“Don’t be silly, Belle—”
“No, I—I should go,” she stammered.
And before I could protest again, she snatched the door open and rushed out of the room, straight through the foyer and out the front door into the night.
Heather looked at me from her desk.
“Everything okay?” she asked. “Should I call the police?”
“No,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
But I was lying; everything was not fine.
Belle had come crashing into my life like a meteor and left just as quickly. But I wasn’t about to let that be the end of things—no way.
I was Alden McLaren and I didn’t get to where I was by not going after the things that I wanted.
And now I wanted Belle, and she was going to be mine.
Chapter Two
Belle
My heart was racing all the way back to my apartment.
What just happened?! I thought as I went around the block one more time while I tried to get my mind straight.
Had I just kissed Alden McLaren at my fucking job interview!?
Yes, Belle, I thought with dismay. Yes, you did.
“Fuck!”
Maybe it’s because he’s unhappily married, or maybe he’s single, or maybe he’s just an asshole looking to cheat with the maid. Either way, I was used to it but I never, ever gave in.
I was a professional twenty-two-year-old who’d built her entire life up on her own. I lost my parents when I was fourteen and fought hard to get where I was. Housekeeping was my business—or at least it had been until Melissa ran her smear campaign against me and got me basically blacklisted from all of Long Island.
And what did she say I did? Exactly what I swore I would never do; she said I was sleeping with my clients. She said I was an escort.
Melissa was my competitor, of course, and she found a couple of guy friends to go along with her story—men who I’d worked for at one point in time—and before I knew it, my reputation was destroyed.
Messages were flying all over social media accusing me of taking money for sex, stealing women’s husbands and even using my business as a front for a state-wide prostitution ring!
It was absolutely insane, but people bought it. I was finished.
Melissa took all of my clients and I’d been scrambling for the last two months trying to make ends meet.
My bank account, like my fuel gauge in my car, was all but empty, and my roommate, Sara, was moving out soon, leaving me to pay for the entire house on my own. If I didn’t find work soon, I’d been in big trouble.
I was supposed to be building myself up from the ground up, finding work and getting my shit together. And so what had I ended up doing?
Kissing Alden McLaren…
“What were you thinking, Belle?” I groaned.
I don’t know what made me angrier; the fact that I’d kissed him or the fact that I knew why I had done it but was still trying to convince myself that it had just been a silly mistake.
No, it wasn’t just a silly mistake; it was something much more than that; it was a problem.