Fooling Around Read online

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I actually have another offer I’m considering.”

  “What’s that?” Marie asked, looking surprised.

  “It’s a strange thing, but this guy who is really rich broke his leg, and he wants me to be his assistant for three months, since I have so much practice taking care of Mom and Dad.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Normally I wouldn’t, but he offered me a million dollars for it.”

  Julie couldn’t help but feel a surge of pleasure when her sister’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “You heard me. A million dollars. For three months’ work.”

  “Is he legit?”

  “Yeah, I checked him out. He seems to be legit.”

  “Oh my! Well, you should do it.”

  Julie was a little surprised, since she’d assumed her sister would want her to move in and start helping as soon as possible. “You think so?”

  “Of course. A million dollars. Think what you could do with it! You could buy us all a huge house. We could go on trips. Think of the shopping we could do. Of course you should take it.”

  Naturally, Marie would assume that Julie would want to blow her money on her sister’s family. Julie was too tired to temper Marie’s enthusiasm, since that would probably lead to an argument and more dramatics. So she just smiled and said, “I’m still thinking about it.”

  —

  That evening Julie went out with Ned. He’d called her back to check in on her, and he’d said he was going to grab something for dinner and asked if she wanted to join him. No pressure. Just a comfortable dinner she didn’t have to cook for herself.

  Since Julie’s other option was to eat stew with Marie and her family, she accepted.

  Ned was an engineer. He was kind and quiet and rather plain-looking, but Julie had always liked him as a person.

  He seemed to have gotten more boring in the intervening years, however. He asked her about her mother and then about her degree in history. Then he told her about his job promotions and about the deck he was building at the back of his house.

  There was absolutely nothing wrong with their conversation. It was normal. But Julie was having trouble not nodding off over their meal.

  She wanted to go home and go to bed.

  “So what are you going to do now?” he asked as she was stirring what was left of her pasta on her plate. “For your future, I mean.”

  Julie gave a little shrug. “I have no idea. It’s hard to think about it right now. I’ve spent so long taking care of my parents.”

  “I can understand that,” he said, nodding soberly. “But you’ll need to do something. Will you go back and finish your dissertation?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m just so tired. It doesn’t really interest me anymore.”

  “But you’ve already put a lot of money and time into the degree. You should go ahead and finish it.”

  Of course she should. She just didn’t want to hear practicalities at the moment, any more than she’d wanted to hear her sister’s dramatics. “I might.”

  “Will you move in with your sister?”

  “I don’t know. I might.”

  “It’s probably a good idea, just so you could save some money while you finish your degree.”

  “Yeah.”

  The plan made sense. She wasn’t making enough money in adjunct teaching to rent a decent apartment, and after all the bills were paid, there would be almost nothing left from the sale of her parents’ house. If she went back to finish her PhD, she’d have to take out more loans. She hated the idea of it as much as the idea of living with her sister for at least a year.

  “What are your other options?” Ned asked, his pale blue eyes watching her with his characteristic seriousness.

  She hadn’t been planning to tell him, but now she did, mostly so she could see his expression. She explained Eric Vincent’s offer and felt a stirring of amusement when Ned’s eyes widened.

  He sat and thought for a full minute before he finally responded. “Well, that’s what you should do, then. Just three months, after all.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t really like this guy.”

  “Why would you have to like him? You just have to put up with him for three months. Then you wouldn’t have to move in with your sister, and you’d have plenty of money to finish your PhD.”

  Naturally, he was right about that too. All she’d have to do was be patient, bite her tongue when Eric was obnoxious, for three months. Twelve weeks. How hard could it be?

  A million dollars might not be much to Eric Vincent, but it would transform everything for Julie.

  “I’m thinking about it,” she said.

  She was thinking about it more and more.

  —

  The next morning when she woke up, she had a few nice moments of comfort, enjoying the warm bed, before she remembered her mother had died.

  The memory was crushing, and she cried for a few minutes.

  As she cried, a memory slipped into her mind of one of the family’s yearly camping trips. Other than an occasional trip to Myrtle Beach, camping had been the only way her family had spent vacation. When they were younger, they’d all loved it—hiking, fishing, sitting around the campfire and chatting as they roasted marshmallows. But once they’d become teenagers, Marie had always whined about the trips, and Julie had been stressed because she didn’t want her parents to be disappointed that they weren’t all having fun.

  One evening, when Julie was thirteen and Marie was fifteen, Marie had been whining again, saying all her friends went to fun places for vacation and got to stay in hotels and eat out. Her father had kept saying they didn’t have money for that, but Marie had just kept it up. “It’s still fun,” Julie had said, seeing the tension in her parents’ faces. “We don’t have to have a lot of money to have fun.”

  “I do,” Marie had said. “I hate this trip. I hate this life.”

  “Well, this is the life you have,” her father had said, his voice strangely resigned. “No one likes everything about their life, but who you are is always who you are. No use in wishing for something else.”

  Marie had huffed off to the tent, and Julie had been upset about the conflict, since she’d never liked it when her sister had a temper tantrum. As she grew older, Marie had rebelled against her father’s attitude toward life. She’d married a man with a good job and built for herself a suburban paradise. She stayed at nice hotels and ate at good restaurants during every vacation she ever had.

  But Julie sometimes felt like her sister’s life was a little bit fake, like she’d surrounded herself with the trappings of a life that wasn’t really hers.

  Looking around at the small, shabby bedroom she was sleeping in, Julie felt the deepest connection to her parents. This was what they’d been able to afford, and it had always been enough.

  She wondered if they’d have wanted her to do this crazy job for Eric and earn a million dollars.

  She heard her father’s voice in her head. “Don’t trust anything that comes too easily.”

  Then she heard her mother’s voice. “But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Her parents had always been practical and hardworking. They’d always wanted the best for her. It wasn’t necessarily a betrayal of them to take advantage of this bizarre, lucrative offer she’d been given.

  Even knowing the little she knew about Eric, she knew the three months wouldn’t be easy. She’d work hard. But she’d be rewarded. And then maybe, maybe, she could be closer to the Julie she imagined in her daydreams, the one in the pretty apartment who did all the things she wanted to do, instead of just fantasizing about them.

  She kept mulling it over as she lay under the covers.

  They’d managed to get everything ready for the funeral this evening at five. Then there would be a lot of small details to take care of.

  Then nothing.

&
nbsp; Julie tried to make herself get up, but she couldn’t seem to manage it. She pulled the covers up higher and rolled over.

  She thought about her options now—in a world without her parents there for her to take care of. They’d needed her for so long, and she’d needed to feel needed that way.

  Now no one really needed her. Marie might pretend to, but mostly she just wanted Julie around to make her life easier.

  Eric Vincent wanted her around for the same reason.

  But at least Eric was offering her something in return, and there was an end point that wasn’t too far away.

  It was probably crazy, irrational, maybe even dangerous, but Julie was starting to think that it might be worth it.

  Mostly, she wanted to wake up in the morning and have some reason to get up.

  Right now, she wasn’t sure that she did.

  She lay in bed at seven o’clock on a Thursday morning, completely alone in her parents’ house, and she made her decision.

  When Eric called her tomorrow morning, she was going to say yes.

  It might be the biggest mistake of her life, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Chapter 3

  Four days later, Julie stared up at a high-rise in downtown Charlotte, reminding herself that this was where she was going to be living for the next three months. The building had just been built last year and was one of the tallest in the city.

  Eric owned a luxury penthouse on the top floor. She couldn’t even imagine how much money he’d spent on it, but evidently the million dollars he was paying her was peanuts to him, so he could obviously afford a place as ridiculously expensive as this penthouse must be.

  The cab driver and doorman helped her with her luggage, and soon she was riding up a private elevator to the forty-fifth floor, feeling nervous for no good reason.

  It was like she was in a movie or in one of her daydreams, where wild, exciting things happened to her that were completely disconnected from her real life.

  She missed her mom. She suddenly wished she were sitting in the recliner next to her mother’s bed, both of them watching one of the old black-and-white romantic comedies her mom had loved.

  Instead she squared her shoulders as the elevator doors slid open to an elegant, marble-floored hall and a woman she vaguely recognized from the lobby of the hospital.

  “Ms. Nelson?” the woman asked, without a glimmer of a smile. She looked to be about ten years older than Julie, with dark brown hair with lovely auburn highlights, even features, subtle makeup, and small wire-framed glasses.

  Julie nodded. “Please call me Julie.”

  “I’m Kristin Rutherford, Mr. Vincent’s personal assistant. I handle both his personal affairs and act as his administrative assistant.”

  Reaching out a hand, Julie smiled and said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Kristin’s handshake was cursory, the kind that made it seem like the other person wanted to stop touching you as soon as possible. This perception was confirmed when Kristin said coolly, “I’m to show you to your room.”

  Well, that was clear enough. Kristin wanted nothing to do with her. She was just going through the motions because Eric had obviously instructed her to.

  As she followed the other woman into the stunning penthouse—soaring ceilings, vast city views, a kind of ultramodern simplicity with a lot of cool colors and extravagant materials—Julie decided that Kristin’s chilly reception wasn’t unusual or unexpected.

  It must be really annoying to have your boss hire someone else to do a job that you obviously weren’t capable of doing to his satisfaction. There had evidently also been a succession of private nurses, all of whom had been fired.

  It was entirely possible that Julie wouldn’t last at this job more than a week before she got on his nerves and was dismissed.

  If she could make it three months, however, she could live comfortably for the rest of her life, as long as she didn’t waste the money on extravagances.

  Maybe she could move to the coast, get a little cottage near the beach. That was a fantasy she’d had for a long time. She tried to imagine herself doing something like that but couldn’t really see it happening.

  She’d gotten her first job as a shelver at the local library when she was sixteen years old. Ever since then, she’d been working hard to earn a little extra money so she could help pay off debts and indulge occasionally in pretty lingerie. Windfalls just didn’t happen to her.

  The penthouse had two stories, with a glossy black floating staircase leading up to the second floor. One half of the first floor was an open space, made up of kitchen, dining, and living areas. Kristin led her through the great room without speaking and toward a hallway that went back to several more rooms.

  “His office is straight back,” Kristin said. She gestured toward the closed doors on the hallway—two on one side and one on the other. “These are guest rooms. Because he can’t get upstairs easily, he’s been sleeping in this one.”

  Julie looked at the single closed door on one side. It must be the largest of the guest rooms.

  “I have my own place on a lower floor,” Kristin added. “The other full-time member of his staff is Tim, who handles the driving, security, and other things that come up. Today is his day off, but you’ll meet him tomorrow. He has his own unit downstairs too. Since you’re only here temporarily, you’ll just be staying in a guest room.”

  “That’s fine,” Julie said. “It wouldn’t make sense for me to have my own place, since I won’t be here long.” She tried to sound friendly and accommodating, but she obviously didn’t succeed.

  “This is your room,” Kristin said, opening one of the doors on the other side of the hall.

  It was probably the simplest of the guest rooms in this place, but it was still twice the size of Julie’s room in her parents’ house. It had a huge window, a French door that led out to the terrace, and a king-size bed with headboard upholstered in cream-colored leather. The room was lovely, with a kind of Zen quality in its simplicity and calming green and gray color scheme.

  “It’s beautiful,” Julie murmured. “Thank you.”

  She put the tote she’d been holding down on a low dresser and asked, “Should I…should I speak to Mr. Vincent?” She wasn’t sure how she should address him, but Kristin had called him “Mr. Vincent,” so Julie figured she better be safe.

  “He’s on a conference call. You aren’t to disturb him when he’s working.”

  Julie blinked. “Okay. I guess I can get unpacked, then.” Her voice lifted at the end, making the words a question. She felt more nervous and uncomfortable than ever.

  What the hell was she even doing here?

  “That would be fine.”

  Without another word, Kristin left her alone in the room, and Julie sank onto a strangely shaped chair near the window.

  She quickly texted her sister to let her know she was here. Julie didn’t feel inclined to chat with her sister at all hours of the day, but she wanted to make sure someone else knew exactly where she was.

  She’d done some research in the last few days. Eric Vincent was a legitimate businessman. He had a reputation for dating a lot of gorgeous women, but there had never been any rumors or complaints about his not treating them right. Obviously, there wasn’t much chance he would be interested in her sexually, but she didn’t want to put herself in a dangerous situation, and it didn’t hurt to be safe.

  When her sister had texted back a reply of k, Julie stared out the window.

  Doing this—agreeing to Eric’s strange proposal—was probably the biggest risk she’d ever taken in her life. She wasn’t a risk taker. She liked to play it safe. Growing up, she’d always been a good girl, and nothing really had changed as she’d become an adult. She focused on school, on work, on taking care of her parents, on being a good friend and a good person. This crazy situation should have happened to someone else.

  It hadn’t, though. It had happened to her. And she just had to
get through three months for it to pay off in a big way.

  It was only ten in the morning, but she felt so exhausted she could barely move. Still, she forced herself to get up and start unpacking. She’d brought all of the clothes she possessed that were appropriate for the range of weather in late April through early July. She didn’t have very much, since she hadn’t gone out socially in the last few years and she didn’t like to splurge on clothes she would have no chance to wear—except for her secret lingerie.

  There was plenty of room in the dresser drawers and closet for all of her stuff, and she tucked her suitcases neatly at the back of the closet when she was done.

  There. She was unpacked. Ready for the next three months in this ridiculously luxurious penthouse.

  She had no idea what she was supposed to do now.

  She went to the mirror to brush her hair and make sure she looked okay. She was wearing a long cotton skirt with a light twinset in medium blue that brought out the color of her eyes. Nothing she wore had cost very much, and it suddenly struck her as a little dowdy-looking.

  She hated feeling that way—uncomfortable in her own skin—so she pushed away the feeling. She wasn’t here to be pretty or glamorous. She was here to do a job and get her money.

  She walked away from the mirror and glanced out into the hall. No one in sight.

  She didn’t want to interrupt an important conference call, but she also didn’t want to hang out in her room, as if she were taking it easy as soon as she’d gotten here. She stewed on her options for a few minutes before the door at the end of the hall swung open.

  A loud, rough voice boomed, “And where the hell is Julie? I thought she was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

  That answered her question clearly enough. She walked down the hall toward the office, approaching as Eric made an appearance in his wheelchair.

  “I’m here,” she said quietly.

  He glowered at her. “Where have you been?”

  The obvious answer would be that Kristin had said not to bother him, but she didn’t like to tattle and she also didn’t want to alienate Kristin on her first morning here. So instead she said, “I was unpacking.”