Page 4 of The Woman with the Secret (Costa Family)

And after all of that, you remember, after taking the subway all the way across town, that you didn’t remember to bring your paperwork that you’d needed to fill out for said job you are trying to apply for.

So you have to rush into an office supply store, printing it out from your cracked phone that you couldn’t afford to replace or fix and still had eight months to pay off before you could upgrade, and then fill out the paperwork on the walk the rest of the way across town. Because, yeah, you can’t afford a cab or ride.

It was probably a mercy that the other woman plowed right into me and sent my coffee flying all over my paperwork. It smeared all the blue ink, obscuring the horrendous penmanship that had been there.

It was all just… a lot.

I could feel the tears stinging my eyes, knowing how much was riding on this stupid interview, this damn job.

I just barely managed to blink them away when I realized that not only had my hopeful potential new employer witnessed my humiliation, but he still wanted me to go through the process of an interview.

Why, I had no idea.

Since I clearly just demonstrated that I had absolutely nothing to offer by the way of life management, so why would he imagine I had house management skills?

I half wanted to blurt out to him that he should just save himself the hassle, that I had milk in my fridge that was so old, it was probably starting to become good cheese, and that I had made friends with the spider that spun a web in the corner of my bathroom, and that my vacuum had crapped out two weeks ago, and I couldn’t afford a replacement, so I’d been sweeping my carpets like we were in the eighteen-hundreds or something.

I was the last possible person he wanted to hire.

So why the hell was he offering to let me interview?

I thought, fleetingly, that maybe he was just one of those creepy dudes who wanted to get you alone to hit on you.

But, objectively, I thought the brunette was prettier than me, so that didn’t seem to be a good motivator.

“Really, you don’t have to take pity on me,” I said before I could even go up another step. “I can handle the rejection,” I added.

But that was probably all bluster.

I mean, usually, yeah.

There was just way, way too much riding on this.

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it down the rest of the steps before I burst into tears. The big, ugly, snotty, loud kind, too.

“How about we try this again?” he suggested, going inside the house, and closing the door, just waiting on the other side of it, I could see him through the little glass cutouts.

When I didn’t immediately move to do so, he pointed toward the doorbell.

This was absolutely ridiculous.

But I really, really wanted this job. Needed it, in fact. So I marched up the steps and hit the bell.

“You must be Avery,” he greeted, giving me a big smile. All perfect white teeth.

I mean, of course they were perfect.

Everything about him was perfect.

Tall, fit, with classically handsome bone structure, light brown hair, and dark blue eyes.

He had on dress slacks, shirt, shoes, and a belt, but no jacket. Everything, I imagined, costing more individually than my entire wardrobe put together. And my entire jewelry collection. Throw in my furniture too.

“Mr. Costa,” I greeted him, trying for my best professional voice, despite the horrific first impression I’d given him. Slow breathing through the cramps steadily working their way across my lower back since I hadn’t had time to track down anything to take to ease them.

Then he was moving aside, and I was walking into his Brownstone.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Good bones, I guess. I mean, the Manhattan Brownstones were so revered for a reason. It had that. But it had… nothing else. Save for some pop-up chairs and a collection of moving boxes.

“How do you take your coffee?” he asked, leading me casually down the center hall, walking us beside the staircase with all its ornate woodwork.

“With oat milk, sugar, caramel drizzle, and whipped cream,” I said, making him shoot me a smile as we walked into the kitchen.

“I have regular milk and sugar,” he told me. “And I might have some of that sugar-free caramel crap,” he said, looking at his boxes like someone else had packed them up and put them there, and he had no idea what was inside of them.

“What’s the point if it’s sugar-free?” I asked, getting another smile from him.

“I will have to ask my sisters that,” he said.

The kitchen had some of the features of the original kitchen—the oversized windows with metal bars on them, the dark wood cabinets, the original wood floors—but the range was one of those new, industrial ones, and the island seemed to be a more recent addition.

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