Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) (36 page)

“I’m reconsidering this whole wedding,” Shannon announces to no one in the room as I crash in, carrying a coffee tray filled with love and caffeine. Mostly caffeine, because on this morning of her wedding Shannon has finally morphed into Bridezilla, and I have to really dig deep to find the love. 

“Dude, the room is empty. You’re talking to yourself.” I hand her a white cardboard cup of inspiration.

“No, it’s not.” Shannon points down.

To a very angry pile of tartan and flowers.

“That is a table setting,” I say, giving her the hairy eyeball. “You are talking to inanimate objects. Did you get enough sleep last night?” 

“Look closer.”

The centerpiece
moves
.

“Oh, no,” I say, jumping back in self-defense, palms out in a gesture of supplication.

That pile of tartan and flowers is
Chuckles
.

“Meow.” 

That is the first time Chuckles has ever said a word to me.

He’s
that
desperate.

I reach down to pick him up and he snuggles in my arms. Either that, or he’s using me for friction to wriggle out of the atrocity that is his outfit.

“What is he wearing?”

“Mom put him in a tartan kilt. See the pin? She made Mr. MacNevin secure an infant’s kilt pin for the—”

“Hold up. Infant kilt pin?”

She shrugs, two of her long, perfect curls sliding on her bare shoulder. “I guess it’s a thing. Anyhow, then they took the flower girl basket and Mom had it custom made for Chuckles.”

He looks like he’s wearing a saddle with two open baskets on either side, filled with rose petals.

“Mom says that as he walks, the petals will spill on the white silk runner behind him, and he’s the flower girl.”

Chuckles drops out of my hands and wanders over to the corner, curling into a ball and spilling all the rose petals on the floor.

Then he stands up and pees all over them.

“I hate to think about what he’s going to do when you throw the bouquet.” 

Shannon bursts into tears.

“My mother is ruining my wedding!” she wails.

I can’t say all the normal niceties you say to your best friend in this kind of situation, because she’s right.

“Well, there’s always elopement,” I joke.

“Is Declan using you now to get to me?” she snaps. 

“Whoa, whoa there!” I hold up my hands. “That was just a joke!”

“Sorry,” she sniffs, the word wispy and fragile in her mouth. “He’s spent the last month or so begging me to just run away with him and bag this whole stupid big wedding thing.”

“He has?”

“Plus he’s angry I made him abstain.”

“For a month?” I’d be angry, too. It’s only been a few weeks for me and I’m pretty grouchy.

“No. Three days.”

“Oh. Poor baby.” My sarcasm is as thick as the mocha syrup in her latte.

“You’re not being very sympathetic! The maid of honor is supposed to be supportive.”

I point to the lattes I brought her, mochas in the largest size Starbucks carries. There’s more caffeine in there than in a UMASS student’s bloodstream on the last day of finals.

“I am supportive!”

“Not when you suggest eloping,” she whimpers. “I’m so tempted.”

Tap tap tap.

Before I can answer the door, two little boys spill into the room, a bundle of nervous energy and out-of-control limbs.

“Auntie Shannon!” Jeffrey shouts, his lisp finally gone. He’s almost ten now, and growing like a weed. He races to her, clearly not caring or conscious of the fact that she’s in a slip, her corset loose around her torso, and she’s showing more skin than a Hannibal Lechter victim.  

Jeffrey’s hug is full-force, all-love, and no holding back.

And it makes Shannon cry even harder.

“Why are you crying? Mom says this is the happiest day of your life, Auntie Shannon!” Jeffrey’s words are muffled because his face is buried in nineteen layers of muslin and taffeta and wool. 

Shannon cries more. If she sobs with much more force her brain will slide out her nostril. 

Tyler’s little face appears from around the open door. He’s painfully shy, but when he walks in the room he lights up at the sight of Shannon.

“Pretty!”

They are the ring bearers and dressed—you guessed it—in kilt tuxedos. Traditional kilt shoes, called Ghillie brogues, are like dress shoes without tongues and feature extra-long laces that wrap around the boys’ ankles. In fact, all the men in the wedding party are wearing the same shoes. 

Chuckles rubs his side up against Tyler’s left foot, his leg lifting, and—

“No kitty! No! Turn the kitty off!” Tyler screams as he half-kicks poor Chuckles a few feet, sending a cascade of rose petals all over the corner.

Chuckles finds his footing quickly, but his attached basket inverts, making it impossible for him to walk, an extra inch of wicker rubbing along the ground.

He stops and lays on his side, like a female cat nursing her brood.

“You don’t kick animals, Tyler!” Jeffrey shouts.

“I sorry! I sorry!” Tyler’s speech disorder comes back when he’s nervous. “Turn the kitty off!” That’s his way of saying,
Go away
.

Carol rushes in, taking everything in with the practiced eye of a parent of two young boys.

“Did you kick Chuckles?”

Tyler buries his face in Shannon’s skirts and says nothing.

Carol turns to Jeffrey for an answer.

He looks at Tyler, then me and Shannon, assessing where his loyalties rest.

Just then, Jason arrives, whistling and happy as can be, wearing half his tuxedo kilt, a tool company t-shirt covering the top of him. 

“Why does Chuckles look like a dying Tauntaun?”

“Tyler kicked him,” Jeffrey starts to explain.

“Did NOT!” Tyler wails from under Shannon’s skirt now, where he’s taken up residence.

“Why?”

“Because Chuckles was going to pee on him, I think. Look, Grandpa. All our shoes have laces.”

Jason’s face goes blank, then beet red. “Oh, shit. You’re right.”

“Dad! Language!”

“Sorry, Carol.”

“Shit,” mutters Shannon’s skirt.

Carol shoots Jason an exasperated look. “Great! It took two weeks to get him to stop saying that word last time.”

“Hey, Tyler,” Jason says to the skirt.

“What?”

“If I give you M&Ms, will you stop saying ‘shit’?”

“Okay,” he mutters as he comes out.

“Shit!” Jeffrey shouts.

Carol and Jason glare at him.

“What? If he gets M&Ms for
not
saying ‘shit,’ I thought I’d say ‘shit’ and then you can give me M&Ms for stopping saying it, too.”

Jeffrey is going to grow up to be a political campaign manager.

Or a pawn shop owner.

I point to the coffee tray and Jason and Carol give me looks of thanks as they guzzle their lattes. I take in the room. The groom, his new best man, and his groomsmen are supposed to be in a wing on the other side of the pool and reception courtyard outside. Each wing is a wall of glass, covered with thick curtains. From what Shannon’s told me, Andrew is here. He just refuses to be best man, or to go outside until the temperature cools down enough to reduce the risk of wasps and bees.

He insisted on confirming that the ambulance is here as well.

And planted EpiPens everywhere.

I hope one is shoved way up his butt, because if you’re going to have a stick up there, it might as well serve a functional purpose, too. My sympathy for his complex fear withers away in the face of not overcoming it for the sake of his own brother on his big day. 

“What are you thinking about?’ Carol asks, interrupting my evil thoughts. “You look just like Chuckles.” 

“Oh. Um...nothing.” I shake my head and drink the rest of my mocha latte. I’m not a fan of sweet coffee, but I just ordered on autopilot and here I am, letting sugar cut in on my caffeine dance.

“You okay?” She’s worried. “I’m sorry about Andrew.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Can you handle being around him?”

“No problem. Could you handle being around Todd after you two split up?”

She laughs through her nose. “He never gave me a chance to find out.”

Before I can apologize for my unthinking question, Jason bellows, “CHUCKLES!” and shakes out his foot.

The cat looks about as apologetic as Marie crashing Shannon’s bachelorette party.

“Damn it!” Jason adds.

“Dammit,” says Tyler the Human Mina Bird. 

“Ten bucks and I’ll get him to stop,” pipes up Jeffrey, holding out an open palm.

I hand him the money and shoo him and Tyler out of the room. Easiest problem I’ll fix all day.

“What are you doing here, Daddy?” Shannon asks as Jason gives her a barely-there hug, clearly a bit less enthusiastic as she’s half-clothed. “You should be on the men’s side, getting ready.” 

“They’re fine. Hamish is passing around another bottle of whisky, and Declan isn’t even here yet. Just me, James, and Terry.” He laughs. “And Jeffrey and Tyler. Have to count them with men, right?”

No Andrew.

“Hamish is passing out shots right now? Before the wedding?” Shannon isn’t wearing her makeup yet, so she grabs the hem of Jason’s shirt and uses it to wipe her eyes. That closeness, that comfortable assumption that Jason will let her, sets my teeth on edge. 

“The guys need a bit of the hair of the dog. Last night was brutal.”

“Last night?” Shannon has been living with Amy during the three days before the wedding, so she has no idea that the bachelor party went on for two nights in a row. I only know because Hamish called Amy last night, insisting that “Hamy and Amy” have a meeting to talk about proper hand positioning for the walk down the aisle.

And on other parts of her body.

A Scottish booty call at three a.m. is better left unmentioned the next day.

Amy rushes in, red-faced and fuming. She’s carrying her dress and wearing sweats, but her hair is clean and slightly damp. She has creamy skin, long, ringlet red curls, and bright blue eyes. Amy is the complete package: smart, emotionally secure, and gorgeous.

“How’s Hamy?” I tease.

Marie’s head whips around.

“He’s an ass! A complete ass! The arrogance of that man!” But her red-face is not from anger.

“Did he acknowledge the booty call?” I ask. Marie already knows about it, and Jason just left the room to check on the little boys. He scoops up Chuckles on his way out, holding the cat gingerly a foot away from his midsection. 

“He says
I
made the booty call!” Amy wails. 

“What?”

“He told me he was flattered, but he remembers receiving the call and that I’m cute, but not his type.”

“WHAT?” Marie, Shannon, Carol and I all roar with indignation on her part.

“So I put him firmly in his place, and then you know what he did?”

“What?” we ask in unison.

“He tried to get me to introduce him to Jessica Coffin.”

“Why would he try to do that?” Shannon asks.

“He says she’s the best person for going viral.”

“She’s a disease, all right,” Shannon mutters.

“I mean for publicity. He can’t stand the fact that he’s a celebrity in Europe, and here in the U.S. no one knows who he is.” 

Shannon snorts as Marie fusses with a ringlet. Fighting physics, Shannon’s hairdresser somehow managed to make her straight, thin, brown hair curl into magical strands that make her look like a princess. I think there’s a sewage treatment plant somewhere in the city that is currently befuddling its engineers who have encountered a seven-hundred-pound block of excess mousse, hair gel and hairspray, though.

Carol looks outside and sees Tyler bending down, dipping his hand in the small reflecting pool. It’s covered with tastefully-placed lily pads, and is both decorative and functional, as Marie informed us when she booked this facility. For the wedding, they’ll close it off, but the gate is open.

“I’m worried about Tyler and that damn pool,” Carol says in a tight voice.

“We’ll have someone close the gate,” Marie promises.

“So,” Amy says absent-mindedly as she peers out a crack in the curtains further down the line, “are you ready for your wedding night?”

And Shannon’s tears come back.

“Is Declan hung over this morning? I want to see him.” 

“It’s bad luck,” Marie chides. She motions for Shannon to close her eyes and pulls out a makeup brush the size of a street sweeper.

“I don’t care. I haven’t gone this long without seeing him other than business trips, and I’m falling apart on the inside, and what if he’s changed his mind and wants to call off the wedding and run away with Jessica Coffin and make beautiful Barbies with her forever and ever and marry a woman who knows you don’t drink white wine with beef!”

“I had wedding day jitters the day I married Jason, honey,” Marie says with a sigh, putting down all her beauty supplies and just reaching out to hold Shannon’s hands. “Every bride gets them.”

“I know he loves me,” Shannon says as Marie looks at her with so much love peeking out from raw, makeup-less eyes that it’s like watching a mother look at her newborn for the first time. “It’s just...” She flings herself at Marie and the two sob, each hitched breath like a tug that pulls Shannon further away into her new life.

Just then, a little man who looks like a troll carrying a hair-covered electric drill walks into the room and claps his hands three times.

“Flowers for the bridal party!”

Ah. It’s Jordan. And he’s carrying Muffin, who now has fuzz all over her.

Marie drops Shannon and practically wins the Olympic 100-meter sprint trying to hug Jordan, whose face lights up as he scans the room over her shoulder.

Until he sees me.

Is he actually baring his fangs at me? The man has unusually large incisors.

“Marie,” he croons. “Let’s make this wedding even more beautiful with my creations.” He takes over, offering the bridal bouquet and the reception bouquet, our pinned corsages and explaining in tremendous detail how the groom and his men will be attired in various flowers native to Scotland, like primrose and bluebell, combined with white roses and a touch of red, all color-coordinated to match the tartan.