Page 2 of Maid for My Billionaire Boss
We reached the end of the upstairs hall, where the natural lighting dimmed, and the ceiling caved into a low slant, creating a little nook. A tiny wooden door—the size of half of a person—perched out of the nook. It looked so quaint that it grabbed my attention. Having done a thorough walkthrough of each room up until this point, where she took great care to tell me each thing I was—and was not—allowed to touch, I figured she’d take me inside the tiny room. However, she breezed right past it. Not wanting to overlook something that would be my responsibility, I slowed my steps. “Do I need to take care of this room?”
She turned around in what appeared to be a slow-motion setting. “Oh, that’s the attic.” I could tell she was forcing a breezy tone, but her eyes bore a tinge of worry, betraying her. “Actually, that room is private.”
My mind flashed to beautiful maidens locked in a round tower and secret children on a diet of rat-poisoned cookies. I was about to scoff at myself for being foolish and blame the secrecy of the attic on it being full of disorganized junk she didn’t want me to see, but just as I smiled at her, ready to agree, her eyes narrowed, and her face paled.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, concerned.
“Most definitely.” Her voice was too firm to be believable and her eyes still steadied on the little door before finally whisking them back to me. “I’m sure we won’t have any issues with anything, will we?”
“I-I, ah, no. Don’t think so . . .” My voice trailed off as I had a budding seed of anxiety over what I had gotten into.
Two
Atalie
Iwasn’tnervous,perse, about my first day of work, even though I had no professional experience with keeping a house clean, other than my own. The entirety of my training could be credited to the many hours of reruns I had watched ofThe Brady Bunch. I was a huge Alice fan.She never had a hair out of place, her clothes were never wrinkled, and the kitchen was always spotless. With her as my role model, I tied my long ebony hair back into a low ponytail and found a cute black house dress to slip on for fun. Well, if I were being honest, I would have to call it a smock because I had used it for our preschool painting classes at the art studio. Since I no longer had a need—nor the means—to teach little humans, I found it frugal to rebrand my wardrobe.
I was on my third lap of nervously pacing the living room—well, not nervously, more like methodically—when Josiah peeked his head out from behind his bedroom door, fully dressed for the day. I called up to him while he stood at the top of the stairs. “How’d you sleep?”
He lifted his shoulders, telling me he hadn’t. Having never been much of a deep sleeper to begin with, he’d always had a brain like a motor, one that only accelerated faster with his thoughts the moment he lay down. His father had always teasingly blamed it on me, saying he took after me. Ever since the move, his constant thoughts seemed to ebb even faster. Recently though, he had learned to keep them hushed—which in a way was a relief because I didn’t have to listen to his unfiltered ramblings—but it often left him silent, where he'd stare blankly and shrug at me.
“Are you hungry?”
He descended the stairs, but another shrug told me it was too early for him to eat. I was sort of feeling the same. Well, too early and too nervous to eat. His cryptic expression left me confused. Since he obviously didn’t want to eat, I didn’t know what to do with the extra time. I funneled my excess energy into finger snaps I popped as I swung my hands in front of me like a tone-deaf conductor who couldn’t find the beat. A thought popped into my head: “Let’s just leave now. We can take the long way and walk along the beach.”
His eyes widened, glittering back at me and I took that as a yes. A moment later we were out the door, headed east along the shoreline. It hadn’t been my decision to live on the beach, but since we were here in the house my husband grew up in, I loved it immensely. I found the ambiance of the waves, along with the rhythmic movement, to be intoxicating and truly one of the only things able to drown out my sensory overload.Serenity.
Josiah skirted along the water’s edge, fearlessly letting the tide roll over his bare toes as he carried his sandals in one hand and picked up rocks with his other. Being a hobbyist in skipping stones, he had honed an eye for finding the flattest rocks. He tossed them back over the early dawn reflective water, counting the bounces out loud, and cheered fiercely when they went over four jumps.
Since it wasn’t too far out of the way, we took our time crossing the beach. I drank in the salty air, feeling it tranquilize the quibbles in my gut. By the time we reached the house, the sun was cresting the street enough to tell the lampposts it was their turn to sleep. I let us into the grand front entrance with the key Mrs. Michael had given me. One look at the empty and too-cool-to-be-comfortable foyer sent a new wave of jitters to meet my fingers. “New adventure day one,” I whispered.
Josiah followed me as I moved to the kitchen. My shoulder blades stiffen as the marble floors looked cold and uninviting and I made a conscious decision to keep my Alice-inspired sneakers on. Josiah matched my tone when he asked, “Why are we whispering?”
My eyes skirted down the hall, but I held my head steady, like a spy. “It feels like a secret.”
“Mom, you’re being weird.”
I cracked a smile and reached my hand out to ruffle the top of his sea-crusted hair. “Is that your final assessment, wise Mr. Chewbacca?”
“First of all, it’s not mister. Let’s get that straight. Plus, Chewbacca isn’t the smart one.” He rolled his eyes while he headed to the kitchen table. I took a second to reflect on my Star Wars knowledge as it wasn’t something I had grown up with, but a recent affection of Josiah’s that I was happy to indulge in. Apparently, I needed to watch it again. “It was Yoda, right?” I spoke to his back. “Chewbacca is the hairy one.”
“It’s okay if it’s over your head.” He pointed to the high-top table in the kitchen. “Can I set my stuff here?” Without waiting for a reply, he let the tie-dyed backpack he had made with his dad slide down his bony shoulder and he sat at one of the high-back stools.
“I think that’s a perfect spot,” I called as I stuck my head into the broom closet. I scanned the domestic tools in front of me, getting acquainted with the layout. Before I lost my nerve and ran home, I grabbed a hand duster and secured the Hoover in my other hand, dragging it along behind me. Then I called back, “Mrs. Michael wanted me to start in the office, so I’ll be down the hall.” I motioned with my duster like I was directing an airplane, but Josiah was already face down in his homework, missing my grandiose gestures entirely.
Padding down the hall, I slowed my stride before I got to the office to listen for human activity. The door to Mr. Michael’s office was ajar and the lights were on like he had recently been there. I timidly stuck my head in and found it empty, so I took that as my invitation to enter.
I had no idea if there was a proper way to go about maiding around. The empty bookshelf seemed like a good place to start. I used my duster to mop up the accumulated dirt. It only took a moment, and I felt a tickle in my nose, but I flexed my face a few times to wiggle it out.This isn’t so bad.
I moved to the next shelf and picked up my pace as I swept my duster along the mahogany wood. “Ol’ Alice don’t have nothin’ on me,” I mused out loud in my latest impression of a New Jersey character accent. In no time, I had cleared the shelves, which seeded my confidence and I set my eyes on the desk.
It was one of those huge obtrusive ones you see in the movies when they show rich people in their offices. I found it comical he would need a desk that large because the only thing on it was an open laptop centered in front of his chair and a reusable coffee mug. It was rather boring when I assessed it. It made me think back to my husband’s desk which I had cleaned many times. Having been an artist, his desk was always messy and vibrant—full of ideas . . . and life. No matter how hard I tried to clean it, it would never wipe clean as the remnants of his latest masterpiece would stain like a blueprint.
Visualizing the montage I had loved, my eyelids drifted down. I knew better than to dwell on it though, because it would bring the sting in my eyes. I moved quickly—too quickly toward the desk and my legs became entangled with a cord. My eyes immediately darted to the floor, but then alerted back to the desk when the laptop rocketed across it, hooking the coffee mug in its cord. The cup spilled like July wildfires all over the keyboard before it finally claimed the computer as a hostage and tossed it screen down on the floor!
My hand slapped my mouth, suppressing a scream! Still entangled in the cord, I didn’t care as I panicked and reached to rescue the computer, praying it would be okay. Then I realized I had been foolish for not caring I was still tangled because I tripped again! If I had been an oaf at the top of this sequence, suddenly I was a ninja and I caught myself by dropping to my knee, and that was swift, so I smiled. Until I heard the vacuum switch on which perplexed me . . . I felt tugging on my ponytail—it was light at first but grew in intensity. Turning cautiously—I freaked! The noise I had credited to the vacuum—wasn’t the vacuum at all! The end of my ponytail was disappearing into a nearby paper shredder. I yanked back, trying to free my hair, but it hurt as it only pulled me closer, chewing my hair—my perfect hair that took me four years to grow this long. I cried out, “Help!” with every puff of air I could muster out of my lungs as the lifeline of hair between me and the beast of the shredder was getting shorter.
This shredder was not an average shredder! It seemed to be on some sort of a workout program because it motored like a speedboat. It chewed, revving even louder, taunting me by drowning out my cries for help. I rapidly switched the settings button, but no matter what I did, the thing wouldn’t reverse. I must have jammed it or maybe it was possessed. I had a revelation.Unplug it!I reached around the girth of the basket and gripped it firmly. Not wasting a second to find the cord, I yanked until I felt a release—a sweet release, quieting the motor.
