“I’ll double your rate if you flirt a little with the new clients. Flash a little chocolaty thigh, make a few risqué comments. Get ’em a little hot and bothered.”

Same old same old. “Yes, sir.”

“Incidentally, Miss Portman, I will take the cost of repairing my desk out of your pay, of course. Now, before you leave”—he gestured at the apple peels—“do be a lamb and clear these away. Good night, Miss Portman.”

“Good night, Mr. Randolph.”

I grabbed the peels in my fist and was about to deposit them in the waste basket when Mortimer said, “No, no. The kitchen.”

I should have stabbed him with that paring knife when I had the chance.

Heading down the hallway, a cleaning woman I’d never seen before scuttled into the kitchen.

“Nasty old bird, ain’t he?” The gray-haired woman tossed the words behind her, pulling her mop and bucket, whistling tunelessly.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but for some reason she seemed strangely familiar.

**

I dropped my heels inside the doorway when I got home that night, aching for a foot rub that I knew Cody would be good for. He loved doting on me, even when it meant massaging my sweaty soles. In fact, the guilt of what he had done with Felicity might even motivate him to do a little extra, as if he could ever make up for it.

The debate on whether to say something to Cody plagued me all night, well into the morning as I slipped out the door on my way to work. It was a thin-ice decision. Say something and create a crack in our relationship that would eventually send us both falling to a frigid marital death. Or skirt the whole topic by staying safely on shore and pretend everything was fine.

I was an actress, so pretending was in my blood.

Cody called to me from the kitchen when he heard the door swing shut behind me. “How was work, honey?”

It smelled like tacos tonight. Spaghetti, tacos, and ribs were about the extent of Cody’s culinary abilities.

“I’m seriously about to either quit my job or kill my boss,” I grumbled as I set my purse down on the dining room table on my way through the house.

“What demeaning thing did Mortimer do today?” Cody was well aware of my racist boss and often begged me to change jobs. I decided it would serve no purpose to tell him I’d told the old bastard off but had miraculously managed to keep my job. We had enough drama in our lives without him harping on that incident.

“He wants to pay me to basically prostitute myself to some clients and act as his diversity hire.”

“Wow, seriously? You said no, of course.” Cody stated it as if fact.

“No, I agreed to do it. We need the money.”

“Marin, come on, we don’t need it that badly.”