Prologue
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Honesty is the best policy, I always say.
Mirabelle
Five years ago
Where do you see yourself in five years?
It’s a classic interview question. One that many people anticipate and prepare for. One that assesses ambition and, for large corporations, potential loyalty.
Unfortunately, I’ve been crippled my whole life with a violent sense of justice and a dreadful compulsion for honesty.
So I have always answered this stupid question with the stupid truth.
Where do I want to be in five years?
At home.
With a loving husband.
And a few children.
I want to be a homemaker and a housewife who spends her free time on hobbies and crafts and book clubs.
…I donotwant to be a corporate slave…or taking care of grown men as thoughtheyare my children.
Unfortunately, again, the only place my honest answer to that stupid question worked out was at Maid for You, the local housekeeping service in sweet small town Amarella, Georgia, located just along the Blue Ridge Mountains, where tourism is rampant and AirBNBs need lots and lots of cleaning after horrific weekend parties.
I’ve been stuck here, sent to disgusting house after disgusting house to make ends meet, ever since my summer after high school when I was job searching as a means to get me fromhigh school graduatetohappily married housewife.
Despite the raging tourism I find myself surrounded by in this position, I’ve yet to meet anyone worth starting a family with, much less moving away for.
So, here I stay, in this dead-end job, pining after losers who break my heart and going to book clubs with elderly women who try to get me to read their Hallmark holiday romcoms year-round…or their salacious monster smuts justonce…and there is no in between.
This is my life.
The life of poor twenty-year-old Mirabelle Peters.
And, to be perfectly honest, I’mnothappy with it.
Chapter 1
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Policies are stupid, and so are grumpy…billionaire…bosses.
Mirabelle
“Mr. Anders,” I say, greeting the ginormous, tattooedgrump above all grumpsthat I’ve cleaned for each week in summer the past four years. I would say he’s my least favorite client, since he’s one of the few long-term vacationers who is normally in the building when I’m cleaning it, but given that one of the other long-term vacationer’s kids has a habit of flipping up my skirt, I am going to refrain.
Mr. Anders is…fine. If you like being glared at. And aren’t really worried about assault.
As stated, he ismassive, undeniably in love with the home gym equipment I wipe down every time I’m here, and most likely a huge advocate of downing two dozen eggs each morning. He’s tall, dark, and handsome—if you’re either into rippling muscles and men in their mid-thirties, or being murdered and buried in the mountains.
Plainly put, Mr. Anders is scary. I don’t know how to read the stoic expressions that cross his face, and I pray every time I come here that I leave in one piece.
