Victoria The Billionaires Maid

I leaned over and dug my sandals out of my canvas bag, swapping my dusty ancient sneakers for more comfortable shoes. Especially if bath time troubles were in my future.

I was pretty sure my poor feet swelled to double their size the minute I took my sneakers off. I needed to be horizontal for a week.

My heart raced at the thought. No.

No.

No.

Not that kind of horizontal.

I peered into my bag for any other goodies. I was good at packing extras of most things, including clothing, but nope. Dusty T-shirt and cutoffs it was. My backup shirt had been used when a toddler sprayed me with ketchup yesterday.

I slammed the door and tromped through the river rock edging the wide driveway, then up the grand staircase. Solar lights flared from large lamps flanking the double entry door. The aged walnut wood screamed of money and affluence.

I didn’t even get the pretense of knocking. A blood-curdling scream had me pulling the large door open.

“Laurie Elizabeth Hamilton, that is enough.” A rare bellow from Seth kicked my heart rate into high gear as I hit the stairs at two at a time.

“No boys allowed!”

“I washed your hair two days ago and you didn’t say a thing then, young lady.”

Uh-oh. He’d dragged out young lady. This wasn’t going to be good.

I came around the corner to find a frazzled Seth crouched next to the door with his fingers fisted in his hair. The dark wavy strands were sticking up in damp tufts. Wet splotches arced across his chest and his arms were beaded with water.

“Didn’t even let you get a towel, huh?”

He spun on the balls of his feet and stood. “Thank God.”

He was wearing his oldest jeans-you know, the kind that were worn at all the good stress points-with bare feet and a waterlogged blue Oxford dress shirt open a few extra buttons to show off way too much of his chest. There was obviously no justice in this world.

“I just tried to go in again. I’m her father, for God’s sake. We just had a bath the other day without incident.”

“That was the other day.” I swallowed down my nerves. If he could act normal, I could act normal. I strode down the hall and knocked on the door briskly. “Hey, can I come in, munchkin?”

“Ally! Do you have my Care Bear bubbles?”

“Honey, you dumped your tubby bubbles, remember?” Seth called through the door.

“No! My bubbles. I want bubbles.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Does she mean like blowing bubbles?”

Seth tipped his head back. So much throat and chest on display. His chest was mostly smooth save for a sprinkle of dark hair between his pecs. I’d seen him without a shirt a million times, but now just seemed so much worse. God, stop looking.

“Honey, we play with those outside.”

“No!” Laurie screeched.

My eyebrows shot up. “Tell me you have bubbles.”

His dark brows knitted, then cleared. “Yes. I have to go get them.” He started to stride down the hall then stopped. “Are you okay?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re asking this now?” His gaze dropped to my chest and his eyes heated briefly. “Your shirt says maybe not.”

I glanced down at the words on my chest and cursed my headlights coming out to play. Timing was wrong as always, but this time there was a weight to it I didn’t want to examine. At all. “Yeah, well, adulting comes around whether you want it to or not.” I opened the door and slid inside before he could say another word.

The little girl in the tub obliterated any other issue I had with daddy dearest. I put my hands on my hips. “I hear you’re giving your dad some trouble.”

Laurie grinned up at me, her freakishly long eyelashes starred from the water. She was sitting in about six inches of water that was mostly foam. She also had an array of plastic ducks, fish, whales, dolphins, and yes, Care Bears in the tub with her. She held a bright pink netted puff in her hand as she painstakingly washed her blue Care Bear.

Fittingly, it was a plastic version of Grumpy Bear.

Just like me.

Well, until this little girl was in my space. I couldn’t be grumpy around her, even if I wanted to strangle her sometimes. Cuteness always won out.

She smiled up at me with a dimple winking. “This is a girls’ party.”

I kneeled beside her and brushed her damp bangs out of her face. “Is that so?”

She nodded and bit her lower lip in concentration as she washed under Grumpy’s armpit.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“Grumpy is a boy.”

She looked up at me with a knitted brow so much like her father’s. A blond version, but all the rest was the same. “Grumpy is a bear,” she said as if that made all the difference.

I supposed for an almost four-year-old, it really did. I shrugged. “All righty then.”

I turned on the taps to add to the water to bubbles ratio. From the looks of the bottle on the side of the tub, Laurie had been using a heavy hand.

When she lifted the bottle and started to pour more on the puff, I made a grab for it.

She stuck out her lower lip. “I need that.”

I swooped up a froth of bubbles and settled it on top of her puff. “There you go.” When she still frowned, I took another dollop and settled it on her nose.

She giggled.

Now we were in business. By the time Seth came back, I had her hair washed and was chaperoning her hygiene rituals. I’d already made the mistake of trying to help there.

I’d been an independent kid too, but I didn’t remember a lot about my childhood. Just moving a lot. And I’d learned to shower far earlier than a lot of my friends. Sitting in bathtubs in some of the places we’d lived wasn’t the best idea.

Seth knocked on the door.

“No! No boys.”

A clunking sound made me frown and then Seth’s lacrosse stick came through the door with a bottle of bubbles in the netting. I laughed and stood.

Laurie giggled. “Thank you, Daddy!”

I took the bubbles. “You’re a dork.”

“Daddy’s a dork.”

“Great. Thanks. She’ll be saying that for days.”

“Fitting.”

“Har-har. Everything okay in there, girls? It’s way past bedtime.”

“Almost done.” Laurie slapped her hand on the water. “Go away.”

“I’m going.”

I snaked a finger through the crack in the door and flicked a nail over the back of his hand. “We’re fine.”

He let out a slow breath. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” I rubbed my hand over my breastbone and went back to his daughter with the bubbles. I unscrewed the cap. “Okay, you get one blast of bubbles for each friend you finish washing.”

“Deal.” She dunked her dolphin into the water and it came out gleaming. She set it on the shelf along the back of the tub. “Go.”

I pulled the double wand out and blew out a stream of rainbow bubbles.

“Me. I want to do it.”

“Two more of your buddies and you got it.”

The big whale and baby whale got dunked and deposited on the shelf. I dunked the wand and handed it to her.

“No, I want to do it.”

“You are wet and soapy, kiddo. We don’t want these to fall in, do we?”

She scrunched up her nose and lips. “No. I guess not.” She shrugged and took the wand. She blew too hard and only got three bubbles. “Hey.”

I took it back and dunked. “Easy. Soft. Yes, just like that.”

When the stream of bubbles floated up, she clapped. Five minutes later, there were many squeaky clean fish guarding her tub and a pruny almost four-year-old standing with a purple towel on her head and fluffy pink Care Bears towel wrapped around her.

Before she could find another reason to extend her bath time, I swooped her out and deposited her on the bath mat. I wrapped another towel around her and started a rubdown. By the time she was mostly dry, she was still giggling and I was laughing with her.

I hadn’t even known this was exactly what I needed to even me out.

“Okay, Daddy, we’re ready.”

He opened the door so fast, I knew he’d stood out there the entire time. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Didn’t he trust me?

Then I looked down at the crazy monkey in my arms and her adoring eyes only for him. There was no way I could get upset about that. Laurie reached for him and suddenly I was forty pounds lighter.

He looked down at me, his eyes flashing for a moment as he dropped his gaze over my wet shirt. I pulled it away from my traitorous nipples and turned away from him to pick up the bubbles and empty bottle of soap.

He cleared his throat before burying his face in Laurie’s neck. She giggled and squirmed, causing the towel on her hair to fall to the floor. “I’m just going to get her dressed.”

“Yeah, good idea. I’ll just clean up.”

“Don’t worry about that. You’ve done more than enough.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, really. The nanny will take care of it.”

“Right.” Of course he had a nanny for her. I’d talked to her a million times. I didn’t know her duties included cleaning a bathroom, but he was right this wasn’t my house or my life.

He just wanted me to create a human, not take care of one. Even if he did call on me to help.

Would he do the same with my-our-his… God. How would I even classify him or her? Mine?

Ours.

I fisted my hands into my hair and tugged out my messy bun. “Fuck.”