Maid To Be

o n e

? Feelin' inspired 'cause the tables have turned

Yeah, I'm on fire and I know that it burns ?

My eyes scanned the silver nameplate that sat, positioned in the center of the window-clad skyscraper.

Rodriguez Enterprises

The building itself was made almost entirely out of glass, and the parts that weren't see-through were either silver or dark gray.

"Name?" a gruff voice called out to me from somewhere in the distance.

I leveled my head to see a buff man standing next to a round security post with a seemingly permanent scowl etched onto his face.

"Lilac Reynolds," I replied politely. "I'm here to pick up my friend, Veronica Dunham."

The bored expression dotting the guard's face became even more prominent as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Okay . . ." I carried on talking as I wasn't sure what else he wanted to know. "Veronica has been an intern here for over a year now, and she told me to meet her by the front entrance at one o'clock, but as you can see, she is now fifteen going on twenty minutes late."

Towards the end of my sentence, the guard let out a prolonged sigh, and it took everything within me to remain calm.

Talking to people is literally in this man's job description.

"Have you tried calling her?"

Oh. My. God.

I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent anything other than a respectable response from coming out of my mouth. "Yes, that was one of the first things that I did."

The want-to-be Hercules proceeded to stare at me for what felt like forever, and I instinctively turned my head to avoid his gaze after his beady eyes began to scan my figure from the ground up.

When his stare became too much to bear, I opened my mouth to bum-rush his decision; however, he quickly turned around and swiped the chrome-colored keycard that grants him access into the building before I could do so.

"Thank you," I muttered without looking up at him.

The guard let out a grunt as he held the door open for me, and instead of providing me with a verbal response like I thought he would, the son of a bitch simply let the door slam shut behind me.

Asshole.

Whoever's in charge of staffing needs to be fired, effective immediately. My dissatisfaction with the people who work here was already higher than my blood pressure, and I haven't even entered the building yet.

In the midst of my internal rant, a prestigious-looking woman passed through the second set of doors that stood before me.

She shot me an uneasy smile as she breezed past me, and the sound of her heels clicking against the marble floors bounced off the walls of the entryway as she rushed to open the door that I had just entered in through.

Her abrupt departure pulled me from my thoughts, and my heart began to thump wildly in my chest as I reached out to open the last set of glass doors.

When she first started working here, Veronica never shut up about how elegant this office is. When I asked her why that is, she informed me that her boss is crazy in the sense that he wants his building to reflect his image.

That of which being . . . squeaky fucking clean.

And, boy, was it ever.

My jaw hit the floor the second I stepped into the lobby.

(A/N: for visual purposes, Lilac is across the room, standing by the doors. so the angle in which the picture was taken (where the photographer is standing) is where the elevators are. got it? got it. :)

The indoor water fountain demanded my attention almost immediately, seeing as it was the first piece of decor to enter my line of sight.

I was pleased to hear that the sound coming from the excess water falling over into the core part of the fountain wasn't annoyingly loud like most water fountains are.

If anything, the noise was more soothing than it was obnoxious.

My eyes continued to wander around the rest of the lobby as people dressed in expensive-looking business attire scrambled around the room.

To my right, there was a sitting area where a few employees sat, typing away on their laptops, their minds seemingly detached from the world around them.

Another group of people stood, conversing with one another by the pillar closest to where I was standing, and from what I could hear, they seemed to be going over the details of some upcoming business deal that their boss has been stressing over for the past day and a half.

A feminine voice suddenly rang out to the left of me, and it caused my attention to drift away from the hard-at-work employees.

"May I help you, Miss?"

I turned my head to see an auburn-haired woman staring at me from her desk.

The faux happy expression on her face made me more than hesitant to talk to her, but since the inner workings of this building were completely foreign to me, I decided to take her up on her offer.

"Hi," I said, greeting her kindly. "I'm here to pick up my friend, Veronica Dunham. She isn't answering her personal phone, so I was wondering if you could call up to her desk and let her know that I'm here?"

The redhead whose name tag read, Renée, looked me up and down before she reached over to pick up the office phone that was sitting next to her computer.

Her black and white acrylic nails clacked against the numbered buttons that were glued to the base attachment of the phone and the sound caused me to cringe internally.

After she finished dialing the number, she held the receiver up to her ear.

A few seconds passed before Veronica finally picked up.

"Hello?"

Renée paused to listen to whatever it was that Veronica had to say, and based on the grimace that slipped onto her face a few seconds later, it must've been something that she didn't want to hear.

"You'll have to tell him that yourself," she huffed. "But look, I've got a woman here named . . ."

She pulled the phone away from her ear, covering the speaker with her palm as she leaned in closer to me. "What's your name?"

"Lilac," I responded instantaneously.

". . . Lilac, and she wanted me to let you know that she's down here waiting for you," Renée added onto her previous statement in a dull tone.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes at her.

Does nobody here like their job?

"She will be down here shortly." Renée's lilted voice forced me to return my gaze to her caked-on appearance. "In the meantime, you can have a seat over in our waiting area."

My eyes followed the point of her finger until they landed on the section that I had been looking at earlier.

I shot her a tight-lipped smile. "Thank you."

She nodded her head stiffly before she focused her attention back on her computer.

As I made my way across the room, multiple people went out of their way to look at me.

Is there something on my face?

?

Even if that were the case, it wouldn't be attracting this much attention.

Almost every single employee was now staring at me in horror and a majority of their glares were aimed at my body.

I glanced down at my physique to try and figure out what it was that they were gaping at, and after giving myself a once-over, I quickly figured it out.

My attire.

They were staring at my attire.

The gray sweatpants that I had on helped to shield my legs from the public eye; however, my arms were now covered with goosebumps as my cropped tank top did very little to protect me from the blasting AC.

And, to set the whole thing off, my worn-down, used-to-be-all-white Nike's squeaked loudly against the marble floors as I slowly continued my journey to the other side of the lobby.

As I grew closer to the main entrance, a tall, dark-haired man yanked open the last set of glass doors with an insane amount of force.

"I'm going to kill that son of a bitch!" he yelled, catching everyone in the room by surprise.

His shouts could be heard from a mile away, and his increased volume ended up startling the woman that was walking past me.

In her frightened state, the woman ended up dropping her pen, and my focus instantly snapped down towards the ground as her writing utensil rolled over towards my foot. I bent down to pick it up for her, and in doing so, another voice spoke up in response to the man's threat.

"Sir, Mr. Durant is simply trying to get under your skin." The skinny woman that had been trailing behind the dark-haired man brought this up to him in a seemingly respectful manner. "He's only doing this to get back at you for the deal that you took from him last month."

As soon as my fingers came into contact with the pen, I straightened myself back upright so that I could give it back to its rightful owner.

Once the pen was safe in her hands, the woman shot me a grateful smile before she scurried off towards the elevators. After seeing that she made it to her destination, I turned my head back forward just in time to see the brunette stop dead in his tracks.

He then whipped around on his heel so that he was face-to-face with the woman standing behind him.

"Thank you for stating the obvious, Jessica," he spat.

Since this . . . emotion-filled interaction left him momentarily distracted, I decided to take the small window of opportunity that was being presented to me and continue my voyage to the other side of the room.

I was roughly two seconds away from being totally out of the brunette's way when he suddenly turned around to resume his trek over to the elevators.

Given the abrupt nature of his actions, I ended up pausing for half a second, which led him to run straight into me.

"Watch it," he growled, shooting me an icy glare.

I tilted my head up, fully ready to tell him off, only the words became lodged in my throat the moment my eyes met his.

Damn.

His eyes were the most beautiful shade of green that I had ever seen. They had an ombré-like effect to them, where the outer part of his iris was a darker shade of green and the inner part was a few shades lighter.

A cool breeze snapped me out of my trance and I looked up to see the annoyingly handsome man actively walking away from me.

In light of my delayed response, he decided to take the initiative and end our conversation early.

How cute of him to think that we were done.

"Excuse me?" I called out to him.

My obnoxiously loud volume managed to grab the attention of several bystanders. "You ran into me, so you're the one who needs to watch it."

Complete and utter silence filled the room around us, with the only exception being the faint sound of the water fountain.

Jessica, the woman that the brunette had been yelling at earlier, ended up crashing into her boss's back due to the fact that he had once again stopped in his tracks without warning.

After realizing what she had done, she quickly recoiled away from his body and lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. "Mr. Rodriguez, I am so sorry!"

Oh, so this is the world-famous Kyle Rodriguez.

I've never been one to keep up with the news, so everything that I've ever heard about this man has been filtered through my most trusted source:

Veronica.

She showed me his picture when she first got the internship, but that was such a long time ago that I honestly forgot what he looked like.

Until now, that is.

Kyle's eyes met mine as soon as he turned around, and after seeing the murderous look on his face, Jessica was quick to remove herself from his path.

In a matter of seconds, the handsome devil was looming over me, and his demeanor became several shades darker as he drilled holes into my head with his overly heated stare.

He kept his voice low so that only I could hear him. "What did you just say to me?"

The height difference between us was almost laughable as my five-foot-three-inch frame didn't even come close to touching his six-foot-three-inch stature.

"I said: You ran into me, so you're the one who needs to watch it," I reiterated, making sure to put an excessive amount of emphasis on my personal pronouns.

Kyle clenched his jaw at my response. "How the hell did you get into my building?"

I swallowed down a laugh.

He's kidding, right?

"I walked in through the front door just like everybody else," I retorted, answering his question honestly.

Jessica stepped out from behind her boss so that I could see her, and my eyes flickered past Kyle's shoulder after she began to gesture for me to stop talking.

Before I could pay heed to her warning, Kyle spoke down at me for a second time.

"My guards are trained to know the name of every single last employee that works in this building, and that's in addition to the guests that I have on schedule to visit me at any given hour of the day," he seethed. "So, I'm going to ask you again: How the hell did you get into my building?"

All eyes remained trained on us as I slowly gestured towards the front door. "What part of I walked in through the front door do you not understand?"

In response to my statement, someone in the room broke the silence with their laugh, and it was at that moment that Kyle became aware of the fact that we had an audience.

In the blink of an eye, he turned to address his team as a whole, and I watched in awe as some people began to shake in fear that he might single them out.

"Do you or do you not have work to do?" he barked at them.

Nobody spoke up.

Instead, everyone returned to their tasks, acting as if they hadn't just taken a non-authorized break to watch this dramatic scene unfold.

Interesting.

"You have two seconds to get off my property before I call in my private security team," Kyle snapped at me. "And trust me when I say that they will not hesitate to haul your poverty-stricken ass out of here."

Oh no, he didn't.

"You pretentious ass, I-think-I'm-holier-than-thou-just-because-I-was-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-my-mouth, little bit—" I started to curse him out, only the sound of someone calling my name caused me to stop short.

"Lilac!" Veronica hissed as she half-ran, half-walked her way over to us.

She came to an abrupt stop next to me before she threw her arm around my shoulder and yanked me into her side forcefully.

"Mr. Rodriguez, hi!" She beamed, flashing him one of her sickeningly sweet smiles. "Please excuse my friend. She hasn't eaten today, and you know what they say in those Snickers commercials . . . you're not you when you're hungry."

I scoffed, rolling my eyes at her excuse. "I act nothing like those people—"

Veronica slapped her hand over my mouth as she flashed her employer one last smile. "She won't be back here again." And with a nervous laugh, she added, "Now, I don't mean to take up any more of your time, so we'll go ahead and get out of your way."

She then flipped me around and began dragging me towards the front door.

"Thirty minutes, Miss. Dunham," Kyle called out to Veronica as we got ready to push open the first set of glass doors. "If you walk in here a second later, you're fired."

Without even stopping to think through her response, Veronica threw an 'of course, sir' over her shoulder before she quickly guided me out of the building.

"Are you sleeping with him?" I asked the second we stepped outside.

The guard from earlier eyed us warily.

"Is there a problem?" I questioned after he proceeded to shoot me a disapproving look.

Instead of providing me with a response, he simply pursed his lips together, judging me silently.

"Ignore her," Veronica told him.

Before I could say anything further, she grabbed me by my wrist and began pulling me towards the Panera Bread that's located right across the street.

She finally answered my question after we made it a safe distance away from her workplace. "No, I am not sleeping with him."

"So why did he let you off so easily?" I nagged, pressing her for details. "He seems like a shoot first, ask questions later type of guy."

She let out a snort at my observation.

"Have you met me?" she cackled in a semi-serious voice. "The man practically worships the ground that I walk on because at the end of the day, I'm the one who brought his profits up by more than fifty percent this year. He'd be insane to let me go."

I rolled my eyes at her response. "That's fabulous and all, Vee, but he was in the wrong too. It wasn't all me."

"You don't get it," Veronica sighed as we stepped into the deserted restaurant. "There is no wrong because Mr. Rodriguez is always right. It's best to just let him do whatever it is that he wants to do so that you don't end up on his bad side."

She paused before adding, "He is the key to making it in this business, after all."

"What can I get for you today?" the cashier asked from her spot behind the counter.

We stepped up to order, and in doing so, our conversation was quickly forgotten. As Veronica recited our order, I couldn't help but think about the very last thing that she said.

She's wildly mistaken if she thinks that the only way to make it in this business is through Kyle.

There are so many ways to make it in the corporate world, and many of which don't involve kissing your boss's ass.

At least that's what my business professors drilled into my skull back when I was studying business administration at UCLA.

They were adamant about making sure that we knew the power of networking and the importance of making a name for ourselves.

But that's beside the point.

We ended up receiving our food in five minutes' time since the restaurant was scarcely occupied. I found this to be rather unusual since this place was typically packed between the hours of twelve and two.

"Why the hell are you wearing sweats?" Veronica asked after we came to a mutual decision to eat out on the patio. "My weather app says that it's ninety-five degrees out with a heat index of one-oh-four."

Since she chose to sit across from me, I swiftly propped my foot up on the bench that she was sitting on so that I could tap her thigh with the side of my shoe.

"Didn't feel like shaving," I snorted. "Had I known that I would be visiting you inside the office today, I would've worn a ball gown instead."

Vee rolled her eyes at my sarcastic comment as she leaned down to take a sip of her drink.

"You need to get your shit together," she said after she released the straw from her lips. "Have you even been looking for jobs?"

I popped a chip in my mouth, nodding my head slowly.

"Part-time isn't gonna cut it, Vee," I sighed, breaking my next potato chip in half. "Living in L.A. is expensive as hell, and with Monica blowing the rest of our money on her figurative children, Hennessy and Bacardi, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep us afloat."

Veronica snickered as she opened her mouth to take a bite of her sandwich. "I bet your mom is the life of the party at the club."

This relatively snide remark drove me to throw my chip at her, and a ghost of a smile played at my lips as I watched it bounce off her forehead.

"I'm trying to be serious here," I whined.

At the sound of my tone, Veronica carefully set her sandwich back down in its container before she clasped her hands together on top of the table.

When she was 100% ready, she raised an eyebrow at me, which was her way of gesturing for me to continue.

"Tyler has done absolutely nothing to help me out, and I would be more understanding of his behavior if he was physically incapable of doing so, but the kid's almost eighteen.

" I let out a shaky breath before continuing.

"He knows good and damn well that our mother prefers him over me, yet he has done absolutely nothing to stop her from treating me like shit, and I'm tired of it. "

I slumped forward in my seat, my body sagging in defeat. "Without a good-paying job, I'm basically just a sitting duck."

As soon as I said this, Veronica's eyebrows came together in what looked to be apprehension.

Well, this can't be good.

A moment of silence passed before she finally let out a sigh.

"What if . . ." she began slowly, "I told you that I know someone who's looking to hire?"

My eyes widened at her words.

"I'd tell you to give me their information right now so that I can apply for whatever position it is that they're looking to fill," I replied in a duh-like tone.

Veronica's hesitation pushed me to look up at her, and it was then that I noticed the conscious effort she was making to avoid my gaze.

"Vee?" I called out to her in a delicate tone of voice.

She glanced at me reluctantly. "Yeah?"

"What aren't you telling me?"

"Wellll . . ." she stated, dragging the word out for dramatic effect, "I was drinking my coffee in the break room last week when I overheard Mr. Rodriguez yelling at someone on the phone."

I immediately held up my hand to interrupt her. "What does this have to do with the job opening?"

My mind was already swimming with ideas that I desperately needed for her to deny.

"Calm down," she huffed. "I'm getting there."

In a childish attempt to settle my annoyance, I began to drum my fingers against the tabletop.

This had better be good.

I took a sip of my drink before I signaled for her to continue.

"So, he was talking pretty loud, which made it easy for me to hear his conversation . . ."

An exaggerated sigh escaped my lips as this was Veronica's way of trying to justify the fact that she had been eavesdropping on her boss's conversation.

"Anyways, to make a long story short, I overheard him say that his stay-at-home housekeeper—his maid, if you will—quit on him and that he's now in search of a replacement."

At the very mention of Kyle's last name, I became turned off, which is why it took me all of two seconds to formulate a response to her insinuation.

"No," I concluded simply. "Hell no."

Veronica's lips tipped up into a smirk at my statement, and this caused my can't-be-bothered fa?ade to waver ever so slightly.

"What?" I asked her carefully.

She sucked her teeth as she began to fiddle with the ring on her right index finger.

"You haven't even heard the best part yet," she hummed.

I arched a brow. "And that would be . . ?"

"The starting pay?" She grinned, flattening her hands out on the table in front of us. "63k."

My reaction only caused her smirk to grow wider.

"Still a hell no?"