Despite the Gentleman's Riches: Sweet Billionaire Romance (For Richer or Poorer Book 1) (6 page)

I usually loved spending mornings like this one in my garden. My sleezeball of a landlord generally slept in until noon, so I wasn't in danger of an uninvited visitor dropping by, and the dew always made my plants look even more beautiful than they did in the afternoons. The ground would be soft now, earthworms close to the surface if I dug a little hole to transplant seedlings into, and I might find a toad burrowing down into the mulch in preparation for the day's heat if I pulled some weeds.

But I couldn't seem to focus on my usual pleasures. Instead, I felt like I was waiting for something.
For the towing company to open their doors
, I reminded myself. Long hours stretched out in front of me, full of chores but empty of pleasures, and I sighed, heading back around to the front of the trailer to fix some breakfast and make my calls.

So when I saw it, I didn't quite believe my eyes. Even though the space in front of my trailer had been empty when I went outside, and even though I hadn't heard anyone drive up in the interim, my rust bucket of a car was sitting in the driveway, the whole vehicle engulfed in one of those dramatic bows that peppered high-school parking lots on graduation days. On a new car, the ribbon would have looked over the top, but on my ancient, rusting hunk of metal, the bow just appeared ridiculous.

"But I didn't give you the key," I murmured, rushing back inside the trailer to check. Yep, sure enough, my car key was still on the ring where I'd left it.
Not that something as simple as the lack of a key would stop Mr. Fish Sticks when he was intent on making a point
, I thought. I knew without turning the key that the ignition problem would be fixed, the car starting on the first try.

I wanted to be angry, to tear off the bow and burn it the way I'd done with my Food City uniform. But instead, treacherous tears filled my eyes as I gently slipped the ribbon out from under the door frame and then hurried into my trailer.

"Back in the cage, Florabelle," I said, my voice lighter than I'd meant for it to be. "I've got an appointment to keep."

The Reynolds mansion felt like a mausoleum. I'd arrived to a note on the door telling me to go on in and make myself at home, that Lena would wake up...when she woke up. Why Jack had made such a big deal out of setting my starting time at 9 a.m. was beyond me since it quickly became apparent that my charge was no early riser.

It felt strange to be alone (except for a sleeping teenager) in such an opulent house, but I wasn't uncomfortable enough to resist the urge to explore. I spent a few minutes wondering if Jack had installed security cameras that would allow him to replay my wanderings at his leisure, but it soon became apparent that I wasn't impinging on the family's privacy in any way by walking through the downstairs. Each room was flawlessly decorated, shiningly clean...and completely devoid of any personal touches whatsoever.

There were no family photos, no valueless doodads. No magazines on coffee tables or clothes draped over chair backs. Even the library, so stunning at first glance, soon disappointed me. The room housed floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with leather-bound tomes, lacking only one of those sliding ladders to make me think I'd died and gone to heaven. But when I looked closer, it became evident that the books had been chosen for aesthetics rather than for entertainment value, as if Jack had told his secretary to order the classics but had neglected to mention which genres he preferred, so she'd selected books with the prettiest covers. The few texts I pulled off the shelf had clearly never been cracked open, their bindings unforgiving beneath my hands.

The kitchen was similarly beautiful on the surface...and just as empty underneath. Copper-bottomed pans hung from a rack near the ceiling, but the vessels were too high up for even Jack to reach without assistance. The granite countertops were immaculately clean, as if no one had ever dared to prepare food atop them, and the sink was completely devoid of dirty dishes.

I'm sure the fridge will look just as empty...if I don't open the freezer
, I thought to myself with a grin, remembering Jack's purchases on the first night that we'd met.
They probably thaw out a pizza every night and eat it on paper plates in front of the TV.
Sure would make cleanup easy...if you didn't care about decimating the rainforest and hardening your arteries.

I yanked on the handle of the silver-gleaming refrigerator door, expecting the interior of the appliance to be as spotlessly clean and empty as the rest of the Reynolds mansion. But to my surprise, I was instead greeted by a carton of milk, a jug of OJ, and a vast array of tupperware containers.

Leftovers, I'm sure
. Perhaps I'd misjudged Jack—maybe he liked taking his sister out to dinner every night and ordering enough extra to bring home for her lunch the next day. But the image didn't quite match up with what I'd seen of Mr. Fish Sticks so far. Was Jack really the type to carry along his own tupperware rather than accepting the easy convenience of the establishment's styrofoam takeout containers? And how could he and his sister have accumulated so many leftovers in such a short period of time?

Knowing that my actions were veering past curiosity and tending toward outright nosiness, I still couldn't resist popping the top off the first container and peering inside. Homemade carrot sticks created from real roots slivered into sections, not those insipid "baby" carrots that most people chose for vegetable convenience food. Who had taken the time to carefully peel and slice these morsels?

My fingers kept opening and my eyes kept being amazed. Cherry tomatoes, cut cucumbers, coleslaw, and baked beans. Home-sliced turkey from a real bird rather than processed lunch meat, fancy cheeses that I knew hadn't come from our local Food City, and, at the very bottom of the fridge, a bowl covered with a damp cloth under which bread dough was aromatically rising. The trays on the inside of the door were full of condiments, and even if many of the brands were too fancy for me to be familiar with, the jars and bottles made the fridge feel like the larder of a family. Like the center of a real home.

Sitting back on my heels, I stared at the food in consternation, not even thinking about how leaving the door open was forcing power plants to spew toxins into the air for no purpose except to cool an already frigidly air-conditioned room. Had Jack stocked his larder with real food just for me? (The thought made me shiver...or perhaps the motion was just a reaction to the cold air.) And if all of this food hadn't been selected with me in mind, then who exactly was expected to consume this feast?

"Are you hungry, sugar?"

The woman's voice behind my back made me jump up so abruptly that I managed to hit my head on the underside of one of the shelves on the refrigerator door. Stifling an exclamation, I looked over my shoulder and saw a familiar, yet totally unexpected, person walking into the room.

"Shirley?" I'd last set eyes on the pleasant, middle-aged woman at Food City, where she worked behind the deli counter, spooning potato salad into small plastic containers for folks who wanted a quick meal without the hassle (and expense) of a restaurant outing. Now, the matron was out of uniform and her hands were full of bulging grocery bags, solving the mystery of the rising bread dough. Jack had hired a cook. Or, more likely, given the state of the floors and windows, a housekeeper.

"In the flesh," my once-and-future coworker replied, panting a bit from the effort of hauling around what would become the next round of tupperware contents. Recovering from my surprise, I remembered my manners at last and rushed forward to ease the grocery bags out of her hands, then hefted them up onto the center island. "Thanks, sugar," Shirley continued, pulling a stool out from beneath the counter and settling her ample mass down to recuperate. Those bags
were
heavy, clearly laden with real food instead of processed offerings, the latter of which would have been packaged into large boxes to make it look as if you were getting more for your money than the containers really offered. Fake food was lightweight and lacking in substance.

Just like fake men. "How long have you been working here?" I asked, trying not to let an arrow of hurt pierce my heart. It shouldn't have mattered that Jack had chosen me and Shirley both from the same grocery store, as if he couldn't be bothered to hunt for someone really appropriate for the job and was instead content with whomever was most easily accessible. One-stop shopping. Picking up the dregs of society from the grocery store along with a frozen pizza for dinner.

"Just a few days," Shirley replied, oblivious to the thoughts whirling through my mind. "Mr. Reynolds offered me twice Food City's salary, if you can believe it. Twice! I turned in my apron on the spot."

I swung away, filling a glass with water for my coworker as I tried to work through Shirley's revelation. Double her previous hourly wage certainly looked good to the older woman, and would have impressed me too if Jack hadn't been giving me what amounted to about four times my own previous pay rate. Did that mean my employer thought I was worth paying extra for...or just that he was a shrewd businessman who knew how to get what he wanted? Chances were, if Jack had offered me $500 per week, I would have turned him down flat and kept pounding the pavement in search of a real job. So, as flattering as it might have been to think that Jack felt I was worth two of Shirley, I suspected this was just another example of Mr. Fish Sticks doing whatever it took to get his way.

No big surprise there
, I reminded myself, but I couldn't help the way the corners of my mouth turned down at the realization. Oh well. I'd never been particularly special to anyone after my parents crashed and burned out of my life, so why should things change now?

And, on the bright side, Shirley's presence would make my wait for Lena more palatable. "Shall I put the groceries away?" I asked, figuring that, when in doubt, it never hurt to be productive.

"That would be a big help, sugar," my coworker replied. At least I could bring a smile to the older woman's face, if not to my own.

***

Lena drifted down the stairs at a quarter 'til eleven, poured some coffee out of the carafe that must have been warming on the counter ever since Jack's departure, and wordlessly headed into the den to lounge in front of the TV. I was too gob-smacked by the teenager's complete lack of interest in the help to immediately follow in my charge's footsteps, and by the time I'd girded up my figurative loins, I found the girl deeply engrossed in her canned entertainment. Like the mug of coffee, I didn't think the show that Lena had selected was entirely appropriate for a fifteen-year-old kid, but I opted to choose my battles and instead perched on the other wing of the huge, L-shaped couch while I waited to be acknowledged.

And waited. And waited. Eventually, after fifteen minutes of dubious diversion from the boob tube and not a single word from my companion, I realized that Jack's kid sister had absolutely no interest in me at all.

To make matters worse, Lena refused to stick to one show. By the first commercial break, I'd been reluctantly sucked into the plot of the current offering, but the more worldly teenager wasn't enthralled. Wielding the remote with the familiarity of a channel-surfing pro, she set the screen automatically flipping through station after station—no reason to tire her pointer finger while hunting for gems. Then, with a subtle tap, we had changed over from drama to sit-com...and at the next commercial break we moved on to show number three.

She has the attention span of a gnat
. None of the programs Lena selected were all that intriguing, but it was still maddening to begin to care about television characters, only to be shifted to another world a few minutes later. Several times I opened my mouth to ask Lena to at least choose one offering and stick to it, but that wasn't how I wanted our relationship to begin, so I never even spoke the first word. The truth was that, while I knew that Lena and I didn't have the potential to become BFFs, I was also well aware that Jack hoped I'd find a way to tempt his sister into becoming some sort of friend. That might currently seem like a long shot, but my chances would dwindle yet further if I started us off on the wrong foot.

So I sat in silence, sneaking occasional glances at my companion, but never catching her looking back my way. Like her residence, the girl seemed shiny on the surface but cold and empty underneath.
If I ever wriggle my way into Lena's confidence
, I wondered,
will there be tupperware containers of real food in her soul...or just frozen dinners like the ones that came rolling down the grocery store's conveyor belt from her brother's cart?

The only hint of life emanated from the kitchen, where I occasionally heard the whir of the blender or the clatter of a pot (making me hope that Shirley was being careful when she climbed up onto a chair to reach the tools of her trade). Then, after about six or seven show segments, I began to smell the delicious aroma of baking bread, which made me hope that Lena would soon break from her mindless entertainment to enjoy a bite of lunch. Without the television blaring, surely the girl would look my way, might even divulge a word or two to point me in the right direction as I sought entry into her heart.

Wrong. The Reynolds' housekeeper served lunch on two trays, each complete with an array of fresh vegetables, a fresh-baked roll full of turkey and cheese, and a pile of glistening strawberries. Shirley had poured us glasses of milk and had topped off our selection with chocolate-chip cookies warm from the oven. The offerings looked and smelled delicious...but the television was still on, Lena didn't even glance up, and my coworker was nearly out the door before I was able to thank her.

"These look delicious, Shirley!" I exclaimed, glancing at my charge and hoping my words would prompt the girl to dredge up some manners, if not an interest in her surroundings. "You're spoiling us."

Shirley followed my gaze to the silent teenager, but didn't seem surprised by Lena's lack of gratitude for her hard work. With a shrug and a smile at me, the older woman headed back to her domain. Clearly, Shirley was content with the status quo—twice her previous salary for lighter duties, with the downside that she was treated like an inanimate object. The trade-off appeared to be acceptable to the middle-aged woman.

And I knew that I should have felt the same way. What would Jack care if I just sat here and watched TV with Lena all day? Sure, I might die of boredom, but tomorrow I'd bring a book, or would at least hunt through the offerings in the library for a text less than a hundred years old. I'd be present if Lena suddenly acquired an interest in living, and would at least be clocking paid hours in the more likely scenario where the teenager continued to ignore my existence for the rest of the day and week.

But I couldn't do it. Nobody was this closed off due to mere teenage sullenness—Lena was hurting and her silence was a plea for help. I'd never averted my gaze and walked past a cold and shivering puppy on the pavement, even if the animal had fallen into a dumpster and reeked to high heaven, and I certainly didn't plan to start now.

Meanwhile, if I were being entirely honest with myself, I also knew that I wanted to prove to Jack that I was more than just a low-wage checker from a backwoods grocery store. For both those reasons, and because I had been nearly as closed off myself soon after my parents died, I got up from the couch, walked across the room, and slid the remote out of my companion's hands. It was time for some tough love.

"Hey!"

When I hit the power button, the ensuing silence was so gratifying that I stood for a moment and reveled in the absence of television blare. Plus, a dramatic pause was useful since I had definitely captured Lena's attention. Now to see if I could keep it.