What a Woman Gets (2 page)

I
F
there was one thing Cassidy Davenport hated, it was to be kept waiting. And if there was one thing her father did best, it was keep her waiting.

“But, Deborah, I just spoke to him.” She had to go through her father's executive secretary for every little scrap, but that's the way Dad's empire worked. No one got to him without going through Deborah. The woman seriously ought to demand the title of CEO because Cassidy doubted her father ever made a business decision he didn't run through Deborah Capshaw first. She had been with him for nearly thirty years and kept the business running while Dad
went
running.

Running around, that is.

“I'm sorry, Cassidy, but he's in a meeting he can't be pulled out of. I'm sure you understand.”

Oh, Cassidy understood all right. She wondered how old this one was. Probably blonde—most of her father's “meetings” were—and probably had an impressive degree. That was the weird thing. Somehow Dad always managed to snag the Harvards and Yales of the world. You'd think those women would know better, but there was something about Mitchell Davenport that made women lose their minds.

Cassidy was about to join their ranks.

She ran a hand over her Maltese, Titania's, soft fur. “All right, Deborah. I understand.” They both knew she
didn't
understand. “Have him call me when he's free.”
And showered
, she wanted to add, but Deborah didn't deserve crass. Poor thing had to deal with it on a daily basis.

Or hourly.

Cassidy ended the call, then stroked her cheek over the little dog's soft head. When was she going to accept the fact that her father only came through for her when it garnered him something? And the “meeting” in his office was garnering him a lot more than she ever would.

Lunch and, more importantly, the conversation she wanted to have with him were now going to be curtailed time-wise.

She set Titania down on the floor and picked her iPad off the glass table in front of the glass wall that looked out over the glass-like lake twelve stories below her condo, the riot of wildflowers reflecting off all surfaces.

She'd love to spend the day painting, trying to capture this scene. The oils she'd bought yesterday would bring out just the right shimmer of the flowers' reflection on the gray blue water. Her fingers itched to get to her brushes.

Cassidy tapped the calendar app to make sure she had enough time today. There was nothing worse than getting all psyched up to lose herself in her art only to find out she had other commitments.

Which she did.
MANLEY MAIDS
was written in for ten
A.M
.

Ah, yes. Today was the day Sharon, her housekeeper, had been going to train the new girl the service was sending over, but Sharon had gone on maternity leave early over the weekend.

Cassidy checked the time. Nine fifty-five.

She tapped the calendar and set the iPad back on the table. Nothing like having to introduce someone to the Davenport world she inhabited. At first they were awestruck—Dad did like to do
showy
in grand style, with a side helping of
decadent
just to make himself look good, and he'd had the designer outdo herself with this place.

It usually took less than a week for a newcomer to see beneath the veneer and start with the pitying looks—the ones she had to pretend she didn't see because it made no sense for anyone to pity someone who lived a life as fabulous as hers.

Wasn't that what Dad always said?

Actually, Cassidy didn't know what Dad said anymore. If it weren't for email, she'd rarely hear from him.

Right at ten, the doorbell rang. Cassidy shooed Titania into her enclosure, brushed her chestnut waves over her shoulder, straightened the lapels on her beige silk blouse, then smoothed the braided belt at the waistline of her matching linen pants. She'd test the one-week theory with this one.

She opened the door to the condo's vestibule. It took the hunk in the Manley Maids uniform less than one
second
to start with the looks.

Only his weren't the pitying kind. They also weren't leering, which was another reaction she'd come to expect.

No, if she had to guess, she'd call his look angry.

*   *   *

C
ASSIDY
Davenport stood before him in the flesh.

Flesh-colored pants, flesh-colored top, and enough buttons unbuttoned to reveal a lot more flesh.

Liam worked hard to keep from groaning. Mac had assured him she wouldn't be here. Not on Mondays. Yet here she was.

Cassidy Davenport. Pampered socialite whose daily clothing bill was probably more than a blue collar worker earned in a week—and he doubted she'd know a blue collar worker if he came up and bit off her ridiculously priced manicure. The woman was frivolous with a capital F.

He was done with frivolous. Been there, done that, spent a fortune on designer clothes and rhinestone-studded T-shirts for his ex, Rachel, that had matched the diamond studs she'd insisted on having.

The scene in Flannigan's Pub came back in blinding clarity. Rachel giving a lap dance to that damn pretty boy frat guy with a tab longer than his dick, one hand down the back of his pants while she rubbed her chest all over the kid's face.

Liam had stood there in stupefied disbelief, watching her talented fingers—that he'd thought had been reserved for his pleasure alone—slip the wallet from the kid's pocket and into her own, and no one at the table, least of all the kid, had been any wiser. A socialite-wannabe stealing money because
he
wouldn't pander to her shoe-and-pocketbook habit.

He'd backed out of the place, sick to his stomach over the loss of what he'd thought had been his future, questioning everything he'd thought he'd known, then he'd driven home in a fog, hurt and disillusionment overshadowing everything else.

Eventually, anger had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of his love, so when she'd shown up later with that new Louis Vuitton bag she'd said was a knock-off, he'd called her on it. On everything.

Rachel hadn't denied it. Hadn't even tried to manipulate him with tears into taking her back—for once—when he'd demanded his key. He'd been almost as surprised at that as the bar scene. She'd merely shrugged, handed it over, thanked him for a good time, and sauntered down his front walk, shredding his heart beneath the damn Manolo What's-their-names he'd bought her.

No, women like Rachel—and Cassidy Davenport—women who lived off the hard work of the men in their lives . . . he was done with them. He'd been played once, but luckily, not to the point of no return. He'd learned his lesson: stay away from the high-maintenance types who only had looks to commend them.

He was really going to have to work for this job. And
not
to keep it.

“
You're
the maid?”

Liam winced. Surely there had to be a better term, but
domestic goddess
didn't exactly fit, while
housekeeper
brought up an image of the Brady Bunch.

He gripped the vacuum cleaner and straightened his shoulders. His pecs flexed—purely involuntarily of course. “Um, yeah. I am.”

He didn't have to be a college graduate—though he was—to read what she was thinking when her gaze ran over him from head to toe. Mac didn't run
that
kind of a business.

“They didn't tell me they were sending a guy.”

“Is that a problem?” God, let her say “yes” so he could get the hell out of here, because he felt a sudden need to clean something—himself. Women like her got under his skin and not in a good way.

They used to, but what was the saying about repeating history's mistakes? Liam had zero intention of doing that.

“Well, no. I guess it's not a problem.” She tapped one of those ridiculously priced nails on her surprisingly non-collagen-enhanced lips. “Won't you come in?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Mac would kill him if he said no. This had been his baby sister's first account. That's why she'd selected it for him, she'd said; she knew he wouldn't lose it for her.

So he sucked up his innate prejudice against the Cassidys and Rachels of the world, and took the step up into the foyer beside her.

She was smaller than she'd first appeared now that
they were on the same level.

Then he got a look around the place. No way would they ever be on the same level.

Rich
dripped from the chandelier with the pear-sized crystals. It wove through the gold-threaded rug, vined through the marble floor, and scented the air with the hint of millions.

Liam had money, but this . . . Even the froufrou little dog had a gilded cage. This was on the level of the Donald Trumps and Conrad Hiltons of the world.

And Mitchell Davenports. The Trump-in-training had turned a small construction business into a residential and commercial design and management firm in an enviable amount of time. But none of this was actually Cassidy's of course. She lived off
Daddy's
money.

Cassidy Davenport was more Bryan's or their pro-ball player friend Jared's type than his these days. He was done with women who looked down their noses at men who couldn't give them what they wanted.

He glanced at Cassidy's nose. Perfectly pert in that rhinoplastic way of the rich, but she'd never get the chance to look down it at him. He'd learned his lesson, and women like her, while not a dime a dozen—because they upped the ante to about a hundred thou a dozen—were so far below women who knew how to make their own way in the world that all he felt for her kind was anger at such uselessness.

But he wasn't here to judge; he was here to clean. For four frickin' weeks.

He should have folded that last hand. Taken his losses and lived with them. But Manleys didn't go down without a fight. It was how he'd made his own fortune, inconsequential though it was when compared to this place. The one he was supposed to be cleaning.

He gripped the vacuum wand and planted it in front of him. “Where would you like me to start?”

“I guess the bedroom's as good a place as any.”

Seriously? Did she really think he'd fall for that? Was she slumming today? Pissed off at the boyfriend or something? Wanting a little spice?

“Sharon always started in the bedroom, then worked her way out. She said it kept what she'd already cleaned from getting messed up again before she finished. Makes sense to me, but if you've got another routine, I'm okay with that. Whatever you want to do is fine.”

Sharon. The maid. The one he was here to replace.

Liam glanced at the bucket of cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner as if he'd never seen them before.

That's right. He was here to clean house; not
play
house.

Liam bit back a chuckle. As if she'd be interested in him that way. He'd forgotten he was in the green golf shirt and cotton pants that constituted a Manley Maid uniform. He didn't feel very manly in it, and with the vibe he
wasn't
getting from Cassidy Davenport, he probably didn't look it, either.

He should be glad. He could get through this nightmare without having to fight off a society babe who thought she'd have some fun with
the help
. Been there, done that, ripped off the diamond-studded T-shirts. And wished he could have shredded them, but he'd been the one shredded.

He adjusted his grip on the bucket, took a deep breath, and headed into Cassidy Davenport's bedroom. If he wasn't involved with a woman, going into her bedroom should be no big deal. And if he couldn't even stand to be in the same room with that woman, her bedroom was just another room.

Then he saw the silky baby blue robe tossed over a padded chair. A piece of black lace peeking out from the top drawer of the dresser. Something peach and frothy lying in a puddle beneath the flowered bench at the end of her rumpled bed. It'd landed near a pair of shoes.

Black shoes.

With really high heels.

And ankle straps.

Black lace. Peach nightie. High heels. The spiked kind.

Cassidy bumped into him from behind.

He'd called this
just another room
? He seriously needed to have his head examined and his sense of smell shut off because the scent of her—still of millions but this time with a good dose of
woman
threaded through—wrapped around him the way that silk robe had embraced her curves.

And those curves, the ones her unbuttoned shirt hinted at, were every bit as lush and soft as he'd expect—except that he
hadn't
expected them to be lush and soft. Most women in her income bracket underwent the knife as if it were a day out with the girls, but the few nanoseconds she was plastered against him were enough for Liam to learn that she hadn't subscribed to that particular social custom.

She jumped back. “Why'd you stop?”