The Billionaire's Housekeeper: A Marriage of Convenience Romance for Adults (2 page)

Sometimes Julie would scoff, have a
sip of wine, and turn around to turn up the classical music again.
Other times her sentences would start with, “Well
you
tell my husband…” Rita didn’t know what to do
then. Whenever Julie had an unpleasant message for George, Rita would
keep it to herself. She didn’t want to be the messenger. A back
and forth was hardly necessary.

George would be home more often when
Julie was on a retreat or a charity function in another country. He
preferred the silence, and to pace around the place instead of lock
himself in a room. It fascinated Rita how different they were, and
she wondered if they had always been that way, or if it was something
that occurred over time. He never had bitter messages to relay to
Julie. Instead he would nod and “Mmm” to himself before
continuing his pacing about the place.

There was always something on George
Ainsworth’s mind, but Rita didn’t think it was her place
to ask him about himself. They weren’t friends. They were from
completely different walks of life, and he was her boss. How strange
would it be for her friend to pay her anyway?

She knew that Mr. Ainsworth hadn’t
gotten any happier since the separation. There was paparazzi lined up
outside. Asking why such a wealthy software tycoon and his debutante
wife would call it quits after being college sweethearts. And now
that a lot of the furniture was gone, Rita’s workload was
significantly cut down. She still loved her job, and she hoped that
Mr. Ainsworth would find a reason to still need her even without his
wife being the one who mostly needed her.

‘
George’, he had asked
Rita to call him by his first name that morning. She said the name
aloud, but barely above a whisper. It was strange to say, but she
admitted that she liked to say it.

“
George,” she whispered
again to herself.

“
There you are!”

Rita screamed and practically jumped
out of her skin. She was on the lanai with a feather duster. She had
been cleaning, but she picked up an old photograph of George and
Julie, and she started to think about them. She didn’t know how
long she had been caught in a daydream of former lovers, but she was
completely embarrassed to be caught staring into space and whispering
the names of her employer to herself.

“
Oh, don’t be scared
silly, it’s just me!” Jose Fuentez shuffled over to her
and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Rita gave Jose a warm hug. He was the
Ainsworth’s gardener and head landscaper. He came once or twice
a week to tend to the grounds. He had worked for them for 5 years,
and when Rita came a few years later, he and she had formed a lasting
friendship.

Where Rita was seemingly shy, Jose was
wild and tumultuous. Where Rita was indecisive and kind, Jose would
tell it like it is right away. They were yin and yang, total
opposites that accepted the differences of each other and welcomed
and embraced the similarities they shared.

“
Were you talking to yourself?”
Jose asked. He put his hands on his hips.

“
Me? No…I was just
humming,” Rita said. She tucked a strand of her curly hair
behind her ear.

“
Oh really? Sounded a lot like
you were saying George to me,” a sly smile began to form on
Jose’s face. He said George in the same way that Rita did. He
wasn’t mocking her accent, but making fun of what he was now
beginning to think was a new crush.

“
It’s nothing! It’s
just that…yesterday morning he asked me to call him by his
first name. After three years,” Rita said pensively.

“
C’est très
bizarre,” she said, more to herself than to Jose.

“
Yes, bizarre,” Jose said
dryly. He eyed her with faux suspicion before taking the feather
duster from Rita and twirling it around. He twirled it by her face so
that she could snap out of her trance.

“
The man is just lonely,
Marguerite! He probably wants to make friends,” Jose grinned.
He handed her the duster and made his way out onto the greens of the
gardens.

Jose was more than likely right. Rita
had been working for the Ainsworths and living at the mansion for
such a long time that she was so used to things being a certain way.
Now that Julie was gone, everything had changed. She didn’t
know just how to process everything that had happened over the course
of the last few months. Since she wasn’t even a part of the
family, no one thought to mention how this may affect her or her job.

“
Rita?” It was George. He
usually woke up early, and went in to work before 9. It was just
after 8:30 now, and he was probably in search of something to nibble
on before heading out to run his company.

Rita always got an early start to her
work. There was lots to be done overseeing the others who worked at
the mansion, and a lot of work of her own. She also liked evenings in
her own space and doing what she liked with her time. She usually
called her mother in Montreal, or watched some TV. It got lonely, but
it was better than how things had been right before she moved to the
States. Montreal was not the place for her, even when she missed her
mother and the rest of her family terribly.

“
Yes, Mr….George,”
Rita said, correcting herself halfway. That made George smile.

“
Takes some getting used to
huh?” he asked when he came into view. He stood by one of the
open French doors.

Rita almost stopped dead in her tracks
when she saw him. He was always in business attire when he went to
work, or sometimes he would wear a polo shirt and very smart slacks.
Rita had pressed them, of course. She knew most if not all of the
clothes that he owned.

Today, George was in a suit, but he
was tugging the collar of his white shirt. He had on a black jacket
and black pants. His shoes had been shined to perfection, and his
normally curly blonde hair had a bit of gel in it. He looked like he
was coming straight out of a Bond movie.

Rita could see that George was trying
to adjust a red bow tie.

“
Looking sharp Mr. A,”
Jose wolf-whistled and walked by the lanai. His chubby body moved
this way and that as he marched and tried to avoid getting grass
stains on his shoes. His shorts were just above his knees, and his
shirt was tucked into his shorts while his stomach bulged a bit over
the edge.

George raised his eyes to the ceiling
and sighed; it was his way of rolling his eyes. He never quite made
the full rotation. He smiled at Jose, showing off a small dimple at
the top right corner of his mouth.

“
Thanks Jose,” George
said. Jose saluted and dragged a hose along with him as he turned a
corner to the west side of the house. The roses were his specialty.
There were yellow and pink roses lined along the side of the house
that led to a garden maze of red, white, and pink roses further out
on the grounds. A small fountain was in the center of the little
maze. Jose was so proud of his work in the rose garden that it was
the first part of the garden he would work on whenever he came to the
mansion.

“
Rita, I need your help with
something,” George said. He tugged more on his collar. “I
normally just use a clip on, but there’s this really fancy
charity dinner tonight. I was wondering if you knew how to tie a bow
tie.”

Rita put down the duster and wiped her
hands on her thighs. She walked over to George and he walked over to
her. They met each other halfway, and an awkward little chortle
escaped Rita’s lips.

“
Let me take a look. I’m
out of practice, but I’ll give it a try,” Rita said.

“
You talk so quietly, Rita,”
George said. He raised his head up to give Rita space to fiddle with
the tie around his neck. His eyes darted from the ceiling above him
and then down to try to look at Rita while they talked to each other.

“
I’m just shy, I guess.
Quiet voice,” Rita laughed nervously. George was about to nod,
but remembered that he had to keep his head up. He gently touched
both of her arms right below her shoulders. It was a gesture to
reassure her.

Rita’s fingers were shaking a
bit, and it took her a few tries to try to loop it properly.

“
Maybe if I put it around my own
neck,” she offered. She took the bow tie off of George; her
fingers sweeping along the collars of his shirt as she did so.

George lowered his head and studied
Rita’s movements as she put the bow tie around her own neck and
attempted to loop it.

They stood silently in front of each
other, Rita being too shy to know what to say, and George being too
stiff to make conversation. They were worlds apart even though they
were less than a foot away from each other.

Rita finally got the bow tie just
right and loosened it just enough for it to go back over her head.
George didn’t put it on, but he held it up using one finger and
thanked her.

“
Ah crap! I need to get out of
these clothes and head to work. I’m running late as it is,”
George said. Rita stifled a smile as George cursed a bit more and
started to turn to go back into the house. “It’s a good
thing I don’t have any meetings today.”

“
Mr. A!” a voice from the
side of the house shouted in a sing song tone. “Oh, Mr. A!!!”

Jose was power walking when he turned
the corner, and he headed straight for the lanai. George had turned
back around and stood to face Jose. Jose was getting out of breath
and red in the face.

“
Ok, Mr. A, I don’t want
to alarm you, but there’s a lot of paparazzi at the front of
the house,” Jose said. Even though he was puffing and panting,
he managed to say all that he needed to say in one breath.

George groaned, but it wasn’t
surprising. Sometimes the press would camp outside his house when he
had made a new development in the software industry, or if Julie had
a function to attend to or would speak up about a charity luncheon
she was having.

“
I’ll have Jeffrey take me
to work today then,” George said bitterly. He never appreciated
the media attention. He much preferred things quiet and simple in his
space. “I’ll do my best to avoid them. Thank you Jose.”

“
Mr. A, I don’t think you
understand,” Jose said. He had a worried look on his face, and
his eyes darted from George to Rita.

“
What is it?” George
asked. Normally Rita would be minding her own business and going back
to work. The way Jose had made his way towards them, and the way he
was looking at her now made her freeze in place.

“
They don’t want to talk
to you,” Jose paused and put a hand on his chest dramatically.
“The press is here to see Rita.”

“
Me?” Rita asked. George’s
eyes were wide. The three of them looked utterly confused. Rita had
no idea why they would want to speak to her.

“
What for?” George asked.
His voice was getting defensive. It was one thing to drag him into
some silly media business, but Rita didn’t have anything to do
with him or his affairs.

“
I don’t know. The minute
they mentioned Rita I turned around and came back this way,”
Jose said.

“
Don’t move. I’ll
try and get this sorted,” George said.

Rita could hear the aggravation
building up in George’s voice. He didn’t like the press
snooping around. They kept him from his work, and now having someone
else being suckered into their nonsense was more than he wanted or
needed. George furrowed his eyebrows and walked briskly off of the
lanai and out of sight.

“
What’s going on?”
Jose asked. He eyed Rita, searching for even a hint of an answer from
the expression on her face.

“
I have no idea,” Rita
said. Her eyes flickered for a moment when realization hit her. There
was
a reason that the press would want to speak to her and not
to George Ainsworth. “No…idea.”

Her voice shook, but she wasn’t
feeling much of anything. She had a calm look about her. It was only
the sudden panic that George had and her mind reeling with
possibilities that made her stay in place on the lanai.

Rita’s heart was now leaping in
her chest despite being so still. The world around her seemed to be
stuck in place, even Jose wasn’t moving. The birds themselves
had stopped chirping about the gardens, and the only thing that had
any movement in the world at that moment was her heart.

She was hoping she hadn’t been
found out. Rita had a secret, but she tried to stay relaxed because
she was sure it was a secret that only she knew. She had kept it to
herself for long enough. There was no way someone from the press
could know anything about her. She kept the calm look on her face. It
wasn’t time for her to worry yet. She didn’t know what it
was the press knew. It could have been about something entirely
different. It could have been something that involved George himself.

‘
Maybe they’re trying to
get Mr. Ainsworth’s staff to reveal some information about him
and the divorce,’ Rita thought to herself. It was wishful
thinking of course, but she wanted to make sure that the paparazzi
wanting to speak to her had nothing to do with her. She spoke her
thought aloud just to be sure that time hadn’t frozen.