Chapter 2
Chapter Two
NOLA
Franklin walks ahead of me at a military clip, his broad shoulders filling the corridor as he leads me deeper into the mountain compound. I struggle to keep up, taking in the gleaming floors, the reinforced glass walls, the cameras mounted in every corner with their tiny red lights watching.
This place feels like a fortress built to keep the world out. Or maybe to keep something in. Either way, I’m suddenly aware of how small I am.
“The main living quarters are accessible through your biometric clearance,” Franklin says without turning around. His voice is as crisp as his posture. “Mr. Asher’s private wing is restricted at all times.”
I nod, then realize he can’t see me. “Understood.”
“Security protocols are non-negotiable,” he continues as we pass another reinforced door with a fingerprint scanner beside it.
“All exterior doors lock automatically at sunset. The system requires authentication to enter any room except your own. Cameras monitor all common areas. Privacy mode is available in your suite only.”
My fingers fidget with the strap of my bag.
It’s embarrassingly light. The agency had been clear the position is live-in and that if Mr. Asher offered me the role that I would be expected to move in immediately.
So I packed everything I had, which took about four minutes and made me want to sit on the floor and rethink every decision that led me here.
I wonder if Franklin notices. He seems like the type who notices everything and comments on nothing.
“Does Mr. Asher always live with this much... security?” I ask.
Franklin pauses. His expression gives nothing away, but something flickers behind his eyes.
“Mr. Asher values his privacy.”
Not really an answer. I file that away, another puzzle piece about the man with the scar and the eyes that seem to see right through me.
We reach another door at the end of a corridor lined with windows overlooking dense pine forest. Mountains rise in the distance, their peaks still capped with snow despite the May warmth.
It’s beautiful and isolating all at once.
Thirty minutes to town, Mr. Asher had said.
Thirty minutes between here and the nearest human who isn’t him or Franklin.
I should feel trapped by that thought, but instead, something inside me relaxes.
No one to answer to. No one’s couch to sleep on. No sympathetic but increasingly impatient friends wondering when I’ll get back on my feet.
Franklin presses his palm against the scanner beside the door. It flashes green.
“This is your suite,” he explains as the door slides open. “The door will be programmed for your biometrics after dinner”
I step inside and my breath catches.
The room is massive. Easily three times the size of the bedroom I shared with my grandma Bea in our farmhouse, and approximately one thousand times nicer.
Floor-to-ceiling windows frame a view of the mountains that makes my chest ache.
A king-sized bed sits against one wall, covered in linens that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
Which, to be fair, is not a high bar right now.
“Bathroom through there,” Franklin indicates a door to the left. “Walk-in closet adjacent. Sitting area with television and reading materials.” He gestures to a sleek sofa and chairs arranged near the windows.
I spot a desk in the corner, a laptop already set up. Everything is pristine, untouched. Like a high-end hotel room no one has ever stayed in.
And everywhere, the tiny red lights of security cameras. One in each corner of the ceiling, unobtrusive but unmistakable.
“The cameras,” I say, pointing upward.
“Standard in all rooms.” Franklin’s tone brooks no discussion. “Privacy mode can be activated by voice command for your suite only. ‘Engage privacy protocol’ will disable video surveillance for eight hours. Audio monitoring remains active for security purposes.”
My skin crawls slightly at the thought of being watched, even in sleep. But then again, I’ve spent the last four months sleeping on friends’ couches, in their spare rooms, never truly private. At least here I can shut off the cameras. That’s more control than I’ve had in months.
“Dinner is served at seven o’clock precisely,” Franklin continues. “The dining room is down the main staircase, east wing. I will be back to retrieve you at six fifty-five.”
“Thank you.” I set my bag down on a bench at the foot of the bed, feeling suddenly small in this vast, impersonal space.
Franklin nods once, then turns to leave. At the door, he pauses. “Mr. Asher’s previous assistants found the isolation... challenging. The compound takes some adjustment.”
Is that concern in his voice? Or warning? Before I can decide, he’s gone, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss of hydraulics.
“Engage privacy protocol,” I say to the empty room, feeling silly but relieved when a gentle chime sounds and the red lights on the cameras turn blue.
Alone at last, I sit on the edge of the bed.
The mattress barely gives beneath me, firm and supportive, and after six months of sagging sofa cushions that smelled like dog hair and regret, I almost want to cry.
I unzip my bag and begin removing my meager possessions, laying them out on the pristine duvet.
A few blouses and pants. A frayed cardigan. A yellow dress I haven’t worn in over a year. Underwear folded neatly, some with elastic starting to fray. A hairbrush. Basic toiletries. My phone charger. A photo in a cheap plastic frame.
Spread out on the silk duvet, it looks like a yard sale nobody would stop for.
I pick up the photo, my throat tightening.
Grandma Bea stands in front of our farmhouse with her arms crossed, her gray hair pulled back in her usual practical bun.
The only home I’ve ever known stretches behind her.
Two stories of weathered clapboard, the porch swing where we drank lemonade in summer, the garden where she taught me to coax life from soil.
All gone now.
Beneath the photo lies her last birthday card to me, the edges soft from handling. I open it, though I know the words by heart. Her handwriting, once so firm and steady, slopes weakly across the paper.
To my exceptional girl. Remember who you are when the world tries to tell you otherwise. All my love, always.
I tuck the photo and card back into my bag. Then I stand and move to the window, staring out at the mountain view as the afternoon sun slants golden across the peaks.
What have I gotten myself into?
I close my eyes and see him again. Caleb Asher. The agency told me that he was a self-made tech security billionaire who hasn’t left his house in almost a decade. I’d braced myself for someone easy to dismiss. I was expecting someone awkward and antisocial.
Instead, I got a gorgeous, six-foot-something man with broad shoulders and coiled muscle, and a face that had absolutely no business being that attractive.
Caleb Asher is devastatingly, unfairly hot.
The kind of hot that makes a person stupid.
The kind that scrambles your thoughts mid-sentence and makes you forget why you walked into a room.
Heat crept up my neck at the memory of his hand around mine. Large, warm, slightly callused. The brief contact sent something electric racing up my arm that settled low in my belly in a way I absolutely cannot be feeling about a man who is supposed to be my boss.
Or he will be, maybe, if I don’t screw this up.
I spend the next hour exploring every corner of the suite like a kid who snuck into a hotel penthouse. I open every drawer, test every faucet, run my fingers along fabrics I can’t name and probably can’t afford to look at too hard.
The shower alone holds me captive for twenty minutes, the hot water a luxury after months of quick rinses in borrowed bathrooms. I use every single one of the fancy toiletries lined up on the marble shelf.
All of them. Shampoo, conditioner, something that might be a hair mask or might be face cream.
I don’t care. It smells like jasmine and money and I deserve this.
By the time I towel off and check the clock, it’s already 6:30.
Thirty minutes until dinner with a man who makes me forget how to breathe.
Time to figure out what the hell I’m going to wear.
I sort through the small pile of clothes on the duvet, pushing aside t-shirts and jeans, looking for anything that might pass as dinner-appropriate. My fingers close around a flash of yellow fabric at the bottom of the pile, and I pull it free.
The yellow dress is a mistake. I know it the moment I hold it against me.
Too bright, too short, too tight across the hips now that I’ve lost that gym membership along with everything else.
The fabric stretches uncomfortably across my body when I shimmy into it, a relic from a different life when I had places to go that required dresses instead of practical jeans and sensible shoes.
But the jeans aren’t an option for dinner with a man like Caleb Asher.
Even worn and faded, this dress is the only semi-professional thing I own.
I survey my options with a grimace. The yellow dress or jeans. Those are the choices. This is what rock bottom looks like: standing in a billionaire’s guest suite, trying to decide between clubwear and denim for a dinner that might determine whether or not I have a job tomorrow.
The dress is club-cut, bought two sizes ago when I was leaner, when I had money for drinks and dinners and didn’t count every penny. The hem hits mid-thigh, and the neckline dips lower than I remember. I tug at it uselessly. The fabric pulls across my hips in a way that makes me wince.
It was never appropriate for anything resembling a formal dinner. It is certainly not appropriate now.
I look at the jeans folded neatly on the bed. I look back at the dress hugging my body too tightly.