Overtime (15 page)

“Declan speaking,” he said behind her.

As she walked out, every step made the plug move, setting off new nerve endings, turning her on all over again.

The next morning, Valerie stood on the curb outside her little apartment at 6:55, waiting for the 7am car that was supposed to take her to the Hamptons. Ten minutes ago, Jasper had called. He had supposed to be in the car that was taking her, but something had come up, he’d said, and so now she was going alone.

She’d been unable to decide what to pack. She still didn’t really know why she was going: she wanted to think it was as Jasper’s secret mistress, or at least partly because of that, but from the trouble that planning this event had been giving her, she thought it might honestly be so that there would be someone to take care of things, so she packed stockings and the corset and garter belts, but also pants and practical skirts and low-heeled shoes.

That was why she had such a big suitcase.

The car drove up, the driver put her suitcase in the trunk and then they were off, the drive lulling Valerie to sleep before they’d even gotten out of Brooklyn. She’d been working too late and not sleeping well enough. She didn’t wake up until the car stopped and then she woke with a jolt, totally disoriented for a moment, looking out the tinted window and seeing a mansion, far away, then trees and the ocean right beyond. The door opened and the driver offered her his hand, and only then did she remember.

Jasper’s house was enormous: three stories, it looked like, painted a butter-yellow and decorated like a birthday cake with columns and columns, fancy little details and curlicues picked out in white. The car sat in a round drive surrounded by shrubbery and with a fountain in the middle.

Valerie immediately felt poor.
You’re the help
, she reminded herself.

Inside, a man — a
servant?
Did people still have those? — showed her to her room. It wasn’t enormous, but it was bigger than her whole apartment, had its own lavish bathroom, outfitted entirely in marble, and a sumptuous king bed with a canopy. Valerie thanked the man who had shown her up and then stood, looking out one enormous window at the ocean, wondering where she was and how she’d gotten there.

Then, she freshened up and went downstairs. She had caterers and florists to wrangle, and the board was due to get there starting at four that afternoon.

Valerie hauled ass all day. By ten that morning, she had nearly even forgotten that there was a fairly large plug in her ass: she was too busy making sure that the tables were dusted, that flower arrangements were symmetrical, that all the rooms were as they should be, that all the other help knew the schedule and the import of the retreat. She had to brief the cook on food allergies — somehow the information had never gotten down to him, and he was irritated that one member had a shellfish allergy. She had to talk to the groundskeepers about getting the lawn properly mowed early that day, and as they argued, she thought:
what kind of estate gets its grass cut on Friday, anyway?

Jasper arrived by noon, but they barely spoke. There wasn’t even a formal check: instead, on a stairway, he slid his hand over her ass, since she was in pants.

“None?” he murmured so only she could hear.

“None,” she confirmed, and then they were back in the whirlwind.

By the time the first board member arrived, she was running on pure adrenaline, and the rest of the night flew by: cocktails, then dinner, then after-dinner drinks as everyone spoke to each other. She identified the Yale MBA by his yammering on about
The Art of War
. They were mostly men, mostly white: no surprises there, not really. At last, they had all gone up to their respective bedrooms — or maybe each other’s bedrooms; God only knew Valerie was in no position to judge — and there she and Jasper were, looking at each other from across the room.

She stood still, her feet aching in her high, high heels, and waited for him to come to her, which he did, slowly, something strange in his step.

When he reached her, he touched the side of her face and she looked up at him, still taller than her even with her wearing heels, melting into her touch.

Finally
, she thought, and her eyes slid closed.

“Valerie,” he said. He slid his thumb across her lower lip. She trembled at his touch. “I’m afraid I need you to sleep in your own bed tonight.”

Her eyes flew open, and she looked directly at him.

Did I do something wrong?
She wondered.
What was it? Should I be jealous of someone?

“All right,” she said. Her voice sounded unhappy, even to her.

“I’ve just had a very long day,” he said. “My feet hurt. My back hurts. My bones hurt. I don’t have the energy to give you what you deserve tonight.”

She lowered her eyes and tried to mask her unhappiness.

Just undress and I’ll ride you
, she thought.
You won’t have to do anything
. But she knew that what he said was the rule: she was in no position to disagree.

“Yes, Mr. Declan,” she said. He kissed her on the forehead —
a chaste kiss, not a lover’s kiss
, she thought bitterly — and disappeared up the staircase.

Valerie sat a while on a couch facing the fire, wondering how she could be so miserable in such a beautiful place.

She finally fell asleep that night, only to wake the next morning to a voicemail. She usually turned her phone to silent at night, so it was six in the morning when she heard Ethan, her ex, drunk and maybe crying, talking into her ear.

“Hey, Val,” he said, sounding dejected. “It’s Ethan. It’s like, one am Friday night, and I was just calling to, you know, say hey.” Silence for a few seconds. “I just really miss you, you know? Like, I think we were good together, and now I wish I hadn’t... oh fuck it,” and then the line went dead.

Valerie listened to it twice, looking out her bedroom window and onto the beach, the sumptuous bedroom behind her, everything in it belonging to her boss who would flog her and order her around and make her cum but who refused to fuck her, apparently.

Finally she tossed the phone onto a chair and crawled back between the covers, still soft and warm from where she’d slept in them.

Ten more minutes,
she told herself.
Ten minutes and then you get up and you deal with your day like a grownup
.

She nestled down into the heavy blankets, the canopy over her, and she started to feel better.

It was just a booty call,
she thought.
He was drunk and horny. He doesn’t really miss you
.
Or, if he does, it’s better that you’ve broken up.

She sighed and started out a window, where a boat was moving slowly across the pale blue-grey ocean, clouds far off in the distance.

He wasn’t that good of a boyfriend, and you know that
.

Valerie lay there for a few more minutes before finally forcing herself out of bed and into the shower.

When she went downstairs Jasper was in the dining room. He was wearing running gear, which somehow looked expensive even though it was soaking in sweat, and guzzling water out of a tall glass.

Of course he runs every morning
, Valerie thought, annoyed by the thought.

Somehow, he still looked commanding and in control, the rivulets of sweat running down his neck only making him look like a king who worked hard, rather than a peasant.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said. One of the chef’s assistants bustled in, put a big bowl of berries down on the table, took Jasper’s empty glass, and left.

“Yes,” said Valerie. She was in no mood for him to be so well-rested and chipper, particularly after her night and morning so far.

The assistant left and Jasper strode over to her, stopping about a foot away. She could smell his sweat, salty and a little metallic, still too fresh to actually smell bad yet.

Worse, she felt herself begin to melt inside, just a little. She still wore the plug — despite being upset and a little angry, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to take it out.

“Ready for a big day?” Jasper asked.

“Sure thing, boss,” Valerie said in what she hoped was a properly peppy tone.

“Good,” he said, smiling.

Then he bent down, took her jaw in one hand, and kissed her, hard, standing in the middle of the dining room. As his tongue pushed its way through her lips, her teeth, as he plundered the inside of her mouth, his other hand roamed up the back of her pants, over her ass, feeling for panties.

He broke away from her, smiling. Then he plunged his hand down the back of her pants, past her ass, and touched the plug just once, lightly.

“Good girl,” he said. “I knew I could count on you.”

Valerie absolutely hated how wet she was at that moment, how, even though she wasn’t quite in the mood, she still couldn’t get enough of this.

“Of course,” she said, the words
please fuck me, right here, right now
, trying and failing to bubble up to her lips.

“I’ve got to go shower,” he said, his hand now out of her pants, he now a respectable distance away. “I can entrust the day’s preparations to you?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Declan,” Valerie said, once again the good employee.

He nodded once. “Good,” he said, and strode away.

Valerie watched him go, taking the steps two at a time, wishing she could be there, with him, in the shower.

Then she grabbed a handful of berries, tossed them into her mouth, and went to go make sure the makeshift board room — technically, it was the second dining room — was prepared for the day-long meeting.

Everything went beautifully, not that Valerie had the time to appreciate it — she ate a salad for lunch, standing up, running back and forth to be sure that everyone had enough soap in their bathrooms, that dinner was going to be on time, that it wasn’t going to rain, that everything was generally in order. After the dinner, Valerie somehow felt both wiped out and energized, but mostly glad that everything had gone so well.

It’s still my job
, she reminded herself.
I still need to do my job well
.

As the board members had drinks on the patio, watching the sun set to the west, Valerie slumped onto a stool in the kitchen with the rest of the help.

“You did fine,” offered the cook. “This is much better than last year. That assistant spent half the day crying. I heard she didn’t last too long after this disaster.”

“I heard she was a crier,” said Valerie. “The bisque was amazing, by the way.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” the cook said, sprinkling sugar over berry tarts. “They pay me the big bucks for my soup skills.”

Valerie laughed, and then someone else came in and needed something new fixed.

Finally, the board members started trickling upstairs in ones and twos, bedroom doors shutting, the house quieting down at last. Valerie didn’t know if she could handle running into Jasper again, or, more specifically, she didn’t know if she could handle getting shut down by Mr. Declan again. She’d barely even had time to think over Ethan’s voicemail.

She decided to go outside, onto the patio. She took her shoes off and walked on the beach, almost down to the water line.

This house was beautiful, she thought, and insanely expensive. She couldn’t even imagine the amount of money it must take to just maintain somewhere like this, let alone buy it in the first place, and Jasper acted like it was nothing.

I’m never going to understand,
she thought.
If I had that kind of money I don’t think I’d buy this house, nice as it is
.

Then, she saw a man’s shape, backlit in the patio doors. He stepped outside, and just by the way he walked, she knew it was him.

Make him come to you,
she thought, looking at him. Her hair blew back in the wind and she felt a little like she was in a romance movie from the 1940s. He leaned both elbows on the railing separating the patio from the beach, and then, Valerie felt herself begin to walk to him.

Dammit
, she thought as she padded through the sand, barefoot. She reached the patio and walked over to him, perching her own elbows on the railing, about a foot away from him.