Sleeping With the Help (Toyboy Lover) (4 page)

“She's not coming back to work any time soon, if that's what you're wondering,” he jumped in, almost before I'd finished my sentence.

“That wasn't what I was getting at, actually,” I said hotly, taken aback. “Despite what you may think of me I do care about her.”

“Of course you do.” He laughed bitterly. “Who else will make your breakfast three days a week? Who'll clean your house for you?”

“You're doing a pretty good job of that,” I snapped. Zing! My words bit into him; I could see their effect as his smile faded, replaced with ire.

He shook his head before reaching into the refrigerator and taking out two handfuls of fruit: apples, plums, apricots, bananas, peaches and kiwi.

“You think that's all we're good for? Us Spics!”

My mouth was wide with outrage. This was beginning to become a theme – him rendering me speechless with his caustic wit and dry humor. If I wasn't careful the wind would change and I'd be stuck that way, looking like a moron with my mouth open.

“I don't...” I began, but couldn't finish. Were there any words to address him after his racist comment? And would it even matter what I said? He'd already made up his mind about me. The bigoted WASP who thought Latinos were beneath me. Would there ever be a way to sway such an opinion?

“Don't get used to this. When Iraq comes calling, I'm outta here.”

“Iraq? You enlisted?” I asked, startled. I certainly hadn't expected that, or for him to give me anything personal.

He shot me an unreadable look before he started chopping the fruits. His grip on the knife was firm. I watched the muscles in his arm contract as he took methodical, sensual plunges into the unsuspecting fruit, sliding the instrument slowly, and with practiced skill, deeper into his victims – my breakfast. From my position across the island I wiped sweat from my brow, a deathly heat suddenly flushing me. His crisp white Tee so tight it looked like it was stuck on with glue. He moved onto the next fruit, an innocent peach. He showed it no mercy. When he raised his eyes to look at me once more, a glimmer of satisfaction twinkled in those dark pupils. He was enjoying his show more than I was.

“Yeah, Iraq. Surprised I'd want to do something other than cater to you?”

“No, I'm surprised you think that's the answer.
Your
answer.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

The knife went down. I risked a quick, nervous glance at it laying there, then fixed my eyes on him again.

“I thought young boys had wised up about joining the army.”

“You don't know anything about it, lady!” he snapped. He picked up the knife again, shot me one final warning look then returned to chopping, only this time with much more aggression.

So, topics such as war and the army were off limits. Duly noted. Except, well, I came from a family where problems were aired and shared, whether you liked it or not. No topics were off limits. Thus, his silent insistence that I leave this one alone only made me more curious about it. I knew a great deal about the army, its inner workings and much of its laws – through practice – but I didn't know what his take on it was.

“What are you fighting for?”

His fire-filled eyes burned through me. “What?”

“I don't know what I'm talking about, so tell me. What are you fighting for?”

He opened his mouth to speak but from the way he faltered I suspected his train of thought had left him. That or his reasons, after some consideration, now sounded stupid to him.

After some time of me staring him down, he said, “My country. What else?”

“What about your country?”

“Freedom. Why the hell does it matter to you anyway?”

“I'm just making sure you've thought it all through, before you give life and limb. I have nothing against the army, I just think boys should enlist for the right reasons.”

“I'm going for the right reasons; I'm going for
my
reasons,” he said sternly, hitting a hand passionately to his chest.

“Okay, well I'm glad we got that settled.” It was my turn to grin, and I did so unashamedly, without attempting to hide it. I'd unsettled him, made him reconsider his position, if only for a moment. I could see it in his eyes, behind the anger and contempt for me. If I never achieved anything else for the rest of the day I would be content knowing that I'd gotten to him. He'd underestimated me, no doubt.

As I went to leave the room, to get ready for work, he spoke again, causing me to stop in the doorway. “You're right. Boys should know what they're getting into. But I'm not a boy anymore. I'm a man.” He'd already turned back to the fruit by the time I spun around to face him, and he didn't return his gaze to me, even though I was sure he could sense my presence still in the room. I drank him in as he worked diligently on my breakfast, looking so at ease in the middle of my large kitchen.

No,
he
was right. He wasn't a boy by any stretch of the imagination. His maturity rivaled most of the men I'd dated, even those many years older than me. But what did it matter either way? Boy or man, he was off limits...

I searched blindly for the shower knob, my eyes shut tight to keep the powerful downpour out. I twisted the knob, turning the water to nothing more than weak droplets. When I stepped out into my misty en suite bathroom, I reached for my towels, first wrapping my damp hair with the smaller of the two, then wandering into my room trying to wrap the second around my wet body.

I screamed when I saw Eduardo standing in my bedroom, overflowing laundry basket in his arms. He didn't even flinch, nor make to turn around to preserve my modesty.

I fumbled to wrap the towel around myself, to shield my nakedness from his stare, horrified.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” I demanded, clutching my towel securely, afraid it would slip off and expose me all over again.

“I thought that was obvious.” He still hadn't removed his eyes from me, hadn't cast them away out of decency. How much had he seen? It had only been a couple of seconds. Was that enough to get a full view?

“I don't want you doing my laundry,” I shouted petulantly. Flustered, I gripped the towel even tighter and turned my back to him.

“It's on the list.” A note of laughter coursed through his voice – I could hear it in every syllable. Was he laughing at me? Had he seen my unfortunate scar – the one on my right breast, that looked suspiciously like a scar from enlargement surgery, but was really attributed to an accident involving a fence when I was sixteen? My mind ran wild, conjuring up all kinds of reasons for his amusement, all involving my body. I worked out; four days a week in my home gym, and did a five mile run twice a week, without fail. I didn't have the body of a nineteen-year-old, of which I was sure he'd seen many, but I was toned.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?”

“I did knock. You didn't answer.”

“So inappropriate,” I mumbled, now spinning around to face him. “Didn't it cross your mind that I didn't answer because I wasn't in a state to do so?”

He shrugged, and I followed his gaze as it made its slow descent from my face right down to my bare, wet feet, standing in a puddle of water. The towel came to my knees and started at my chest; it concealed the most important parts, yet I still felt naked. To me it just wasn't enough of a cover. Beneath his eyes – his scrutinizing, wandering eyes that drank in everything I had to offer, took in my whole sordid display – I could have been wearing ten layers of clothing and still felt unclothed. That was what he did to me.

“You should probably just skip the laundry and move on to the next thing on the list,” I said, disgruntled.

He shrugged again, shook his head, laughed, then smoothly strutted from my room. I heard him whistle on his way, adding insult to the worst injury. Whatever advantage I'd had after our army conversation was now lost forever. He'd effortlessly taken the reins from my reluctant hands, reduced me to nothing. Because once you've seen someone naked all their power goes right out the window.

My office phone buzzed; the flashing orange light on the machine indicated that it was an internal call.

I pressed to retrieve. “What is it, Jake?” I asked my assistant.

“Victoria, I've got Mrs Doveman on the line.”

“Mrs who?”

“Mrs Hildred Doveman.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” I asked impatiently.

Silence. Then, “She's the CEO of Doveman Freight Services, the company that has the wrongful death class action suit against it.”

Ah, the Doveman case. I took my feet off the desk and stubbed out what was left of my cigarette. It tasted like crap, but somehow did the trick. I'd picked up a pack on my drive to work that morning. If any occasion called for a quick smoke it was being walked in on naked by your teenage housekeeper, who just so happened to be male. How fitting that Mrs Doveman would call me, today of all days, considering my predicament was not so unlike hers. Three of her employees died after working too many hours and operating heavy machinery. I was stuck with Lupita's cub because, if he was to be believed, I'd overworked her. So you see, Mrs Doveman and I were not so different. Only, I suspected none of her employees had ever walked in on her butt naked, water glistening off her withered seventy-year-old body, and proceeded to laugh about it as though they'd seen the body of a 9000-year-old mummy! No, that kind of shit only happened to me.

“Tell her I'm at lunch. And could you come in here for a minute?”

I opened my window wider, letting the smell of smoke and burning tobacco filter out quicker. Knowing Jake he'd have something preachy to say about it, and I wasn't in the mood to hear his sanctimonious musings.

He stepped in moments later, a five foot five boy in his early twenties, who'd yet to lose his baby fat, but had made it his life's work to try, even though, at his age it had gotten to a point where it could no longer be called baby fat – just regular fat. He was always on some kind of diet, none of which worked. He'd never tried simple exercise, however...

“She thinks you're giving her the run around.” He had this constant seriousness about him, such a stickler for the rules, that it was always hard to imagine he had a life outside the office.

“I
am
giving her the run around. I'm good, but not that good. She needs a miracle, or a judge she can bribe.”

He didn't even laugh. What was it with young people today? Did anyone laugh anymore?

“You wanted to see me?” Straight to business.

“Tell me something,” I started, reclining in my leather chair. “Is it uncommon for guys your age to have relations with older women?”

A mortified expression took over Jake's pudgy face, turning it beet red. If I looked close enough I probably would have seen beads of sweat appear on his forehead.

“Erm...”

“Relax, Casanova, this isn't about you. And it's just a simple question.”

He sighed with relief, affirming what I'd already suspected. Why would boys his age go for women my age when they had girls their own age at their disposal?

“Well, it's not uncommon, but it also isn't the norm.”

“Would it be out of desperation or a genuine desire, do you think?”

His blank, vacant expression told me he didn't really have the answers, but as I was his boss he would offer one anyway.

“Desire, I guess.”

I nodded slowly, considering everything he'd said. Then, after hesitating a while before posing it to him, I said, “If you were going to choose an older woman, and you saw me at a bar, would you pursue me? Hypothetically speaking, remember.”

He'd likely have me up for sexual harassment, but I wanted to know. Needed to.

Jake fidgeted with his tie, his chubby hands shaky, his plump, pimpled face pink. He tipped it to the side, squinted one eye shut, something he did whenever he was deliberating.

“If I were going for an older woman... and you weren't my boss... then, um, sure?” It sounded like a question more than an assertion. I didn't buy it.

“People have said I look a bit like Catherine Zeta Jones, in the right light,” I said sulkily. Well, a total of one person had said it, and he was drunk at the time. The only thing she and I had in common was our penchant for dating grandpas!

Jake furrowed his brow, his face displaying his incredulity. “They do?”

“Yes, they do!” I snapped. I waved him out of my office, turning back to my paperwork. “That's all.” I felt like giving him busy work for the rest of the day simply because he'd been so shocked about the Catherine Zeta Jones statement.

I was already up and ready when Eduardo arrived that Friday morning. I was determined not to be caught in the nude again. Just as he had the day of the incident, he strutted around the mansion with a sort of smug, self-satisfied look on his face; each time I looked at him I saw him wearing it with pride. It was an inside joke at my expense. I felt like I would always be that naked woman scrambling for her towel.

Fridays were my late starts, my sleep-in days, which normally resulted in the busiest days of the week. Interestingly, people needed more legal advice on Fridays than they did any other day of the week. I could have gone anywhere; had breakfast down by the marina, or gone for a jogging session through the park to “accidentally” bump into the handsome widower who walked his Border Collie at a particular time every morning, just to say hello. Instead I remained in the house with my shame, a morbid desire to stay with Eduardo, convincing myself that I could grow the balls to ask him what he found funny about me and my body.

I found him out beside the pool, cleaning the surrounding area of leaves and debris that had blown over the fence from the neighbor's yard. His expression of pure concentration whenever he undertook a task was curiously sexy. It couldn't be said that he didn't put one hundred percent into his work, despite his
stubbornness
. His mother had been right about his diligence.

I handed him his cell phone, which had been vibrating on the kitchen counter and annoying the crap out of me. He took it from me without looking at it, then mumbled a quiet, stilted
thanks
before returning to his task, his smugness as plain as day.