Maid for Me (13 page)

Jaiden cleared his throat. “We do give nice severance packages, you know.”

“Alright, I’ll tell you everything. But you will have to promise me you won’t tell Master Jameson or anyone else I told you this.” Driver held up his hairy right pinky. “Pinky swear?”

Jaiden didn’t have the heart to tell his silly chauffeur a pinky swear had no legal binding value in the courts. He decided to play along anyway, hooking his pinky around Driver’s. Driver sucked in a deep breath and told Jaiden everything he wanted to know and more.

Afterward, Jaiden half-regretted forcing Driver to talk.

Ignorance is truly bliss after all.

During dinner that night, Jaiden ate his meal in silence. Whenever Jameson asked him a question, Jaiden replied with a shrug, a nod, or a shake of his head. Before dessert (gold-flaked decadent Swedish-chocolate mousse cake) arrived, Jaiden excused himself from the table and retired to his bedroom. He looked out the window and down. Downstairs, Driver stood staring directly at Jaiden’s bedroom. When he noticed Jaiden, he turned to stare at the moon.

Jaiden frowned and decided to give Detective Graham a call.

~*~

The next morning, Mina opened her cracked eyes when sunlight filtered into the room and shone on her eyelids. She yawned and stretched her arms over her head before walking over to her mother’s side.

Kaila, sitting up in bed, watched the morning news and sipped on a cup of hot coffee. On the nightstand next to her bed rested a big, beautiful bouquet of white roses.

“Good morning, love,” Kaila said, putting the cup of coffee on the table tray next to the bed. “So, what secrets have you been keeping from me?” Kaila reached for the bouquet and caressed the soft white rose petals. “Jaiden Daniels, son of our billionaire Comptroller is going out with my daughter? It’s hard to believe.”

“You’ve met Jaiden?” Mina looked at the roses.

“He brought the flowers. What a handsome young man. If only I were a decade younger. Don’t let go of him, Min-Min.”

Mina’s eyes rolled. “We’re not going out. We’re pretending to go out. He’s paying me to be his fake girlfriend.” Mina took ten minutes to explain everything to Kaila.

Kaila sipped her coffee again. “So in a way, you’re like a sex-free whore? I see.”

“Mom!” Mina’s face turned all shades of red and pink. “I’m going through with all of this because of you. How else are we going to pay your debts and save Daddy’s house?”

Kaila yawned. “It wouldn’t make any sense if you two were really going out. Even though you’re my daughter, I have to admit, you’re no looker.”

“Thanks for the encouragement, Mom,” Mina said, sarcasm dripping in her tone.

Kaila rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “So he’s our moneybag. Nice.”

Mina shook her head. “Enough about him. How are you feeling today?”

“Much better. A girl could get used to a place like this.”

Mina gave her mother a stern look. “This is the last time in a long time you’re ending up in a place like this. It looks glamorous, but don’t forget, you’re a patient in a hospital.”

“I feel good enough to bullfight, love. Get Mommy out of here. I need to smoke.”

Yesterday, Kaila seemed like she had made some progress in rehabbing herself. Today, she regressed, proving the saying “old habits die hard” true.

“You’re staying here until the doctor says otherwise.” If Mina had to handcuff Kaila to the bedpost, she would. While they were already in the hospital, Mina wondered if she could force her mother to attend a twelve step rehab program to treat her gambling addiction.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back, Mom.”

“Okie-dokie, darling.” Kaila flipped through the TV channels. Mina exited the room and approached the nurse-station in the middle of the hospital floor. She found the bubbly nurse who took care of her mother and tapped the ginger-haired woman on the shoulder.

“Nurse Joy? Is it possible to get my mom some nicotine-patches and enroll her into free addiction-seminars?”

Nurse Joy smiled at Mina. She had freckles just like Mina and yet Mina wondered why Nurse Joy looked so much prettier than herself.

“That can be arranged. Your mom will just have to sign some paperwork. Then she can come here as an outpatient. I believe Dr. D’atria is discharging her today.”

“He is,” Jaiden said, striding toward the nurse-station, wearing a pair of baby-blue scrubs. Mina made a face. Nurse Joy grinned and walked toward Kaila’s room with nicotine patches.

“What are you, a surgeon today?” Mina asked.

Something about a guy in uniform turned Mina’s knees into jelly. She had to admit-Jaiden was one of the cutest guys she had ever met. As a painter, even Kiterin would appreciate Jaiden’s looks.

“Actually, I observed an open heart surgery this morning.” Jaiden winked. “One wrong cut and the patient would have bled to death.” Happy chills ran down Jaiden’s spine.

“Okay… Anyway, what do I have to do for you today, Boss? If you don’t mind, I would like to take the day off to take care of my mom.”

“You don’t have to take the day off since you and your mom are moving into the manse.”

“What? Why?”
The hospital smells must have gotten to his head and made him talk crazy
, Mina thought.

“Because that way, we can kill many stones with one bird.” Jaiden chuckled. “You and your mother fascinate me, Mina. I want to observe you. If you don’t want to live in the manse, then I could come live with you. It could be like a Survivor experience.”

“No way,” Mina said, face scrunched. “That wasn’t part of the Contract.”
What am I, an experimental project? He wants to observe me?

“Well, if you don’t stick to me like glue, who will be responsible if the Stalker hunts me down?” Jaiden raised his brows. “My life is very precious, you know.”

Mina stuck a finger in her mouth, pretending to gag. “We don’t have room for you in our house. We have bedbugs… and our neighborhood is bad.” Mina’s nose twitched. They didn’t have bedbugs since Mina changed the bedding every other week. Their neighborhood was much better than the slums of East Uptown. In the past five years, no one had been killed around her neighborhood. Robbed, mugged, and ran over. Yes, but this was the Uptown and bad things happened everywhere in the city.

Even North Uptown.

“Then that’s why you and your mom are living in the manse.”

Jameson Daniels hardly stayed at home, leaving Jaiden alone in a fifty-thousand square foot manse often. For now, this was a good thing. Jaiden would rather not see or talk to his father.

As for friends, Jaiden had plenty of them-five thousand and counting on Facebook, seven thousand on Myspace and at least ten thousand followers on Twitter.

Whether they all really cared for him was another story. Sometimes he wondered if he weren’t Jameson Daniels’s son, would people treat him differently? Would girls like Madison even look at him? (Even though he looked otherworldly hot, he knew most females these days cared more about financial stability and power than a man’s looks.)

Having real people like Mina and her mother in the manse would definitely liven up the place-not that Bunion and the other staffers weren’t real people-they were just too formal and robotic. For one, Jaiden felt like he lived in the Eighteenth Century with everyone calling him their Young Master. Plus, they kept secrets from him-big, life altering secrets.

“Just agree. Think about it this way-treat my manse as a summer getaway. Plus, my staff can keep a close watch on your mom and make sure she doesn’t hurt herself again.”

“You do have a point there. Let me think about it.” Mina raised a finger to signal for Jaiden to give her a second. She closed her eyes. Five seconds later, she said, “Alright, we’ll move into the manse. Besides, I do owe you. You helped save Mom’s life. But I have to take care of some stuff first in our house.”

“Great. I’ll help your mom with the discharge papers. Driver could take you home.”

“Okay.”

Half an hour later, Mina arrived before her house in Jaiden’s limo. She stepped out of the limo and spotted Alyssa sunbathing in the front lawn in a tiny black bikini. Large shades covered her eyes. She removed them when she noticed Mina.

“A limo? The hell?” Alyssa ran up to study the limo, her breasts almost bouncing out of the small bikini. “Did you win the lottery or something?”

“’No.”

Mina told Driver to pick her up in half an hour. Driver drove away.

“Sorry, Alyssa, I don’t have much time to talk to you.” Mina walked up to her front door and reached into her jean pocket for the keys.

“Kit and I had mind blowing sex last night,” Alyssa said with a raspy voice.

Mina raised her chin. Her heart felt like someone had squeezed it dry. “Congratulations. I hope you guys used protection. Wouldn’t want that nice belly of yours to bloat up with a baby,” Mina stammered.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m on the pill.” Alyssa licked her teeth. “Did you know Kit quit his stupid summer job so he could spend more time with me?”

Mina dropped her keys. “Kit had looked forward to working at LAG all semester long. If you really love him, you would let him do what he wants and not hog him all summer.”

Alyssa snorted. “Love? I don’t love him. He’s like a summer fling, honey. Jake’s the real deal, but he’s away in Europe right now. So, I’ll just have to settle for Kit.” Alyssa sighed.

Jake Maxbraun, the rich and popular junior jock-football and basketball team captain at Uptown High was Alyssa’s “real deal”. Mina knew who he was—she had beaten him in arm wrestling.

“Are you serious? You’re just toying with Kit’s heart?” Mina raised her invisible sleeves, ready to give the flake a good smack-down.

“Kit was challenging, but now that’s he’s mine, I just don’t feel challenged anymore. But he’ll have to do for the summer.”

“What? You bitch!”

“Nope. That doesn’t make me a bitch. This makes me a bitch.” Alyssa surprised Mina with a sudden backhand slap across her face, hard enough to possibly snap her jaw. Mina cocked her fist back, ready to punch in the blond’s nose. Alyssa gasped and shielded her face. Kit walked out of his house. Mina quickly brought her fist behind her back.

“What’s going on here?” He glared at Mina.

Seeing Kit, Alyssa quickly ran across Mina’s lawn to his. She sobbed and pointed at Mina. “I just said something about how much I love you and Mina just went crazy. She wanted to punch me, so I got scared and slapped her.”

“Is that true, Min?” Kit looked disgusted. Before giving Mina a chance to speak, he added, “What’s wrong with you?” He led Alyssa back into his house and slammed the front door.

Exasperated, Mina screamed until her throat bled. She stormed into her house and cleaned every dusty and dustless surface like a maid with an OCD.

“When did I ever hit someone for no reason, Kit? The question is, what’s wrong with you?” Mina kept replaying the scenario in her head, wishing she could turn back time and redo everything. She would run up to Kit and show him the red slap mark on her face. She would tell him everything Alyssa had said, about Jake and Kit being her boy-toy plaything. She would cry and act dainty to tug at his heart strings.

“But would he believe me?” Mina screamed again, wanting to punch a hole in the wall. She wished she had ESP or other sorts of power so she could do evil things to Alyssa.

Her cheek still stung. Mina opened the freezer door and stuck her head inside it for a minute.

Then she ran upstairs to scrub the toilet, wash her mother’s ash-filled bedroom, and threw out the burnt charcoal. Chores made her sweat. Sweating meant forgetting.

But not forgiving.
This was Alyssa’s final strike, Mina decided.

She grabbed Kaila’s loan contract and packed her mother’s clothes in a large, busted gray suitcase. By the time she left the house, Driver had been waiting for over an hour in the limo. He tapped his watch and grunted.

“Young Master Jaiden is waiting for us, Miss Mina,” he said and sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong with your face? Did that sexy girl slap you?” Driver asked.

“Your name is Driver. Not Asker.”

Driver’s eyes darkened. He flared his nostrils. “Actually, my name is Matt Tirpluc, but everyone tends to forget that. Get in, Miss.”

“I’m sorry for being rude, Matt.” Mina hopped into the limo, sat back, and refused to cry, squeezing her eyelids shut. Tears, however, still managed to escape.