Page 12 of Dangerous Command
Derek
The next morning, high-waisted jeans hugged Maddie’s hips, the denim loose around her calves. A flowing white shirt was tied off at the bottom. The outfit looked comfortable, and somehow, sexy. Like she was pure magic. She stood on the front porch with a hand on her hip, armed with her usual bag and a plastic rolling crate. The scent of lemons always wafted from her. It must have been her cleaning supplies.
“I came prepared,” she said.
I raised a brow. “You’re not cleaning it from the sheets.” We would burn those; she knew that.
“From the walls?” she asked. I nodded. “The carpet?” I nodded again. “Well,” she shrugged, “Let’s get to it.”
I led her upstairs, though Maddie knew how to get to my parents’ bedroom. She had worked for our family for a year or two, cleaning mine and my brothers’ places regularly, as well as the Adler House a handful of times.
The accent wall was painted a deep red, hiding the splashes of blood. But the wall behind the bed was cream, splattered with red. The mattress still had an imprint of where they had lain, the blankets showing their outline.
“Where did they go?” she asked.
“Gerard’s being prepared for burial.”
“And his mistress?”
Why did she care about Margot? I scratched my chin. “The acid vats.”
Maddie nodded to herself. Then she unzipped the bag and took out a large, bleached-worn rag. She sprayed it with an unlabeled bottle, then started working on the back wall. Then she stopped and stripped the bed. Her moves were shaky, like she couldn’t decide what to do first. I tore off the fitted sheet for her.
“With how much you’re paying me, I can strip the bed all by myself, you know,” she said.
That smirk made me want to launch forward and bite her bottom lip. Instead, I stepped back. I was tired of waiting, but I had to be cautious around her now. I didn’t know who she was.
Instead of bantering like we used to, she focused on the task. But whenever she paused between motions, her hands fidgeted, her fingers crossing her cheek, dragging over that same part of her skin. There was something different about her. She was acting nervous. Not talking. Usually, she teased me, giving me a hard time for whatever she could think of. But she said nothing now.
“Are you going to watch me the whole time?” she asked, rolling her eyes.
There it was. That retort I was looking for. It wouldn’t be the first time I had watched her work. I couldn’t help it. Her ass jiggled in those jeans; I wasn’t about to miss that.
And there were more important matters to discuss.
“Where have you been for the last six months?” I asked. She sprayed the carpet with a different solution, then scrubbed it with another rag, digging into it. “You disappeared. Out of nowhere.” She shrugged. “You know that’s not an answer.”
“Not everything revolves around you, or your family, you know,” she said. It was that remark that told me that somethingwasgoing on with her.
“But it does,” I said. She rolled her eyes, a flirtatious grin on her lips. I was tempted to say, Screw it all, and bend her over the bed already, smacking her ass until she relented. But I waited. “Still doesn’t answer where the fuck you disappeared to.”
The curse word made her stop. She put the rag down. “My stepdad showed up.”
Stepdad? “What did he want?”
“Don’t know.” She rubbed her palm down her pant leg. “I’ve been dealing with family.”
“Anything I need to take care of?”
“I can take care of myself, thanks.” She threw her hair over her shoulder. “I have been since I was a teenager.” She turned away, mentally and physically closing herself off from me. I knew she could handle her own. She had shot at one of the Midnight Miles employees to defend my brother’s girlfriend once. She might have been a bad shot, but she knew what to do when it came to handling herself and others.
But why had she been taking care of herself since she was a teenager? Curiosity took hold of me, especially since her stepdad wasn’t a welcome intrusion in her life. The light between the window blinds lit her cheek, the powdery surface caked on. She usually wore makeup, but not like that.
Then I noticed the line she was covering up. A new scar.
“What’s with the scar?” I asked. Her fingers ran over it, like she had been doing on and off since she got here.
“Scar?”
