Free Shopping for a CEO (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 7) by Julia Kent

database that I lose count.

Chapter Nine
    The sound of a man clearing his throat is the next conscious event that pierces my psyche.
    “Excuse me? Eleven-thirty meeting?” It’s Declan. I step out of Andrew’s arms and close my eyes in embarrassment, like a child who thinks if they can’t see the world the world can’t see them.
    Andrew looks over my shoulder. I feel the movement rather than see it as his palm slides down from the base of my breast to my hip. “Give us a minute. We’re wrapping up our meeting.”
    “You’d better wrap it,” Declan mutters. “Shannon and I are having the first grandchild. You don’t get to win that one, too—” 
    “Hey!” Andrew barks, moving swiftly across the room and shutting the door in Declan’s smirking face. I watch his body, my mouth buzzing with his taste, the lingering sense of his kisses making me giddy with the sheer nonsense of being in a different layer of life for a few minutes.
    How can a kiss (or nine) do that?
    Andrew stands at the door, his back to me. He squares his shoulders and begins nodding to himself. I imagine, if he faced me, he would be silently preparing himself for the moment he turns around and tells me this is nothing. We are making a mistake. A kiss (or nine) are enough, and let’s just part our separate ways and stay friends.
    He turns around, looks at me, and says, “Lunch?”
    Not what I expected to hear.
    “Excuse me?”
    “We’ll have lunch. I’ll cancel my meeting with Declan and we can continue this database discussion over lunch.”
    I really, really hope database discussion is code for kissing .
    My stomach flip flops. Lunch. Lunch. I look at the clock.
    11:32.
    “I...can’t.”
    He looks utterly shocked. “You can’t? Why not?”
    “Because I have a date.”
    “A what?” 
    “A date.”
    A fake date. I can’t say that part, though. First rule of mystery shopping: never, ever reveal your true identity. I can’t admit the DoggieDate dates I’m going on are fake. I can’t tell him the truth. Some part of me wants to break every professional rule right now, and my body is screaming at me to make an exception.
    But I can’t.
    I just...can’t.
    He scowls. “A date. You’re dating? You have a boyfriend?”
    “No boyfriend.”
    He blinks, alternating between widening his eyes and a furrowed brow. “But you’re dating.”
    “Yes.”
    “Men?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’re dating men?”
    “Who else would I date?”
    “Shannon.”
    “ Excuse me? ”
    “You dated Shannon. For a while there. At least, you pretended to.” He looks very confused. “I never really got the whole story from Declan. Something about you and Shannon being married, and then you weren’t, and then you stormed into my office and kissed me and demanded that me, Dad and Terry all act in your hotel scheme—”
    “Hold on there. I kissed you ?”
    “Of all the things I just said, that’s the detail you’re going to focus on? What about my question about men?”
    “I did not kiss you! You kissed me !” As for whether I like men, if he can’t tell the answer to that one by now, then we need more kissing. 
    Er, database discussion.
    “You barged into my office and started ranting about what an asshole Declan was, right after my spin session. Then you pulled me into my closet and started kissing me,” he recounts. 
    “You have a memory made of Swiss cheese. There are more holes in that story than in a J. Lo Oscars gown.”
    “You didn’t barge in here?”
    “I did,” I concede. 
    “And you didn’t pull me into my closet?”
    “I did. To hide from Shannon, who magically appeared at the exact worst moment.”
    “And you didn’t kiss me?”
    “No, I did NOT. You kissed me . I remember it perfectly.”
    “So do I.”
    “Glad to hear it. Funny how nearly two years went by without a word from you. Good to know you weren’t suffering from a rare case of kissing amnesia.” 
    He crosses his arms over his chest and gives me a