f i v e
No, I don't mean to pry
I don't need no play by play
All I need from your side is for you to
communicate
**
"Why are you here today?"
I blinked.
Was this some sort of joke?
"You wanted to interview me," I deadpanned. "Why else would I be here?"
Kyle shook his head at my answer.
"Must you be so figurative?" he asked. "My question was meant to be taken literally, Miss. Reynolds. As in, why did I bring you to my house today?"
"To rub in my face how rich you are?" I guessed sarcastically.
A cutting look of disapproval flashed across his face, and that's when I realized that I had communicated my thoughts out loud.
"Wait, I didn't mean that—"
"Job interviews normally take place at the venue in which the applicant will be working, right?"
He interrupted my apology with a follow-up question, and I wasn't sure if it was rhetorical or not, so I simply nodded my head in agreement.
"This is no different," he concluded. "If I were to hire you, this is where you would be working."
I brushed off the immense amount of emphasis that he put on the word 'if' as I shot him a fake smile.
"Now, I could've just interviewed you at my office and let you come into the job blind, but that would be a liability on my end, so I decided against it." He paused to gauge my reaction. "Don't make me regret that decision."
I licked my lips nervously. "Right."
My gaze then shifted down to his fingers as he pulled my résumé out of the folder that was sitting in front of him. "Miss. Dunham had this delivered this morning."
The shiny, black, company folder that he was referring to glared up at me as I began to recall the existential crisis that I slipped into just seconds after Veronica told me that I had less than twenty-four hours to get myself together for this interview.
Instead of going straight home like I originally planned to, Veronica and I spent the next two hours throwing my résumé together so that it would be entirely up to date when it came time for me to hand it over to Kyle.
Vee also insisted that I sit-in on her hour-long TED Talk, which featured topics ranging from 'how to properly speak to higher-level individuals,' to, 'how to appear like you know what you're doing even when you really don't.'
She finally let me go after she pre-approved all of my responses, and I was secretly grateful for her insight.
This interview was going to be a piece of cake, thanks to her.
Kyle's piercing gaze made me shift around in my seat, and my hands began to twitch underneath the table after his lips slowly curled up into a smirk.
"My home, much like my building, reflects my image, Miss. Reynolds," he stated while leaning back in his chair. "So, you must understand how important it is for me to have somebody fulfill this job."
His singular pronoun usage made me perk up.
"Somebody?" I repeated stupidly.
He tilted his head at my confusion.
"This is a solo position," he explained. "I thought Miss. Dunham informed you of that, seeing as I specifically told her this bit of information after she begged me to give you a chance . . ."
Now that he mentioned it, Veronica did say that his housekeeper quit on him—not his housekeepers.
"She did!" I stammered, scrambling to correct myself. "It just slipped my mind after seeing how big this place is. I figured that you would have at least two people working this job . . ."
Kyle scoffed at my assumption.
"You must understand that my house is not a museum," he professed cockily. "People can't just walk in and out of here whenever they so please."
And here I was thinking that his ego couldn't get any bigger.
"Right, because it would be such a shame if something were to go missing."
My retort drove him to lean forward in his chair.
"Hence why I'm speaking to you today," he all but spat. "I could've had Miss. Dubois or one of my other representatives conduct this interview, but since this individual is going to be living in my house, I figured that I should be the one to do it."
My fingers itched to slap the smug expression off his face.
"I am barely comfortable with you being in my house right now, let alone having an entire team of maids sleep here every night," he continued. "Trust is hard to come by these days, but I'm sure you already know that."
Warning bells went off in my head as soon as he said this.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Was he really trying to shade me right now?
"Surely you've had someone betray your trust in your twenty years of living," he elaborated with a shrug.
My eyes narrowed at his words.
"You're right," I said sweetly, "I have. But surely you struggle with it way more than I do. I mean, dealing with leeches practically makes up two-thirds of your job description."
The silence was deafening as we fell into our second stare-off of the day.
Kyle was the first one to break it after he glanced down at the papers in front of him.
"Speaking of job descriptions," he hummed, "let's talk about what yours would consist of if you were to get this job."
I inhaled deeply.
"Your daily tasks would include cleaning all bedrooms and bathrooms, washing dishes, setting the table for breakfast and dinner, doing laundry, dusting/wiping down shelving units and tabletops, and last but not least, you would be expected to straighten up any rooms that are in direct view of the public. "
He hesitated for a moment before he added one more thing to the list, "You would also be on door duty from eight to four."
Door duty?
My face crumpled together in confusion. "And that would be . . ?"
"Doing what Miss. Dubois did today," he clarified. "Which is making sure that all visitors sign in the minute they walk through my front door."
A tiny breath of air passed through my lips, prompting Kyle to raise a brow.
"Will that be a problem?" he questioned.
My attitudinal side instantly came to the surface, but my play-nice side beat me to the punch.
"Of course not," I answered quickly.
Kyle's lips twitched at the falsehood of my statement, but instead of calling me out on it, he proceeded to ask me about my résumé.
"So you dropped out of college?"
I inwardly cringed at his bluntness.
"Yes." My response was short and to the point.
He didn't ask why, so I wasn't about to provide him with a reason.
Kyle nodded as he reached out to grab the mug that was sitting next to his right hand.
"Do you have any cleaning experience?" he asked after he took a sip of his drink.
"Does cleaning my room count?"
He shot me a hard look. "That was a serious question, Miss. Reynolds."
"Ditto," I clapped back dryly.
Any ounce of professionalism that I previously held was now rapidly making its escape from my body as it was starting to become increasingly clear that I wasn't getting this job.
The longer I sat here, the more I realized that I wasn't cut out to work for the man sitting in front of me.
He was clearly looking for someone who would readily submit to him, no questions asked, and I was neither wanting nor willing to do that.
"I was talking about professional experience, so no, it does not." Kyle's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
His response was all the proof that I needed, and it led me to slide my phone out of my purse and send a brief S.O.S. text to Veronica.
"Why do you want this job?" came his next question.
I glanced up from my lap to find him staring at me intently.
This question has always irked me because why else would someone want a job?
Sure, you might enjoy what you do, but at the end of the day, we're all in it for the money.
It is because of this belief that I decided to give him my honest answer:
"Because I'm broke."
I was already in way over my head, so I figured that there was no harm in showing him my real personality.
To my surprise, Kyle chuckled at my answer and my stomach twisted at the sound. I've never seen him express an emotion other than anger before.
"Are you always such a straight-shooter?" he asked once his laughter died down.
I shrugged. "Pretty much."
"Well, that resolve isn't going to last long around here because, in this industry, you lie to get what you want." In the blink of an eye, Kyle's entire demeanor switched up. "Telling people what they want to hear is the key to making it in this business."
His assertion triggered a memory that I'd nearly forgotten about to come floating back into my mind, and I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of it all.
"That's funny," I rasped, "because Veronica told me that the only way to make it in this business is through you." And, with a smirk, I added, "Looks like I just found leech number one . . . "
Kyle's eyes darkened at my joke.
"Are you a quitter, Miss. Reynolds?" he questioned, changing the subject entirely.
His tone didn't sit well with me as it was borderline accusatory.
What was he playing at?
In response to his question, my leg began to bounce underneath the table. It has been bugging the hell out of me that he refuses to address me by my first name.
The atmosphere in the room shifted in the wake of my silence, and I could almost feel the metaphorical storm cloud hovering above our heads.
"No," I responded evenly. "I never have been, and I never will be."
Kyle frowned at this.
"Really?" His elevated tone of voice told me that he didn't believe me. "Because with the way that Miss. Dunham was speaking about your situation on the phone the other night, she sure did make it seem as though you had given up in pretty much every aspect of life . . ."
The sound of my chair scraping against the floor filled the air as I flew forward in my seat. "May I ask why your last housekeeper quit on you?"
"No, you may not—" Kyle started to deny me my right to ask questions, but I quickly shut him down before he could do so.
"This is an interview," I snapped. "It's a very strange one at best, but it's still an interview no less."
I settled back into my seat, willing myself to calm down. "I'm allowed to ask questions."
I could tell that my outburst caught him off guard due to his delayed response.
"Mrs. Davis had a family matter that she needed to take care of," he went on to explain. "Her daughter broke her leg about a month ago, and she wanted to be there for her."
"Why do I find that hard to believe?"
Veronica told me that his last housekeeper cited irreconcilable differences as her reason for quitting, so either she heard the story wrong, or he was lying.
Now typically, I don't base my judgments on hearsay, but Veronica is a stickler for details, and she doesn't just go around messing them up. In the eight years that I've known her, she has never once gotten a piece of gossip wrong, which is why I'm leaning more towards her side of things right now.
Before I could get an accurate feel for Kyle's emotions, the anger that had been brewing inside of him came spewing out like lava from a volcano.
I was so unfazed by his erratic behavior that I barely flinched when he slammed his hand down on the table in front of us.
"I don't give a damn what you believe," he seethed. "That's the cold hard truth, so you can take it or leave it."
Something inside of me refused to let this situation slide. I knew that there was more to the story than he was letting on, and I didn't feel right accepting this position without knowing all of the details.
Maybe a tiny part of me was overreacting, and Mrs. Davis really did quit to help her daughter.
Or maybe Veronica was right.
The only way for me to know what truly happened is to go and speak to Mrs. Davis myself, but I didn't even know what her first name was, let alone her phone number.
After carefully considering the consequences that would, without a doubt, follow my actions, I slowly stood up from my chair.
Veronica is going to kill me for this.
I reached down and grabbed my purse from the chair to my right before I made my way over to the door.
While my fingers became acquainted with the door handle, I glanced back at Kyle. He had already turned around in his chair so that he could watch me leave, and his eyes lingered on my face as if he could somehow figure me out from staring alone.
"I'm sorry for wasting your time," was all that I said before I wrenched open the door and stepped out into the hallway.
I immediately tugged the door closed behind me, and the sound of my heels clicking against the floor filled my ears once again as I rushed down the hall.
"Leaving so soon?"
My movements came to a halt as I whipped around to acknowledge the person who had called out to me.
A gorgeous brunette-haired woman who looked like she just stepped off a catwalk entered my line of sight. The warm smile that she had plastered across her face encouraged me to relax where I stood.
"Yeah, my résumé wasn't much to look at," I responded sheepishly.
A small laugh escaped her lips as she extended her hand out for me to shake.
"I'm Kassandra," she beamed.
I shook her hand lightly. "Lilac."
Kassandra went out of her way to walk me down the rest of the hallway before we both came to a stop at the front door.
"I really hope that you get the job," she gushed while opening the door for me.
My eyes came to rest on Veronica's 2016 Jeep Cherokee as I made a move to step outside.
I don't, I thought to myself.
I would've told her this, too, but after seeing the hopeful expression on her face, I decided to spare her the details.
So, instead, I simply chose to say:
"I do too."