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

tell you about Darcy and the agency. I just didn’t want you to see me as Nolan. I would never put my hands on you or anyone else the way that he did. You know that, right?” I ask, hoping that the things I’ve shared with her are enough to make her see the truth. Just let it be enough for now and then I will win her back, win her trust, make it right, show her who I am and how much I care.

Seconds feel like hours.

“I want to believe you aren’t,” she whispers on a sob. “But I just don’t know.”

“Okay, okay,” I barter, “will you continue seeing me? We don’t have to have sex, or touch even. Just dinner at my house a few times a week. We can continue to get to know each other. We’ll start where we should’ve started in the first place. And then after a while, you can decide.”

She sniffles and then she speaks the most beautiful word I could hear, even in its reluctance. “Okay.”

“I’m not like Nolan,” I say it again because it feels like I can’t say it enough. “I like you. A lot. And you make me see the horizon, not the path behind me.”

Money or no money, the same fear lies in us all, somewhere. Mine just happened to be at the surface, flaring brightly. I’d been in love before and left before and though I was well past those emotions, I never forgot how it felt. I wanted to be with Britta, but the idea that perhaps she didn’t or wouldn’t share those feelings—it kept those three words at bay. For now.

“I don’t ever want you to think I want you for your money,” her tone is sharp, and it tells me she’s thought about me, about us. My heart settles after a flip and breathe my first relaxed breath in a week. It’s not all worked out. It’s not what I want it to be, not yet. But we’re closer than we were.

“Come for dinner tomorrow,” I say, “promise me dinner tomorrow. We’ll start there.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and its slight but there is excitement in her voice.

Progress.

19

Brooks

I don’t know if dating has changed that much or if I’m just not used to dating someone I actually give a shit about, but dating Britta is—at the risk of sounding like a twelve-year-old girl writing in a diary—magical. The days we’ve chosen to see one another are Wednesdays and Fridays, and I get to see her Tuesdays while she’s at the house. I despise her cleaning my house, I want her off my service—hell, I want her to quit that fucking job altogether. But we are moving in baby steps, to make up for the quick and somewhat disastrous start.

She insists on bringing groceries on Wednesday evening and we cook together, swaying gently to the crooning of Frank Sinatra while we talk about nothing and everything. We share our favorite authors and favorite books; she shows me a whole world of music in the form of stripped-down acoustic covers. I introduce her to the world of Lionel Richie, we slow dance together in the kitchen to classical music, and I get lost in her presence when she tells me she’s going to teach me to make French macarons from scratch, her passion gleaming in her wide green eyes.

“What’s the most important part?” I asked her, sifting almond flour over a bowl as she directed me.

“Macarons have a lot of important parts. That’s why I started with them, back when I was younger. I knew if I could perfect a macaron, I could do anything else,” she smiled and dug around in my drawers and cabinets, a strand of blonde hair dancing in front of her face.

“What are you looking for?” I asked, enjoying watching her blow the hair away from her face, her lips going pouty and edible as she did.

“Would you know where it is, even if I tell you what it is?” she smiled and continued digging, knowing full well that I don’t make use of all the things in my kitchen. The microwave and the fridge but everything else may as well not exist.

She pulled a food scale out from a cabinet and held it up like baby Simba, her eyes gleaming up at it.

“Important?”

I smiled, loving how my heart thudded wildly as I watched her move naturally around my kitchen.

“Very,” she set it down on the counter and began scooping the almond flour from my bowl, pouring it into the bowl on the scale. “You did good. This is nearly 100 grams. You always have to use a food scale because a cup isn’t 100 grams,” she shook her head staunchly as she measured and sifted sugar in her bowl. “Now we sift them together.”

We’d agreed to keep our hands to ourself while we dated and I’d been okay with restricting myself with her around only to abuse myself utterly and desperately later. But with her sweet smell of cake and body heat under my nose, the light inside her coming alive doing what she loves and how comfortable she is in my home with me… it was a real fucking test of willpower. And a stark contrast to how I felt with Darcy. I had to force myself to fuck her, so I wouldn’t be a horny recluse. And if she wanted to cook or use my home for any reason, it made me itch. My skin would literally crawl listening to her bare feet slap against the marble tile as she touched my things and existed in my space. With Britta, I never wanted her to feel like it wasn’t hers too and I never wanted her to leave, either.

“The eggs need to be room temperature, too. Aging them,” she nudged a small elbow into my waist and while it was just a tiny jab, it electrified me. “You don’t seem to age too much so