Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) (23 page)

“Mom?”

“Oh, that poor state trooper. When I asked about my little girl he screamed.
Screamed
. He was at the scene with Leo and all those men, all those firefighters and paramedics ran back to the scene and started combing the long grasses by the side of the road and roamed into the woods, searching.”

“For me?”

Her eyes meet mine, red and wet, filled with the haunting of memory. “For your little body.”

“My
body
?”

“Leo was too drunk to be coherent and I just cried and prayed into the phone. I thought you were with him. We didn’t know that you weren’t. Those poor men. They spent hours looking for you. Hours, expecting to find a little girl thrown from the car from the crash’s impact.”

The full horror of what she’s saying hits me like I’ve been kicked in the chest.

“Oh, Mom.” Her words sink in. “But I wasn’t with dad?”
 

She shakes her head, her eyes glassy. “No. Sweet Jesus, no. Thank God, Mandy. We don’t know how, but we think Leo just left you at Fenway Park. Maybe you went to tinkle, maybe you wandered off to get an ice cream. Maybe he walked away to get a beer for the road...we don’t know. We just know that after hours of trying, those responders never found you. And then....”

“You—” She’s clinging to the kitchen island with those hands, her fingertips white with pressure. “You had walked all the way from Fenway Park to some police station in South Boston. Hell of a distance. Back then, it wasn’t safe. Southie was no place for a little kid alone. You had to cross that enormous bridge. The cop told us you walked in to the station and sweetly asked for help calling your mom. That you had lost your dad. You knew our phone number and he called and called, but it was busy.”
 

“Busy?”

She sniffs and snorts and makes a funny laugh. “Yeah. Busy. Back then we didn’t have call waiting for two lines and Leo and I sold the answering machine at a yard sale, so...yeah. Busy. The cop spent the next hour calling.”

I’m remembering the nice police officer with the ginger hair and the wide brown eyes. His eyelashes were the color of my peach crayons in my box at school. His name tag flashes through my mind.

“Murphy. Officer Murphy.”

She jumps like I shocked her.

“Holy shit. You
do
remember. I still send that man a Christmas card every year.”
 

Mom doesn’t curse. Ever.

“I remember how he gave me a second Dr. Pepper and told me my mom wouldn’t yell at me for it. How he talked to the other officers and they kept looking at me. Then one of them grabbed his hat and took off, then came back. And how Officer Murphy said we were going for a ride in a police car. That was really cool.”

Mom slowly drops to the floor, her back against the kitchen cabinet under the sink. Twilight’s descending and the change from the sun’s disappearance gives the room a kind of faerie light that makes me feel like a child.

I hold her hand. She clings to it like a lifeline.

“That man—that beautiful man—put two and two together and brought you home.” Her throat is jumping in spasms and she’s sniffing. I pull the hem of my shirt out and wipe her eyes. She doesn’t move, just sits there, shoulders shaking. “He kept it quiet. Pulled the police cruiser over a half block from home and just walked you up. Kept it calm.” 

She takes in a hitched series of breaths, then lets it all out. “That moment is etched in my mind forever, Amanda. I had just started to force myself to assume you were dead.”

I reach out and hold her. She holds me right back. I’m not sure how long we both just sob, but it feels like hours. 

Finally, I break the silence.

“But I wasn’t.”

“No. You weren’t. You later told us that when you couldn’t find your dad, you decided to start walking until you found a police officer. You ended up taking an alley away from all the traffic. One different turn and you’d have found a cop right away. You headed for the Financial District and...just kept going. I guess. That’s how we reconstructed it all.”

I just nod. That’s how I remember it.

Minus the whole car accident part.

“What about dad?”

“Your father? Your fuckin’ fathah.” Mom’s Revere accent comes roaring out of her. She’s smoothed it out over the years, but I’ve heard it leak through in times of extreme anger. “When he sobered up, we still hadn’t found you. I said...some things.”
 

“I’d have said them, too.”

“Told him he’d killed you.”

“Jesus.”

“And the cops took him away. He was booked with a DUI and when you came home, child services got involved. They interviewed you at school and me here at home but Leo...Leo disappeared.”

“He just left?”

She nods.

Reconstructed, indeed.

“I don’t...Mom, I had no idea all this happened. I remember parts of the baseball game and walking around Boston. It was an adventure. I felt like the little kids in that book. The one where they live in New York at the museums for fun.
From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler
. I was just fine and all I needed was a police officer and I’d find my way home. I remember being pretty proud of myself for figuring it all out. The Dr. Peppers were a bonus.”
 

We share a laugh. It feels good.
 

“That’s how I wanted it. You were always such a smart little girl. Unflappable. The counselor at your school and the lady from children’s services said you didn’t need to know. About the car accident. And I just told you Leo went out to get some beer and didn’t come back. Which was probably true.” She buries her head in her arms, which are resting on her knees.

“You hid me from all that.”

“I thought it was best. I didn’t know. You’re my one and only, kiddo. I’m not an expert in this parenting stuff. We all start out completely clueless and...” She laughs, the sound buried by sadness. “And we stay clueless.” 

I understand so much now. Why Mom worries when I don’t check in. How she was such a hovermother for so long. What it must have done to her emotionally and psychologically to go through an alcoholic husband and the horror of thinking I was dead.

Why she’s always been so obsessive-compulsive about controlling so much of our life.

“Did my dad ever find out I was alive?”

She looks at me. Her eyes narrow, brown triangles of deliberation.

“You tell me, Amanda,” she whispers.

My turn to share something she only knows bits and pieces of.

“He came to my school. Once. When I was in second grade.”
 

Her shoulders slump. “I thought so.”

“He stood on the other side of the chainlink fence. He cried, Mom. Said I was beautiful and he was sorry and that he’d make it up to me some day. My teacher came over to see why I was talking to a strange man and he ran away.”

“She told me.” Mom uses the hem of her own shirt to wipe her face now. There’s more I could say, but I can feel her limit. Pain radiates from her limbs like love in twisted form. I’m not adding to that right now. 

I stand. My knees pop. I reach down to offer her a hand and as she lifts up, she groans with pain.

“I’ll regret sitting like that in the morning.” 

The front screen door opens. A man’s voice calls out. “Hello?”

Andrew.

He did follow, after all.

I wonder what he thinks when he walks into the kitchen to find two orange-stained-finger women crying their eyes out in the darkness. Whatever his internal reaction, on the outside he’s polite. Concerned. Downright courtly.

“I’ve been calling and texting for the past few hours. Are you okay?” He crosses the room and stops a few feet in front of me. His eyes take in my mom. Then me. 

Then the tray of Cheeto treats.
 

Mom smooths her hands on her slacks and gives me a hopeful smile. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she says, grabbing me for a very tight hug.

“No, Mom. I—”

She looks at Andrew, then at me, then back at Andrew. “Glad you’re here,” she says to him. “Amanda needs someone right now.”

“Mom, but—”

“It’s all old territory for me, honey. But it’s new for you.” And with that she steps out of the kitchen, leaving me with a very perplexed Andrew.

“What’s going on?” he asks in a voice filled with grave alarm. His tone drops down to a low, sedate level.

I tell him. The whole story, from the moment in the pavilion suite until just now, right before he came in the house. 

I spill it all in one long, crazy ramble. It’s the kind of story I’ll have to tell many times going forward, so the telling from start to finish feels good in its own odd way. 

By the time I’m done, we’re standing in complete darkness, the only light peeping in from other rooms in the house and digital clock displays on appliances in the kitchen. We’re bathed in a strange greenish glow.

“That’s one hell of a story.” He exhales as if he’s been holding his breath. “I’m so sorry I didn’t understand earlier.”

“It’s fine.” It isn’t. Not really. But I don’t know what else I can say.

“I’m here now.” He opens his arms wide and I walk into them, my drained eyes resting against the soft fabric of his fleece top. 

“You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“Those naked-in-public dreams I have?”

“Yeah?”

“They started when I was five. Now I know why.”

He squeezes me tighter. “Oh, Amanda.” He gives me a soft kiss on the temple and moves me, slowly, to an oversized chair in the living room. It’s the one mom used to sit in with me when I was little and we’d read picture books from the library, one after the other from a big basket she always kept next to the fireplace. 

Andrew sits down and pulls me into his lap. I curl up, my cheek pressed against his heart. His breath is my anchor.  

I cry for everything I didn’t know I’d lost and gained until I fall asleep in his arms.

And do not dream.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The man sitting across from me at this lovely bistro is remarkably normal. Better than normal, in fact. He’s downright
hot
. 

“What is someone like you doing using an online dating service like this?” Chris asks, bringing his beer to his lips. We’re in a brew pub, with little wooden boards containing six little glasses of beer samplers. So far, we’ve determined we have the same taste in brew choices.

Dark and hoppy.

On this, my ninth DoggieDate date, I have found the Holy Grail of men: a decent one. A better-than-decent one.

A guy I, Amanda Warrick, for real, would actually date.

Lord have mercy.

Chris Stieg is taller than me, with the slim, toned look of a tech guy, which he is. He’s the lead architect for some new publishing technology that analyzes books to track narrative arcs and reader engagement.

The man has read Italo Calvino.

And
Jennifer Weiner.
 

Avant-garde lit fic
and
commercial fiction? He’s someone’s wet book dream.
 

Maybe even mine.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m technically still dating Andrew. But after that weird blip at the baseball game, and after he finally found me at home that night, things have been bumpy. He’s been in Tokyo for a week and our texts have been erratic. Falling asleep in his arms in my comfy chair in the living room was wonderful.
 

But I had awoken alone in the daylight, in my own bed, with a text that simply read:
See you soon
.
 

Mr. Hot and Cold is blowing more chilly arctic air these days, and it’s killing me.

Besides, this is a DoggieDate date. It’s for work. I’m just doing my job.

Is it my fault that some days I love my job more than others?

“I, well, you know. It’s not like Tinder or Ashley Madison are my speed,” I reply.
 

Chris laughs, throwing his head back just enough for me to take in the golden blonde hair. He wears glasses and has these sweet eyes the color of honey lager.
 

“Let me guess. Loads of disgusting come-ons from guys who think that crap works.”

“I have quite the collection of unwanted dick pics.”

He chokes through his laughter.

“And all I did was send you a picture of my dog,” he says with a smile that reaches those warm eyes.

The beer is loosening me up. I lean back and stretch, pushing my breasts out inadvertently. Chris is too much of a gentleman to look. We’re seated right by the big, plate-glass window along the sidewalk. Outside, the streets are filled with people straggling back from an art-in-the-city festival.

Chris reaches across the table as I go to taste another sample, and our hands bump.

“I’m grateful for that. Snoozer is a real cutie, by the way. I love affenpinschers,” I say.
 

Chris smiles, looking down at our hands, which are an inch away.

And then a rush of memory hits me, of Andrew and I naked in bed.

Heat runs from my belly to my mouth like a brushfire. I hastily grab the final glass of beer from the taster board and chug it.

Chris’s eyebrows shoot up. “That good?”

I realize my mistake. We’re sharing this, to decide which pints to buy. “Oh. Um, I’m so sorry.” I look at the empty glass and make a face. “It actually wasn’t.”
 

“You saved me from bad beer. Friends don’t let friends drink bad beer.”

“Then I had some really bad friends back in college.”

He laughs, and I see him watching my hand. Oh, boy. He’s sending all the good signals now.
 

When Greg informed me I was perfect for the DoggieDate account, I figured I would slog through twenty insufferable dates with weirdos who use a site like DoggieDate for a reason. Because they’re weirdos.

I never—not once—thought I’d meet an actual hot guy who I’d
want
to date.
 

And here I am.