Hmmm.
“Steve’s crazy, Shannon, and we know it. Don’t worry. Your mom thinks you’re a feminist hero, though, for going on one date and leaving with another guy.” Amanda’s voice slices through my rapid-fire thoughts.
“I wasn’t on a date with Steve! I’d rather get a Brazilian wax with battery acid.”
“Ouch,” she says in unison with Declan, who is now off the phone and behind me, all heat and muscle bearing down, moving with a slight rhythm that tells me exactly what—and who—is coming next.
“Gotta go, Amanda. We’re in a lighthouse in the harbor and Declan’s about to—”
Click.
“About to…?” He kisses my shoulder, taking the phone out of my hand as his thumb presses the “Power” button. His chest is hot against my back and as he leans around me to set down my phone on the table, I realize his shirt’s unbuttoned. Bare skin warms my cotton shirt and he turns me to face him.
I look at the L-shaped couches across the room, the flicker of fire in the glass door of the wood stove making the velvet seem so soft, so welcoming.
Like Declan’s hands as he lifts my shirt for what feels like the umpteenth time this evening.
“You,” he says with a growl as he reveals my bra, “are so hot.”
“I’m Toilet Girl.”
“You’re Hot Girl.”
“That’s your title.”
“I’m Hot Girl?” He takes my hand and puts it at his waistband as he undoes his belt. He has a point.
“I retract that statement.”
“This isn’t a newspaper article. You’re not a reporter.” His voice holds a smile. “Unless you’re undercover and investigating me.”
“I’m only dating you for the account,” I joke. “Nothing more. No Woodward and Bernstein. No deep cover.”
“If you’re only dating me for the account, then you nailed it two dates ago,” he whispers as he unclasps my bra. The shiver that runs through me vibrates into the scarred wood floor, carrying out into the ocean’s waves, triggering a tsunami somewhere in the Azores islands.
“Then why am I here?”
His mouth stops me from saying more, slanting against mine, his arms strong and lifting me to tiptoes. My bare br**sts press against the heat of his pecs and the push of his abs against my belly makes me feel more intimate than when he was inside me, in the limo.
“Let me show you exactly why you’re here, Shannon.”
And he does.
Chapter Nine
“Your medical emergency made the local Patch news!” Mom shouts from the kitchen. Mom begged and begged and begged and guilted and blackmailed me into coming to one of her yoga classes, and then she snuck into my phone and texted Declan, pretending to be me, and he’s here.
Here. Standing in my childhood home drinking orange spice tea and wearing workout clothes that make me feel feral.
“Great. Just what we need. Notoriety from a news site that covers misspelled store signs and duck crossings with as much space as they cover fatal car accidents and government corruption,” Declan mutters.
“What did they say, Mom?” I ask, forcing myself to be polite. I’m drinking chamomile tea and it’s not relaxing me. You could pump Zen Tea into me via IV and it wouldn’t work. My heart is the sound of one hand clapping, flailing in the wind, trying to find something to rest against.
Watching Declan sit on our sunken sofa, perched with perfect posture and powerful legs encased in lycra stretch fabric, confuses the hell out of the wiring in my brain.
“And Jessica Coffin mentioned you!”
Declan groans, then covers it with a sip. His eyes take in the room. Mom has a thing for thrift shopping, even though Dad complains that we can afford to buy new, as long as it’s at a discount warehouse. Born and raised in New England, Mom’s Yankee sensibilities tell her she can’t dare to buy a new dresser even though she spends $60 a week on mani-pedis. The incongruity has been long pointed out to her, like explaining that driving seventeen miles to go to a different grocery store to save $1.70 on apples isn’t worth it.
“She says, ‘Buzz buzz sting sting run run stupid stupid.’”
“What, no ‘oink oink’?” Declan smacks my knee, hard, and gives me a glare that says, You’re ridiculous and Stop it and then his look says I want to make love right here on the couch in front of your mother.
And then he kisses me so hard even Mom goes silent.
“So,” she interrupts, her voice high and reedy, “we need to get going. Downward Facing Dog is for yoga class, not on my nice Bauhaus sofa.”
Declan ignores her and smiles against my mouth. Aha. I’m sensing a trend. He loves to smile while kissing me while defying the people most interested in controlling me. Hmmm. I should think that one through, but the flutter of his fingers against my breast makes me think I’m about to pop my Bauhaus sofa cherry and then my sex starts doing jumping jacks and shouting, Control me! Control me!
“I’m going to class! Need to be there early!” Mom’s shaky voice carries through the room at a distance.
Declan’s hand leaves my breast and he waves silently, mouth a bit busy. I hear the click of the front door as it shuts and he pulls away, smile intact.
“Mission accomplished.”
My face falls. “That was your mission? To drive my mom away? I can do that by pretending to be a Republican.”
His face becomes a stone mask. “I’m a Republican.”
I punch his shoulder lightly and laugh. “You almost had me there.”
The expression doesn’t change.
Oh, hell no. Even Steve was a Democrat. Most of the time.
“What are you?” he asks.
“I’m a Stewartarian.”
“You worship The Daily Show?”
“It’s like my daily mass.” My heart is hammering. I hate politics. I don’t even really have a party. In Massachusetts almost everyone I know is a Democrat, and if they’re not, they’re originally from New Hampshire or Maine. So…
“Are you one of those screechy liberals who crams your morals down other people’s throats because you you view the world through a rigid ideological lens and can’t bear to see other people making different choices?” he asks.
“You sound like Rush Limbaugh!” I squeak.
He’s laughing, though. “Replace ‘liberals’ with ‘conservatives’ and you get the same end.” He chuckles quietly, then caresses my face. “I don’t care what you believe, as long as I can have a rational conversation with you.”