6. 6
6
The morning’s chill nipped at Barrett’s bare biceps as he marched up the icy walkway of Mrs. Thompson’s sprawling ranch-style mansion, one located on twenty-four acres of land on the outskirts of the mountainous town. His hands batted against the camouflage design on his Army combat pants. His heartbeat thundered beneath his matching shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a sliver of tanned muscles. He swallowed hard and stared at the doorbell camera.
He was being recorded. Somewhere in the cloud was now an image of his oiled abs peeking out from a tactical work shirt, feet nervously tensed in slightly undersized surplus store combat boots. He had been asked to come as a horny soldier on leave, ready for a different kind of action.
It’ll get easier , he chanted, echoing Will Jessup’s words during his first morning briefing. Soon, this would all be second nature, but today, his nerves felt like a teen stripped to his underwear in the middle of a pep rally.
Could be worse, he remembered Will saying. You could be in a soul-sucking cubicle listening to coworkers repeat the same dull stories.
Before he could knock, a woman in her late fifties threw open the door. Her forehead warred with a month-old dose of Botox in its attempt to crease with surprise. Collagen-plumped lips slathered in berry-colored lipstick gaped in shock.
“Hello, ma’am. First Lieutenant Bulge, reporting for duty.” He clicked his heels together and saluted aggressively, trying his best to remember how they did it in movies like Platoon and Apocalypse Now .
“At ease, soldier.” She grinned. “Follow me.”
Bolt-upright, he clasped his arms behind his back and followed her in, whistling as he entered the grand foyer.
So much glass. So much marble. So many shining surfaces.
This was going to be a pain in the ass.
“My, they never seem to disappoint at Man Maid , do they?” Mrs. Thompson’s stiletto Louis Vuitton heels traipsed toward him, arms extended for his jacket. He stripped it off with a smile and handed it to her, pumping his bare pecs as she turned away to hang it on a coat rack.
Her gaze raked down his sculpted body, settling on the lump in the front of his pants. “I see why they call you Lieutenant Bulge.”
She shook her head to regain her composure and returned her eyes to his face. “Alright, let me show you to the laundry room. My normal housemaid just had a baby and is on maternity leave for a few weeks. I’ll have you come in her stead a few times a week while she’s away. The poor thing’s water broke all over my Ernesta Sugar rug. Then, she used my seven-hundred-dollar imported towels to clean it up, if you can believe it. I was just sick over it. I’d have tossed them, but Will said you guys are great with laundry. Clean them up so I can gift them to her. I’m sure they’re nicer than anything she’ll ever be able to afford.”
Mrs. Thompson strutted down the corridor. Barrett followed, taking the opportunity to appreciate every bit of the tight figure beneath her clinging silk dress. He half-listened as she droned on, fantasizing about what her bare ass might look like and if she’d be a voracious cougar type in bed. It was women like her, in his experience, who let loose the most between the sheets.
…Except for Aphrodite .
The sudden recollection of her pierced nipples in his fingers hardened him. He cleared his throat and tried to focus on whatever Mrs. Thompson was blathering on about.
They turned the corner into a laundry room nearly as spacious as his loft apartment. He stomped in ahead of her, giving her a gorgeous view of his muscular back and marble-hard butt. He looked at a floor-to-ceiling wall of chemical detergents between two massive windows. Bizarre cleaning tools on an eye-level shelf reminded him of the torture instruments he’d once seen in an action movie.
Lining both side walls were large washing machines and dryers, neither of which he was confident he knew how to operate.
You’re thirty-four years old, Barrett. You know how to clean by now. And if you don’t know how to do something, hell, fake it ’til you make it. Just make sure you look damn hot while you’re doin’ it , Will had said.
“So,” he muttered smoothly, twisting in his too-tight boots to face her, “this is where you want me to start?”
“I don’t think I stuttered .” She folded her arms.
“What about… the bedroom ?” He stepped closer. “Sure you don’t want me to start there?”
She studied him for a moment, stunned by the brazen proposition to lay her only moments after gaining entry to her home. She toyed with her wedding band, one studded with enough diamonds that its glittery surface could be seen in Idaho. “I’m married, Romeo. To a man who gives me all of this.” She gestured to her opulent surroundings. “Keep it in your fatigues, Officer Bulge, and get started on those towels.”
It was worth a shot, he thought. Any activity would beat actually having to clean.
Barrett nodded, saluted her again, and turned toward the several baskets of laundry nestled in the corner. Banging the cougar would have been so much easier than stain-treating placenta-covered towels…
Or whatever the hell was on them.
Exhausted by several hours of work, Barrett tossed the scrub sponge in the bottom of the huge Jacuzzi in the master bath, cranked the water to cold, and dunked his head beneath the faucet.
In the doorway, Mrs. Thompson tapped her manicured nails on the jamb and smiled. “Mmmm. Working up a sweat?”
He turned off the faucet and nodded, flinging beads of water into the bottom of the tub. His muscles rippled, flexing as he stood. He shook his short hair like a dog, speckling the heated mirror beside the bath.
“Is today… your first day on the job?”
“Yeah, it is. How’d you know?” He wiped his hands on her crisp, white Egyptian cotton bathrobe and then scrubbed his face with a towel on the chrome bar above the Jacuzzi, leaving it crooked.
Mrs. Thompson just stared at him with a look of displeasure.
He followed her gaze to the towel and realized his mistake. He straightened it on the bar, backing away when he seemed satisfied.
Sue rolled her eyes. “Well, Colonel Boner—”
“First Lieutenant Bulge, ma’am,” he corrected, standing at attention and saluting her again.
“At ease, soldier.” She motioned to him with flattened hands. “I think that’ll be all. Your tour of duty just ended.”
He looked inside the tub at the line of shaved hair and soap residue he hadn’t yet finished scrubbing. “Yes, ma’am.”
He nodded, feeling panic wad in his chest. She had scheduled him for five hours. It hadn’t even been three since he knocked on her front door. Either she got what she wanted:
An eyeful and a moderately cheap thrill…
Or she was displeased entirely.
They hadn’t even gotten to the part where he shed his fatigues and scrubbed tile grout in his small “ Be all you can be ” banana hammock yet.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d like to at least finish folding the laundry. You paid for five hours.”
He shuddered to think about the painful look of disappointment he’d have to see in Will’s eyes if his first client was disgruntled.
“I’ll get everything folded and hung up before I leave, so nothing’ll be wrinkled for you.”
She nodded and followed him out, but not before catching a glimpse of the dirty sponge he’d left in the half-scrubbed bath. She shook her head.
A few minutes later, as she rounded the doorway into the laundry room, she stopped, frozen in horror as the faux-soldier pulled an armful of fluff-covered fabric out of the dryer.
“Oh, dear God…” Barrett grimaced, thoroughly embarrassed at the presence of the powder-blue fibers on every inch of the load in his grasp. A mostly disintegrated bath rug dangled from the mouth of the machine.
Mrs. Thompson covered her mouth to stifle a scream, her lifted face flashing angrily scarlet. “What did you do ? You… fucking moron ?!”
“Moron?!” Barrett froze. “Your frickin’… bath mat self-destructed like a bomb!”
She stormed over and snatched the remains of the rug. She flicked the little white tag dangling from the shred that remained. “Did you read the instructions?!”
“I shouldn’t have to! It’s a rug!”
“You. Don’t. Wash. A. Rug. With. Delicate. Expensive. Fabrics!” She snapped, slapping her palms with each word. She tossed the destroyed rug on the floor and yanked the items in his hands out in a burst of anger.
“Hey, lady, those were clean!”
“Those are covered in rug fibers!”
“So is your floor , now!” Barrett growled in frustration.
Staring down at the mound of fabric, she cocked her head sideways and lifted a towel from the pile. She held it up, staring at Barrett through a fist-sized hole melted through the middle of it.
“What… the…?”
“Oh shit.” Barrett swallowed, Adam’s apple bouncing hard in his throat. “I might have used too much bleach.”
Mrs. Thompson glowered at him, lowering the towels and rolling her shoulders back. She looked like a bulldog, forcing an under-bite.
“They were white towels! You told me to remove the gunk, so I stain-treated them!”
“You poured bleach straight onto a seven-hundred dollar towel?! Jesus, I thought it was your first day on the job . I didn’t realize it was your first day ever cleaning in your life !”
“Now, Mrs. Thompson, there’s no need to be cruel… I’ll just… replace them.”
“Replace them?” She laughed cruelly. “You’re going to go to Italy and get me replacement towels?”
“Well, no. But Target has some nice—”
“Target?! Target?! ” She looked like she might pass out. She shot a finger toward the door. “Get the hell out of my house, Lieutenant Imbecile !”