Page 18 of Maid in America

Lining both side walls were large washing machines and dryers, neither of which he was confident he knew how to operate.

You’re thirty-four years old, Barrett. You know how to clean by now. And if you don’t know how to do something, hell, fake it ’til you make it. Just make sure you look damn hot while you’re doin’ it, Will had said.

“So,” he muttered smoothly, twisting in his too-tight boots to face her, “this is where you want me to start?”

“I don’t think Istuttered.” She folded her arms.

“What about… thebedroom?” He stepped closer. “Sure you don’t want me to start there?”

She studied him for a moment, stunned by the brazen proposition to lay her only moments after gaining entry to her home. She toyed with her wedding band, one studded with enough diamonds that its glittery surface could be seen in Idaho. “I’m married, Romeo. To a man who gives me all of this.” She gestured to her opulent surroundings. “Keep it in your fatigues, Officer Bulge, and get started on those towels.”

It was worth a shot,he thought.Any activity would beat actually having to clean.

Barrett nodded, saluted her again, and turned toward the several baskets of laundry nestled in the corner. Banging the cougar would have been so much easier than stain-treating placenta-covered towels…

Orwhatever the hellwas on them.

Exhausted by several hours of work, Barrett tossed the scrub sponge in the bottom of the huge Jacuzzi in the master bath, cranked the water to cold, and dunked his head beneath the faucet.

In the doorway, Mrs. Thompson tapped her manicured nails on the jamb and smiled. “Mmmm. Working up a sweat?”

He turned off the faucet and nodded, flinging beads of water into the bottom of the tub. His muscles rippled, flexing as he stood. He shook his short hair like a dog, speckling the heated mirror beside the bath.

“Is today… your first day on the job?”

“Yeah, it is. How’d you know?” He wiped his hands on her crisp, white Egyptian cotton bathrobe and then scrubbed hisface with a towel on the chrome bar above the Jacuzzi, leaving it crooked.

Mrs. Thompson just stared at him with a look of displeasure.

He followed her gaze to the towel and realized his mistake. He straightened it on the bar, backing away when he seemed satisfied.

Sue rolled her eyes. “Well, Colonel Boner—”

“First Lieutenant Bulge, ma’am,” he corrected, standing at attention and saluting her again.

“At ease, soldier.” She motioned to him with flattened hands. “I think that’ll be all. Your tour of duty just ended.”

He looked inside the tub at the line of shaved hair and soap residue he hadn’t yet finished scrubbing. “Yes, ma’am.”

He nodded, feeling panic wad in his chest. She had scheduled him for five hours. It hadn’t even been three since he knocked on her front door. Either she got what she wanted:

An eyeful and a moderately cheap thrill…

Or she was displeased entirely.

They hadn’t even gotten to the part where he shed his fatigues and scrubbed tile grout in his small “Be all you can be” banana hammock yet.

“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d like to atleastfinish folding the laundry. You paid for five hours.”

He shuddered to think about the painful look of disappointment he’d have to see in Will’s eyes if his first client was disgruntled.

“I’ll get everything folded and hung up before I leave, so nothing’ll be wrinkled for you.”

She nodded and followed him out, but not before catching a glimpse of the dirty sponge he’d left in the half-scrubbed bath. She shook her head.

A few minutes later, as she rounded the doorway into the laundry room, she stopped, frozen in horror as the faux-soldier pulled an armful of fluff-covered fabric out of the dryer.

“Oh, dear God…” Barrett grimaced, thoroughly embarrassed at the presence of the powder-blue fibers on every inch of the load in his grasp. A mostly disintegrated bath rug dangled from the mouth of the machine.

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