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"Stop thinking so much." Rayne placed a hand on my shoulder and spun me around. "I'm not as much of a dick as you want me to be."
"Says you," I snapped and shifted away from him. I brushed past him and out of the bathroom, then made my way across Allister's bedroom toward the door. I could hear Rayne following me but wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. "You know, just because Antoine pays me—"
"We."
"What?" I paused and peered back at him.
Rayne leaned against the bedpost of Allister's four poster bed and crossed his arms over his chest. He was shorter than his brothers but no less muscular. Still, he wasn’t like a football player or one of those beefy guys who spent more time at the gym than at home. No, Rayne was more like a soccer player with lean muscle from running up and down a court all day.
"Soccer? Really?" Rayne cocked a brow at me.
Had I said that out loud? Must have. I grabbed the sponge from my bucket and threw it at him. To my dismay, he dodged it and appeared at my side in a flash.
"Leave me alone," I growled.
"Gladly," he leaned in close as if to tell me a secret, "but I want to make clear that Antoine doesn't just pay your salary. We all do. You aren't his maid. You're ours. So, I have as much a reason to torture you as the others."
I let out a frustrated growl. "Do you ever hear yourself talk? You sound like a complete and utter douchebag." A fucking fantastic kisser of a douchebag.
Rayne shifted back and smirked. "A fucking fantastic kisser douchebag," he said, even miming my inner voice as I had said it to myself.
I gaped at how he had literally just read my mind. It wasn’t possible. I shook my head and spun on my heel, marching out of the room and into the hallway. The wooden floors gleamed where I had recently polished them, and a long maroon runner covered the middle of the hallway, making it seem like it was leading you to somewhere. However, that somewhere was the end of the hall where a single window covered in heavy drapes stood.
Pulling open one of the drapes, I positioned myself in the light of the morning sun. If anything, the sun would keep Rayne at a safe distance from me, and I needed a break, anyway. With a satisfied hum, I spun around to tell Rayne as much, but he hadn't followed me.
"Huh." I let out a sigh and tried to tell myself that it wasn't disappointment swirling in my gut. I stood in the sun a bit longer, expecting Rayne to pop out of nowhere at any moment, and then as the minutes ticked on, I realized he wasn't coming. I shook my head, picked up my things, and made my way to the next room.
As I was turning the doorknob to Drake's room, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs reached me. I froze. Had Rayne waited for me to get out of the sun before making his grand reappearance? A part of me hoped he had because, if anything, fighting with him sure made my day less boring.
Sadly, it wasn't.
Darren appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed in his usual black slacks and suit jacket. his shirt had clearly been recently pressed along with his bow tie. He wore his ebony hair slicked back from his gorgeous face and a pair of white gloves. There was something so peculiar about how he dressed. It was so very butler-like that it was scary, as if he had stepped out of one of those television shows set in the nineteenth century. Really, who expected their workers to dress like that?
Then again, I had been expected to wear some Lolita maid outfit for the dinner party with Valentine so I couldn't say who got the short end of the stick there.
"Ah, there you are." Darren walked toward me, his shiny dress shoes making next to no sound on the wood floors. "I was hoping to catch you this morning."
"Uh, yeah." I shifted in place to face him fully. "I skipped breakfast and was working through your list of chores. Did you need something?"
Usually, Darren and I had a pretty professional relationship. He certainly tried to keep me at arm's length no matter how much I tried to be his friend. I tried not to take it personally. He was blood bound to Antoine, and I was an outsider. Who knew if I would one day leave, and we'd never see each other again? Based on how many maids they'd gone through, I could hardly blame him.
"Why don't we go to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee?" Darren offered with a small smile. I didn't trust that smile. He never wanted to have a coffee break with me. To ask me now was suspicious.
Too curious to say no, I shrugged. "Sure, I was just about to take a break, anyway."
"Wonderful." He clasped his hands and then swept one out and toward the stairs. "Shall we?"
I nodded, and as we walked side by side, the pleasantries dropped, and we settled into an awkward silence. Well, more for me than him. I didn't think Darren had an awkward bone in his body, or at least, he didn't show it. He was one hard man to read.
"So, what did you want to talk about?" I asked, trying to fill the quiet as we walked down the stairs.
"I'd prefer to speak in private rather than out here in the open." Darren gestured around us.
My eyes caught onto the large chandelier hooked to the middle of the ceiling in the foyer. I'd never get used to how beautiful this house was. Over twenty rooms, most closed off to save electricity and cleaning, thank God, several bathrooms, a large dining room, a drawing room, a huge library, and even a ballroom were only a few of the things about the house I enjoyed. Let’s not forget about the fully stocked kitchen filled with the latest appliances and my own bedroom. It was much more than I was used to, that was for sure.
Before I'd come to work for the Durands, I'd been hopping from one clerical job to the other after my former company went under, leaving their employees jobless and without any promising prospects. I didn't know what my ex-coworkers had done. I hadn't been much of a socializer at the time.
But me, I had ended up having to give up my dog and my apartment to live out of my car. It was how I was living when I finally got the job here as the live-in maid, not that Darren was too happy with that development. He'd been dead set against me working here.
