Shopping for a Billionaire 1

  Shopping for a Billionaire

  Julia Kent

  When mystery shopper Shannon Jacoby meets billionaire Declan McCormick with her hand down a toilet in the men’s room of one of his stores, it’s love at first flush in this hilarious new romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent.

  Shopping for a Billionaire

  Copyright 2014 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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  Chapter One

  I am eating my ninth cinnamon raisin bagel with maple horseradish cream cheese and hazelnut chocolate spread.

  Don’t judge me.

  It’s my job to eat this.

  It’s a Monday morning, 9:13 a.m. on the dot, and the counter person, Mark J., takes exactly seventeen seconds to acknowledge my presence. He then offers to upsell my small mocha latte, which I decline nicely, and within seventy-three seconds my cinnamon raisin bagel with maple horseradish cream cheese and hazelnut chocolate spread is in my hands, toasted and warm.

  I pay my $10.22 with a $20 bill and he counts back my change properly, hands me a receipt and points out the survey I can complete for a chance to win a $100 gift card to this chain restaurant.

  Survey? Buddy, I’m surveying you right now.

  No, I don’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder, though it helps in my line of work. I am not a private detective, and I don’t have an unhealthy stalker thing for Mark J., who loses points for ringing up a customer, touching cash, and not washing his hands before touching the next person’s bagel.

  I cringe at mine.

  I’m a secret shopper. Mystery shopper. Or as the clerks and managers in the stores where I pretend to be a regular shopper call me: Evil Personified.

  That’s Ms. Evil Personified to you, buddy.

  It really is my job to sit here on a sunny Monday morning, in my ninth chain store, buying the same exact meal over and over again, sipping each mocha latte and sliding a thermometer in the hot liquid to make certain the temperature is between 170 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

  You try doing that without making people think you are that one weird customer, the one who talks to aliens through the metal shake cans, or who brings her teacup chihuahua in to share a grilled cheese and lets the dog lick the plate clean.

  I’m just as weird, except I’m getting paid to do it.

  My best friend and coworker, Amanda, created a little thermometer that looks just like a coffee stirrer. I slip it in through the lid and in sixty seconds—voila!

  One hundred seventy-four degrees. I reach for my phone and pretend to send a text. I’m really opening my shopper’s evaluation app, to type in all the answers to the 128 questions that must be properly answered.

  I enter my name (Shannon Jacoby), today’s date, the store location, whether the front trashcan was clean (it was), whether the front mats were clean (they were), the name of the clerk who waited on me (Mark J.), and pretty much every question you could imagine short of my favorite sexual position (none of your business) and the first date of my last period (who cares? It’s not like I could possibly be pregnant. Maybe the cobwebs are in the way…).

  Did I mention this is my ninth store of the day? I started at 5:30 a.m. I’m very, very questioned and cinnamoned out. One hundred twenty-eight questions times nine stores equals a big old identity crisis and a mouth that can’t tell the difference between horseradish and mocha.

  This is not my fault. I am in management for a secret shopper company. That means my job is to find people to do what I’m doing. A year ago, when I was a fresh-faced marketing major with my newly minted degree from UMass and $50,000 in student loans at the ripe old age of twenty-three, the job seemed like a dream.

  You know those ads you see online to “Get Paid to Shop!”?

  Yep. They’re real. You really can sign on as a mystery shopper with various marketing companies, and once you pass some basic tests, you apply for jobs. What I’m doing right now pays your $10.22 expense, gives you the free breakfast sandwich and latte, and you earn a whopping $8 in payment about a month after submitting your mystery shopper report to our office.

  And people are lining up to do this.

  Except…sometimes, supervisors can’t find anyone to fill a last-minute no-show. I’m a full-time, salaried employee (which means I get to keep the sandwich, but not the $8 for each of these nine shops this fine, beautiful, bloated morning).

  One of our flakier shoppers, Meghan, texted me at 4:12 a.m. to tell me the purple and green unicorn in her flying sparkly Hummer told her not to eat bagels anymore, and she and couldn’t make her nine—NINE!—breakfast shops on religious grounds.

  Okay, then. Someone was eating something other than cinnamon raisin bagels last night, and I suspect it involved mushrooms of some sort.

  That gave me one hour and eighteen minutes to find a replacement, which meant—yep—here I was. In a rush, I’d jumped out of bed, printed out all of Meghan’s shops, made a driving plan and a map, and steadied myself for the biggest mystery-shopping blitz I’d done since—

  Since being dumped by my ex-boyfriend last year. Steven Michael Raleigh decided that finishing his MBA meant he needed a trophy wife who could schmooze with all the hoity-toities on the Back Bay in Boston.

  Me? A Mendon girl with only a BA who works as a “glorified fast food snitch” just didn’t cut it, so he cut me loose.

  So here I sit in this little coffee shop in West Newton, counting down the minutes until I can break into the men’s room. That’s right – the men’s room. Did I mention I’m a DD cup? So not a covert Men’s Room Ninja.

  My ninth men’s room of the morning. Every part of the store has to be evaluated, including the toilets. You’ve seen one urinal, you’ve seen them all…except that’s not how it works when you’re evaluating a store for a mystery shop.

  Nineteen questions about cleanliness and customer service are waiting for my answers. Neatly waiting inside my smartphone’s app.

  And if I didn’t break in to the men’s room?

  The eval would be a “failed job.” I shudder. A failed job is worse than eating nine cinnamon raisin maple horseradish bagels, because when you work in my field, a failed job is like a failed date with a billionaire.

  Whatever went wrong, it’s always, always your fault.

  Speaking of billionaires, hellllooooo, Christian Grey. In walks a man wearing a suit that must cost more than my rickety old Saturn sedan. Fine grayish-blue with fibers that look like he snaps his fingers and they conform to his body because he’s that dominant. Trim body with a flat, tapered torso, and oh! His jacket is unbuttoned. The bright white shirt underneath is so bespoke that it fits like a glove.

  If I had echolocation I could map out the terrain of ab muscles through sheer force of will. His cut body is meant to be relief mapped the way Braille is meant to be read.

  With my fingertips.

  Parts of my body that have been in suspended animation since I dated Steve spring to life. Some of these parts, as I watch him reach out and shake hands with Mark J. and see the taut lines of sinew at his wrist, the sprinkle of sandy hair around a gold watch, haven’t risen from the
dead since my party days at UMass.

  And then he opens his mouth and asks Mark J., “How’s your morning going?”

  Liquid smoke, whiskey, sunshine and musk pours out of that jaunty, sultry mouth and all over my body like I am standing under a waterfall of oh, yeahhhhh. Everything goes into slow motion around me. My world narrows to what I see, and I can’t stop staring at Mr. Sex in a Suit.

  Mark J. says something to the man in what sounds like Klingon, and they share a laugh. Beautiful, straight white teeth and cheeks that dimple—dimple!—make me fall even more in lust with Mr. I Will Make You Omelets in the Morning Wearing Your Suit Jacket and Nothing Else.

  I look down and nearly vomit, because my torn t-shirt may actually have remnants of omelets on it. From yesterday. I sniff in that secret way people try to surreptitiously look like they are not so hygiene-deprived that they don’t know whether they’re offending half the eastern seaboard.

  Damn. I am.

  My phone rings. People around me look as I stare at it, slack-jawed. I can see my open mouth in the glass and realize my hair is still in a loose topknot on my head. Is that my nephew’s My Little Pony scrunchie?

  I really sprinted out the door this morning, didn’t I? Being made an honorary Brony by a seven-year-old with two missing front teeth meant I’d been named “Thparkly Thunthine Auntie Thannon.” I smile at the memory.

  “Hello?” No one calls me. They always text. And the phone number is new. I don’t know this person.

  “Shannon, it’s me.” Amanda. My co-worker. My best friend. My thorn in my side. A ringing phone is an anomaly these days. Most people just zombie text. Me? I have a twenty-four-year-old friend who uses her phone like it’s 2003.

  “Why do you have a new number?”

  “Greg made me get a cheaper plan.” Greg is our boss. He makes those crazy coupon queens who buy $400 worth of groceries for $4.21 with 543 coupons look like people from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

  “Huh. Well, you could have answered the phone when I called this morning and taken some of these bagel hell assignments, you know,” I whisper. “I am going to name my reflux Maple Horseradish Amanda after you.”

  “Oh, thank God! You picked up the jobs.”

  A very attractive college guy walks in, donning a lacrosse team shirt and a pair of legs that make me wish I were wearing my good underwear instead of my safe underwear. You could go fly fishing in these granny pants.

  My eyes can’t stop flipping between college dude and Christian Grey. Eight bagel shops, and on the ninth, God gave Shannon a smorgasbord of hot men.

  “You took them all?” Amanda’s voice is somewhere between a dog whistle and a fire alarm. She shakes me out of my head just as Mr. Sex in a Suit walks by, making me sniff the air like an animal in heat. Which I kind of am, suddenly.

  He smells like a weekend in Stowe at a private cabin with skis propped against the back wall, a roaring fire in a stone fireplace that crawls from floor to ceiling, and a bearskin rug that feels amazing against all your naked parts.

  Even the dormant ones.

  Especially the dormant ones.

  “On the ninth one right now, but you’re blowing my cover,” I hiss. “And you so owe me. I’m making you pick up those podiatrist evals next month.” Podiatrist shops don’t exactly feed a sense of sexual desire, so my mind makes me go there. Feet. Hammer toes. Eww. Mr. Sex in a Suit leaves through the main doors, coffee in hand.

  But wait, I want to cry out. You forgot to let me lick your cuff links.

  “You can’t make me do the bunion walk!” Amanda protests. Yes, mystery shoppers evaluate podiatrists. Doctors, dentists, banks, and even—

  “Then you can do all the sex-toy shop surveys,” I say, biting my lips after. I can feel the heat from her blush through the phone. Or maybe that’s my own body as I lean to the left to search for a glimpse of Mr. Sophistication.

  “Bunions it is,” she replies curtly. “Come to the office after. We need to talk. Clinching this huge account hinges on how well these bagel shops go.” She pauses. “And I am so not doing those marital aids shops!” Click.

  Chapter Two

  Nineteen questions compel me to wrap up the rest of my sandwich, throw my half-full latte away, and walk with confidence toward the restrooms, hands shaking from too much caffeine. So what if, in my rush out of the house, I’d forgotten to change out of my yoga pants and torn t-shirt?

  I look down. I’m wearing two different navy shoes. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except one of them is open-toed.

  Whatever. I am fine. This is my last shop of the day. So what if I look like something out of People of Walmart?

  Thank goodness Mr. Omelet Cashmere Jacket is gone. He didn’t even look at me, which is fine. (Not really, but…) Living in my own head has its privileges, like pretending I have a chance with someone like that. What would he see if he looked at me? Crazy hair, a full figure in an outfit so casual it classifies as pajamas, tired but observant brown eyes, and the blessings of good genetics from my mother, with a pert nose and what Mom calls a “youthful appearance”, but I call a curse of being carded forever.

  And the whole two-different-shoes thing, which could be a fashion statement, you know? It could. Don’t question it.

  The coast is clear. Tap tap tap. I knock softly on the men’s room door, assuming it’s a one-seater like all the other stores I’ve been in this morning. No reply.

  Sauntering in, I do a double take. Damn! Two urinals and two stalls instead of the big old square room. Someone could walk in on me. A guy could come in here and whip it out if I’m not careful.

  Then again, it’s been so long, I’m not sure I remember what they whip out.

  Last year, one of my shops for a gas station chain made me count the number of hairs on the urinal cakes. That was, I contend, the low point in my secret shopping career. Fortunately, this particular chain does not have an obsession with hirsute urinators.

  How progressive.

  I tap on my phone and open the app, scanning the questions. Enough toilet paper? Check. Faucets in working order? Check. Paper-towel dispenser full? Check.

  Toilets and urinals in operating order? Hoo boy.

  If you’ve never been in a men’s room, and have only set foot in the ladies’ room at most fine (and not so fine) establishments, you need to know this: store owners hate men. No, really—this is the one area where women get treated better. We may earn seventy-seven cents on the dollar compared to men, but, by God, our public bathrooms don’t look like something out of a Soviet-era prison.

  Or worse—a Sochi hotel during the Olympics.

  My mind wanders as I try not to touch anything I’m not required to touch in order to do my job and get out of here. I recall the scent of aftershave and man on Mr. Perfect Blue-Gray Suit from a few minutes ago, instead of the acrid odor of moldy cheese, urine, and chemical deodorizer that smells like poison-ivy pesticide. How would it feel not only to touch a man so put together, so confident, so in control—but to be allowed to?

  The overwhelming pleasure of being in a relationship isn’t the actual affection, sex, and companionship. It’s the permission to be casual, to reach out and brush your hand against a pec, to thread your fingers in his hair, to hold hands and snuggle and have access to his abs, his calves, the fine, masculine curve of a forearm when you want.

  On your terms.

  By mutual agreement. The thought of running my palms from his wrists to his shoulders, then down that fine valley of sculpted marble chest to rest on his waist, to slide around and embrace him, makes my mouth curl up in a seductive smile.

  That no one will ever see. So why bother?

  Besides, I have toilets to flush.

  I check the back of the bathroom door for the cleaning chart. You know those pieces of paper on the backs of the doors, with initials and times written on them to verify that the restroom has been cleaned? Someone verifies that verification.

  Me. That’s who. Of course, I have no way
to verify that JS (the initials down the line for the past four hours) has actually cleaned the bathroom. Only a video camera would be able to tell for sure.

  And while modern society loves to videotape everyone in public, mostly for the purpose of catching Lindsay Lohan in an uncompromising crotch shot, corporations haven’t begun videotaping bathrooms.

  Yet.

  And thank goodness, not only for privacy reasons, but because cameras put people like me out of a job. As much as my job drives me nuts on days like this, it’s a paycheck. I have health insurance. Paid time off. A retirement plan.

  At twenty-four, that’s like being a Nobel Prize winner in today’s economy. Most of my friends from college are working part-time at retail stores in the mall, being evaluated by secret shoppers like…me.

  Question number thirteen stops me cold. “Is the bathroom aesthetically pleasing?” Um, what? It still makes me cringe, even for the ninth time. The walls are a pale gray, with tile running halfway up. Chips and stains on the tile make me wonder what men have done in here. How does taking a pee translate into broken tiles? And those yellowed stains. I shudder. Is it really that hard to aim?

  Whoosh! Whoosh! I flush both urinals, then rush over to toilet #1. Whoosh! I stand in front of the stall to #2 and get ready to flush that one.

  I’m in my own little world and let my guard down to ponder the question. I am also exhausted and most definitely not in top form, because I let a few seconds go by before realizing that someone is coming in the bathroom. Out of the corner of my eye I see a business shoe, and that becomes a blur as I scurry into one of the stalls and shut the door.

  Heart pounding, I stare at the dented back of the stall door. Then I look down. Chipped red nail polish peeks up at me from my open-toed navy shoe. Aside from being outed as a transgendered man in here, there’s no plausible reason why any men’s room stall occupant should have red toenails.

  I quickly scramble to perch myself on the toilet, feet planted firmly on either side of the rim, squatting over the open bowl like I am giving birth. Because I am genetically incapable of balance—ever—and as my heart slams against my chest so hard it might as well be playing a djembe, I lean carefully forward with one arm against the back of the stall door, the other clutching my phone.