“I just got off work,” he protested, which pleased her.
“Is it the job you told me about? The one you took for me?”
“Yeah. Five grand.”
“You promised me a discount.”
“Down from seven,” he protested. “He wouldn’t go lower.”
It would have to do, she thought.
She felt him shudder and smiled as she took him by the hand and pulled him into the house, sliding the straps of her topdown and stroking viciously through his jeans, until his pants dampened. “Fuck,” he cried out, but she silenced him with a kiss.
“I hope you brought your camera. You wouldn’t disappoint me again, would you?”
Chapter One
???????
“Nicholas? It’s Arthur. I know it’s the weekend but I thought you should know that our VP of Operations resigned.”
“Eileen did?” Nicholas sat up at his desk. “Why?”
Arthur paused. “She cited creative differences. Off the record, she’s very Christian.”
Nicholas closed his eyes.
“And with the scandal—”
“I can imagine.” He cut the other man off, not wanting to hear any further recriminations, real or speculated. “I suppose we’ll just have to grin and bear it until we can hire somebody else.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face, staring up at the ceiling.Fuck.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
“No, thanks for letting me know. I’m about to have a video interview with a cleaner, so we’ll have to wait until Monday to discuss this further. We can plan a course of action then.”
Nicholas set his phone down on the desk. His fingers began to tap in agitation and he growled in annoyance when he realized that he was unconsciously copying the cadence of the clock mounted on the office wall. It was his father’s, purchased at auction from some dwindling estate. He wished he’d thought to remove it before. Too late now.
The video app on his computer flickered into focus and he arranged his face into a picture of something approaching civility as a disgustingly earnest-looking girl in her early twenties appeared. She adjusted her tennis headband like she heard there had been a casting call for a reboot ofThe Virgin Suicidesandwas afraid that she had missed it.
Nicholas didn’t think she looked very much like a maid.
“Mr. Beaucroft,” she said eagerly. “Hi! Thank you so much for this opportunity to work with you.”
With him?He nodded tersely, bristling. Why was she talking like she’d already gotten the job? Who was this excited to clean somebody else’s toilets? Did she think they were going to collaborate over fucking Fabuloso?
And he was only going to have to go through a higher stakes version of this with the interviews for the Vice President position. The sales and marketing team were such fucking parasites.
“Do you have any prior housekeeping experience?”
“Well, I used to work as an au pair for this family in Paris.”
“This is a bit different from watching some French brats paddling around in the Seine. I own a very large piece of property and I’d expect every inch of it cleaned. Do you know how to polish granite?” he demanded abruptly. “Clean hardwood? Can you dust?”
Her smile faltered. He wondered idly who had put her up to this.
“Let me guess,” he said, when she continued to falter. “You don’t have any maid experience.”
