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“Well? Aren’t you going to…? You know, leave?”
She seemed confused for an instant, and then she understood. “Oh no, I’m here to help. He would have me fired if I left you alone. He gave strict orders to treat you like royalty.”
“Is that how he treats all his ladies?” The words blurted out of my mouth. I looked at the shock and slight disapproval that registered on her face.
“He doesn’t host visitors in the master suite. You’re the first woman to grace these floors in all my time here. That’s around two years now.”
Whether or not she was telling the truth, I would never know. For all I cared, she could be reciting from a script he’d written for her. I pouted to let her know I wasn’t buying it.
She came behind me and helped me take off my clothes, and then we stepped into the hot bathtub together. This felt so wrong. Was she going to bathe me?
“Do you bathe him, too? Angelo, I mean.”
She seemed offended by this question as her face turned a light shade of red. “No,” she said in a curt tone. “He bathes himself.”
“I’m sorry.”
The smile returned to her face.
“What’s your name?”
“Dorothy. I already know yours.”
I smiled at her. She was a nice woman. I wondered if she had a family or was Angelo’s prisoner like I was. But she didn’t look like someone suffering or kept against her will.
As she sponged my body, I looked away shyly. I’d never done this before. What would my mom say if she could see me now? I did feel like royalty, and that was the problem: I was not royalty. Angelo was making me feel like many things that I was not… beautiful, for instance.
“Everyone’s intrigued now that you’re here. We think Mr. Preston spends too much time with work and blows his money in clubs and bars at the end of the day. No one woman has caught his fancy.”
“Why do you assume I’m not his long-lost sister or something?”
Dorothy laughed and lifted my arm. “He asked for my opinion in selecting sexy new lingerie for you, that’s why.”
Was he buying new clothes for me? How long did he plan on keeping me here?
We stepped out of the hot tub together, and she toweled me dry. She wouldn’t let me do it myself. Was this what the Queen felt like? I chuckled.
“You’ll love it here,” Dorothy said.
“I don’t know...”
“You don’t know about what?”
“My mother is sick. I need to be at home to take care of her and not here, living whatever this life is.”
“Then why don’t you bring her here, too?”
“What?” It sounded crazy to me. “Bring her here? Why? Why would I do that? I could never. She would never—”
“She doesn’t know about your relationship with Mr. Preston?”
“What?” I almost screamed. “Listen, I don’t know what he told you all, but I don’t even know the man. He just waltzed into my life and is now bent on destroying it. A relationship, with him? I would never! My reputation would be ruined!”
She stared at me quizzically, as though asking,What reputation?
Back inside the bedroom, I couldn’t seem to find my clothes. She opened the wardrobe, and there I saw it full of dresses, presumably new ones. My jaw almost dropped to the floor.
“We prepared a wardrobe for you with the help of his designer.”
