She knocked on Roman’s office door, and he called out from the other side, telling us to enter. She opened the door and stepped inside.
“Roman, Sasha is here to sign her contract. I’ve already explained every aspect of the job that we discussed.”
“Very well.” He glanced up, making eye contact with me. “Have a seat.” He motioned toward the chair across from him while shuffling papers on his desk.
Monica gave me a friendly smile as I stepped past.
I took a seat across from him, and when I looked back, expecting to see Monica, all I saw was an empty room with a closed door.
“So, Monica explained the job to you?”
I nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“And you’re OK with everything? You don’t want to negotiate?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I do have a question.”
“What?” He sat back in his chair, his gray eyes locking on mine as his angular jaw flexed.
“Why did you fire your staff?”
“It was time for a change,” he stated, matter-of-factly. “However, that does mean that you’ll have more duties on your plate. You’ll be the one cooking meals and tidying up around the house. I’ve adjusted your pay for these extra duties.”
“You mean, for Sophia, right? Or for you as well?”
“I’ve been staying in the city here recently with so much going on at work, but there will be times when I come home, and I expect to have dinner on the table. Is that a problem?”
I was surprised, but I shook my head, not wanting to lose the job over a meal.
“The cleaning around the house will fall on you as well. The laundry for Sophia, you, and me as well, when I’m home, of course.”
“I have to do your laundry?” I questioned.
“Of course. I don’t have time to do laundry. I run a multi-million-dollar business. Not to mention all the traveling from here to the office and back, business trips.” He wet his lips slowly, and I was annoyed by the way the butterflies in my stomach came alive from that gesture. “Because I am so busy, it will probably be a while before I’m able to replace the staff, so it will just be you and me around here for a while. I do use a lotof dry cleaning, so you won’t have a tremendous amount of my laundry to deal with. Monica picks up the dry cleaning for me.”
“And Sophia,” I added on, circling back to who would be in the house.
“Of course,” he replied. He paused for a moment before going on. “You’ll have off every Thursday and every other Saturday. Those days are not negotiable. It’s the only days I was able to have the ladies from work come and sit with Sophia.”
I nodded. “That’s fine.”
He pulled out the contract and put it on his desk, sliding it across to me. “One last thing.”
My brows knitted together as I met his gaze.
“No dating.”
“What? Why?”
“I want your focus to be on my daughter, not worrying if some guy is at a frat party you can’t attend, cheating on you.”
I took a deep breath as I thought it over. Thanks to my recent breakup, I wasn’t really looking to jump back into another relationship anyway.
“OK,” I agreed with a nod of my head.
He held out a pen with a brittle smile.
I couldn’t help but feel like I was about to sign a contract with the devil. I even hesitated for a moment, but something inside of me pushed me forward. I needed to sign that contract. Not only for myself and my need for a job and a place to live, but also for Sophia. She needed me. She needed family. She needed consistency. And my signing that paper would give us both what we needed.
