Sleeping With the Help (Toyboy Lover) (3 page)

“Hasn't your maid been doing the laundry?”

“She's off sick,” I sulked.

“Did you think your clothes would wash themselves?”

I cut my phone a seething look, hoping the look would miraculously travel through the telephone lines and whack my mother for being her usual unhelpful self.

“No, I...” I began, but realized she was right. What had I expected? Lupita had been off for a whole week and I'd yet to call the agency for a temp. I barely knew how to operate my washing machine; so again, what had I expected?

“So get a new maid. Or learn to take better care of yourself.”

“I'm going to get a new one, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.”

It wasn't that simple, though. A lot went into choosing a good maid. There had to be a connection – a synergy between employer and employee. An immediate trust. I didn't think I'd find that with another maid.

“Good, because I've seen your washing machine. That thing looks like a freakin' time machine, what with all those buttons! You wouldn't be able to work that beast. You're technology illiterate just like your father.”

“Your confidence in me is really inspiring.”

She said something in retort, but the jingle of my doorbell drowned out what I was sure was a bitchy comment (the only kind she knew how to make). Not even 7 AM and someone was at my door. Only Lupita ever turned up early, but even she waited until eight to start her shifts. Besides, this couldn't have been Lupita.

“Gotta go. Someone's at the door.”

“Who is it?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don't know, Mom.”

“Why are you getting visitors at this hour?”

I growled for the second time in the conversation. “That's what I'm going to find out. Love you. Bye.”

She tried to say something else, probably to scold me for what she called my 'biting sarcasm', but I'd already reached over the bed and hung up. I let out a relieved sigh when I could no longer hear her.

The bell went again.

“All right, I'm coming,” I called. I pulled on the closest bathrobe I could find – a worn gray number that was so worn and threadbare, from years of wear and tear, that Goodwill had turned it down when I'd tried to donate it. I ran my hand through my hair a couple of times, getting my fingers tangled in the knots, before charging to the door. If I'd had to take a guess I'd have said it was a neighbor, stopping by to borrow some sugar or milk. It was the kind of neighborhood for it. Someone was always borrowing something, most of the time when they already had whatever they were asking for. I'd learned that the act of borrowing food was a means of socializing. I'd never borrowed anything, and had no immediate plans to.

When I unchained the door and threw it open, neglecting to take a peek through the spyhole, my legs grew weak. I had to grip onto the door to keep myself steady. I wanted to believe that it was because I was light-headed from my sprint to the door, or because I'd woken up too early, or because I hadn't eaten in twelve hours, or because... anything else. I would have sooner believed that some rare disease was the cause of my imbalance than accept the fact that the person standing before me was responsible. Not the person, the
boy
. That tall, black-haired, black-eyed boy with the golden skin and full lips as delicious and red as the sweetest, juiciest strawberry. Behind him, day broke, and the orange sun began to rise. The sight could have come straight from the tip of an artist's brush; could have hung in the Louvre beside The Mona Lisa.

Eduardo Montez, as beautiful as he was the day we first met at the hospital. As brooding and distrusting as he had been when he'd looked at me with those penetrative, reproachful ebony eyes. A few days' worth of jet black stubble hid his chiseled jaw, and several little red cuts decorated his bronzed face – a band aid sat over his left brow, splitting it in two. His knuckles had a slight purple-blue tinge to them – bruised, just like his arms, altering the palette of those thick golden arms.

My first question would have been, “What the hell happened to you?” But I quickly remembered that we were strangers, and whatever had happened to him wasn't any of my concern. Moreover, he wouldn't have told me even if I'd had the courage to pry. Besides, there were a thousand other more important questions to ask; that's what I went with first.

“Um... hello?”

Okay, so it wasn't so much a question as a
what the heck!
reaction.

“Hello.” Everything about his delivery of such a simple word, the most common of courtesies, sounded forced, like someone had a gun to his head. Did he despise me so much that he couldn't even offer me a standard greeting without balking?

“Eduardo, right? Lupita's son?” I questioned, just for the sake of it. I knew exactly who he was – the son of my maid. The strikingly handsome,
nineteen-year-old
son of my maid. I didn't need a reminder, not after the way I was feeling, beneath his dark gaze. I had to tear my eyes away from his, and away from those taut biceps that were on full display, thanks to the off white wife beater he wore like a runway model. However, as my eyes drifted from his arms, they foolishly lingered on the rock-like chest, which the meager material wasn't doing a good job of concealing. The outline of an erect nipple showed through the fabric.

Although I couldn't see the blush that stained my face, I felt it like a sheet of fire. It even managed to reach my neck. An uncomfortable warmth greeted me between my legs, the kind no man had elicited in me since I was in my early twenties. At thirty-five, it shocked me that someone this young could bring back those feelings. My blush wasn't going anywhere.

I pulled my robe tighter around my body, as though shielding myself from an imaginary chill, when in reality the temperature had reached a new high. I could have been imagining it but I was sure I saw the sliver of a smile crease the corner of his mouth, so faint it should have gone unnoticed. Was my sexual frustration a source of amusement to him? I couldn't blame him, really. I must have looked ridiculous. A woman nearly twice his age getting flustered over a bit of skin. Bronzed, perfect skin, might I add, but skin all the same.

“W-what are you doing here?” I continued, realizing that he wasn't going to confirm his identity. Just another way for him to show how stubborn he was.

“I'm filling in for my mom.”

“She was serious about that? You actually agreed to this?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes serious, penetrating mine. “Why does that surprise you?”

“I just, well... I didn't think you'd want to work for me, not after what you said at the hospital.”

“What, that you're a slave-driver who overworks her employees until they end up in hospital, sick from exhaustion? And who then offers to pay their medical bills to make herself feel better?”

My hand itched to slam the door in his face, to rid myself of his hate-filled stare and words.

“A slave-driver? Is that what you call someone who pays triple the minimum wage?”

He didn't respond, only glared from atop his high horse, which was getting lower by the second.

I went on. “You're more than welcome to find another person willing to fork over that much for a job many people would do for below minimum.”

He raised his injured eyebrow. “Many people? You mean illegal immigrants?
Latinos?
This keeps getting better and better.” He gave a derisive snort, a sarcastic laugh, and folded his arms across his chest.

“Look, pal, why don't you remove the stick from your ass before you step into my house!” I said it before I could stop myself. That wasn't the lawyer in me, that was someone completely different. Someone who used the word “pal” like a boss (though no one used words like that any more). Someone who wasn't going to take bullshit from a disgruntled teen whose purpose was to guilt me out over being a high earner.

“No stick, I'm just telling it like it is.”

Silence punctuated his sentence, and continued on while we stood at the door sizing each other up. And when that was over, when things had grown sufficiently awkward, I looked away. I could still feel his eyes on me, the effect of which made me feel naked, despite me wearing two sheets of clothing.

I let out a long, exhausted breath. “I promised your mother I'd give you a shot, so if you want the job, you've got it.”

I half expected him to turn his back to me then storm off indignantly, but to my surprise, horror and delight, he stepped past me into the house. I watched him as he panned the spacious entrance hallway of my mansion-sized home, taking in every piece of lavish decoration, from the large crystal chandelier that shadowed above us – that had been a gift from a client, and cost a small fortune – to the marble staircase that led to the second floor. He retained a poker face, neither visibly liking, nor loathing his surroundings. He knew I was watching him; without an audience he would have had a reaction, good or bad.

“It's three days a week – Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Eight to twelve. Fifteen minutes break.”

“What does my mom normally do first?” He didn't seem to find the hours unsatisfactory. I'd been prepared for an argument over them.

I hesitated before answering, a sense of embarrassment taking over. “When she arrives in the morning she cleans the kitchen then makes breakfast.” For the first time in my life I felt ashamed for having a maid; for needing one. Her tasks sounded so frivolous when said aloud, to her son. Tasks anyone could have done for themselves, and most were expected to. For the first time I felt like a privileged, spoiled brat.

“Then what?”

“There's actually a list she keeps on the refrigerator.” I led him through to the open-plan kitchen. The A4 paper was right where she'd left it, stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet of the Union Jack (a souvenir from my vacation to London the year before), his mother's handwriting scrawled all over it. I hadn't had the heart to remove the list; it had been there almost as long as she had – it was a part of the furniture.

“Half of it is in Spanish, though.”

“I can read Spanish,” he stated pompously, somewhat impatiently, as though it was a given.

“Good, because I can't... unless it's in English!” I laughed at my own lame joke, foolishly expecting him to join in, in order to lighten the mood a little. But no dice. It was as though the kid couldn't laugh or smile without it having a negative connotation. Was this how it would be having him around the house? At least Lupita laughed at my stupid jokes, even though I was certain she didn't understand half of them. She and her son were so different it was hard to imagine that they were related, let alone mother and son.

“The cleaning stuff is in there.” I pointed to the pantry beside the window that overlooked the garden. “Everything's labeled. Your mother was very efficient like that.”

I watched him approach the pantry. Then, with his back to me and what I assumed was humor in his tone, he said, “Ah, so that's why you paid her triple the minimum wage.”

He didn't see the glare I shot him, but I knew he felt it. And in the reflection of the window I saw it. A smile.

People in my family didn't dream. At least, they could never remember their dreams upon waking. I followed in their dreamless footsteps, and had done since childhood, and had resigned myself to having a dreamless existence.

The night after Eduardo turned up on my doorstep, 180 pounds of pure muscle and sex appeal, I woke up in a cold sweat, my sheets sodden with perspiration. I'd dreamed. A dream to end all dreams – so graphic and delicious that it had infuriated me to wake up. Only after I'd had time to recover from it did the implications of it hit me.

“Holy crap!” I said, switching on the lamp, still short of breath from the dream. “Do you realize that you just had a sordid dream about your maid's son?” Although I was the only person in the room I felt the need to whisper the revelation, as though saying it louder than that would let the world know how much of a raging pervert I was!

He'd been naked – we'd both been, in fact – and... No! I shook the memory from my thoughts. Every vivid image of flesh upon flesh, trying to block out the nudity, the sex, the unbelievable sex that saw me doing positions I knew my body could never pull off.

“This is not okay,” I told myself, wanting to shake the stupid out of me. “You're almost old enough to be his mother. Get a hold of yourself.”

I vowed then that I would go back to being a dreamless freak who only had the here and now, the tangible to look forward to, reminding myself that in this reality that kind of story didn't happen. Only in novels. Only in porn. I was in neither. Besides, Eduardo practically hated me, blamed me for putting his mother in the hospital.

I totally preferred the Eduardo from my dream.

When he turned up a day later, eight on the dot, I could barely look at him, though I did look long enough to notice that his cuts were fading. But new ones had appeared in different places on his body. What did he do on his days off? The question hung on the tip of my tongue, as it had on his first shift. But it remained there, not ready to make its exit, not ready to meddle.

“How's your mother?” I asked instead, thinking it safer and less intrusive. He'd taken off his denim jacket – a skin-tight piece of clothing that fit right in with the rest of his tight-fitting clothes. I wondered if it was his custom to buy clothes that were one size too small. He threw the battered outer garment onto the coat-stand; it looked so out of place and tatty beside my coats and jackets, some of which had traveled all the way from Milan and Paris's Champs-
É
lys
é
es.

“Fine.”

I followed him into the kitchen,
my
kitchen, like I was the guest and he, the master of the manor. There was something hot about the whole thing. I didn't mind pretending, just for one moment, that I wasn't in charge. He flicked on the kettle then pulled open the refrigerator. He too didn't seem to mind the exchange of roles; he slipped into the role of master quite easily, acting like he owned the place.

“That's it? She's out of hospital now, I assume?”