Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) (24 page)

Andrew.

His name slides through my mind with an echo of need. My eyes take in Chris as the waiter comes over and he orders pints for us, picking our two professed favorites. I could date him. Kiss him. Maybe even sleep with him.

There really are plenty of fish in the sea after all.

Too bad the fish I want is in Tokyo right now.
 

I have a choice here. If I’d met Chris on the very first DoggieDate, life might be very different.
 

Then it hits me.

I don’t want different.

I want
Andrew
.

At that precise moment, warm fingers take my hand. That zing? The one you’re supposed to feel the first time you experience affection from someone you’re getting to know romantically?

It’s not there. Holding hands with Chris is nice. It’s comfortable and sweet, and as I look up and meet his eyes and smile, I remember that I am playing a role here. We’re supposed to be talking about our dogs and bonding over my teacup chihuahua and his little affen puppy.

“What’s Snoozer like?” I ask, bringing this back to my actual job requirements. The mystery shopping evaluation form has been taking shape slowly as I go through enough of these dates to start to form an idea of what we need to evaluate in terms of customer service and client experience.

Chris gets an uncomfortable look on his face. His eyes drop to my boobs. I’m wearing a shirt that could pass muster in a convent, so I’m not sure what he thinks he’s actually looking at.
 

“I have a confession to make,” he says in a sheepish voice, squeezing my hand. I have to lean forward slightly to hear him.

Outside, cabs stop and go, dropping off and picking up customers right outside the window. The brew pub takes up nearly half a block in this trendy neighborhood, and it’s a bustling area that’s gentrifying. Enormous old factories are being renovated into new lofts, hotels, and business spaces. I’m guessing the brew pub has two to three years, tops, at this location, before the rent increases drive them away.

“I, um...” Chris stumbles, then sits back with a long sigh, letting go of my hand. The waiter brings our pints and we clink glasses, then each chug about half our respective beers. I fight back a belch.
 

Chris leans forward again and puts his palm on my shoulder. Our faces are half a foot apart.
 

“Are you okay? Is something wrong with Snoozer?” I’ve learned to direct all the attention to talk about the dogs whenever anything gets strange on these dates. Works like a charm.

“No, no. Nothing’s wrong with him. Actually, though,” he says, leaning in another inch. “This is about Snoozer. He, um, he’s not my dog.”
 

I press my lips together and frown. “Huh?”

“I don’t actually have a dog.”

“You don’t?” My voice contains a little more glee than it should, because I predicted this exact scenario when I spoke with the client. I said there would be fakers, and my God, here we are. The thrill of being right mixes with the beer, which I grab and finish off with a flourish.
 

“No. I just invented him so I could join this dating service,” he says as he gets closer. Any closer and my eyes will cross to a blur.

But just then, he freezes.

“Don’t look,” he whispers, “but there’s a creepy guy outside staring right at you.”

I turn and look in defiance of his order and—

Andrew McCormick is standing three feet away, his limo behind him.

And if looks really could kill, Chris would be dead right now.
 

Chris pulls back and gives me a menacing stare. “You know him? Because—”

I’m on my feet, throwing the napkin down before he can finish. “Hang on,” is all I say as I fly through the warehouse-style restaurant, the enormous painted duct work above me, metal ceiling fans dropped along thick wires that lend the place the feel of a hipster brew pub.

I run out the door and find Andrew exactly where he was seconds ago, his hands in his suit trouser pockets, his face a grim scowl.

Directed entirely at Chris.

“What are you doing here?” I cry out, fighting twin urges to smack him and hug him.

“Interrupting something, apparently,” he answers, eyes staying on Chris, who has pulled out his phone and has a bad case of self-invoked text neck as he pretends to ignore Andrew’s ire.
 

“No, I mean, aren’t you in Tokyo?”

“I came back early.”

“What are you doing
here
? In this part of town? Did you come to find me? Are you stalking me?”
 

His nose pugs up, jaw tight, like he’s trying hard not to let his temper fly. He still won’t look at me. “Gerald had to take the limo on a detour. We were stuck at the light. I looked out the window to see you on your....” He clears his throat like he’s eaten a bug. “Date.”
 

I’m stuck.
 

I can’t tell him the truth. I just can’t. And technically, we’re not exclusive. He’s sending me mixed signals and if this were a real date, that would be fine. He has no claim on me. We’re not—

“Is he your boyfriend?” Andrew asks, eyes narrowing as he stares at Chris.

“What? Him? No. First date.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you dating?”

“Because I can?”

“No, you can’t.”

“Excuse me? I most certainly can.”

“Do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Date other men.”

I open my mouth to answer and stop mid-movement, eyes blinking. The cool night air dries out my mouth quickly, and with my hammering heart and beer-soaked blood, I realize that everything in me is screaming:

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because you haven’t given me a reason not to.”

Okay, technically, that’s not true, either. But knowing how competitive Andrew is, and being stuck in this absolutely, utterly impossible horror of a situation with three brain cells left for making decisions, it’s the best I can come up with on the fly.
 

Suddenly, his mouth is on me, slanted against mine, tongue ravaging and claiming. This is no welcome kiss, no soft
hi there
after a week apart. The rough push of his lips, scruffy with a day’s growth of beard, will leave my mouth raw with the demand of this man who is making it quite clear that this is the only reason I need to stop dating anyone else.
 

This kiss.

This
man.
 

His hands fill with my ass, fingers digging in to the flesh, his hardness against my belly, my arms hanging loose by my sides as my mouth knows what it’s doing but the rest of me needs a few seconds to catch up. The
zing!
that fills every square inch of my skin screams out his name in ecstasy, as if all the vibrations in the world came into one single frequency that pumps through my veins like thunder.
 

And then my body remembers what to do, hands clutching his waist, sliding up over those rolling shoulders that are attached to fingers that won’t stop giving me reason after reason after reason not to date anyone else.
 

And promise to give me multiple, mind-shattering
reasons
right now, if I just go with him.
 

“Ahem.”

Someone is clearing their throat, but
my
throat is currently occupied by Andrew’s delicious tongue, so I—
 

“This is not how my dates typically end,” declares Chris.

I reach between me and Andrew, brushing against his erection as my palms slide up his hard wall of abs and chest, then make a space between us. Our mouths separate with near violence, and I turn to look through blurred vision at—

Oh. Yeah.

My date.

“Normally
I’m
the one kissing my date,” Chris adds.
 

“Go away,” Andrew growls.

And Chris does.

I’m not torn. I should be, but I’m not. As I watch Chris the Fake Dog Dater roam off into the night, my staring is interrupted by a strong hand on my cheek, fingers raking through my hair, my head tipped up for another kiss that leaves me breathless and knowing even less than I knew a moment ago.

Until:

“You won’t date anyone else.”

“I won’t?”

The savagery in his tone and the bluntness of the words makes my feminist heart rise up and shake its outraged fist.

“No.”

“Says who?”

“Says your boyfriend.”

“He sounds like a troglodyte.”

“He prefers the term Neanderthal. Someone applied it to him once.”
 

“Boyfriend? That makes me your girlfriend?”
 

I’m thrilled and horrified at the same time, because I have eleven dates to go for DoggieDate. And I can’t say a word about this, because the owner of DoggieDate is a rival of Anterdec’s. I would not only be violating the basic tenets of mystery shopping, but also a slew of non-disclosure agreements. I’d lose my job in a heartbeat.

“Yes.” His voice softens.

“Is that what you want?”

“I just said so.” He kisses me again.
 

“You know what I want?” I stand on tiptoes, my lips against his ear.

“Mmmm?”

“A breve latte for breakfast.”
 

He leers at me. “How about that latte for second breakfast. First breakfast in bed can be...you know...”

I leer back.

He grabs my hand and pulls me to the limo, whispering, “Okay, girlfriend. Done.”

I fall into his lap in a tumble of giggles and gasps—then groans.

His
groans. I’ve missed the sound of his sigh in my ear, how his breath lifts the hair from my neck, how his throaty laugh rumbles along my skin. 

Andrew reaches behind me and grasps the door handle, shutting the limo closed with a thump. We begin to move, but I don’t really notice much, as Andrew’s kissing me like we haven’t touched in years.

 How can a week of distance feel so much longer?

“I missed you,” he whispers, dragging the tip of his nose along my neck, from earlobe to collarbone, his lips hard and soft at the same time, arms circling me like I’m meant only to be here.  

“I missed you, too.” A thin wisp of guilt floats through the air as I inhale. I must tense, because he stops moving his hands, his arms tightening.

“Is this okay?”

“Of course,” I reply, my laughter muted. “I just feel bad about ditching my, uh...” The word
date
feels dangerous right now. Inappropriate. 

Incendiary.

“Your date?”

“Yeah.” When he names it, I’m off the hook.

“Why?”

“Because he was a nice person.”

“Just because he was nice doesn’t mean he gets to be shielded from consequences.”

“Consequences?”

“Right.”

“Explain.”

Andrew’s head dips down, and as he moves his chin glides along the top of my breasts. A fireball of want replaces whatever silly little bit of guilt was there a second ago.

“People don’t live with a rope tied between you and them emotionally. Not people you aren’t attached to, I mean.” 

I frown, tilting my head as if the physical shift will give me a different perspective on his words. “Explain again.”

“I see you doing this. Shannon, too.”

My ears perk up at the mention of Shannon. Although she’s about to become his sister-in-law, I’ve rarely heard him mention her. This is definitely new territory.

“You both,” he continues, “act like you owe some debt to people you aren’t attached to. As if you have to take care of everyone else’s feelings, even when you’re not asked.”

My cheeks begin to blaze. It’s not from arousal.

“I don’t understand,” I admit.

He swallows, and I feel the tension in his neck. “Ah, maybe I’m getting too serious here.”

“No,” I whisper. “You’re not. This is interesting. I’m really trying to understand. I think you’re on to something. Please,” I urge him.

What I don’t say is that there’s a deep intimacy to his words, to this discussion, that I don’t get from him elsewhere. Not in restaurants, not in the boardroom—not even in the bedroom.

I feel his shrug. “Maybe it’s a male/female difference. Maybe it’s personality. I don’t know. That guy back there—”

“Chris. His name is Chris.”

“Who cares. Anyhow,
that guy
is walking home right now, probably a little pissed that I sniped his date, but he certainly doesn’t feel an attachment to you. There’s no connection. No mutuality. You don’t owe him a thing and he doesn’t owe you a thing. He’s a separate person who has autonomy over his behaviors and emotions.”

“Still not getting you.” And yet, something deep inside me is stirring. I can feel it. A dawning recognition that Andrew has zeroed in on an essential part of who I am, a piece of me that I know subconsciously is there, but that lurks within the subterranean mess of my chaotic soul. The fact that he intuitively sees this part of me is both thrilling and terrifying, because it involves being more real than I’ve ever been with anyone. 

“Amanda, you have a loyalty and a need to fix problems for other people. You do this not because you want the accolades, but because you deeply enjoy being the person who solves problems.” He tightens his grasp of me, touching my elbow with a stroke. “You connect ideas with solutions and implement them. You’re the perfect operations person.”

Coming from the former VP of Operations at Anterdec and now CEO, that’s high praise.

“If you’re just saying that to get into my pants,” I tease, “I’m a sure thing tonight.”

His laugh makes my body lift and bounce slightly as I burrow into the embrace. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean. Take the compliment.”

“Then...thank you. I’m still not sure I understand everything you said, but I find it fascinating.”

“My middle name is Freud.”

“I thought your middle name was James.”