Page 4 of Boss of the Year
“No, don’t,” the woman was saying. “I want you to smell like me all night. Just like I’m going to smell like you. Like sex.”
Under the towel, I made a face. Gross.
“You really are a dirty girl,” Daniel told her. It didn’t sound like he disapproved.
Thankfully, the door to the closet remained closed, and when I pulled the towel off my head, the sounds of more sloppy kisses permeated through the door. With a fervent cross over my chest, I prayed to every saint I could remember that the kisses would not turn into Daniel’s desired second round.
“Come on, let’s go,” said the girl. “If we leave now, I’ll go down on you on the drive over.”
Oh, thank you, Jesus.
But wait. People did that? Talk about a driving hazard. Daniel would never?—
“Well, you’ve got me convinced.”
It sounded as if they were getting dressed before I heard the telltale sound of his bedroom door opening and closing, then the taps of their shoes on the oak floors gradually fading away. I remained in the dark closet for what seemed like hours, even if it was just fifteen minutes. To make sure no one was coming back up, I told myself. But also possibly contemplating throwing myself out the window out of shame and self-pity.
Unsurprisingly, I did not have the guts to do that. I did, however, manage to lug myself off the floor and stumble through the bedroom in the pitch dark.
“Christ, Daniel. When are you going to grow up?”
Just as I was rounding Daniel’s king-sized bed, the door opened, the light flipped on, and I ran smack into Lucas Lyons, Daniel’s older brother and the family’s de facto patriarch.
“Ah!” I fell back onto the bed with a shriek, and then, after realizing what kinds of “remnants” might have been left on its mussed linens, scrambled off just as quickly, a black tumbleweed of skirt and sweater.
“What the—Marie?”
I managed to get back up without my skirt being tucked into my underwear or something equally embarrassing, though I was spitting hair out of my mouth from where it had escaped its bun. I straightened my glasses and stood as tall as I possibly could. Which was still more than a foot below my looming boss’s bewildered expression.
“H-hello, Mr. Lyons,” I said to the third button of his shirt.
Not for the first time, I was struck by how vastly different Lucas and Daniel Lyons were.
It was a phenomenon I was familiar with, given the way my younger sister and I, despite being born only ten months apart and having shared a room most of our lives, were also polar opposites. Joni was the life of the party. I was Debbie Downer. She was effervescent, beautiful, and impossibly charismatic. I was plain, unremarkable, and basically the human embodiment of a shadow.
Similarly, Lucas was his brother’s foil. While Daniel seemed to have walked directly out of the sun with his golden hair, California-bright smile, and shining blue eyes, Lucas was more like the storm cloud arrived to blot out the light. He was just a little too tall, had dark hair that was always immaculately trimmed and combed, always wore a full suit and tie, and wore a persistent scowl that would make a sunflower wither down to seeds.
A scowl that was currently focused on me.
“What are you doing in Daniel’s room?” he demanded. “You haven’t worked as a maid for at least seven years.”
I swallowed. Lucas and I had spoken maybe four or five times. I wasn’t even aware he knew my face, let alone my name or what exactly I did for his family.
Perhaps I should have expected it. Lucas Lyons knew everything about everyone who worked for him, his family, or any related project or company. The man had a notoriously encyclopedic memory, which the staff murmured was photographic and not particularly forgiving.
“I—I was just—” Usually, stuttering was only a problem around Daniel.
Lucas glanced around the room. “Are you here to bring back Daniel’s dishes?”
I followed his gaze to the pair of champagne flutes and the open bottle on the bureau. One of the glasses had a lipstick print on the rim.
I barely hid my glare.
“Yes.” I decided to accept the alibi. “That’s right.”
Out of instinct, I attempted something like a curtsy, except I’d never been taught how to curtsy, nor was I a servant at Downton Abbey. So, it was just an awkward sort of bob. One that sent me sprawling to the floor.
That fall was apparently the last straw that evening for my sanity. Like a button had been pressed to open the floodgates, tears fell down my face in torrents.
