Shopping for a Billionaire's Wife (31 page)

A tiny, pained sigh comes out of Mom. I’m the only one close enough to her to hear it.

“I gave my girls the best I could, but I’ll be damned if it was even one iota of this.” He spreads his arms around the room, his face crumpling slightly. “Not, uh—not this. Not Louie’s. But you know.”

I try to think of something to say and glance back at Mom. She’s dumbfounded, staring at Dad, her lips slightly parted.

“I look around this town, this destination city where people from all over the world come to vacation and play, to gamble and be entertained, to get shit-faced and revel and unwind and become part of something bigger than themselves while they’re here, and all I see is my own failure,” Dad says, that last word spat out like a growl. 

Tears choke me, Declan’s hand on my hip as I let a small sob escape. Declan was right, earlier, about blending our inner lives, and how our outer lives have to be woven together, too. It never—not once—occurred to me that marrying Declan meant asking my mom and dad to adjust to a new reality that would force them to confront deep questions about themselves, too.

I don’t want to
adult
anymore. Adulting is too hard.

A small, high gasp behind me makes me turn. Daddy can’t see her, but Mom is behind a small curtain that covers the booth parallel to us. She’s moved closer. 

“Failure?” I finally ask, putting my hand on Dad’s forearm, completely confused. “Why would you ever feel like a failure, Dad?”

He looks down at the neck of his beer, avoiding my eyes. Something tells me to keep touching him, to maintain the connection, though. His bravado is fading, and as it drains out of him I see his authenticity coming back in. 

“I’ve worked hard my whole life, kiddo. Was born in New York. Moved to Boston as a little kid. Lived with him in Southie.” He juts his chin toward James, who nods slightly in acknowledgment. “We didn’t know each other back then, but he gets it. He knows. When you’re born into poverty there’s a kind of grinding feeling that’s always a part of you. It never goes away.”

James closes his eyes and swallows, once. Declan’s eyes are riveted on his father.

“I finished high school. That’s better than either of my parents. Did a few years of community college and met Marie that way, at the veterinary clinic where I worked. That’s it. My greatest financial success came the day we scraped together a down payment and managed to buy our house. Five more years of payments and it’s really ours,” he says, chest puffed with pride.

He deflates, his arm sweeping out in a gesture that makes it clear he’s not pointing to Louie’s Stiff One.

“But
this
? I can’t give you this. I can’t give
anyone
this. When you kids were little we wanted Marie home with you. A vacation? Hell, no. That meant I wouldn’t get paid for the time I took off. Stay in a hotel? I think the first time any of you girls got that was when you went on a school trip. We could finally manage weekends camping if I stacked my days off just right.” He looks at me. “About when you hit high school. Carol was out of the house by then.”

“Daddy, none of that makes you a failure,” I choke out. 

I hear a sound of agony behind me, a sob being smothered. Mom’s wet eyes meet mine and I am helpless, caught between two parents filled with an aching pain I can’t fix.

“I know that,” Dad says, clearing his throat with a rumbling sound like rocks in a clothes dryer. “And when I’m back home, puttering in the garage, mowing the lawn, going to work, or babysitting Jeffrey and Tyler, none of this—he gestures again—“is real. Coming here makes it real. Your wedding made it real. Seeing all these people with more money than me, giving all these luxuries I could never provide for my woman and my girls, well, Shannon, it eats a man up.” 

Mom catches my eye and puts a long, manicured finger to her lips. Mascara lines, wet with tears, run down her lower lids. She looks like a sad clown. 

“Daddy—”

He drinks the rest of his beer and looks around the table. His new friends are looking at their own beers with sad-sack faces. James is holding a plastic cup with ice cubes and a thin drizzle of amber-colored liquid in the bottom, staring off into space. Declan is a stone wall, his face showing nothing about the tornado of emotions that I know is whirling inside him. 

Meanwhile, my mother is falling apart behind me, little pieces of her littering the dirty carpet like heart confetti.

“No.” James’ voice cuts through the melancholy. His soft eyes fall on my father, who rears back slightly at the baritone timbre of his nemesis’s voice. “No, Jason. You are anything but a failure.” 

Mom pinches off a sound of shock, her chest rising and falling rapidly, hand over her mouth now, as if she’s physically holding back her impulse to speak. Dad’s face lifts, like the sun rising over the ocean, slow and deliberate until he’s looking straight at James.

“Says the billionaire,” he replies, an unrecognizably bitter tone in his voice, making me recoil. That’s not my dad. 

His words ring out in the now-somber cluster of tables around us, people watching with a bemused curiosity, a cocktail waitress delivering a fresh round of American beer to a group of slot machine players behind us. A gust of wind from people coming in through the main doors blows a billowing cloud of cigarette smoke our way, the taste in my mouth making me cringe.

The cacophony of hope is the soundtrack to this face-off, the electronic dings a kind of reinforcement as players feed money into a slot, push a hope button and watch a disappointment display, convinced that they can beat those random odds if they just get luck on their side.

A decidedly pissed-off female voice declares, “Says a man who is lucky, ambitious, a financial success—and a failure in his own way, too, Jason.”

James’s eyes narrow as he searches for my mother.

At that, Mom steps out of the shadows, Daddy’s sad eyes widening slightly then rolling down with a humiliated tightness. He clearly wishes she hadn’t heard what he just said, and the defeated sigh that comes from his dropping shoulders makes me convert my touch on his arm into a desperate hug.

As I pull away, Mom steps forward, a few feet from Daddy, looking down. Tears openly pour down her face. She doesn’t make the effort to wipe them away. Shaking, she opens her mouth, her voice tremoring like buckling asphalt.

“If I didn’t love you so much, Jason, I would slap you right now.” Her fingers twitch, and her right hand curls into a ball. “Might even punch you.” 

Her voice is trembling from fury.

“How dare you,” she says. “How dare you call yourself a failure?” 

“I—”

She shakes her head slowly, not even bothering to make him talk to the hand. “I won’t hear it. You are shredding me, Jason, with this failure nonsense. I’ve been your wife for more than thirty years. I have borne you three wonderful children. We’ve suffered through two miscarriages together. I’ve searched for change in the couch to buy another jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread to stretch through to the next paycheck, and I sat next to you at a conference table at the credit union when we signed the paperwork to buy our house, with eleven dollars left to make it through half the month.” 

The table goes to a hush.

“You worked two, sometimes three jobs while the girls were young so I could stay at home. I watched you make broken cars work with nothing but your hands, your wonderful brain, some duct tape and magic. I’ve seen you fall asleep at dance recitals from being awake for twenty hours straight, and I’ve watched you sit patiently through your third nail polish color at a princess tea party surrounded by Carol, Shannon and Amy.”

Dad’s mouth hardens. Mom’s trembles.

“I’ve been able to whisper my darkest fears to you in the inky night when I think you’re asleep and it’s safe to be scared, and your warm hand always reaches out to grab mine.”

I am openly crying. I think James has something caught in his eye, because he’s rubbing it pretty hard. Declan grabs my hand and squeezes it, tight.

“You have been to so many soccer games and school plays and concerts and recitals—and the ones you missed really hurt you. I’ve watched you coach a T-ball game and hop in the car to go work an extra shift, then come right back in the morning to help with church youth group. You lend money to people who need it, have gotten really screwed a few times over the years—and you still always want to give people another chance.”

Mom’s makeup is in streaks down her face right now, and she’s holding Dad’s hands. His eyes are so wide a ring of white is around his irises, and he looks like he’s barely holding it together.

“I don’t know what your definition of success is,” she says, looking over Dad’s shoulder to James, then Declan, “but by my standards, Jason is a god-damned emotional billionaire.” She tugs on his hand. He takes one step toward her, and she looks back at Dad. “And I’m taking you to our nice hotel room, where I’m going to spend as long as it takes with you until you really feel your success all the way in the marrow of your bones.” She turns away from us and they take a few steps, Dad pocketing his chips first. 

I swear she adds, “You fool.”

Dad doesn’t look back at us, but as they reach the main doors, the bright desert sun shining behind them and making the wide rectangle of the door’s threshold feel like a blinding imprint, I see him clasp her to him tightly, their kiss like something out of a 1940s glamour movie.

Even I say, “awwwwww,” and I’m supposed to be grossed out by them.

James lets out a sigh, like he’s nostalgic, then winces. Declan and I give him the side-eye, but I think for completely different reasons.

Mom turns back to us and shouts:

“If it wasn’t clear, when I said ‘spend as long as it takes,’ I meant I’m taking Jason back to the hotel room and we’re going to have sex until he can’t remember that the word
failure
exists.”

All
the men over fifty in the casino sigh, including James. Again.

Dad gives us a thumbs-up and they leave, Mom’s hand splayed across my father’s ass.

“Your mother,” James says with a sigh, the words hanging loose like one of Tyler’s baby teeth, not quite ready to let go. 

“My mother what?” I ask as Rheumy moves to the seat next to me and offers his half-consumed beer. When I decline, he pats his shirt pocket and mouths the word
maryjane
. 

Or maybe he says,
Marry me?
It’s hard to tell. The guy has three teeth left, and either phrase is likely.

“Your mother is one of a kind,” James declares.

“I’ll drink to that,” Declan says.

Old Rheumy offers up his beer. Declan declines.

“Maryjane?” he offers, pulling out a fat joint the size of my ring finger.

At least that mystery’s been cleared up.

“No, thanks,” Declan demurs, helping me stand. “I appreciate the offer, though.”

“It’s free and clean,” Rheumy swears. “Got me a medical card in California and this is some prime weed.”

“I’m sure it is,” James assures him. “But, um...” 

I jump in for the rescue, leaning over and tapping Rheumy on the arm. “The Illuminati are watching them. If the feds ever take them into custody and they have weed in their piss test, they’re toast.”

Rheumy’s eyes go wide. “No shit?”

“No kidding.”

“I knew it was all real,” he mutters, shaking his head slowly, giving Declan and James a sad, sympathetic look.

I nod toward the door and the three of us escape.

“What the hell was that about?” Declan says with a low whistle. 

“That was a young woman thinking on her feet,” James replies, his face pensive as he walks fast toward the waiting limo, Geordi at the door. “You Jacoby women are a formidable force.”

“We have our moments,” I say, holding my head high, my sophistication infinite.

Until I trip over the outstretched leg of a beggar carrying a sign that says “WILL EAT PUSSY FOR CASINO CHIPS” and fall right into his lap.

“My prayers have been answered!” the guy hisses in my ear. “It’s raining women!” 

Geordi rushes over to pull the guy away, while Dec and James extract me quickly, not looking back. My knee’s ripped to shreds, blood blooming like a rose through the torn pantyhose, and I feel like my elbow banged into a steel door. They funnel me into the back of the limo and shut the door, locks activated instantly. 

“Your knee,” Declan says, reaching for a bucket of ice. James hands him a perfectly pressed handkerchief and in seconds, I have an ice pack on my bloody joint, leg stretched over Declan’s lap, James in front of us, frowning out the window.

I shouldn’t look back. Declan even tries to shield me from the tinted window. I can’t help myself. I know I shouldn’t.

But I do.

When I fell, my scarf must have unraveled and landed on the beggar. He’s currently, uh, using it as a sex toy.

Let’s leave the description right there.

Because what happens in Vegas—stays in Vegas.

Chapter Twenty

When you don’t have a thousand guests, when you’re not bringing in forty-one bagpipers, and you don’t use a floral designer who has more flowers than the garden at Versailles in your wedding, the actual ceremony is so simple.

And the emotions are still the same.

All the big resorts in Vegas have their own private wedding chapel on-site. In the movies and on television, you see people going to some twenty-four-hour quickie wedding place, getting married by an Elvis impersonator. Those places exist, but what you don’t hear about are the more sedate, calm chapels where couples can just tie the knot in peace, then go up an elevator and screw like bunnies afterward.

As husband and wife.

Or wife and wife, or husband and husband.

Early this morning we made the trek to the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas, and they issued us a shiny Nevada license. Once we’re married here in the resort chapel, the officials will file the license and in a few weeks we’ll get a copy.

It’ll be legal in a few minutes.

I’ll finally be Mrs. McCormick in the eyes of the law.