheeks pink, as she nods encouragement.

“Your mother is wise,” Evie urges. “Let Mr. McCormick do this for you.”

“Considering most of your non-work wardrobe comes from second-hand stores, this is a quantum leap for you, honey!”

Thump.

We look down.

Evie has finally fainted.

Chapter Fourteen

After experiencing more processing than a Kraft cheese product, I return to our suite with a new hairdo, every pore of my skin exfoliated and moisturized, body hair intact where I want it intact, though the negotiations over that issue rival the Paris Peace Accords and boundary lines.

A note on the bed reads:
Business mtgs still. Sorry. See you @7 for dinner w/ parents. <3
 

I check my phone. Same basic text from Declan.

And, to my surprise, one from my dad, left just a few minutes ago.

Can we talk before dinner, honey?

I text him back and within five minutes, I’m in a giant bear hug with Dad, embraced between slot machines and a baccarat table.

“Look at you!” he says, his voice hitting three different octaves of marvel. “My little tomboy’s all grown up.”  

I blush. “The stupid spa. Declan and Mom made me.” I can’t help but be a little pleased, though.

“Declan and your mother joined forces on an issue?” Dad’s eyebrow goes up, his mouth down. “That’s frightening.”

We share a very,
very
understanding laugh.

“What’s that?” Dad asks, pointing to the “High Limit” sign in front of a private door. 

“I think that’s where the really wealthy players go. Baccarat? Declan likes that game.”

“Huh. I played that years ago.”

“You did? Are you sure? Declan says it’s a game for international jet setters.”

“What? I don’t look like a billionaire playboy?” He mugs for me.

I laugh. “Seriously, though—you know how to play?”

“Just the basics. Before you were born, I worked for three months at the first casino in Connecticut, right after they opened. A temp job. Learned most of these games there.” He just nods to himself, his eyes flicking back to the door, then focusing on me.

“Oh, Daddy, thank you for doing this. I need a break.” 

“From your mother?”

“From everything.” I look around the casino in marvel. “Isn’t this place amazing? It’s so...”

“Awful.”

“What?” I laugh, giving him a conspirator’s smile. “I know it’s a bit much.” Dad’s not the kind of guy to be negative about pretty much anything. Go with the flow is more his style.

“It’s a ‘bit much’ the same way that I’m ‘a little in debt,’ honey.”

There’s that damn topic again. Money. I guess it’s natural. We’re in Vegas, on a casino floor. For the first time, it occurs to me that it’s Monday. And Mom and Dad have been staying here the entire time. I’m assuming Anterdec is comping their rooms, so they don’t have to pay for that. What about food, transportation, and all the rest?

Talking about that seems too prickly, especially given Dad’s rare frown. I tuck my questions aside for later and pick something safer.

“Declan designed this resort. It was one of his first jobs at Anterdec.”

“And he did a fine job. It’s just not my style. How about we get out of here and go outside. There’s an ice cream shop across the street on the Strip.”

“You’re remarkably fluent in my language, Dad.”

“We’re in the land of milkfat and honey, Shannon.” He gives me a side hug. “I’d better be, after all these years.” We walk through the casino, which starts to feel like it never ends, a repeating pattern of fake Persian carpeting and marble-like wallpaper on the high walls giving the appearance of eternity.

Dad takes a deep breath. “Do they pipe in some kind of money scent?”

I shake my head.

“Focus-group-determined aromatherapy designed to convince people it’s safe to keep gambling away.” 

Horror fills Dad’s features just as we reach the main lobby. A twenty-foot ceiling with a skylight the size of an ice-hockey rink is covered with stained glass.

“What? Quit joking.”

“I’m serious.”

“This place is so fake.”

Relief pours through me, and I bump his shoulder, a nudge meant to convey approval. “I know. I can’t stand it.”

He gives me the side-eye. “Good girl.”

We walk down the curved sidewalk that wraps around the enormous fountain outside and reach the main sidewalk. Other than my quick trip to the drug store and my foray next door, I haven’t actually walked outside, in daylight, along the Strip. This is the famous Las Vegas, the center of decadence and luxury.

And the first person I encounter on the sidewalk is wearing a billboard on a backpack, the picture flashing a topless woman crouched over the mouth of a man with a one-hundred dollar bill between his teeth.

“GIRLS!” he screams, forcing a small business card in my hand. “Free shuttle to see the girls! Getcha booty on!” Dad gets the same treatment, recoiling and dropping the card.

“Geez,” I mutter.

“At least in Boston the street hawkers are more polite,” Dad mutters.

“I know!” 

“They’re just doing their job,” Dad adds, his voice changing. “I remember those days. You’d get a chance at a few bucks to stand on a corner handing out flyers and that helped you make rent.”

A woman about Mom’s age, wearing a neon pink shirt that says “ALL GIRLS ALL NIGHT” hands me a flyer.

I take it.

Over the course of a single city block, I stop counting the hawkers when I reach twenty. Beggars dot the walk as well, in wheelchairs, sitting on blankets next to dogs wearing bandannas around their necks, and all of them call out to us.

With each encounter, my unease increases. Daddy’s expression turns into a scowl.

We reach...an escalator?

Outdoors?

“What’s this?” 

“Isn’t it the damnedest thing? Escalators outside. Must not rain much out here.”

“It’s desert, Dad.”

“It sure isn’t New England.”

The sky is so clear and blue, with puffs of clouds that run lower than you’d think, as if they just want to try a chance at a slot machine, or to put twenty bucks on red, and if they dip their cotton goodness down low enough, they’ll get a shot. Behind the escalator, the Strip rolls on like someone created a Richard Scarry Busy Town, only a very naughty version of it.  

The Caesar’s Palace sign caps a building so ostentatiously imitating a Greek building, and Linq, across the street, has some sort of wrap spray painting on the entire side of the building, guest room windows and all, advertising a singer who I thought died before I was born.

Maybe cloning has actually happened and the entertainment industry is keeping it a secret.

In order to continue straight down the road, we have to enter a building—which we immediately realize is a mall, replete with a Chanel clothing store, two jewelers, a gelateria and a coffee bar.

That serves Kahlua-spiked lattes.

Where was this place when I was in college?

It’s dizzying, though, figuring out how to find our way back to the simple sidewalk outside.

“They make you go through the malls. You have no choice.” Dad’s observation is so tinged with bitterness I look up in surprise, thinking the voice is some other man.

It’s not.

“More consumer value extraction,” I surmise. 

“More fakery. Is this supposed to be luxury? I don’t understand.”

We find ourselves at an impasse, realizing we have to go back and to the right to find a walkway that will then lead to an escalator going down.

“Should we just get gelato here?”

Dad’s eyes fill with panic. “Here? In this mall? No. I found a better place.” He slings an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go over the land bridge and fight our way through the people selling sex on a card.”

“On a card?” I laugh.

“On a
credit
card,” he says with a sigh.

We walk through a revolving door, onto the land bridge, and face nipples.

Big, uncovered, live nipples.

Painted like a Minion from
Despicable Me
.

“Never saw
that
in the movie theater when I took Jeffrey and Tyler to see that flick,” Dad says.

“Please don’t say ‘flick,’” I beg.

“Wanna picture?” The woman is painted yellow from top(less) to bottom, breasts decorated like a Minion wearing goggles, and she’s dressed in a string bikini bottom that is supposed to mimic jeans, but just looks like a blue ribbon chafing device. 

“No thanks,” Dad says, making eye contact with the woman and smiling.

No, Daddy. No....

Eye contact in environments like this is akin to a war cry. A challenge. A promise. 

A
dare
.

She reaches for Dad, bending at the waist, which makes all the men (and two women) standing behind her give an ovation.

“C’mon. Twenty bucks for a sweet pic is all I need. I gotta buy my toddler some diapers,” the Minion says in a voice that is just earnest enough to crack wallets open.

Wallets like Dad’s.

“How old?” Dad asks. 

“Twenty-one,” the woman says. “I’m legal.” 

“I meant your child.” His weary smile makes something in me tear, just a tiny bit. 

“She’s two. Wanna see a picture?”

And right then and there, in the middle of a land bridge on the strip in Las Vegas, Jason Jacoby
oooohs
and
aaaahs
over a half-naked woman’s pictures of her little daughter while prying a twenty out of his wallet and giving it to her.

“Can your wife take our pic?” she asks him, giving me a grateful smile.

“Wife? No, no. That’s my daughter,” he explains with a chuckle.

The woman winks. “Right. That’s what you all say.”

“EWWWWWWW!” I groan. Her face falls. 

“Oh, hell, you’re not kidding!” She gives Dad a helpless look, grabbing him, her nipple brushing against his bare forearm. “I’m so sorry.”

Dad looks down at the stripe of yellow paint left on his skin.

And turns a furious red so fast I fear he’s having a heart attack.

“How about I take a picture of you two?” Daddy says in a low, thick voice.

She grabs me, throwing her arm around my shoulders, jutting her boobs out so the goggles look like a wide-eyed Minion.

“Say cheese, Shannon! Declan’s going to love this!” Dad calls out as he takes a series of pics.

Minion Chick grabs a phone from somewhere in her hair and asks Dad, “Could you snap one of us for me to keep?” Her eyes dart from me to Dad, and something feels
off
suddenly. “She’s so cute!”

And with that, Dad takes the pic.

She grabs the phone and looks me full in the face. “You’re the runaway bride, aren’t you?”

Oh, no.

She sprints, Minion eyes like googly-eyes on springs. By the time I can even think to run after her, the crowd has swallowed her up. 

“What just happened?” Dad asks, confused and red, tracking her through the revolving doors, just staring. We’re in the middle of the land bridge and people begin walking around us, streaming out of the hotel mall.

“I think that picture is about to be all over the internet,” I say with a sigh. I look down at the lovely outfit Evie selected for me after she came to. The yellow paint on my side definitely does not go well with royal blue linen. 

‘What? Why? You’re not a celebrity...oh, no.” Daddy gets it.

“Yeah.”

“Oh,
no
. Shannon, I’m sorry.”

“Declan’s going to be furious.”

“Nah. Men don’t care if their women are with other topless women. In fact, your mom kind of likes it when I—”

“STOP!” I shout. “It’s bad enough that Mom is inappropriate, but not you too, Dad.” 

He winces, his nose wrinkling. It’s adorable.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, but I’ll explain it all to Declan,” Dad says, deftly changing the subject as we make our way quickly across the land bridge. Two Chewbaccas, one Wonder Woman, and a priest holding a “JESUS SAVES” sign stand at the edge of the bridge. 

That’s not the opening line of a joke, but it should be.

All these characters in costume mingle with the crowd, hoping to get tourists to cough up a five or a ten (or even a twenty) for a picture. Declan warned me not to go outside—that I’d be “accosted” by unsavory creatures, and he was right.

It’s just that I didn’t suspect a topless Minion would be my downfall.

We get to a “down” escalator and wend our way through the Caesar’s Palace resort, which has an enormous open-air courtyard, like a replica of the Forum, only instead of philosophers applying the Socratic Method to help enlighten the masses, there’s a smoothie bar with vodka shots for sale.

Same thing, right?

Dad seems to know the way, leading me to a stoplight that mercifully involves a good old-fashioned crosswalk to get across six lanes of traffic. More cards are shoved our way, advertising strip clubs, nightclub performances, and shows from stars who peaked before I was born.

We make it across the way, a giant pelican on the side of a pirate ship in front of another resort, advertising a singer’s chain restaurant, and then—

It’s like we’ve found an oasis of peace in the middle of chaos.

This side street is designed to mimic a middle-America small town, with lampposts that look like gaslights, and old brick facades. The energy is different here, too, like we broke off from a raging river into a tiny trickle of a stream, the transition jarring but welcome.