“Shannon thinks she wants me to leave,” Mom insists.
Dad replaces Declan, hands on Mom’s shoulders from behind, pushing her like a stubborn mule being coaxed to cross a small stream.
“Shannon wants you to leave,” I answer. See? I’m referring to myself in the third person.
My mother has turned me into my nephew, Tyler.
“We’re staying,” Mom says firmly. “We have too much to talk about for me to leave. First of all, you two pulled that horrible stunt with the helicopter! And Declan, your father spent a small fortune on the wedding. Do you have any idea how livid he is right now? More than a thousand people were left—”
SLAM!
Whoever designed this hotel knew how to pick the right doors. Much better than the one on the airplane.
The doorknob rattles.
“Shannon! Shannon! But Jason, I have one of her shoes!” Mom’s voice trails off in a thin stream of chatter, the sound even more muffled as Declan’s warm, bare skin envelops me, biceps covering my ears, my face burrowing in his hot, hard chest.
I sigh.
“Thank God they’re gone,” I mumble, my lips rubbing against a sprinkling of dark hair at his breastbone. On impulse, I lick the skin right there. He laughs, the rumbling comforting. He tastes like salt and spice, like adrenaline spiked with power, his own sigh mingling with another one of mine.
“It’ll all be fine,” he adds.
Tap tap tap.
“GO AWAY!” we shout together. Who cares about the shoe Mom’s clutching?
“I own this place. You can’t make me go away,” says an imperial voice on the other side of the door.
Oh, no.
Declan mutters an expletive, then adds, “That’s my dad.”
Mom’s statement about James’ anger makes my blood start to race.
Tap tap tap.
I look up at Dec and see the storm in his eyes. I’m sure mine is just a mirror, reflecting back a hurricane of overwhelming chaos. We both close our eyes, like little kids who think if we can’t see the monster, he can’t see us. Not that James is a monster. He’s not.
The world is the monster.
“Open up, kids. We need to talk.”
With a deep sigh, Declan reaches for the doorknob, his chest expanding as his inhale goes on forever, my arms around him adjusting to the changing space his body inhabits as he just breathes in forever and ever, as if eternity masks what we need to face.
The door opens and there stands The Silver Fox. My soon-to-be father-in-law. The man who just spent nearly three-quarters of a million dollars on a thousand-person wedding we subverted by commandeering corporate helicopters and jets.
To escape.
I keep one arm around Declan’s waist, feeling him go tense and rigid, as if preparing for the verbal onslaught he expects.
James, though, is grinning madly.
“Brilliant!” he exclaims, pulling Declan away from me, embracing my fiancé in a man’s hug, the quick smash of chests and claps of flat palms against shoulder blades that gets the social nicety over with and expresses masculinity without affection.
“Brilliant?” Declan rasps, clearing his throat.
“Your departure from the wedding. Oh—Shannon!” James comes in for a second, gentler hug, this one fatherly and...sweet? James is about as sweet and sensitive as ISIS.
“Hi, James.” I give Declan a look that says, WTF? and he gives it right back in double time.
“Was this your idea?” James whispers in my ear. His breath smells like coffee and whisky, his breakfast of choice.
“My idea?”
“The whole mess with the helicopter and the press!”
I am walking a tightrope here. If I say yes, will I be screamed at, the target of ire?
“Ummm....”
“Whichever one of you came up with it, you’re a genius,” James adds.
“It was me,” Declan and I declare in unison.
Now we really give each other WTF? looks.
“That’s a power couple,” James says with a guffaw. He pulls out his smartphone, a phablet he doesn’t really know how to use. “Go find CNN, son,” he tells Declan, who takes the phone, finds the browser, and squints at whatever web page he’s reading.
“Huh,” Dec grunts.
“Our public relations specialists say Anterdec is getting wicked good free press here!”
James’ carefully-cultured sophistication is falling apart as his South Boston accent emerges in the excitement. He’s kind of like Pam, who does the same thing.
Hmmm.
“Every news site and gossip blog is talking about you two—and best of all, they’re mentioning Declan’s role as VP of Anterdec in the process, which means we’re trending.”
“Trending?” I ask, knowing exactly what he means, but trying to reconcile his happiness with the horror of wasting all that money on a wedding that didn’t happen.
“Our PR department tracks Anterdec press mentions and ranks them for positive, negative, and neutral qualities. You’re in marketing—you know the drill.”
“Of course.” James can be pedantic when he talks about business. I don’t push back, because hey—I’m a genius, right?
Or, maybe, half genius. I’ll share the title with Declan. We can go halfsies on it.
“And PR works with marketing to find paid promotional spots to generate positive press mentions. At the rate your shenanigans are generating positive and neutral press for the corporation, your wedding will have paid for itself.”
“Huh?” Dec and I are in stereo on that one.
James beams. “You two orchestrated one of the most brilliant pieces of free positive PR for Anterdec that I’ve ever seen. We’ll get the resort in the press, too, now that they know you’re hiding here at Litraeon.”