“You were the one who told me his assistant hires prostitutes for him!”
“No, I didn’t!”
“You told me Declan told you that he schedules ‘business meetings’ with various women and after he’s bedded them, they go away. What do you call that?”
“Modern dating?” She smiles.
“Minus the anal glands,” I whisper under my breath.
“You’re starting to worry me,” Shannon says as she squeezes my hand. The limo pulls up to Anterdec’s office garage and begins the slow, winding way down to the executive level. Shannon knows how to live now.
“I am the one who is being kissed out of the blue by your future brother-in-law while creating the mystery shopper survey for a dog owners’ dating site. I should worry you.”
Her laughter fills the car. “He has never hired a prostitute. Put that one out of your mind. Plus, Andrew doesn’t have a dog.”
A pang of guilt hits me. “About that...”
“About doggy dates? You want to dig through the dating database and see if he’s in there? Because he’s not.”
I shudder. “You don’t want to know what that database looks like. Trust me.”
“Can’t be worse than that dating site for married people who want to have affairs.”
“There are people in the DoggieDate database who have a sexual fetish for dressing up in dog costumes that match their actual dog’s breed and pretending to be a dog.”
“Oh. Weird.”
“Or the human-dog relationships.”
“Oh, gross.”
“No, no,” I say, hands up in protest. “Not actual human-dog sex. But one person is the human and the other one pretends to be the dog. Wears the costume, eats out of the dog bowl—”
“STOP! I cannot unhear what has been heard.”
“The weird part is that there are all these accessories for relationships like that. The merchandising opportunities are amazing.”
Shannon sticks her fingers in her ears as we climb out of the limo. The driver holds the door open, his face neutral and stoic as I say, “And the human can buy special leashes, and the fetish involves—”
His face is not so stoic now.
“Work. We’re talking about a client, Jose,” Shannon hastily explains.
“I’m sure you are, ma’am,” he says tightly.
“Bet you’ve heard worse in your line of work,” I joke.
He makes eye contact. “No ma’am. That one’s in the top three.”
Oh, great.
“Let me explain,” I say, suddenly deeply humiliated. “I’m a mystery shopping manager and I have to go out on twenty dates with dogs for this new dating service I’m evaluating.”
That didn’t come out right.
“Not with the dogs,” I say, giggling. “With their owners.”
“And some of the owners want to pretend to be dogs,” Shannon adds, trying to help. “It’s a fetish.”
Not helpful.
“What you do in your line of....work, ma’am, is your business.”
“I’m not a pervert!” I call back as Shannon pulls me away to the elevator, which opens at that exact moment to reveal—you guessed it.
Andrew McCormick.
His eyes light up.
“Shame,” is all he says.
“Shame what?” I retort.
“Shame you’re not a pervert. See you at eleven.” And with that, he moves so smoothly it’s like he’s on wheels, disappearing into the same limo we just got out of, Jose avoiding eye contact with us.
As he pulls away I look at my watch. 10:33 a.m.
“Where is he going?” I ask Shannon, who enters the open elevator and pulls me in. She presses the floor for the main Anterdec offices with a practiced hand. “We have an appointment!”
“Who knows? To grab a cup of coffee?”
Living with a billionaire hasn’t rubbed off on her, has it? “He has people who fetch him coffee,” I say, as if explaining religion to an alien. “Hell, he has people who test whether it’s too hot for him. He probably owns a sugar cane plantation where they hand harvest his personal sweetener. How can you live with the richie riches and not know that?”
“I—”
“And I am not a pervert!” I hiss again.
She starts to laugh. It’s a sound of absurdity. There is no mocking in her tone, and I join in, realizing my own over-the-topness.
“You’re really not,” she gasps. “You’re about as vanilla as they come.”
“How can I be vanilla when I’m not having sex with anyone?”
The words come out of my mouth just as the elevator slows and the doors open, revealing James McCormick.
Who just heard every word I said.
Chapter Seven
“That’s the difference between men and women,” he declares in a voice that’s just a notch louder than it needs to be. He’s cultivating an audience. James McCormick is a man who is accustomed to instant attention.
Just like Andrew.
“Men pretend to be sleeping with more women than they really are. Women complain endlessly about all the men they’re not sleeping with. Both are always lying,” James declares with a smug little smile.
“But I’m really not sleeping with anyone!”
I can’t believe I just said that in public.
James startles slightly. “You and Andrew aren’t....” He makes a series of suggestive sounds from the back of his throat like he’s trying out for a sound effects specialist on a porn set.