Читать книгу Meet Me in Paris - Simona Taylor - Страница 10

Devil Cuts a Deal

K endra couldn’t bear to unpack the box. She set it down on the floor inside her front door, and there it stayed. The lock on the door stayed closed, too. But she wasn’t alone, fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it. She had the company of a few old friends she thought she’d ditched a long time ago: the seductive, unpredictable Miss Betty Crocker and those shameless old scallywags, Ben and Jerry.

For two days, she subsisted on turtle brownies topped with gobs of ice cream. The tight control she’d held for so long over her urges and her eating, was slipping. That scared her. But the feeding frenzy was welcome, too. It kept her mind off her the shame and guilt of what she’d done.

Every time she made it to her fridge door, Fat Kat was there waiting. The old photo was taped to the door, slightly askew. More than once, caught in the act of helping herself to a spoonful of ice cream straight from the tub, or pouring shredded mozzarella into her mouth from the bag, she wanted to tear down the photograph, rip it into confetti, and toss it out the window.

“Don’t condemn me,” she told the photo. “You, of all people, should understand.”

But the moon-faced girl with bad skin and a jumble of crooked teeth had a different expression each time. One minute she looked shocked, the other, disappointed. Pitying, condemning. Her old self, the teenage self she’d tried so desperately to leave behind, was in no mood to forgive.

Kendra couldn’t blame her. What had she done? The escalating circumstances that had led to her scandalous downfall had begun with the best of intentions. First, tired of being overweight, fed up with feeling as if she always had to apologize for her size, she’d used every ounce of willpower to curb her eating sprees. Gradually, the weight had gone down.

Then there were her skin, teeth, hair—so many other things she still hated about herself. Getting that all fixed ate up a huge chunk of her savings. A dermatologist took up what was left. Then there were manicures, pedicures, skin treatments, pampering she’d never had in her life. And over the months, she’d started seeing someone in the mirror who didn’t look half bad.

Then, none of her clothes fit. Although she’d always had a passion for fashion and a huge sense of style, she’d never liked herself enough to wear designer outfits before; but now, with a pretty face, pretty hair and pretty smile, she bought expensive clothes to show it all off. When she’d maxed out her credit cards, she applied for new ones. For a while she was as happy as a pig in mud. For the first time in her life, she’d stopped craving food. And the more she bought, the better she looked, the better she felt about herself.

Then the bills had started rolling in.

Kendra leaned against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. Fighting panic, going against all logic, she took cash on one credit card to pay off another…and kept on shopping. She’d replaced her old addiction with a new one.

The collapse came so fast, she’d barely had time to think. She missed a rent payment, an installment on her TV. She had a credit card cut up right in front of her—and then she missed another rent payment. It was awful. Crazy. And then, she’d been doing the finances for a project, her mind buzzing with the kind of low-grade panic that came with impending eviction, when she’d had an awful, desperate idea.

She filled out a voucher to cash.

She’d meant to pay the money back, had every intention of doing it. Then her car got repossessed. Her furniture was in the firing line. The credit card companies were calling, the bank was calling. So she filled out another voucher, and then another one….

“I’d be ashamed of me, too,” she said softly to the accusing photograph of the old her. With nausea bubbling insider her, Kendra dumped her last pint of ice cream into the sink and threw the last two brownies into the trash. “I am. I just wish…” Wished she could do something. Take it all back. Make amends for what she’d done.

Fix it.

Her mind spun around to the office…and Trey Hammond. His disgusted stare, his complete rejection of her. She wasn’t what he thought she was, she wanted him to know. Not really. She was a good person.

A good person who’d done a bad thing. What could she do to get him to believe her?

All that night, she sat in an armchair, too wired, too exhausted, too filled with remorse to sleep. She watched the sun come up, pale and watery, and watched the numbers on the clock tick away until she was sure Wanderlust was open for business.

Then the phone was in her trembling hand.

“Wanderlust, good morning. Trey Hammond’s office. How may I assist you?”

“Petreena?”

“Kendra? What’re you doing calling here?”

“I need to talk to Mr. Hammond.”

The hesitation lasted maybe a second and a half, but to Kendra it was vast. “I don’t know if that would be the best thing.”

“Petreena, please.”

“Kendra, you shouldn’t be calling. I don’t think he’d want to talk to you.”

“Just ask him. I only need a few minutes.”

“Well, he’s, uh, in a meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“That’s confidential.” Click.

Somewhere in the back of Kendra’s skull, steel doors slammed shut. Leaving her out in the cold like a ragged beggar. No, she wasn’t giving up like that. She hit redial.

“Wanderlust, good morning. Trey Hammond’s—”

“Petreena.”

Petreena’s tone was a combination of embarrassment, anxiety and irritation. “Kendra, I don’t think—”

“Petreena, please. Help me. We used to be friends.”

“I’m not too sure about that….”

To be spit out so easily, like a pebble in a spoonful of rice. It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. For a dizzying moment, she had the sensation of blinking out of existence and then flickering back. If you were denied by people who knew you, did you cease to exist? She accepted her demotion from friend status with grace, but insisted, “Well, we were colleagues, at least. You’ve had coffee at my desk. We’ve split lunch. For the sake of that, if nothing else, please let me speak to him.”

The hesitation was longer this time. Then she heard a series of clicks and blips.

“Miss Forrest.”

The hand holding the receiver had gone cold. It took great effort not to let the phone fall to the floor. “Mr. Hammond, I need to see you.”

“What about? I thought we’d already said all that needed to be said.”

“Please, I need you to know I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure.”

“I mean that. You have to believe me. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.”

Hammond’s deep voice was deceptively melodious, but what he was saying was poison. “Miss Forrest, time is money, and you’ve taken up enough of both of mine already. If you want to apologize, fine. That’s neither here nor there with me. But if your conscience is pricking you, I suggest you find a priest. Absolution is their job, not mine. Now, unless you have a check for fourteen thousand dollars that you’d like to drop by with—”

“I’ve got nowhere near that—”

“Then we have nothing more to say to each other.” The next thing she heard was the dial tone. She stared at the receiver, looking for answers. After a few minutes the phone kicked up a howling that wasn’t half bad, given that it penetrated the silence in the apartment, at least for a while. Instead of clicking it off, she set it down on its side, and let the jarring, obnoxious noise spur her into action.

She took a shower, allowing the hot water to soak away the despair and self-disgust of the past few days, and then surveyed the contents of her closet. Hammond had made a nasty remark about her expensive taste in clothes. That meant he could recognize a genuine designer original, as opposed to a knockoff. As much as she adored the sheer beauty of a well-designed outfit, the last thing she needed was to wear something that would set him off again. Chloe would just have to chill out on the rack for a while. She chose a simple navy shirt dress with long sleeves and a modest hemline. With the kind of eating frenzy that had overcome her over the last few days, she half expected to have ballooned beyond all logic; but it fit her 132-pound frame as perfectly as it had the day she’d bought it. She brushed her short cap of hair, smoothing it down carefully and wrangling it into its pixie shape with holding gel.

Makeup? A little mascara, maybe, and a warm shade of lipstick. Enough to look dressed rather than provocative. Not enough to look vain or self-absorbed. Her pumps were all business and no flash, but she drew the line at giving up her hand-tooled Spanish leather handbag. After all, a girl has to have something to bolster her confidence when she went to seek out a very mean and dangerous fire-breathing dragon.

Kendra stood staring up at the sixteenth floor of the Farrar-Chase building. It was lunchtime, and Blackburn Boulevard was humming like a beehive. The bank of four glass revolving doors at the top of a short flight of stairs were practically whirling as workers spilled out of the building and down onto the sidewalk. Even on this overcast, slightly windy spring day, they were cheerful, chatting in their pairs and threesomes.

The determination that had fueled her thus far abandoned her at the foot of the stairs. Could she really do it? Could she walk past all those desks and cubicles, feel the burning stares at her back, hear the hushed conversations, and know they were about her? And that glass office, Shel’s eye in the sky. Speaking to Hammond in there again would leave her naked. Stripped.

The doors spun again—and out walked chatterbox Iris. Fluffy as a lemon meringue, chubby legs having difficulty with the stairs. Smiling and laughing with Jennifer from procurement.

Panic! Kendra darted back to the curb, squeezing herself between a hotdog cart and the newsstand where she always bought her papers. The newsstand owner gave her a funny look, but didn’t comment.

If she couldn’t go in there, she’d have to come up with an alternative battle plan.

An ambush was her next best bet; the man had got to come out sometime. Bachelor style, he never brown-bagged his lunch and never ate in his office. He prowled the restaurants within a block or two of here, a habit everyone in Wanderlust had grown accustomed to. She could only hope he kept up his pattern today.

But, as had been the trend these days, she was long on hope but short on luck. She watched other employees leave and return, watched Iris and Jennifer saunter back in, and still no sign of Hammond. Round about one thirty, it began to rain. And why not?

She was glad for her camel coat, and even more glad the newsstand owner didn’t seem to mind her huddling under his narrow eave for what little shelter it afforded her. Was the man ever going to come out to eat?

Then, in one of those uncanny moments where everything seemed to have been choreographed by someone with a flair for the dramatic and a deeply ingrained sense of irony, the door on the far right spun again. Out strode Trey Hammond, larger than life and twice as striking. He descended the stairs like a huge ticked-off puma. Long legs eating up the sidewalk, mackintosh open down the front, coattails unfurling in the slight breeze, as though he didn’t care if he got wet. He was limber, graceful, and filled with purpose. Unbelievable, Kendra thought, he even walked like he was on slowed-down film. The only thing missing from the scene was Miriam Makeba on the sound track, warbling the refrain from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

His brows were drawn in an expression that was either pensive or irritated. Her money was on the latter.

Just before he passed the newsstand, she blocked his path. “Mr. Hammond.” Her voice hadn’t betrayed her. Good.

The irritation was replaced by surprise. It took several seconds for him to get over the shock and speak. “You’re aware, of course, that stalking is a crime.”

Ha ha. Funny. She clarified for his benefit. “I’m not stalking you. I was waiting for you.”

“But I’ve told you I don’t want to speak to you. Since I don’t desire your company, doesn’t your persistence constitute stalking?”

She was tired, hadn’t slept for three nights, and her glycemic load was through the roof. She tried to be calm and explain her position as best she could. “Look, Mr. Hammond, all I want is two minutes of your time.”

“Why?”

He really did make her feel like she was in the presence of a huge feline. Even standing still, he was thrumming with pent-up energy. His solid, powerful body dwarfed hers, and his eyes held her in thrall. Cats were known to mesmerize their prey with a stare, weren’t they? She almost forgot what she was about to say.

“I want you to know how sorry I am.” Ah, yes, that was it.

“You’ve already said as much.”

“And you need to know I’m not a bad person. I’m not a thief.”

Unblinking, he still had her pinned. “Miss Forrest, I think we’ve gone over this ground already, and frankly, I’m a little tired of it. I didn’t brand you a thief. You did yourself that disservice.”

That was when the wall of fatigue caved in. It was the wrong time, and definitely the wrong place, but walls had a habit of doing that. And on the way down, it crushed every shred of self-esteem she had left. Horror of horrors, her eyes were burning and her cheeks were wet, and the moisture was a whole lot warmer than the rain. She put her hand up to hide the evidence of her weakness, but it was too late.

Hammond knew tears from rain, and wasn’t impressed. “Oh, please. Spare me the theatrics.”

“What?”

“I know exactly how women like you operate. What you can’t achieve by stealth you achieve by guile. Did you think that leaving your couture outfits and five-hundred-dollar shoes home would impress me with your humility? Did you think that turning on the waterworks would soften me up? For what? What d’you want from me?”

She held her hands out, empty, pleading. “Your understanding.”

“Not interested.”

“Your forgiveness, then.”

“Not my department. Refer to my previous statement about visiting a priest.” He fished in his pocket, and she had the ludicrous feeling he was going to subject her to the humiliation of offering her a few coins, bus fare, maybe, and suggesting she get the heck out of his face. But he withdrew a folded, pale blue kerchief and handed it to her. She stared at it in wonderment. Were there really still men who carried those around?

“Mop yourself up,” he advised her. “You’re making a scene in front of my business.”

The gall of him! “You don’t own the whole of Farrar-Chase, you know. It was here long before you rode in on your hoss and tried to take over. It’ll be here long after you’re gone on your way. There’re at least twenty travel, decorating, new media and marketing businesses in there.”

“Yes, and one of them is mine. You can keep the hankie.” He spun around and walked off.

She did as she was told, scrubbing at her face to remove the tears and the streaks of makeup they’d left, catching the newsstand owner out of the corner of her eye and wondering how much of their conversation he’d heard. The fine linen, rubbed hard into her skin, abraded away her despair, her humiliation and her pain. Then there was only one emotion left. Pure, home-grown, unadulterated, polyunsaturated rage. It was all she needed.

Hammond was walking so fast she could barely keep up, but sheer pig-headedness made sure she did. Two blocks down, he turned into the Blarney Stone, a pseudo-Irish steakhouse she’d been to once or twice. She followed at a distance. He never so much as looked back.

She made it inside a minute and a half after he did. It was good to be out of the drizzle. She could see Hammond seating himself. A waitress was upon him in a single shake of a lamb’s tail. He ordered with a smile that was happily returned by the young lady, who was leaning in toward him a little more closely than necessary. As she walked away, the waitress flipped her hair and gave her shamrock-dotted hips a little swivel. Ick.

Look at him. Sitting there so smug and self-satisfied. Flirting with the waitress. Loading up on breadsticks, as if everything was all hunky-dory, now that he’d given the least likely candidate for Employee of the Month the slip. The more she thought about it, the more she paced. Getting madder and madder.

On her dozenth about-face on the lobby carpet, she found herself toe-to-toe with the hostess, who was all kitted up as a leprechaun. Central casting would have been impressed. The young woman was four feet ten and festooned with stick pins, smiley-face stickers, shamrock key chains, small, fuzzy animals and clunky brass whatnots. She looked like a walking trinket cart at the county fair. “Miss? Will you be dining?”

The apparition jolted Kendra out of her internal rant. She was suddenly aware she must look quite bizarre, half-soaked, whirling back and forth in the lobby, muttering as though she had imaginary friends. She felt her face heat up. “Um, not right now.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“You could say that.” Involuntarily, she glanced across at Hammond. He was poring over the menu. Still completely relaxed, damn his eyes.

“Then would you like to have a drink at the bar while you wait?”

A drink? In here? She probably didn’t have enough change in her purse to buy herself a soda. She shook her head. The leprechaun gave her a strange look and left.

Missy with the swively hips brought Hammond a Bloody Mary. Again, the goo-goo smile as she set it down, and again his overwhelming charm as he took it. All this with the ease of a man who’d rid himself of a minor irritant, like he’d brushed a beetle off his coat sleeve. Like she, Kendra, was nothing. No.

Next thing she knew, she was standing at his table. The expression on his face was so precious, if she could have bottled it, she’d have made a million bucks. She took advantage of his momentary speechlessness to lay into him. “Listen up, Hammond. I’ve had enough of you and your attitude. What makes you think you can sit in judgment of me? Where d’you get off acting so superior?”

“Where do you get off hovering over my table while I’m having a drink? For God’s sake, Forrest, if you’re going to ruin my lunch, at least do it sitting down. You’re making me dizzy.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want you to listen. I’ve listened to every nasty thing you’ve had to say to me—”

“Was any of it undeserved?”

“Be quiet. It’s my turn to speak. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t need your forgiveness, because you’re a rude, arrogant, self-assured bastard, so coming from you, it wouldn’t be worth a damn. But I do expect you to respect me. Don’t you ever, ever turn and walk away from me again. Don’t you ever call me a thief again. I did something stupid, and I admit it. And I don’t have the money right now, but I’ll get it to you if I have to work my fingers to the bone….” She waited for the sneer. She waited for the derisive laughter. None came.

“Okay.”

Okay? That was it? It took the wind out of her sails. What next? They stared each other down like two cats balanced on an alley wall. His stare was thoughtful, contemplative, making her feel like a beetle under a magnifying glass. She hoped he wasn’t directing the sun’s rays at her.

She couldn’t stop him from looking at her, but while he was doing it, darned if she wasn’t going to take the opportunity to size him up, too. He must have known how good looking he was. Why else would he have chosen a suit that was the exact charcoal gray as his eyes? Why else would he have worn a shirt the color of a glacier’s heart, and a tie of garnet that set those coals alight? His silver-rimmed glasses framed his face so well, he could have stepped down from a poster in an optometrist’s window. No wonder he knew the brands she was wearing. He was a bit of a metrosexual himself. And they said women were vain.

His almond-hued skin was clear and bright. His soft, slightly wavy hair was closely cut and razor-marked. Even so, it rippled from forehead to nape. His finely shaped nose was indisputable evidence of mixed blood. His lips…she didn’t want to go there. As she watched him, and as he watched her, something in his face changed. She could have sworn that the deadly steel of his eyes warmed to a deeper shade. Maybe it was that shirt again. He gestured at the chair opposite him, the one she was clutching. “Sit down. Please.”

She sat, discovering that she was heaving with effort.

“Feel better?”

“What?”

“That was a whole lot better than the crying jag back there, wasn’t it?” Unbelievably, he was smiling. Kindly.

She did a quick mental inventory and discovered that she did feel better, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not to him. So she didn’t say anything.

He didn’t seem perturbed. “What’re you drinking?” he asked, lifting his Bloody Mary as a visual example. She realized she was dying of thirst. Again, there was the problem of her empty pocketbook. That, and the laughable idea of drinking with the enemy. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. Storming all the way over here and reeling off a list of my character flaws to the entire restaurant must have made you thirsty. What’s your poison?” He signaled the waitress without waiting for an answer.

“Water, please.”

“I’m buying.” He didn’t say it in a nasty way.

Perceptive. But she insisted. “I like water just fine.”

He sighed. “Have it your way. Still or sparkling?”

“Tap.”

Looking amused by her stubbornness, he turned to Miss Shamrock and said, “The lady will have a glass of water. Tap.”

Witnessing Kendra’s tirade hadn’t diminished the redhead’s effusiveness toward Hammond, but it did earn her a scathing look, of which she got a double helping when the woman returned with a tall, frosty glass of water. She accepted it gratefully and took a long, deep drink.

He handed over the glossy, emerald-green menu. “The mutton here is amazing.”

Was he for real? He couldn’t be inviting her to have lunch. He didn’t even like her, never mind respect her. Was this masochism or just another way to make her squirm? “I’m fine, thank you.” But the smell of the hot food all around tugged at her will, hooking her by the nose like a finger-shaped wraith straight out of Saturday-morning cartoons. Food, her personal demon, always beckoned when she was nervous or upset. Right now, she was both.

“Dieting?”

“No.” Her two-day binge aside, there was no way she’d ever put herself into the position where she’d have to do that again. Not after she’d done so much hard work. She shook her head to underscore her denial.

He accepted it without question, and offered, almost irrelevantly, “My wife used to diet all the time.” That was when she noticed the simple, ridged gold band on his wedding finger. He was married? Someone put up with him 24/7? She hadn’t heard anything about that in all the breathless conversations about him and his indisputable gorgeousness back at the office. She was sure her colleagues would have noticed a ring. Maybe she was just odd woman out. Or hard of hearing.

He cajoled. “Come on, you’ve got to be hungry. It’s way past lunchtime.”

Food. Food! She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

Patiently, he explained, “Hey, I’m starving, but my mother didn’t raise me to eat in front of a lady, if she isn’t having anything. So please, it’s almost two o’ clock, and I haven’t had breakfast. Pick something, or I’ll do it for you.”

All she could do was sit in dumb incredulity.

He took that as a cue to proceed, and summoned the redhead again. “We’ll both be having the mutton.”

She spent the rest of the meal struggling with the disorienting sensation that she was having lunch with Trey Hammond’s good twin, or at least the pod person that had replaced him somewhere between the steps of Farrar-Chase and the front door of the Blarney Stone. Her lunch companion was urbane, almost friendly, making small talk about the travel business and asking her opinion about a deal he was exploring. She answered where applicable, hearing her own voice as though it were coming from underwater, but couldn’t scrape up the gumption to initiate a train of conversation herself. The food was delicious, a comforting place to hide. She drew the line at his offer of desert, so they sipped Irish coffee to round off the meal.

He steered the conversation around to her personal life with the suddenness of a rally driver at the Paris-Brest-Paris. “Are you from around here?”

“Where?” she asked stupidly, irrationally looking about the room.

He laughed. The sound was foreign to her ears. “I wasn’t enquiring as to whether you were born under the salad bar. I meant, are you originally from Santa Amata?”

“No, not exactly. I’ve only been here for a couple years or so. I’m originally from Gary.”

“Indiana?”

“Yeah.” She paused to allow him to insert the obligatory Michael Jackson reference, but was disappointed.

“And what brought you out east?”

What, indeed. Getting into too many details about her past would have meant digging up the flat-footed, ugly duckling self she’d tried to escape, and Kendra was never keen on that. She was deliberately vague. “I guess I needed a fresh start.” And she’d made one, a good one, until she’d gone and messed it up.

“So you went to college, stayed in Indiana for a few years, then moved here. And you worked with Shel ever since?”

“Yes. He hired me because of my travel-and-tourism and hospitality courses. This was my first real full-time job. Not much tourism in Gary. I felt like I found my niche here.”

“Wet behind the ears, huh?” The irony couldn’t possibly be lost on him, but he chose not to rub it in. Instead, he finished his coffee and set the spoon in the saucer, next to the cup. He folded his hands on the table, and tilted his head to one side, examining her contemplatively. Calculatingly. Slowly.

Lord, she wondered, what next?

Finally he spoke. “Did you mean what you said?”

“What part?”

“The part about working your fingers to the bone to pay me back.”

“I did. I’m going to pay you back, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know how I’ll get a job in the travel business, considering how small the community is. They must all be talking about me. And it’s not like….” She looked at him, then glanced away. “It’s not like I’m leaving Wanderlust with a glowing recommendation.” In spite of the grimness of the situation, she laughed ruefully. “So I guess I need a whole new career.”

“People have short memories. It’ll blow over faster than you think.”

Easy for him to say. “It might, or it might not. But I will pay you back. I promise.”

Tired from the events of the day, he took a deep breath, as if he were drawing on inner courage to say what he had to say next. “You could pay it off in kind.”

“ What? ” For a second, she wondered if she could get away with throwing her glass in his face. He’d been forbearing so far about siccing the police on her. Would such a gesture of feminine outrage end with her in the slammer?

The shock on her face brought a short, amused laugh to his lips. “Don’t jump to conclusions. That wasn’t what I meant, but I’m flattered you think I’m capable of such a sophomoric idea. I was more in the market for a housekeeper.”

A housekeeper? “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve been living out of a hotel for the past few months, and I’ve only just settled on a house. I’ve had my stuff delivered but it’s still all in boxes, and the place’s gonna need a little elbow grease….”

“You want me to unpack your stuff and clean your house?”

“Pretty much. It’d go a whole lot faster if two people tackle the job.”

“Two people? What about your wife? Isn’t she helping?”

“My wife is dead.” Briefly, the chill in his eyes was back, but it was gone so fast, she could have imagined it.

Oops . I’ll have a side of fries with that mouthful of my own foot, please. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She contemplated his incredible offer. Was he tripping, or was she? On what planet could such a proposition possibly make sense?

He leaned forward, looking at her levelly, challenging. “Too demeaning for you? Afraid to get scuff marks on your Manolos?”

He couldn’t resist that, could he? “You leave my wardrobe out of this.”

He lifted his shoulders. “I was just thinking we could help each other out. You need money, and I need help. I certainly don’t condone what you did, but I’m in need. I’d pay eighteen dollars an hour, that’s above standard rates around here, I’m told. You could get half in cash, and the other half I put toward your debt to me.” He added, “When you get another job, you can feel free to take it up. Then we can make alternative arrangements for repayment. That is, if you really are serious about paying me back.”

She lobbed his challenge right back into his court. “Aren’t you afraid I’d swipe your spare change off your nightstand?”

“I doubt even you would stoop that low.”

Even her? Oh, he was a bastard. But she couldn’t see any other way out of her predicament, and he knew it. He knew it so well, he wasn’t even making any further case for himself. He just sat there, quiet, allowing her to wrestle with her own misgivings and come to the realization that he had her over a barrel.

Times might be tough, but she still had her dignity. She’d show him. She wasn’t afraid of a little work, and she certainly wasn’t as self-absorbed and high-maintenance as he thought she was. Plus, who knew how long it would take her to find another job. So, he wanted to make her pay for her sins in sweat? Bring it on.

“When do I start?”

He pulled out a thin, stylish pen from his breast pocket, scribbled an address and number on a paper napkin, and pushed it to her. “We’ll start on Saturday. I’ll be home all day, so I can show you around. Eight o’ clock. Don’t be late.”

As if.