She gave him a confused look.
“You were frowning at your phone.”
“Oh, sorry. No, I was just checking to see if I had any new job offers. If you don’t want me to clean until Evette returns, I should go job hunting. I mean, I should do that anyway as I guess she won’t be gone long.”
God. Why hadn’t he realized she would be worrying about this? He should have.
“You don’t need to clean because you’re our girlfriend now and we will take care of you,” Alexei told her.
“You will?” She tried to turn to see Alexei’s face. “What does that mean?”
“We don’t really feel comfortable with you cleaning for us when you’re dating us,” Salem tried to explain.
“Why?” she asked.
“We just don’t want you to feel like you have to pick up after us,” Salem said.
“But I offered.”
“Which is very kind,” Salem told her. “But you shouldn’t feel like you have to do anything. All right?”
“Okay.” She nodded. “I’ll do some job hunting tomorrow, then.”
“No,” Alexei growled.
“Alexei,” Salem said.
“Why no?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I told you, because we’re taking care of you,” Alexei replied.
“Yes, but you didn’t really explain what that meant,” she said.
“That you don’t need a job because we will provide everything,” Alexei stated.
“Umm. You will?” she asked.
“Yes. So, you see, it is simple. You will move in here and allow us to take care of everything.”
Dear Lord, help him.
“Simple,” she repeated.
“It might not be that simple,” Roman said, glancing over at Alexei. “What about her housing now? Is there a lease? Do you need to break it? And what will Tamsyn do while we’re at work? Won’t she get bored? Maybe she might like a career of her own.”
Right.
All good points.
“I think—” Salem started to say.
“I don’t want her working outside the house. It’s too dangerous without me there to watch over her.”
Shit.
That was Alexei’s childhood trauma rearing its head. He’d gone to school one day and when he’d returned home, his entire family had been gone.
But Tamsyn likely didn’t know about that as he rarely spoke of it.