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Chapter 16
Piper
The doorbell ringingcouldn’t have come at a better time. If I hadn’t known if I should kiss Wynn, I sure as hell shouldn’t have been kissing Allister. Sweet, caring, such a fucking great cook Allister.
He had surprised me today. The quieter of the two twins, Allister hadn’t said more than a few words to me since I started. Now, he was feeding me, a huge plus for him, and telling me I had the whole household wrapped around my finger? I could hardly believe it. Yet, he hadn’t been acting like he was lying.
I chewed on that information on my way to the front door. Usually, Darren would answer the door, but he was in the office with Antoine ‘helping’ him with something. I have started to suspect his helping was more than in an employee-boss sort of way, especially considering the way the guys made not so subtle comments about the two of them.
A shudder of desire rushed through me and settled between my thighs at the thought. Either of them, Darren and Antoine, was any woman’s wet dream, and the thought of them both together just did it for me. If I didn’t know the house was full of vampires now, I’d sneak away to my room to play out what I hoped was going on up in Antoine’s office. What I had instead were fantasies of what the commanding vampire might have done to me last time I was in there with Darren’s help.
Wow, where’d that come from? Now, I was drooling after the only other human here. Jeez, Piper. You need to get laid and bad.
Shaking my head, I turned the doorknob and pulled it open. Plastering on my best customer service face, which was fake as all get out, I opened my mouth to greet whoever had come to call on my masters... except the words I had prepared to say died on my lips. Standing before me wasn’t some visitor for the masters or even a delivery, that would have been sent to the kitchen, but my very own parents.
“Mom...? Dad...?” I gasped, my mouth hanging open as I took in my parents. Derek and Jennifer Billings were exactly what you would imagine a suburban couple would look like, wearing khaki pants and polo shirts along with sensible shoes and matching cardigans. They were everything I was not. Poised. Polite. Perfect. The three p’s I was never able to achieve. That was one of the reasons we didn’t exactly speak to each other anymore. What really broke the camel’s back was when I refused to marry Brad, a boring cookie cutter that had the same ideals as my parents and their whole neighborhood of clones.
“Piper!” My mom scowled with a shake of her perfectly coiffed blonde hair. “Is that any way to greet your parents? And are you going to make us wait here on the doorstep all night or invite us in?”
Remembering myself, I swallowed and moved to the side. I started to let my parents in than I remembered an important detail about the household I lived in, vampires. My parents were humans. Nope. Nope. Nope. I couldn’t let them in.
Jumping in front of them, I shook my head and tried to usher them back out. “Let’s talk out here. You know the house is kind of a mess. I don’t want you to see that.”
“But aren’t you the maid?” My dad cocked his head to the side with disapproval. “Isn’t it your job to keep things from getting messy?”
I nodded slowly at a loss for words. “Uh, yes. That is my job. I clean the house, but you know, I was sick this week and haven’t had a chance to catch up, and I’d hate to have you judge it based on that.”
“Oh, nonsense.” My mom shook her head and pushed her way in. I stumbled back and gaped at her, my eyes flicking to the door to the dining room and back to them. My dad followed close after her as each of them took in everything there was to see. I could tell by their expression that they approved wholeheartedly of the house I worked in. In fact, the way my mom was looking at me, I could see the wheels turning in her head.
Ugh. Why did they have to show an interest in me now? It has been five years, and now, now of all times to actually care what I was doing, they had to pick when I was working for vampires. Did someone up there have it in for me or what? I screamed silently up at the ceiling and simultaneously prayed the masters would keep their distance.
As if summoned by my very thoughts, Drake and Allister came through the dining room door. Their eyes were curious and confused at the sight before them, then they seemed to piece two and two together, and those confused looks turned to delight.
I was instantly suspicious.
I didn’t want whatever they planned to get out of control, so I jumped in and gestured to the approaching twins. “Mom. Dad. These are two of the gentlemen I work for. Drake and Allister Durand.” I gave them a warning look hidden beneath a fake smile. “Master Durandses,” I winced as I struggled through the introduction, “these are my parents.”
My mom practically melted on the floor and then hurried across the foyer to shake the twins’ hands. “Oh, my. If my bosses were half as attractive as you two, then I might have stayed in the workforce after I got pregnant with little Peppy here.”
Drake grinned at my mom and then, over her head, mouthed ‘Peppy.’
I grimaced and repressed a groan. My mom was really trying to embarrass me here, and she’d just got in the door. My dad, however, wasn’t looking at the twins like he was thinking of having an affair. Thank God, that would be weird.
Instead, he was giving them the stink eye, looking them over before asking with his not-at-all intimidating dad voice, “Master. huh? You have some kind of fetish about making my daughter call you that?”
The grin on Allister and Drake’s faces dropped abruptly. This time, it was my turn to enjoy their discomfort. The twins fumbled for their words, making the two large men look flustered and adorable all at once. They were saved from coming up with an answer by Antoine as he appeared at the top of the steps with Darren in tow.
“My apologies if our ways seem a bit outdated,” Antoine explained as he made his way down the left staircase. “In our country, it is common practice to refer to the employers by Master and Mistress.”
His blonde hair was braided and draped over his shoulder, its paleness a stark difference to the midnight black dress shirt he wore beneath its matching suit jacket and pants. The only color in his outfit was the pure white tie with a pin in it decorated with a minute sigil of the house. If my mother had been near dead from the twins, she was about to have a heart attack at the sight of Antoine.
Jennifer Billings fanned herself as if she were having a hot flash, but I was pretty sure she was feeling exactly the same as I had been for the last few months. I covered my mouth with my hand and tried to hold back a laugh as my mom sort of danced across the foyer to stand before Antoine.
Darren arched an amused brow, meeting my gaze over the others from a few paces back on the stairs. He was as poised and put together as ever, not showing an ounce of what might have happened in the office upstairs. I returned his look with a shrug. I had no idea why they were here or that they were coming at all. The last I’d heard from them had been on my birthday when they gave me their obligatory card in the mail.
That had been six months ago.
My dad, however, was not impressed by any of this. He stepped in front of my mom and offered Antoine his hand with a flat expression. “Derek Billings, and where exactly is it you come from?”
