His Young Maid: A Forbidden Boss Age Gap Romance Daisy Jane (love letters to the dead TXT) 📖

my head. I slide into my work polo and grab my smock and step out of the bathroom to see Melody there, in the doorway, tapping her foot.

“We gotta go, girl,” she says, hand on hip, gum popping in her cheek.

“Okay, okay,” I grab a banana from the counter, throw my bag over my shoulder and pull the door closed behind us. Not too bad for less than twenty minutes, I think to myself, a private smile on my lips as I walk down the stairs behind her.

Once we’re settled in the car and headed towards that hills that linger just outside the city, Melody brings him up. We made it exactly three minutes.

“You know, I’m glad you were at the apartment this morning,” her tone is cautious and low, as if she thinks the ice could be thin.

“Why?” I hate playing dumb, but I do it anyway.

She selects her words carefully. “I thought maybe you’d go to his house last night, you know, I could tell he wanted you and I thought he’d try to, you know, rescue you.”

“And you’d be against that, had he rescued me?” I ask plainly, not crabby. Okay, maybe a little crabby.

She exhales a laugh, a cross between sarcasm and surprise. “I’m not against you being rescued, girl. I’m not anti-fairy tale!” she glances in the rear view, her hoop earring swaying gently back and forth. “But I want a good guy to rescue you, not just a convenient one.”

“Can’t convenient also be nice?” I ask, silently refuting the idea that just because Brooks happens to be under my nose doesn’t mean we aren’t good together. We are. We are very good together, despite the years (and everything else) between us.

“Sure,” she answers too loud and too quick, and my stomach rolls over at the breath she sucks in after she speaks. “But,” she begins and I knew there’d be a but. There’s always a fucking but.

“But with a good guy. I mean, Brooks Bennett is probably no different than the Nolan guy. I mean, he slept with a prostitute for like, months,” she whispered to me across the cab of her car, despite the two of us being alone.

“He what?” I control the shock in my tone, the surprise that soars through my veins and makes my fists curl closed. My heart twists in illogical jealousy and anger.

“Yeah, like six months ago I was cleaning the second level. Mavis was downstairs,” she lets the wheel slip through her fingers, telling the story at a leisurely pace, not knowing her leisure is killing me, the anticipation of it all nearly crushing. “A woman came out of the master suite; she was like, really pretty. Anyway, she stopped in the hall and just started talking to me about my job. Asked me how many houses I cleaned, stuff like that. I didn’t think much of it. Well, later on, Mavis told me that Mr. Bennett pays a service for her. I guess she slept with him twice a week. Mavis said he’d done it for months.”

I am silent, mouth agape, staring blankly through the windshield at precisely nothing, my mind a marathon, zig-zagging everywhere. Brooks had paid a woman to sleep with him for months? He seemed so interested in getting to know me, he seemed to genuinely care—I really had begun thinking he liked me, and that maybe we’d work out.

Now, knowing he views women as items to be rented for his leisure, a ball of acid claws its way up my throat. I roll down my window, gasping desperately at the fresh air, trying to will away the sudden feeling of sickness.

“Now why a man like that needs to pay to get laid, I don’t know but it doesn’t sit well with me,” she trails off as she navigates a heavy patch of traffic. We come to a stop and we’re not far from our first house. She looks across the car at me, my face drained of color, my eyes fighting tears.

“Oh Britta,” her tone is meant to soothe but it aggravates me, slapping me with condescension in my already tender state. “You didn’t fall for him, did you? Don’t let him coming to the apartment fool you, girl. He just wants to have sex with you. Guys like that, they don’t really care about women. Not women like us, at least.”

Rage grabs hold and I find myself defending Brooks and what we’ve built in just a handful of days, rather than siding with my cousin, my only friend, a person who I know well and love so much.

“Do you want people to make their mind up about you based on your relationship with Donny?” it comes out of me cruel, sharp edged and cold. “You should think about that when you disparage Mr. Bennett like that. We don’t know what his relationship with her was like.”

She snaps back immediately, on her toes, like she’s thought about this exact scenario.

“What else do I need to know other that he paid to fuck her? He paid to have her pretend to care about him, for months. He paid her to do what he says, for months. Think about a person that does something like that.”

I don’t want to think about it. All I can think about is the fact that he didn’t tell me. He had a handful of great opportunities yet he didn’t tell me. Hell, I am a maid after all. He doesn’t take me serious or us seriously because I am no one and there is no us.

“He’s the reason we still have jobs, you know. Nolan could’ve fired us.”

It’s all I can think to say to defend him. I lean my head against the window, away from her, my stomach sick and my heart torn straight down the middle. She inhales and steadies her voice, as if she’s about to tell me something that enrages her to explain. It annoys me and I remain silent.

“That’s the thing right there,