Maid for Each Other(6)

“Mariano.”

“Yes?” She sighed and gave me an impatient glare before glancing at something beyond the phone and muttering an “excuse me” to someone.

“Can I have your attention for a moment?”

Her eyes shot back to me and she looked pissed, even as she said, “It is yours.”

I could tell by the narrowed brown eyes that she wasn’t in the mood to be messed with, which irked me because who did she think she was, using my house as her personal Airbnb and then acting like I was an ass for being unhappy about it?

She was a five-foot-nothing bundle of red hair and attitude who’d be cute if she wasn’t the cause of my current headache, but alas, Abi Mariano had seemed incapable of not causing me difficulty. I said, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh, joy.” She was walking beside a congested street, but I couldn’t tell where she was in the city. She looked at me through the camera and said, “Listen, let me stop you right there because I’m not interested in anything sexual or illegal.”

“As if I am.” For someone who’d squatted in my residence last night without permission, she sure had a big chip on her shoulder. I would’ve called her boss immediately if I wasn’t so desperate to keep my career on its current upward trajectory. “Do you want to hear my offer, or should I call Ken Adams?”

That made her mouth close. Yes, I know your boss’s name, honey.

“Please continue,” she said, and I was pretty sure she was gritting her teeth.

“If you pretend to be my girlfriend at the party tonight—and do a good job without making things worse—then we’re square.”

“Wait, what?” She stopped walking and looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend at some cocktail party?”

This was such a bad idea. “Yes.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“I’ll give you notes so it’ll be easy to fake it.”

“How do I know you’re not going to get me fired after I do this?”

“I won’t.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m not going to trust you on that. See previous ‘I don’t even know you’ comment.”

“I’ll put it in writing.”

“That means nothing. Like I’m going to hire a lawyer to sue a billionaire for going against his word to not fire me for trespassing? Nope.”

“What do you want from me here?” I snapped, irritated that she was making this absurd situation even more difficult.

“Hmm.” She sat down on a bench—is that Elmwood Park?—and was silent for a solid five seconds before snapping her fingers and saying, “I’ve got it. You can email Ken and tell him that you’re paying me to house-sit for a week. It’s electronic evidence of permission, and also an FYI so the amazing Abi doesn’t get in trouble if someone saw me slipping out in the morning.”

Okay, so the girl was quick on her feet; I’d give her that. “Fine, but why would I say a week? I’ll just say, FYI I paid Abi to house-sit last night.”

“Because you’re going to let me stay at your apartment for a week, just until my situation has resolved itself.”

“That is not happening,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m not letting a stranger stay—”

“First of all, we aren’t strangers—I’m your girlfriend,” she interrupted in a tone that made me sound like the ridiculous one. “And you will be staying at a hotel. It wouldn’t make sense for me to house-sit if you’re there.”

“You want me to move into a hotel and let you—a stranger—stay at my house.”

This girl was clearly out of her mind.

Ironically, I was already planning on staying in a hotel for the weekend. My dad had a bad back and couldn’t handle shitty beds, so since I was leaving again on Monday, it’d just made sense to let my parents stay at my place.

Until Abi showed up, that is.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “And technically you let strangers come into your house all the time when you’re out of town, so it won’t be my first unsupervised-in-your-place rodeo. I’m there all the time.”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

She shrugged. “Then I’m not doing it. Count me out.”

“I might consider putting you up in a hotel for a week,” I said, not wanting to but also ready to be finished with this bullshit.

She scrunched up her nose. “Nah.”

“Nah?” I was going to fucking lose it. “Why nah? I just said I’ll pay for you to stay in a hotel for a week.”

“Yeah, but I really want to use your kitchen.”

“This is madness.” I took a deep breath and tried for calm when I had mere hours until the party. I needed to focus on that, not this ridiculous person who’d suddenly inserted herself in my life. “It was nice meeting you. Have a wonderful life—I’ll tell Ken you say hi.”

“And I’ll tell your parents you say hi and also that you made up a fake girlfriend.”

My mouth snapped closed, and I literally had no idea what to say as she watched me with her eyebrows raised. There was nothing on her face but attitude, like she was daring me to test her, and I wanted to bang my head against a wall.