Page 12 of Hired Help

After being served, Harrison sits at the corner bench of the outdoor food court, surrounded by a cluster of equally large, equally fit males as per usual. When I accidentally mistime a glance, he catches me watching. Every hint of expression falls off his face, leaving it as smooth and blank as a riverbed stone.

“Want to switch sides?” Floss asks, following my line of sight, then she squeals and waves. “Kaden, get over here.”

Her stepbrother makes a show of ignoring her, pretending he can’t hear her ear-piercing call. I smile as she stretches so far, she’s dangerously close to tumbling off her bench, snagging the edge of his t-shirt and hauling him in like fisherwoman hauling in her catch.

“Sit. Provide your expert services as a blocking screen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawls, winking at me and lifting my spirits.

As eye-candy goes, Kaden ticks a lot of boxes with his chestnut curls, large features, and slightly morose air. A manner that’s completely misleading as he immediately launches into a raunchy joke about a barber and a beautician, making Floss howl with laughter.

He also makes an impressive screen to shield Harrison from view. If I thought it would make my ex jealous, I’d sit in his lap.

But Harrison has made it perfectly clear he doesn’t care about me in the slightest. Not only that, but his friend’s video on our senior notice board ensures that nobody else cares about me either, unless it’s poking fun.

I asked Alicia if I could leave school, come to live with her, but she gently suggested it would be better for me to finish out my final year.

It won’t. Another six months of this is completely intolerable.

I need to go find a flat or apartment. Maybe get a cat whose offspring will eat my face in a few decades when I die alone.

“He’s insane,” Kaden says now while Floss makes a whole plethora of signals designed to tell him to shut it while he still has the chance. “You’re one foxy lady. If my sister hadn’t—”

“Stepsister,” Floss immediately corrects him.

“Oh, sorry.” He scrunches his nose at her. “Didn’t realise you were ashamed to be related to me.”

“You’re in my same year. I don’t want people gossiping about how we’re twins or something.”

“Yeah, wow. I can’t think of anything worse.” He dismisses her with a grimace and turns back to me. “Anyway. I think I was in the middle of describing all the wondrous things I could do to you—”

“Ew, Kaden. You’re meant to be cheering her up not revolting her.”

“You’re lucky I don’t go for older women,” he finishes with a wink. “Just saying.” I’m only a year ahead of him and Floss but he makes me sound like a cougar.

I smile while finishing my lunch—or the part of it I’m going to eat, anyway. Watching the two of them together makes me wish I had a sibling. Someone to lean on and spar with.

My phone buzzes with a text alert. A package is waiting for me in the student housing lobby.

I make my excuses and wander there. “Hey,” I call to the driver who’s loitering near his vehicle. “You have a package for Brooke Ellis?”

“Yeah, love. Sign here.”

I scrawl my finger across the portable device, trying to work out what’s inside the large box inside the door. But he reaches farther into the vehicle, pulling out a garment bag instead. “Here you go.”

It’s my dress for the senior dance. A rush of grief hits me like a sledgehammer. “Thanks,” I say, gulping back the disappointment. “Have a nice day.”

He waves, already reversing away from the door. I follow his progress until he’s left the grounds, then retreat to my room, hanging it from the hook on the back of the door, then backing away like it’s poisonous.

I consider throwing it in a donations bin. I consider setting it on fire.

Finally, with an irritated sigh, I tug the zipper on the garment bag, pulling it down and revealing the gorgeousness hidden beneath.

The high collar is white and shaped from hundreds of tiny pleats. From the moment I saw the design, I had to have it. The intricacy of that piece alone reminds me of the ruff collars from Elizabethan times.

From there, the dress is a snug fit to accentuate my figure. There’s a pleat in the back giving access in a straight line down to my tailbone. When it was being fitted, I’d imagined Harrison sitting beside me, sliding his hand through that gap, and teasing my bare skin.

I love it.

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