“Don’t fear the unknown. You’ll miss out on some of the world's most beautiful things.”

“I know.” He sighs, peeking back down the hallway.

“Come. We’ll find our room and then we’ll explore.” Colby takes off ahead of me over to the box with our new little friend. I stand, looking back down the hallway. I don’t scare so easily Mr. Schulz. Not after some of the things I’ve been through. You’ll have to try a whole lot harder than that.

5

Kale

A cat. They brought a cat to my house. I redirect the camera and zoom in on the striped furry creature. Wait, that thing isn’t a cat. It’s a kitten and it’s tiny with a smushed face and fluffy tail. It’s cute as hell. I hate that it’s here.

I push away from the panel of security screens in utter disgust. It’s bad enough that there’s a hot, soft woman wandering my halls, opening my drapes, and perfuming up my dank rooms, but now I have to deal with a bundle of fluff? I knead my temples and try to formulate a plan because I can’t stay in my east wing quarters and jack off for the rest of my life. I need to get her to quit and take her cat and her kid away from here.

She didn’t like me yelling at her, so I guess I’ll have to be a loud-mouthed asshole. I grab my sweatshirt and flip the hoodie up. It’s too hot to be wearing this fleece and I’m going to suffocate with the hoodie on, but if I don’t wear it, she might see me, and I can’t risk that.

While she and her minion and the hairball are touring my house, I slip down the back stairs and out the door. To my surprise, there isn’t much in her car. I wonder if there’s a moving van coming.

It only takes me three trips to get all the stuff from her car into the house. I stack it outside the maid’s quarters just off the kitchen and let myself in. This part of the house has been used by the housekeepers ever since I bought the place five years ago, but this is the first time I’ve been inside. It’s a set of three rooms—a bedroom, a sitting room, and a small kitchen. Off the sitting room is a patio only big enough for one chair and a small iron table. The walls are white and the furniture outdated. No wonder the previous eight housekeepers quit. This is a soulless place. Someone like Summer, who likes soft things, pretty things, cute things, will hate this place. I’ll need to make some changes. I start hauling her stuff inside and have three of the boxes inside the drab set of rooms when I hear her voice.

“Oh, I think it’s down here, Colby. We missed it the first time.”

“This place is too big,” the kid groans. “And I need to go potty, Summer. Why couldn’t I use one of those other bathrooms?”

“I don’t know, honey. That man has a lot of rules, and we don’t want to get in trouble on our first day, right?”

“I guess.” The kid sounds petulant, but I’d be in a bad mood, too, if I had to piss and saw a toilet but was told I couldn’t use it.

The voices are growing closer, and if I don’t get out of here right now, I’ll be trapped. Reluctantly, I set down a box and slip out onto the terrace just before Summer and Colby come in.

“Oh, someone brought our stuff in,” she says.

“There’s only one bed here.” The kid is annoyed. “I can’t sleep with you, Summer. I’m too old for that.”

I notice that he calls her by her first name. Are they siblings? How old is she? Tina didn’t slip jailbait into my house, did she? Immediately I feel dirty and not in a good way.

“Too old? How is that possible? You’re my boy.”

There’s a light scuffle as I presume Summer tries to foist some affection on the kid, who resists. Eventually, he gives in, though, because who wouldn’t? Summer’s the type of woman to melt the hardest steel. Of course my cock disagrees. It’s hard right now and would like nothing more than for me to bust down the door, shove Colby in a closet and bend Summer over that rickety two-decade old bed and break the headboard with the fucking I’d lay on her.

I leave before I do anything dumb. Upstairs in my lair, I call Tina again. “How old is she?”

“Hello, Kale! Nice to hear from you, Kale. You’re welcome, Kale, for all the hard work I do for you.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and draw on my tiny reservoir of patience. “Hello, Tina. Thanks for hiring a teenager as my housekeeper. I’ll be sure to send you letters from my prison cell after Chief Dane learns that I’m employing children out here.”

“She’s twenty-two, you melodramatic ass,” Tina retorts. “She’s twenty-two, has a brother who is seven, and has like a half dozen nursing credits. She said she had to drop out because of other obligations at home, which I took to mean she had to take care of her brother.”

So they’re siblings. That’s a relief. I don’t examine why that’s a relief, but it is.

“It sounds like you’re getting along?” Tina asks, hoping to color her words.

How do I answer that since I’ve not officially met Summer and have no plans to, but if I tell Tina that, she’s going to give me some lecture about how I shouldn’t let my physical scars define me. That’s easy for her to say. Her mirror doesn’t cringe in fear when she stands in front of it. I’m not upset about how I look. I accepted it a long time ago, but acceptance isn’t the same as pouring hot acid down your back, which is essentially what I’d be doing if I waltzed downstairs, sat at my massive dining room table, and let everyone in the world including the goddess who is currently bedding down in my house see the true me. I wasn’t much to look at before the accident, and now I’m a horror show.

Colby would probably have nightmares for years and need therapy or some shit like that if he laid eyes on me. Summer would pass out in shock and horror.

“You need to find someone else,” I inform Tina.

“Come on now. Give Summer a chance,” my sister pleads.

“I will, but once she sees me, you know she’s going to run. Might as well start looking for her replacement now.”

“You don’t know that,” Tina protests. “This one could be different.”

“She won’t be. Not at all.”

6

Summer

“I still don’t know why Beast couldn’t come with us.” I stop what I’m doing at the stove to look over to where Colby has been pouting since we got down to the kitchen. He’s not looking at me; his attention is focused on the paper he’s been working on for a while now.

“You picked a name?”

He shrugs. I put a lid on the sauce I started. The pantry came stocked with basic stuff, and I found things that I could put together to make spaghetti. I also found a fresh loaf of bread I can toast to go with it. Spaghetti is Colby’s favorite.

I figured it would comfort him if I made something he liked. I also had the thought that maybe the smell would lure my new boss out of hiding. I knew it was a shot in the dark, but I know food can get me moving often enough. It’s worth a try. Maybe if he meets us—which I know is against that list of crazy rules—he’ll warm up to us. No one could be mean to Colby after meeting him.