Page 15 of My Ex’s Dad (Scandalous Billionaires #1)

Chapter seven

Amalphia

A s far as places of my own, I’ve never been able to afford anything past the tiny apartment I moved into right before I met Reginald.

The building I was in before that was converted into a condo, so unless you were buying, you had to move out.

It was tremendously sad because it was a lovely brick building with all sorts of character.

Despite the fact that the boiler often broke down in the middle of winter, always on the coldest of days, I loved it.

The one I moved into after, with its plain yellow vinyl sidings and its token white wrought iron balconies, never felt like home.

I did what I could, buying a few paintings for the walls and thrifting some handmade quilts, Afghans, and other décor.

I built my teapot collection up and displayed all the charming porcelain and pottery on top of the cupboards in the kitchen and on the bookshelf in the living room.

It wasn’t that the furniture was secondhand or that the place was rundown.

It didn’t matter that there was hardly ever hot water for showers and the appliances didn’t work properly.

I mean, it mattered, but that’s not what made it feel like a temporary residence.

It just never felt like me. It never felt right .

The pool house is different.

It doesn’t feel like mine either, but since Warrick said it was fine to hang whatever I wanted on the walls and add whatever touches I saw fit, that’s how I spent my free hours this past week.

I’ve never been a routine-oriented person. I don’t need order to function. Chaos and anarchy aren’t fun either, but there’s a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, and if I can fall into that, then it’s golden.

Warrick doesn’t seem to have a routine either. I mean, he works, and that’s a constant in his life, but he doesn’t leave at the same time every morning, and he certainly doesn’t get home at any set hour.

Now that he’s back, my sort of routine is to keep out of his hair in the mornings so I don’t throw off his pre-work mojo. Once he’s gone, I head in and start ticking items off the mental list of tasks that I draw out for myself every day.

I always start in the kitchen, cleaning and tidying, and from there, I move in a rotation.

From the living room to the weird room that is mostly windows, which overlooks the backyard and seems to be for nothing more than storing incredibly expensive-looking furniture and plants.

And then, I pick the rooms that look like they need the most cleaning.

The guest rooms only need to be dusted every so often.

I do them once every three days or so. Warrick has a home office, and since the door is never locked, I do quick dusting and tidying in there and usually head to the stairs.

Metal and glass are magnets for fingerprints, so a good half hour is generally spent erasing all traces of inhabitation.

So far, I haven’t broken anything, messed anything up, or moved anything such that Warrick has to ask me where it is.

In the plant room—sunroom?—place, I feel like I’ve accomplished a huge milestone by not killing the greenery in there.

I know nothing about plants, but there are plenty of apps out there, and they’ve told me pretty much everything I needed to know to avoid becoming a plant murderer.

Who knew you had to water some with distilled water or that others are finicky about soil and fertilizer? Right, probably everyone but me.

I’ve been too squeamish to touch Warrick’s room.

Generally, the door has been shut, and I’d feel like a snoop going in there.

The other area of the house that seems to be blatantly off limits to me is the garage, and not because it’s locked or because Warrick has said so, but because I don’t think I should be farging around in there next to cars that cost more than most people’s dream house, along with his crazy expensive robotics project.

I also know the house has a basement. The door at the back of the kitchen can only lead down there, I’ve decided, but it’s always locked.

Down there, Warrick is probably guarding a man cave full of expensive sports crap, guitars on the wall, a massive TV, and a ton of stereo equipment that all scream alert, alert, expensive. DO NOT DUST AND NEVER APPLY CHEMICALS OF ANY KIND. Back away. Slowly. Carefully. And never, ever return.

On my first day, Warrick showed me where he’d hang the clothes that needed to be dry cleaned—conveniently and thoughtfully by the front door. Thus far, there’s been no need to go into his room to get them or for any other reason.

Today, after cleaning the kitchen and the living room and scrubbing the stairs until the glass inserts and the metal railing shone, I decided that a few of the guest rooms could use some light dusting. When I reached the end of the hall, I realized Warrick’s door was open.

I pause, hesitant, but tell myself I’m being ridiculous.

I’m not a stage-five creeper. This is my job .

He probably left it open for me as a not-so-subtle nod that goes something along the lines of oh, for the love of giant pumpkins, please take the hint and clean me!

I grin like a loon as a mental image of a filthy car with that saying finger-scrawled across the back window pops into my head.

The room has large windows, but I switch on the light anyway.

It’s not fancy. Warrick isn’t a maximalist. He’s gone with functional pieces that aren’t personal.

Things like square dressers and a huge bed that can be in any five-star hotel room.

The house is mostly hardwood, which intimidated me before I watched a few videos on how to properly clean and care for it, with the exception of the tiles at the entrances.

The room is neat, the bed made. It’s very hotel-inspired indeed, with the fluffy down duvet, matching sleek grey nightstands, and two chrome lamps with black shades.

I run my finger along the dresser’s top, which is completely devoid of any sentimental items—no knick-knacks, no clothes out of place, no toiletries. There’s no dust, and the mirror is perfectly spotless, but I go and get my cleaning supplies from the stairs anyway.

I give everything a good wipe-down, including the windows. The shades are a gauzy white fabric, and I send up a plea to the curtain gods to never let them get dirty. I would have no idea how to go about wiping those things down.

After that, I skim past the bed, keeping my brain on track by filling my head with images of me madly cleaning and not snooping around in here.

I certainly don’t imagine Warrick sleeping in that huge bed, his massive form making even the biggest bed seem small.

I don’t wonder which side he sleeps on. I don’t freaking run my hand over the mattress and check for indents, and I most definitely do not lean over and smell the pillows.

Fuck, of course I do all of that, but at least I have the decency to feel utterly guilty over it.

I don’t need to try and catch his lingering scent. The whole place is enveloped with it. The room screams MAN in shouty caps. It’s basically nightmare fodder. Well, that is if you term having erotic dreams about your ex-boyfriend’s dad the stuff of nightmares.

Okay, calling it a nightmare is too strong.

Inappropriate dream fodder from which you wake up sweaty and aching is more accurate.

I don’t know why Warrick entrusted me with his secrets, but it immediately shot us both to a new planet of intimacy.

We rocketed straight past the stratosphere of boss-employee professional distance.

We skipped past the friends’ planet, and now we seem to be floating in a nebulous, unexplored galaxy.

I force my attention back to cleaning and head to the en-suite bathroom, where I let out a little sigh of delighted dismay when I realize that, at last, there is actually something to clean in here.

Most of my afternoons are long and empty.

I’m not going to just go through the motions of cleaning stuff that doesn’t need to be cleaned, which ensures the hours stretch on and on.

I’ve never had so much free time in my life, and it’s almost intimidating.

I’ve spent my off hours the past week forcing myself to explore the city, even if driving here freaks me out.

On the first day was groceries. I couldn’t just keep eating out of Warrick’s fridge and cooking in his kitchen.

I don’t think he’ll mind, honestly, but the pool house has its own kitchen and fridge with working appliances.

I may be living here, but cooking in my own area makes me feel more independent.

During the week, I also found several thrift and antique stores, and I chose a few original vintage paintings for my space as well as a funky, knitted, granny-squares Afghan done in glorious pastel hues.

I didn’t want to say anything to Warrick, but when I went back to my apartment after he paid off those thugs, intent on packing my things and giving my notice, I found that the place had been…

what do they call it when someone’s been searching in there?

Sifted? Tossed? Whatever euphemism people like to put on it, the only proper word that could be used was destroyed.

Most of my things were broken, furniture slashed, TV smashed, laptop in pieces, bedding torn apart, and mattress sliced open. There were holes in the walls, and the fridge door had been torn off. Why? I had no idea, but it ensured I wouldn’t get my damage deposit back.

Because my parents are the world’s best people, they came over and helped me clean up.

All my childhood keepsakes were still at their house, packed in boxes in the basement, so they were safe.

The saddest thing I lost was my teapot collection.

My mom tried to cheer me up by carefully putting all the broken porcelain, glass, and pottery into a bucket.

She suggested we learn to do mosaics and make a mirror or get into stepping stones.

I had to lock myself in the bathroom and have a good cry where my parents couldn’t see me, and then mumble something humiliating about constipation issues that resulted in my mother literally buying me a box of chocolate laxatives on the way home.

It ended up that all I brought here with me was a duffel bag of clothes—they were just strewn about the apartment but not wrecked—my new (to me) laptop I went and purchased with the money Warrick paid back to my savings account, and my phone.

I’ve missed my parents like crazy, and each day, when they get off work, we video chat.

We usually do it again in the evenings when they go and visit Granny.

I know my parents are still worried about me, but Granny thinks the digs are sweet, especially with a pool she’d give her left boob to have in her non-existent backyard. Her words exactly.

At least today I won’t have so many hours that I have to kill.

I’ve also been visiting a different library every afternoon, and I have a stack of books that I’ve been plowing through, but there’s only so much reading I can do every day.

I also don’t want to keep driving around aimlessly, even if I am discovering the city.

I want to find something to do that has meaning.

Okay, I might be more lonely than I’ve even realized. You can fill the hours all you want, but in the end, they still feel… empty .

Maybe I should look into some kind of night classes. Get an early start, even if they’re online. Or volunteer. Pittsburgh is an incredibly large city. The empty hours are no one’s fault but my own.

As I start scrubbing away at the bathroom, I ruminate on the fact that I never had this problem in Harrisburg because I had my family. I had friends. I had a whole life there. I failed to fathom how uprooting yourself can make you feel so…adrift.

I’m almost thankful that I can turn my thoughts from that to focusing on solving the problem of how this bathroom is stubbornly refusing to come clean.

I tackle it with every cleaner I have, but the shower glass just won’t shine, and the taps look dull. I wonder if the last housekeeper ever came into this room or if Warrick even meant to leave the door open.

I throw myself into the work, frustrated when I still can’t get the shower looking anything but subpar. The stone floor isn’t looking so hot either.

The shower alone is bigger than my entire old apartment. I think. I’m not great with square footage, but this bathroom is palatial. At least there isn’t a tub in here. I’m already sweating like I’m that poor spit-roasted porker at a rather unfortunate cookout.

There are tons of cleaning supplies downstairs. The house literally has its own little janitorial closet with mops, brooms, and shelves with neatly lined-up products.

I head down there and arm myself with an arsenal, determined not to be defeated.

In the end, I pick something that promises to make everything shine like new. It smells like oranges and lemons and, combined with what my granny would call good old-fashioned elbow grease, it works freaking miracles .

“Look at you,” I gush at the small bottle. “Tiny, bright, and mighty. Total gold. Cleaning magic.”

Feeling satisfied with the bathroom after I scrub the rest down and apply the product to the counter, taps, mirror, and tiles in mixed measures with other products, I turn off the light and head downstairs.

The entire top floor of the house now smells like lemon-and-orange-scented heaven. I breathe it in.

Ahhhh . Probable toxicity has never smelled so delightful.

Stashing all the products back in the little closet, I head out to the pool house for a snack, a much-needed glass of water, and a quick power nap before I tackle the pool.

After I have a swim in it, that is.

Granny’s right. The pool is pretty great, especially in this heat. I don’t know if I’d give any of my anatomy for it, but I’m going to appreciate the heck out of it while I have it and the weather is still warm enough to use it.

Winter. Shudder.

The thought of snowy frigidness bowls me over, as does the daunting prospect of how to properly winterize a pool.

I’ve started a list of work-related things I have to discuss with Warrick, and once I’m inside the pool house and draped over my bed with a glass of water filled to the top with ice, I start a new list with the dubious title of Expensive things I probably have no business mucking around with if they want to be in running order for the following season.