“So let me understand, Mom. Trolling the men’s room is a clever way to meet a man, but doing so during a mystery shop is debasing?” She quickly pulls my unruly hair into an updo and bobby pins appear in her mouth like she had them shoved up her nose the entire time, waiting for the perfect moment to correct my hairstyle.

  “It’s just…” She sniffs. “What kind of man will you meet at a burger joint? Or a car wash? Getting your oil changed or buying a bagel sandwich?” Her face perks up. “Is there an elite level of mystery shopping? Who are the secret shoppers for Neiman Marcus, or the Omni Parker House? What about Tiffany’s?” Her eyes glitter. “Now that would be one way to meet the right kind of man.”

  “The right kind of man.” I can’t keep the disdain out of my voice, but an image of Declan flashes through my mind. That smile.

  “You won’t meet him on your eighth bagel sandwich dressed like a college student on the fourth day of exams with a bad case of lice,” she adds.

  “I don’t have lice!”

  “Well, honey, you looked like it.”

  “Mom.” I steel myself. “This has been great. Really. But I have to go.” I grab my purse and throw a few cups of white rice in a baggie, then shove my phone in it. “But I need to get to work.”

  “We need to talk, Shannon—”

  “Bye! And change Chuckles’ litter box for me, would you? He looks like he’s about to go in the zen rock garden.”

  And with that, I run down every one of those twenty-seven steps, grateful for my escape.

  Chapter Five

  The drive to the office gives my body a chance to settle in to the day. Awake since four a.m., it is screaming for some kind of break.

  Or maybe that is my inner thighs. They begin to spasm and ache, and not in that stretchy-groany kind of way after a long weekend of incredible sex.

  Squatting on the toilet has, apparently, led to a fair amount of injury. Great. Add this to the growing list of occupational hazards.

  If only Declan had been responsible for this burning ache in a decidedly more delicious way. Daydreaming never hurt anyone, right? I let my mind wander, wondering what he looks like out of that suit. In bed. Under bright white sheets on a crisp spring day, windows open and gauzy curtains billowing with the breeze, the air infused with the scent of sensual time.

  Would he be a patient lover, taking every curve and valley of my body with a slow touch that built to a crescendo? Or an intense, no-holds-barred bedmate, with fevered kisses and unrestrained hands that need and knead, fusing us together in sweaty promises of nothing but oblivion?

  A new kind of ache emerges between my thighs, and it’s closer to the kind I wish I’d had with him.

  For the first time since our meeting a few hours ago, I let myself laugh. Really giggle, with belly moving, abs engaged, and chest whooping with the craziness of it all. Was he laughing, too? I feel a blend of incredulity and shame inside me, too, but there’s a lot more amusement. Never one to shy away from self-effacing humor, this event will be reshaped and I’ll retell it to my friends, crafted in a way that makes everyone think, That silly Shannon.

  Is Declan even thinking about me at all? The laughter dies inside fast. Maybe I’m just some whacko woman he humored as he now tells scathingly nasty stories to his work buddies about the chubby chick he found squatting on the men’s room toilet, fishing her phone out.

  Am I the butt of jokes? Does he describe me with vicious derision, using me as a quick one-off story, the office equivalent of a viral BuzzFeed link that makes people pause, point and laugh, and move on?

  A lump in my throat tells me I care way too much about what he thinks. Why am I fantasizing about a guy who trapped me in a toilet stall while I was on a mystery shop?

  Because you’re that desperate, my mother’s voice hisses in my head.

  I throw an imaginary cat at her.

  The company I work for, Consolidated Evalu-shop, Incorporated, is in a building as nondescript as the business’s name. If boring had a name, it would be Consolidated Evalu-shop. The building is made of block concrete. The interior steps are concrete as well. No carpeting anywhere, leaving the hallways to echo. If Stalin’s army had designed an office building, this is what it would look like.

  Fortunately, our actual office has carpet. Cheap industrial carpet that is about as thick as a gambler’s wallet the day after payday, but it’s carpet. It pads our feet and keeps the floor warm.

  I open the main door and walk into the office. There is a reception area the size of two or three graves shoved together without any chairs, and then to the right a long hallway, with three offices on either side. At the end of the hall is something the owner, Greg, calls a “kitchen” but I call it a supply closet with a sink in it.

  Want coffee? Get it from the donut shop next door. Same if you need to respond to nature’s call. Greg doesn’t provide fancy fringe benefits like bathrooms, microwaves, coffee machines, or even pens. He uses the freebies he gets at the bazillion marketing conventions he attends (on the company dime, of course).

  To be fair, we get plenty of freebies in this line of work, too. You go to enough mystery shops at banks and open a new account, you get to keep your free pens, notepads, water bottles, can cozies, toasters, smartphone cases, and other assorted swag that you receive.

  Greg is super-cheap about outfitting the office, but he doesn’t skimp on health insurance. I might make slightly more than a full-time assistant manager at the Gap, but I have one hundred percent employer-paid health insurance, so I’m not complaining.

  Plus, he pays mileage for all our driving. Which adds up, fast. You drive a piece of junk like I do and you need the fifty-five cents for each mile to feed the hamsters that keep it going.

  “Oooh, someone got lucky last night. You’re walking like a woman who got what she needed and then some,” Josh says, winking as I limp into the office. Josh is the company tech expert, which means we all think he’s a little bit shaman, a little bit magician, and mostly a nerd.

  My glare should make him spontaneously combust, or at least turn into a hedgehog with a profound case of psoriasis, but no such luck.

  “Not even close. I hurt my inner thighs sitting on the toilet this morning.”

  His eyebrows shoot up and disappear into his disappearing hairline. “You need more fiber.”

  “I need a lot of things, Josh.” Limp. Limp. I feel like I’ve been riding a Shetland pony for three days. At least I don’t have saddle sores. But Josh’s original idea, of having a man do this to me in bed…Mr. Sexy Suit comes to mind. Not the pompous ass who made me flush my own hand and cell phone, but the one I turned into Mr. Dreamy before The Great Toilet Fiasco of 2014.

  I have the second door on the left, sandwiched between Josh and Amanda. My office smells like pine and vinegar, which means it must be Thursday. The cleaning crew came through the night before. I hang up my purse, pull out the baggie with rice and my phone in it, put it in my windowsill to bake in the sun, and flip my computer on.

  Amanda’s left a note on my desk: Leave it for two days in a baggie full of rice. If it doesn’t work, we’ll get you a new one. Greg won’t be happy, but too bad. Hope your hand doesn’t fall off from germs.

  It’s so nice to have a friend who really gets your OCD phobias. Or who understands your mom. Or both.

  “Shannon? I recovered your data,” Josh says, scaring the hell out of me. He moves like a vampire, suddenly behind you in your office. I think he likes it. Office sadist.

  But I forgive him, because what? “You recovered my shops?” Hope springs eternal.

  “It’s all in the cloud now, so thank me for setting that app up and forcing Greg to spend money on something worthwhile. Everything is in there but the last one, because you didn’t hit save.” I get a scowl that makes me think Chuckles is more evolved than most humans. Josh looks like a lamb pretending to be mad.

  “I was perched over a men’s toilet trying not to watch a man whip it out. Don’t you dare shame me.”

  “The only shame is that you didn’t try to look when he whipped it out,” Josh says, eyes twinkling.

  “You recovered all eight shops?” I’m incredulous. This is making my day already, and it’s only 11:37 a.m.

  He nods. I throw my arms around his neck and hug him. “I would French kiss you if you weren’t gay,” I murmur.

  “You keep this dry spell up and you’ll start French kissing me even though I am gay,” he mutters, shaking his head. “If the only action your inner thighs are getting is while hiding from a hot guy in the men’s room of a shop, it’s time for a lifestyle evaluation.”

  “Let’s mystery shop Shannon’s life!” Amanda squeals, appearing at the perfect moment. The perfect moment to go through another episode of Let’s Dissect Poor Shannon’s Failed Love Life, that is. My mother would emcee it.

  We’re on Season Three, Episode Five by my count. Netflix should pick this one up. People could binge watch and point to the TV as they laugh, feeling a sense of relief while thinking, At least I’m not as bad as Shannon.

  I could provide an important public service.

  “What about Hot Guy? Did he ask for your number?” Amanda and Mom had clearly connected.

  “I’m sure he hits on all the women he meets who have their arm flushed down a toilet in the men’s room.” Does he? Because if he’s met more than me that way, then it’s really not me. It’s him.

  “Sample size of one!” she chirps. “You stand out from the crowd.”

  “I’m the only one who could give him E. coli by feeding him grapes!” I look nervously at my hand. It looks the same.

  “You didn’t catch his name?” Josh asks.

  I freeze inside. Declan McCormick is on the tip of my tongue, but I keep it behind my teeth, like a candy you savor and suck on. Heat creeps up my chest and neck as I think about things on Declan I could suck.

  I shake my head hard, like a dog after a swim. “Nope. Just really rich, really confident, and enough of an asshole to make me want him.”

  All three of us wistfully sigh in unison.

  They believe the lie. They should. We’re all really good liars. You kind of have to be in this business, because you spend so much time pretending to be something you’re not, all while evaluating the surface level of people.

  It’s a cold job when you think about it that way. Now I frown and Amanda looks at me with concern. Then I realize she has black hair again. Fourth color change in four months.

  “What did you do?” I ask as she follows me into my office. Yesterday she was a blonde, and the shift is jarring, like she’s gone from looking like a beach bunny to a dominatrix.

  “Carol flaked on the hair salon shop, so I had to go to yet another color, cut, and style,” she says sadly. She touches the ends of her hair. “I look like Morticia Addams.”

  I snort. “You look like Katy Perry.” Amanda is the cheerleader type. Was in high school, still is. And yes, I’m lying a little, because Amanda actually has near-zero similarity to Katy Perry other than black hair and red lips. In fact, right now, she’s staring at me in a creepy way with that new hairdo, like that woman on the Oddities San Francisco show.

  Like she either wants to tell me a secret or stick me in a jar with preserved three-headed piglets from 1883.

  “You got all your shops in?”

  “Eight out of nine.”

  She looks at the wall clock in the hallway. “Twenty-three minutes to get the last one in and we get credit for exceeding client expectations.”

  “But—um—hello? Toilet water? Dead phone? Hot guy?” I can’t catch a break.

  “Hot guy or no hot guy, we have that big meeting at four today with Anterdec, and if we get this all in on time it makes it much easier to land a client so big Greg will have to start turning the heat up over fifty-five in the winter.”

  “You know how to improve company morale. Don’t tease me,” I say, pretending to fan my face. “Next thing you know you’ll tell me we’re allowed to turn the overhead lights on after sundown.”

  “Don’t push it,” she says in a fake flat voice. But with the new hairstyle she makes my abs tighten with fear. I flinch. She sees it and frowns.

  “You look like something out of a BDSM novel,” I explain.

  One corner of her mouth hitches up. It’s half adorable and half chilling. “Really? Too bad I’m not dating anyone right now. This is just going to waste.” Her hand sweeps over her face.

  “Ha.”

  “Twenty-one minutes! Hurry! Once we have all the shops in the system we can do a quality-control check and go to this big meeting with an unblemished record. And then maybe they’ll give us the Fokused Shoprite account.” Amanda says this with a triumphant grin.

  My jaw drops. “We have a shot at sniping one of their accounts?” Fokused, or Foked, as we call them, is our archenemy…er, competition. Consolidated and Fokused are the biggest consumer experience and marketing firms in the city, and the rivalry is strong.

  If my little toilet-hand fiasco had cost us this account, I would have not only cried, Greg would have sold my office furniture out from under me and spent the $17 it was worth on coffee for the rest of the staff out of sheer anger.

  My computer boots up and I log in to the website interface, a zing of thrill flooding my extremities as I see all complete shops from this morning, except that red ninth one.

  Incomplete.

  Incomplete this, sucker. Ten minutes later, I am stuck with one final question.

  “Is the bathroom aesthetically pleasing?” I let my mind drift to Declan, remembering those smoldering eyes, the tightly muscled jaw, how his cheeks dimpled when he laughed. The snug cut of his tailored jacket across those broad shoulders and how strong and sure his hands had been on me, making certain I didn’t fall.

  Into the toilet, that is.

  Can a relationship develop from two people who meet like this? Am I hopelessly dreaming? Or am I doomed to live the rest of my life surrounded by men at fast food restaurants on $5 sandwich day, or guys opening new accounts at banks to get a free pair of tickets to a big amusement park, or—

  I take a slow, deep breath and remember the heat of his fingers on my arm. The warm questions in those eyes. The willingness to laugh with—okay, at—me.

  I click Yes and then submit, ready to perform the killer client pitch of my entire career.

  Chapter Six

  Amanda and Greg like to pretend that they’re the experts at client pitches, but while they’re good openers, I’ve become the closer.

  And in business, the closer is everything.

  I have this innate sense that tells me how to fine-tune my words and convince a wavering vice president of marketing, or director of consumer relations, or vice president of let’s invent a title for the owner’s son, that Consolidated Evalu-shop, Inc. will help their company usher in a new wave of business that positions them at the vanguard of a paradigm shift in the industry.

  See? I’m good.

  Marketing really isn’t anything more than word salad, and I don’t mean the schizophrenic kind. Learning to speak business jargon fluently is definitely an acquired skill.

  Growing a penis is another one. Haven’t mastered that just yet, though if I could, I would.

  You know how many female VPs I meet? Maybe one in fifty. Presidents? One. Ever. A smattering of directors, more assistant directors, and then the glut of “coordinators,” which can mean anything from an underpaid, overworked equivalent of a vice president but without the paycheck to a glorified secretary.

  And when you walk into a meeting, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.

  Guess what my title is?

  Yep. Marketing coordinator.

  “They emailed me this morning,” Greg says. I take a good look at him. One thing I have to give to Greg—he cleans up well. He’s a little younger than my dad, which makes him mid-forties or so. You know—old, but not ancient. Brown hair, thinning out, and cut super short the way guys who won’t quite admit they’re balding cut their hair. His wife made him ditch the old 1980s frames he used to wear for a sleek updated look, and his suit is tailored, which it has to be. The beach ball masquerading as a stomach needs to fit.

  “Portly” is the genteel term for what Greg looks like. He’s a great Santa at Christmas over at the Community Center, and today he looks like a distinguished gentleman ready to play hardball at the boardroom table.

  “What’d they say?” Amanda is wearing a long, gray pencil skirt with a slit up the back. Nothing too racy, but with her curvy hips it looks business sexy. Red silk shell and black blazer. With the black hair and red lips, she has the look down. I have to stop myself from calling her Mistress.

  “They want to expand the account by sixty percent. Into their high-end properties.”

  Amanda and I suppress twin squeals of excitement. Anterdec owns an enormous chunk of real estate, hospitality companies, and restaurants in the area. If they have fewer than two hundred properties, I’d be surprised.

  An account this big, including their luxury hotels, fine dining, and elite transportation services, could turn Consolidated into a major player in marketing services for enterprise companies.

  (See how I did that? I should be a highly paid copywriter. Instead, I spent the ten minutes after we got here using a lint roller to peel cat hair off Greg’s back.)

  “You want first dibs on mystery shopping The Fort?” Greg’s words make my heart soar. Amanda’s eyes open so wide I think one will fall out. The Fort is the exclusive waterfront hotel in Boston. Rumor has it the mints on the pillows have mints on them. Sheiks and royalty from around the world stay there when they are in town.

  A night in a standard suite costs what I make in a month.

  “Dibs!” I hiss. Amanda snarls.

  “Down, you two. If this goes through, there will be more than enough shops for both of you and Josh. The luxury shops will be handled in-house. I might need to add employees.”