Rachel's Accident (10 page)

“I thought I was your housekeeper. You didn’t say anything about cook.”
I looked at him suspiciously.

“Yeah, well, one day you just said my frozen foods were crap and threw them out, and then you started cooking for me.” He shrugged, not knowing what to make of that
,
either.

I had to admit, “That does sound like me.”

“So, what do you say?”
He
asked, smiling at me.

I looked over at Jess, who hadn’t said a word the last few minutes.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“I think you were enjoying yourself, cooking and cleaning for him, because I haven’t seen you this lively ever before. And you do have to admit the pay isn’t something to sneeze at either.” She looked at me with a raised brow, giving me a meaningful look.
It was all about the money with her.

I relented, “Fine.
Why not?”

The next day was a Monday. In school I had no freaking clue what the professor was talking about, I was going to have to learn everything again from the beginning of the semester.
Great.
Just what I needed.

When the lectures where over I took the bus to Ethan’s house, following the directions he had given me. I had to reenter the code at the gate twice because I mistyped it so many times. When I finally got in I had to walk up a freakishly long driveway to get to the even more freakishly huge mansion at the end of it.

I walked around a Ford Mustang in front of the house. As I walked up the steps to the massive front doors I rooted around my purse to find the key he had given me yesterday, which I apparently had left with the ominous note.

I found the key and opened the doors only to find myself in a huge foyer.
I could tell from the looks of it I was going to get lost in this building.

I didn’t want to risk that, so I called out for Ethan and
he came out of a room from the second floor and was at my side in a matter of minutes.

He looked much better than yesterday. His hair was now combed back from his face and his beard was neatly trimmed back. He looked like a total stranger, again.

At my request he showed me around the house and where everything I needed for my job was kept. Then he excused himself again to get back to his own work. I wondered what a man like him did for a living.

I reluctantly pulled the cleaning supplies out of a closet behind the kitchen and started down a long hallway that hopefully led to one end of the huge mansion. My plan was to methodically clean one room after another from one end of the property to the other.

I had yet to decide if it wasn’t easier for me to use a map, so I could cross those rooms off that I had already cleaned. It was even worse of a maze in here than the hospital had been.

Well, since I actually liked cleaning I didn’t have much of a problem with this plan. I was sure, though, once I was finished with all the rooms I could immediately start from the very beginning again. It would take me weeks to go through them all and in that time they would get dirty all over again. He really should hire more personnel. I went about my work and was quickly lost in my own thoughts.

Around seven in the evening I heard him calling my name from somewhere in the house. It took me a while to find the right way back. I was still getting used to the layout. A good twenty minutes later I finally arrived at the kitchen. He stood there impatiently, waiting for me.

“I need food, woman,” he demanded. “I’m starving.” To undermine his statement his stomach growled
. He looked at me expectantly.

“Excuse me?” I asked offended. “Did I somehow make the impression that I was your maid?”

At my angry look he took a step back and apologized at once.

“Please, would you
mind cooking
us dinner?”
He
tried again, extremely polite this time.

I smiled. “Was that so difficult?” I raised my brows at him as his stomach answered me instead of his mouth. He gave me an apologetic
, embarrassed
look.

I made my way into the kitchen and rooted around the fridge. “You do know that almost everything in here is expired?”

I looked over my shoulder at him. He looked like he was in agony.

“Let’s go eat out. How does that sound?” I asked him as I started throwing the expired food into the trash. When the trash was full I took it out into the garage where his garbage cans were.

When I came back he was awaiting me impatiently again. He was making a habit out of that. He waved car keys at me and hurried me out the door. I hardly had time to grab my purse on the way out.

He drove us to a
n expensive
restaurant
, which instantly made
me
uncomfortable. He scowled at me with his darkest look as I protested going in there. Reluctantly
,
he
then
drove away again, his stomach grumbling in protest. I could only imagine how starved he was right now, but I didn’t want him to spend so much money on me. It just didn’t sit well with me and weighed on my conscience.

After a
short while we found a diner
we were both agreeable with. We had a nice dinner and the conversation wasn’t half bad either. The most interesting part, though, was when he told me about how I had helped him with his work after he burned his hands while trying to save our burning dinner once.

“Usually, I don’t like anyone to be in my office, but it was really interesting and fun working with you,” he said.
“You had really god ideas. Maybe we can repeat that some time?”

“I wouldn’t be able to clean for you if I was occupied otherwise. And don’t forget about the cooking.
Which reminds me, we need to pick up groceries before we get back.
”

“Aye
aye
, captain,” he smiled at me.

When he got something into his stomach he could be quite the fun
-
loving guy.
This way he was a really nice employer to work for. I had to watch out that I didn’t grow too attached to him, though. Something like that never ended well.

"Right now I'm miserable at anything architecture. I lost half a year of knowledge from school and I'm sure I learned some things from you too that are now gone. I need to get that all back before I do anythi
n
g else."

"I could tutor you," he offered without even thinking about it.

"I don't know if that would be such a good idea."

I also didn't know if I really wanted to be this close to him for longer than necessary. Right now my body was acting all crazy and I had only been around him for one and a half hours. As my employer he was off limits to me.

"Come on, Rachel. It would be fun."

I still balked. My mind told me it was a bad idea. My body had different plans entirely. It said it was the best idea in long time. Oh, yes my mind and body had completely different ideas wh
at a working relationship should
be like.

"
I’ll
think about it," I managed to appease him. "Let's pay and go shopping for groceries. Your fridge needs to be fully restocked."

That managed to distract him fully. He called for the bill and under a lot of protest from my side paid for everything. He would drive me insane with his rich ass. I knew I didn't have much, but he could at least let me keep my pride. I was a working woman. I could pay for my own food.

Still grumbling I got into the passenger seat and let him drive me to the 24 hour supermarket. He hadn't even known such a thing even existed nowadays. We browsed around the store selecting various items and then went to the register to check out.

When we got back to the house we stashed everything away in the fridge. Since it was now very late evening I went about gathering all the cleaning equipment I had left lying around earlier and putting them away as well. Then I made my way back home.

That night I lay awake for a long time, trying to remember anything, anything at all. But no matter how hard I tried nothing resurfaced. The doctor had said it could take days or weeks to recover my memories. It was also possible they wouldn't come back at all.

I was still hopeful, though. It had only been a day since my release from the hospital, only a week since the accident. It would be okay I chanted like a mantra until I fell asleep from the monotonousness. I supposed in a way it was like counting sheep.

Sitting through my lectures the next day was sheer torture. Again I didn’t understand a single thing what the professor was talking about. The next exam was coming up soon and it was in no way possible for me to cram all that I was missing back into my head again in such little time. I needed help.

When I came to the mansion I
searched Ethan out first thing. I lightly knocked on his office door.

“Come in,” I could hear muffled from inside.

I opened the door and stepped in. He looked over his shoulder with a rather somber expression on his face. It instantly brightened as he saw me coming in.

“Hey, Rachel.
What can I do for you?”

“If the offer still stands, I would like for you to tutor me. I wouldn’t be able to catch up otherwise.”

“Of course.”
He seemed much more enthusiastic than me at the prospect of tutoring me.

“I would like to still work for you, but take time off for the tutoring if that’s okay.”

“Sure, sure, no problem.
How about we make a schedule?”

So we discussed my new schedule and decided it was best to split my working hours in half
. I would go to lectures in the morning, then work for a few hours and let what the professor said sink in. And then I would work together with him on his newest project. I was actually getting excited to work with a real architect.

I had had an internship with an architect between my second and third semester, but you could hardly even call him that. He just sat and did nothing the whole day until finally an idea struck him and he would make a horrible sketch on a piece of paper. It had been such a discouraging experience that I had almost quit all my studies. But after that it got a little better and much more interesting.

For my first tutoring class I was a little nervous how he would handle it. I didn’t know what kind of person he was and from the looks of it he could didn’t interact with people very often. That often resulted in great expectations and a lot of impatience.

But I shouldn’t have worried so much. As soon as we sat in his office together he opened up a new project on his laptop screen. I wasn’t very used to this program and had no idea how to navigate through it, but I knew we were frequently using it in our lectures. It left me like a fish on dry water. So his first class was making me familiar with the program. He explained every important feature to me and didn’t hesitate to answer any questions I had.

By the time my tutoring class was over I could navigate the program almost blindfolded. He was an incredible teacher. I really admired that. When we were finished I cooked us dinner and then went home after cleaning up.

The next day he taught me the basics of architecture. He thought it would be good to start from the very beginning to see where I still had problems and then to go on from there, teaching me what I didn’t know. I learned so much more from him in one lesson than my professors ever manage in a month.
Soon I was only a few weeks behind the other students.

And so the days went by and we fell into our new routines.
I went to lectures in
the
morning. Then I would come over to Ethan’s house and clean for a few hours, and then until dinner we would work together. I wasn’t much of a help and only slowed him down with my constant questions and him having to explain almost everything, but he didn’t seem
t
o mind much. He’d told me he just enjoyed my company.

I gradually got to know him a little better over our dinner conversations.
Most of the time we just talked a lot about our mutual love for architecture.
We could talk for hours on time about nothing else.

Every day at half past six he would urge to start dinner so that we could eat at exactly seven. While I was making dinner he would work for the remaining time and show up in the kitchen at seven on the dot.

I was just taking the chicken breasts out of the oven with the oven mitts when a touch on my shoulder startled me
. With a frightened cry I let
go of the pan. I had been so
wrapped up
in my
own
thoughts
I hadn’t heard him approaching. The pan
sailed through the air
and Ethan tried to catch it. He managed to touch it with his hands before it clattered to the floor.

“Ouch,” he exclaimed. He blew air at his hands to cool them down.

I just stood there and stared at him as memories assailed me. This had happened once before. Not exactly like this, but it had resulted in his hands burned to a crisp just like now.

“Could you turn on the water?”
He
begged me.

It brought me out of my daze and spurred me into action.
I rushed to help him get cold water on his hands.

“You should really fire me, you know,” I commented. “I’m just a magnet for bad luck. This is the second time this happened. Not to mention the two car accidents.”