Page 29 of Quarantined with the Billionaire

Chapter Nine

“Have a good weekend, Simon.”

“I will, sir.”

I almost wept when Simon left several hours later, leaving me alone in this monstrous home with a man I had far too many doubts about.

And continued to feel attracted to for no good reason. Well, not good enough reasons.

What was worse, I was losing my edge. My weapon of choice, sarcasm, was dulling as I allowed this man to see more and more of the real me. How could I defend myself if my walls were crumbling down around me, leaving me exposed?

Add being sequestered together to all that? I had reason to worry.

Maddox, his fingers linked together, stretched out his arms and hands so that a couple of his knuckles popped. “Shut it down, Bailey.”

“I’m not done yet.”

“The weekend begins now. Turn it off.”

I drew a deep breath in. I was grateful that he was the boss and didn’t care if I still had work left, but I’d wanted to stop at a natural breaking point. I knew, however, that arguing with this man wouldn’t get me very far. So I took off my wireless headset and powered down the laptop.

“If this keeps up much longer, I’ll consider having IT bring a desktop for you.”

“I’m okay with this.”

“I know you’re okay with it, but I want you to have the best. You’re spending long hours hunched over the desk here. You deserve something better.”

“It’s fine.” Twirling my chair around, I stood, marking the official beginning to the weekend.

“Are you ready to see your room?”

“Sure.” When Simon and I had returned from the store, I’d insisted on bringing my bags in the house while he brought the groceries inside—but, like a hotel bellhop, he refused to let me take my things to my room.

“You haven’t seen the whole house, have you?”

“No.” And I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d been so curious about it earlier in the week. Now that I was going to have free reign, I’d be able to sneak in more pictures for Elise. My poor friend. She’d managed to find a guy online she really liked, but they were practicing social distancing—although she’d confessed this morning that she was going to see if he’d want to come to her house for dinner. A “kind of” date, she’d called it. I’d have to call her tomorrow to see if she’d managed to talk him into it.

“Then that’s the first order of business.”

Inside, I felt a bit of a thrill. Having come from humble beginnings that hadn’t improved just because I’d become an adult, I loved getting a glimpse into a world I’d never belong to. I couldn’t dream about it, either, because I had some pretty strong negative feelings about the wealthy. Maddox had begun to feel like an exception—until his comment earlier today.

Plebian fricking S’mores.

But it didn’t stop me from wanting to take everything in, enjoying it while I was here.

“Let’s go this way,” he said, indicating the doorway to his office. I wasn’t going to tell him I’d figured out earlier in the week that his office connected to the room I considered the living room, but everything else after that would be new to me.

When we walked through that second doorway, he said, “The living room.” I was glad to know that, even though we were classes apart so far as money matters went, he still called it a name I was familiar with. “I think you’ve probably been in here to use the powder room.” I nodded. “The stairs in here go both up and down. The bedrooms are upstairs, but let’s go down first. That’s where a lot of the fun stuff is.”

This time, he led the way, flipping on a light switch at the top of the stairs. The carpeting was the same beige-brown I’d seen in other areas of the house, and I got excited as I wondered what fun stuff awaited. At the bottom, there was a hallway that darted off to both sides but, in front of us, the open doorway simply widened into a large space. “The game room,” he said, and I took it in. There was a bar to one side and, in front of it, a pool table and a foosball table. I wondered how often he played them if at all. There was also an old-fashioned pinball game over to the other side next to the fireplace—and there was a huge television hanging from the wall with a black shelving unit underneath it. I recognized a couple of the gaming systems, but I wondered how often Maddox ever actually played videogames. There were two doors to the right.

I followed him through the space, full of soft lighting. There were no windows down here but I imagined it would feel like a complete escape when he spent time downstairs. He opened one door. “Powder room.” I peeked inside, marveling at all the kitschy art on the walls. That room felt completely out of place in this entire house.

Opening the next door, he said, “Come in here, Bailey.” There were a couple of levels in the room, sinking like a pit, and there were panels on the wall directly in front of us. “I used to call this my TV room, but it’s like a mini theater.”

“That’s really cool.” I happened to notice a rolling popcorn cart in the corner, and I wondered if that was why Maddox wanted Simon to buy some at the supermarket. On the wall were movie posters for films I’d never even heard of. Suddenly, I was eager about spending my weekend here after feeling a little dubious earlier. “What else?”

“Follow me.” We walked back through the game room to where the hallway split off at the stairs. Turning to the left first, Maddox opened a door. “Boring. Laundry room.”

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