Page 1 of Maid For Each Other

1

Waking Up in the Bed of a Millionaire

Abi

Is it wrong that a tiny part of me is happy to have an infestation at my apartment?

Of course it is, I thought as I sat up and stretched in the decadently soft king-size bed. But who could blame me? The luxuriousness of the million-thread-count sheets alone made it way less of a hardship, not to mention the frothy memory foam pillows. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how the wealthy ever dragged themselves out of bed in the morning when it felt so good to just lie there, cocooned in expensive linens.

But I didn’t have time to languish in the opulence. I needed to get the hell out of there and get to work before Benny fired me.

I carefully made the bed, ensuring it was impossible to tell I’d ever been there. I was going to wash the sheets after I came back later because I wasn’t some kind of psychotic Goldilocks-codedmonster who’d secretly sleep in someone else’s bed without laundering away my DNA, but just in case someone happened to show up in the meantime, I wanted to remove all traces of the uninvited Abi Mariano.

I’d showered last night, just to ensure I had time to clean every square inch of the bathroom (a lot of square inches, for the record), so I quickly changed and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Five minutes later, everything I brought with me was jammed and zipped into my backpack as I reached for the doorknob and opened the bedroom door.

“Well, good morning!”

I gasped and my hands flew to my heart as I looked to my right.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.

Standing there, in the enormous kitchen of the fancy penthouse, was a silver-haired man and a woman with a sleek black bob. They were smiling, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

I was completely, totally, absolutely screwed.

The guy was wearing a flawless navy suit that was definitely not off-the-rack (hello, rich dude with the pocket square), and the woman was in one of those it’s-just-an-oxford-and-white-jeans-but-they-cost-a-thousand-bucks ensembles. They looked like beautiful royals on retirement, perfectly put together, and they looked like they belonged in the upscale residence where I’d been squatting.

But they didn’t look surprised to see me.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said, stepping forward to extend his hand while he smiled warmly. “I’m Charles, and this is Elaine.”

“Abi,” I mumbled in shock as King Charles wrapped his big hand around mine and shook it confidently, as if this was okay and I was supposed to be there.

Way to give them your real name, dipshit!

“Abi!” The woman—Elaine, apparently—beamed at me like she’d been breathlessly anticipating my arrival. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“Yeah, um, same,” I said, unsure of what she could possibly mean byfinally.

Am I in an episode of some pranking show?

Are the cops on their way and the Chuck/Lainey duo before me is simply a distraction to keep me from getting away?

“I, um—”

“We helped ourselves to your muffins, by the way.” Charles pointed toward the cooling rack on the center island, where the six face-size blueberry muffins I’d painstakingly made from scratch in that glorious gourmet kitchen the night before had now been reduced by two.

THEY. ATE. MY. MUFFINS.

I had bigger problems at the moment, but a tiny part of me wanted to rage because those muffins had been the most delicious things I’d ever tasted. They were supposed to be my amazing breakfast for the next week. I’d planned to devour one perfect little pastry every morning before embarking upon my far-from-perfect life.

Only now, two resided in the digestive tracts of these two beaming socialites.

RIP, decadent pastries, and a plague on the house of Charles and Elaine.

“They were so delicious,” Elaine gushed, then added, “Declan never told us you were a pastry chef.”

“Well,” I said, my heart pounding out of my chest as I tried to play along, “you know Declan.”

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