Thanks, FTC.
“I, for one, would like to start over,” Dad adds. He crosses the room and walks right up to Jason, who—to his credit—stands his ground. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” Dad says, offering a hand. “We’ll be sharing grandchildren someday, so the polite thing to do here seems to be a quick handshake and a memory wipe as we pretend none of this ever happened.”
I give Dad a nasty look and he instantly realizes his mistake. Marie’s eyes light up at his words. Shannon’s standing over by the bookcase nervously spraying the same spider plant over and over.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he says to Shannon’s parents. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say those words. It’s good to know he can say them.
“Deal,” Jason says with relief, shaking back. He grabs Marie’s forearm and pulls her out of the office.
“Can we expect you for dinner tonight, James?” she calls back. As Shannon and I walk through the doorway, a horrified Becky tracks every movement Marie makes.
“That depends on the FTC, Marie,” Dad says, which I know is a firm no. Dad was being polite earlier. There’s no way he’s coming over to the Jacobys’ house, and not just because he’s busy.
Dad can’t handle real people. One glance at Becky’s rack confirms that. Two kickballs suspended under a sheet of Jello shots, covered in a dress.
As I turn to look back, my mind half focused on being a shepherd and making sure the flock is safe and away from the wolf, Dad’s eye catches mine. He looks like he has something to say, but then shakes his head with two quick snaps, as if driving the thought out.
Right.
It’s probably for the best.
CHAPTER TEN
“I cannot believe I sprayed the James McCormick in the face with a spray bottle like a dog,” Shannon says, a look of frozen horror on her face. We have said our good-byes to a very embarrassed Marie and Jason and I’ve brought her into my office to cool down.
“I can,” I say. “You took on Dad. One of the richest men in the U.S. Most powerful, too. He could ruin you, and you did the exact right thing. He and Jason were being ridiculous and you—” I gasp, trying not to laugh. Controlling my ab muscles is impossible, though, and Shannon’s looking at me with great annoyance tinged with fear.
“He and my dad were just being so stupid! Wrestling on the ground like street punks. They’re in their fifties! They should know better! One of them could break a hip!”
“I don’t think age automatically means you’re more mature, Shannon,” I answer. “In fact, I’m damn sure of it.”
“I still can’t believe I did that.”
I smile and hold her, hands sinking into her long, brown hair, which fell out of the clip she wore to work today. “That’s my Shannon. You think fast and untangle messy situations.” Shannon’s completely focused on using the spray bottle on Dad, as if that were the boldest thing she did or said just now. She has no idea that for Dad, it was the least of it. Water evaporates, but emotional truth leaves a mark.
Taking on his perspective of the day mom died was like dropping a nuclear bomb on Dad’s internal structure of how the world works. Shannon just told him that if he’s the emperor, he’s wearing no clothes and might want to check the bottom of his foot for a stray piece of toilet paper.
As her eight-year-old nephew Jeffrey would say, Shannon totally pwned Dad.
“This was more than that! This took a kind of courage I don’t normally have, to take on your dad like that—” Her hushed tone tells me she’s on the verge of tears.
“And that’s why I—” want to marry you. The words are on the tip of my tongue and I catch them before I blurt them out. A woman who can boldly take on her own father and my father like that will be the perfect life companion for the next six or seven decades.
She pulls back and looks up at me with an expectant look. “What? Why you....what?”
“Love you, Shannon.” And soon, she’ll know just how much.
Her eyes soften and she reaches up to touch my lips. “I love you, too.” She shakes her head slowly. “I am so fired.”
I frown. “No. The opposite. Men like Dad respond to people who stand up to him when he’s wrong. After he’s cooled down he’ll realize you did him a favor.”
“A favor?”
“He’ll never admit it, of course. And he might give you a hard time here and there for the next week. If you have a meeting with him he’ll be extra tough on you. Gruff. Might try to humiliate you, but only once.” I think it through for a second. “The audience was fairly small and the stakes were, too. Dad will never forget that you sprayed him like that, but you do realize that because Becky witnessed it, word’s going to spread.”
“Noooo.”
“You’re about to get a nickname.”
“Like what?”
“The Jamie Whisperer.”
Her face breaks into four quadrants. One part is trying to laugh. A second is trying not to laugh. A third looks like it wants to scream.
And a fourth is just too amazingly beautiful not to kiss.
So I do.
Her body yields under my touch, the thick fabric of her business suit so coarse, covering the lovely soft lines of her curves. The breathy sounds she makes as we kiss transport me. My mind is too full of other people. They take up too much space in my head.
My hands, however, can never be too full of Shannon.
I lift her in my arms and walk a few feet to my desk, where I set her on the edge, her lovely ass on the glass top, my knee pushing hers apart as I grasp her tight, hand sliding under her suit jacket to find her silk shirt. Within seconds I’m touching her hot skin and I groan.