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“Uh-huh.” Jasmine frowned at me. “Are you sitting in front of a swimming pool?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“So you’re sitting in the lap of luxury and still bitching. Mmm.”
I huffed out a breath. “It’s not like I get to use this shit, Jasmine. I just run around sweating all day to play catch-up while he breathes down my neck. Half the time he gives me conflicting things to do, and I don’t have time to do both by the time he wants me to do them. And God forbid I correct his majesty, because then he gets all pissy. I feel like he must have gone through life with no one ever putting him in his place.”
“Well if anyone’s going to do it, it will be you. After you get paid.” Jasmine flashed a smile. “Look, I know this sucks, but the money is good. And it’s temporary. The only time I will cosign on you quitting before you even make a dollar is if he is honestly aggressive towards you and it’s not just you being flustered and overwhelmed.”
“He—”
“Nuh-uh. Think about it first, boy. I know how you do when you’re overwhelmed. Assume everyone is against you and the world hates you.”
Okay, she had a point.
I scowled at the grill and went over Gavin’s and my interactions of the past few days. He snarked at me, I snapped at him, he snarled in return, and then made up some other asinine task for me to do. And the asinine make-believe tasks prevented me from doing the important tasks. He was so far behind on everything, including stocking his home with food and basic toiletries and supplies, that I’d spent the majority of the previous week just trying to make sure he had everything accessible to him.
It was a constant thought in the back of my mind that, come each Friday, he’d be on his own and would not be able to leave the house. But instead of appreciating my efforts, he sat around moping and looking miserable before looking for a reason to complain. I didn’t get him. You’d think he’d try to help me help him make this house arrest go by easier, but he seemed determined to antagonize me.
Unless . . . that was his way of drawing me into conversations. For all that Gavin had initially growled about not wanting to talk to me or see me, he sparked up conversations more often than I did. Was sarcasm or shitty “jokes” the only way he knew how to get someone to pay attention to him if football didn’t do the trick? That was pretty sad. His social skills were seriously lacking.
And then there was the fact that half the time he appeared uncomfortable about me doing my job. Not because of me in particular, but he fidgeted and frowned every time I cooked or cleaned up after cooking. Like it bothered him to have me waiting on him. Then he’d reiterate that I was the one who’d insisted on this being added to my tasks so I could earn more money. Basically saying, “I never asked you to be my chef.”
I hadn’t known what to make of it at first, but I was starting to put together the fact that he genuinely did not like having household help. Even though he really needed it. He couldn’t seem to keep his own schedule straight, forgot things constantly, and would often start one task only to abandon it in the middle and move on to the next. I wasn’t sure if Gavin Brawley had ADD or had just never learned basic functional living skills such as grocery shopping and organization, but he was definitely struggling to get along by himself in this massive house. No wonder he lived out of hotels during the season.
“Did you just zone out?”
“No. Sorry.” I eased to my feet and walked over to the grill. I wasn’t one for turkey burgers generally, but these looked amazing. I planned to put them on multigrain bread with aioli, avocado, bacon, and Swiss cheese. Three for him. None for me. “He’s not aggressive. More like constantly pissy and unhappy that I’m around at all, or pissy and unhappy because he’s trapped here and not at training camp. None of this was his idea.”
“Does he try to intimidate you?”
“Uh, if you count walking around half-naked like eighty percent of the time. And he calls me ‘baby’ and asks about my personal life.”
Jasmine smirked. “Is he flirting?”
“Very unlikely.”
“Mmkay. Well, two things: one, if your panic mostly stems from you being overwhelmed, you need to relax. You were the same way at your last job. Didn’t know what to do and flew around freaking out that you didn’t have it down pat by the first day or even week. And then you were fine. You’ll be fine again this time if you stop letting him get under your skin. At the end of the day, you’re there to do a job that will milk some of that blond bastard’s fat bank accounts. And after a while, he’ll realize you are helping him. He just sounds like a giant, beautiful brat.”
