“Tessa Stanton,” Price began, looking down at the clipboard he had taken off the table nearby. He looked up and stared at me as if studying every single move I made. I tried to not pay attention to the way he watched me, or to how little butterflies attacked my stomach with the way he said my name—pronouncing it in a way that made it sound beautiful and elegant, unlike any way I’d ever heard before.
“Yes. My mother named me after a rich girl she went to school with. She decided that Tessa would be a good name to give me so I would one day be rich or something—like her classmate.” My mother would have also liked the way he said my name, but why I was giving him this useless information, I had no idea. I knew I needed to calm down and not hog the conversation, or I was going to blow this interview.
“All right, Tessa. It says on your application that you have never been a personal assistant before. Is that true?” He watched me intently, as if wanting to see how I delivered my answer rather than simply to hear it.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why did you apply to be one?” he asked. His deep, husky voice rolled off his tongue as smooth as butter.
“I…” I glanced at my feet, back at him, and then decided I had to be honest. “I don’t know. When I saw the ad, there was something about it that just stood out. It interested me.”
“But you have never worked in this field at all? What about housekeeping?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“No, sir. I’ve only been a waitress or a bartender. I was a maid once for a motel but was being paid under the table, and it was for less than a week, so I didn’t put it on the application.”
“Do you have any higher education?” he asked, the intensity of his stare making my skin burn.
“No, sir. I have no education to mention at all. That would have required my mother to actually care or be engaged in my life. I was pretty much on my own growing up. I wouldn’t call my mother a parent, but more the other way around.” I let out a defeated breath. I was giving away too much of my dramatic past. No employer wanted drama, and I was handing it to him on a silver platter. Shit. I needed to shut up.
“So where do you live now? Are you currently employed?” he asked.
“I’m not employed right now. The last job I had was at a café, and it went out of business. I currently live in… the city.” I didn’t want to continue on. He didn’t know, nor would he care, that I barely had enough money to get back to my shitty hole and have dinner for the night.
“Family in town?”
“Not unless you count my druggy mother. I’m sure she’s somewhere out there. But I haven’t seen her in over five years. So your guess is as good as mine.” And there I go again. Completely ruining this interview with my big mouth. I was a complete disaster and by the heat radiating from my face, I knew I had to be several shades of red as I did so.
“Did you read the part about having to be a live-in? Living in a remote cabin?” he asked, still staring at me with those dark eyes of his.
I nodded. “I think that was the part of the ad that interested me the most.” I struggled to inhale a steady breath, and stilled my fidgeting hands. “I’ve never been to the mountains before. Or a cabin.”
“Do you know who I am?”
I shook my head, confused by his question and looked down at the floor again where I got some feeling of reprieve from the penetrating energy in the room. “I don’t understand. Should I?”
Price sat back, clapped his hands together, and interlaced his fingers. “Very well then, let me make it perfectly clear what I am looking for.” He waited for me to look up and meet his eyes. “I’ve been writing psychological thrillers and horror novels for over two decades. I work under strict deadlines and have an aggressive production schedule for my releases. To hit these deadlines, I like to go to my cabin in the Sierra Mountains. I like to be away from San Francisco, the distractions, and breathe the mountain air. My writing consumes me, which means that unless I want to live in absolute squalor and living off no nutrients whatsoever, I need someone to handle providing the meals, making sure I actually eat them, and keeping the house from becoming uninhabitable. I also need someone to read my writing as I go to make sure I haven’t gone off track and to look for glaring mistakes. I am a taskmaster. I have extremely high standards and expect things done my way. My rules are my rules, and they aren’t up for negotiations. I have very little patience for just about anything.” He stopped and released a deep breath as he briefly closed his eyes before continuing. “Without going too much into the details about what I write, it often puts me in a dark mindset. Almost as if my words haunt me. So, I need someone to help keep all the shadows at bay, keep my life level, and to also know when to leave me alone.”