Page 1 of Married in Michigan

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Ihaven’t even clocked in before Tanya, my immediate superior, is hovering behind me. I try to ignore her, but I can tell she’s a little bit stressed. I clock in, change into my uniform—a classic maid outfit: black knee-length shirtwaist dress and white apron, modest and sensible. I examine myself in the little mirror on the inside of my locker: my explosively curly brown hair is braided back into a tight, neat fishtail, the wispies around my temples clipped back with bobby pins. My blue-green eyes look right back at me, friendly and open, and I take a quick peek at my skin—the color of caramel and milk chocolate. No makeup at work because the last thing my employers want, or I want, is to be noticed while I’m cleaning rooms—it’s a contracted part of the job, as a matter of fact.

I’m a housekeeper at Beach by deBraun, a boutique hotel in Petoskey, Michigan—owned by none other than the deBrauns; a sprawling family of billionaires. The deBrauns have investments in shipping, technology, hotels, politics, and real estate. This particular hotel is a favorite of the deBrauns, personally overseen by Camilla deBraun, the matriarch of the family, as her pet project. She’s here frequently, and personally decorated every room, chose every wall color, lighting sconce, tablecloth, and piece of silverware. Every member of the staff, from housekeeping to desk clerks, are interviewed and hired and fired by Camilla. Front desk clerks are hired as much for their beauty as their skill and experience, and are taught diction by Hollywood voice coaches so as to articulate each syllable perfectly, without accent, with perfect elocution. Chefs are Michelin-starred, and even room service dishes are prepared and presented with five-star flair and elegance. Housekeepers are trained to the same exacting standards as the housekeepers at Buckingham Palace, and I am not exaggerating—Tanya’s job, as a matter of fact, is to inspect each room before it is assigned to a new guest, and she does so literally wearing white gloves. From toilets to tubs, nightstands to windowsills, every corner and crevice must be dusted to perfection, the beds turned down without a single wrinkle in the freshly laundered sheets and comforters. And we, as the housekeeping staff, are to be seen and not heard, and preferably not seen—“invisible and efficient!” is the motto Camilla insists we live by. Even the shoes we wear are checked for squeaks and creaks. Cart wheels are oiled regularly, vacuums are custom designed by Dyson for deBraun hotels in order to be as silent as possible.

Mine is a very demanding job, and one for which I am well paid.

I finish my preparations for my shift, and finally turn to face my boss. “Let me guess, someone trashed a room and no one else wants to touch it?” I ask, tying the apron around my waist.

Tanya, on the older side of middle age, with graying brown hair in a severe bun, carrying more than a few extra pounds in the usual locations, huffs. “I wish it was that easy,” she says.

I stifle a groan. “Bachelor party in one of the suites?”

“Worse,” Tanya says.

I blink. “Worse than a bachelor party…a bachelorette party then?”

She cackles. “You wish it was a simple matter of penis-shaped glitter balloons.” She eyes me with sympathy. “Let’s just put it this way—Camilla herself assigned this job to you, and she has authorized me to pay you time and a half for the work. This assignment is your sole job for today.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Time and a half? What could have happened that she’s assigning me for a full shift at time and a half?”

“Two words—Paxton deBraun.”

I groan out loud, “Shit.”

Paxton deBraun is a notorious playboy—a twenty-first-century Jay Gatsby, complete with the aura of dark, dramatic mystique, and Paxton is infamous for throwing absolutely wild parties. And by wild, I can truthfully say the stories I’ve heard make my housekeeper’s blood run cold. It seems that until last night, his mother has succeeded in keeping him away from her precious boutique hotel, but it sounds as if that run of good luck is over. I’ve spoken to other deBraun hotel employees, and they’ve cleaned up after Paxton bashes in the past, at some of the other hotels, and it was not pretty.

I shudder all over. “You’re kidding.”

Tanya sighs, patting me on the shoulder. “Nope. He threw a party in the penthouse last night.”

“Of course he did.”

The penthouse—the entire top floor of the building, with a private elevator, also comes with a private floor of the parking garage, both a private chef and a concierge available twenty-four hours a day, and a Mercedes S-Class with a private driver also available at all hours.

Let’s review a few housekeeping facts: the penthouse is an entire floor in the hotel. It takes a team of eight women working in concert for four hours to clean an entire floor’s worth of rooms. But this is just me, in a single shift, and I’m cleaning up after a Paxton deBraun party.

“Can I give up the extra pay to get someone to help me?” I ask.

Tanya shakes her head. “No. Camilla was adamant—one person, my best cleaner, my most trustworthy and reliable.” She glances around to make sure we’re alone in the room. “I guess this was a pretty wild one, and Camilla wants it to stay…quiet.” Her eyes fix on mine, giving me a meaningful look, and she lowers her voice. “Cleaning up after these parties of Paxton’s is supposed to be…lucrative. I worked with a woman who did one at the deBraun Chicago, and Camilla gave her a big enough bonus afterward that Lucy paid off her mortgage with it.” Tanya’s eyes widen. “It’s not common knowledge, and Lucy had to sign some of kind nondisclosure agreement that she’d keep quiet, both about the bonus and whatever she saw during cleanup.”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “What did she see?”

Tanya shakes her head. “She wouldn’t say, nor would she say how much she got paid, just that she was able to take out her mortgage note with it.”

I blow out a breath, stiffen my spine, and lift my chin. “Fine. Let me stock my cart and I’ll head up.”

Tanya nods. “Bring extra garbage bags, extra gloves, a lot of bleach, and call Rick in maintenance directly when you need something fixed or garbage taken away.”

Rick is head of maintenance, which means he’s probably being given similar marching orders.

I stock my cart, loading it with extras of pretty much everything I can think of, and then roll it to the service elevator, transfer to the penthouse elevator and take it up the top floor. The doors open directly into the foyer of the penthouse, and my breath halts in my chest—I’ve never cleaned the penthouse before, so I’ve never been up here; the view is absolutely breathtaking. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the foyer, looking out over Lake Michigan, the water rippling with the glittering flash of a billion diamonds in the early morning sun. Seagulls wheel on wingtips, sailboats carve across the bay with white sails, and the sky is endless and blue.

The view of the bay, however, is not what takes my breath away—it’s the mess.

I stand in the foyer and try to figure out where I’m even going to start.

I’ve been to my share of keggers and house parties gone awry, cleaned up after bachelor and bachelorette parties gone crazy, and in the process seen some colossal messes. I have an iron stomach, and an ability to look at a disastrous mess, stay calm, and take on the cleanup one step at a time without getting overwhelmed. It’s why Tanya assigned this to me, after all.