He had a lot to do tomorrow. There were three interviews for new Crew members, two client interviews and four actual cleanings to do. He skimmed through the calendar. Good. All regular cleanings, all in apartments, so that should be easy. It was a straightforward business model: hot guys cleaning house. It had worked for Sadie down in Charleston and he was here to make it happen a second time, in the state capital. He loaded the addresses into his phone and Googled them to look at the map and get a sense of the locations. His phone rang and Sadie’s name popped up on the screen.
“Did you save your damsel in distress?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“How you doing up there?”
“Good.” He gave her a brief rundown of Crew business.
“I meant with you, Josh,” she said when he finished. “How are you doing?”
“Good. Starting to not feel lost every place I go. I found a yoga studio that seems like it isn’t just a place to go look pretty. Still looking for a dojo.”
He sat back and rubbed a hand through his curly hair. And a barbershop. He needed to find one of those. Yoga and meditation were akin to breathing. He couldn’t go without, not for long. Not if he wanted to stay himself, the self he could stand. And while he was perfectly able to practice at home, there was something about being in a class, about being pushed past his limits, that he needed. The dojo? Well, he’d been studying martial arts since he was twenty. Yoga for peace of mind and karate for discipline—the two things that kept him sane. That kept him functional.
“Is she pretty?”
“Huh?”
“Your new neighbor. Is she pretty?”
He laughed. “Now that you’re disgustingly happy in love, you want to hook up everyone you know?”
“You should try it. It’s awesomely fun.”
“She has a kid. A little kid. A baby-size kid.”
Sadie didn’t say anything but he could hear her breathe. She let out a slow sigh. “I wish I could hug you.”
“I don’t need a hug. I need some pointers on the behavior contract.”
Yeah, that. The behavior contract. The Cleaning Crew, as a business model, provided a superior cleaning service and nothing else. But Sadie had found that some clients’ understanding of this simple fact was at times fuzzy. Hot guys, right? It wasn’t surprising where some people’s minds went. A false allegation in the company’s early days had frightened her. Now she required clients and employees to sign a contract that essentially said “keep your hands to yourself.”
“What’s the problem? It’s pretty straightforward.”
“Some clients are taking it as condescending. Like we’re saying they won’t be able to control themselves around a good-looking guy or something.”
“Huh,” Sadie said. She paused for a moment. “There may be something to that. It’s not everyone, is it? Just a few here and there?”
“Yeah. I started being way more careful in how I explained it after that. It’s helped some.”
“All right. Keep me posted. If it gets to be a problem, I guess I could drive up and get them signed.”
“I guess.” But he didn’t want her to do that. If this was going to be his branch, his company to grow, then he had to find a way around this. He figured that it was the newness of the idea here in Columbia. In Charleston, the company had been established long enough that new clients knew about the contract, knew about the expectations Sadie had for them and the guys. It was still in the titillation phase here. A hot guy vacuuming your rugs? Giggle and drool. He heard Jules, Sadie’s fiancé’s niece, in the background, yelling for Sadie to come look at this right now. “I’ll figure it out. Go. Give Jules a hug from me.”
MICKIE STARTLED AWAKE on her blanket bed on the floor. Sunlight streamed through the windows. How long had she slept? She scrambled up to her feet. More importantly, why had Ian slept so late? He usually woke her at the butt crack of dawn. She crossed the hall and found him sitting quietly on his own blanket bed with a book. Naked. She followed her nose to the dirty diaper tossed on the rug. Awesome. She added a trip to the Laundromat to her chore list for the day.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she cooed.
Ian looked up at her and smiled that goofy baby smile that always melted her heart. He held up the book. “Pat! Pat bunny!”
“We’ll pat the bunny. But first, let’s get you cleaned up, little man.”
The second order of business, after bath, book and breakfast, was to find a job. While Ian ate, Mickie sipped coffee and browsed through the local listings. Nursing school wouldn’t start for two and a half months. She’d have to rely on her savings while she was in school, but right now? Right now, she needed to work. The job that she’d had lined up—a nurses’ aide at the hospital affiliated with the nursing school—had been perfect. The pay was good, the hours were good and there had been access to the onsite day care center and valuable experience to put on a résumé. But at the last minute, the day-shift position had been changed to a night-shift position. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except the day care wasn’t offered overnight.
“Square one,” she said to Ian. “Not like we haven’t been back here before, huh, buddy?”
“One!” he shouted. He handed her a Cheerio.
“Thank you.”
“Whelk!”
Tears burned at her eyes as she watched Ian return to his breakfast. What was she doing? Dragging him willy-nilly along while she tried to get her shit together. Jumping and running at every bump in the night. She took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in her throat. This was it. Hopefully their last stop. She had two years to go and then she’d have her nursing degree. Once she had that, she’d have financial security. Right? Then they could stop. The two of them, her and Ian, they could begin to put down some roots and find some sense of normal. But first, she needed a job. And affordable day care.
She shook her head. Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help a thing. Get to the Laundromat. Maybe there’d be some places along the way she could stop and put in applications.
An hour later, she was pushing the stroller out of the door, with duffel bags of laundry dangling from the handles. She had her backpack strapped on and an entirely too grumpy Ian strapped in the stroller. He didn’t want to go wash clothes. He wanted to read Pat the Bunny for the ten jillionth time. She paused to secure the swaying bags. The door of the apartment next to hers opened and a flicker of annoyance darted through her. Please don’t be Hot Guy offering to drive me again. She hated people offering to help her. It was stupid, she knew, but it made her scared. As if they could sense her vulnerability and weakness.
“All right, thanks for stopping by. I’ll let you know once the test results are back.”
She glanced over. Hot Neighbor Josh was shaking hands with a hot stranger dude. Hot Stranger Dude nodded. “Thank you for the opportunity.”
Mickie frowned at this exchange, then shook her head. None of your business. She tested the balance of the duffels and shifted the backpack.
“Hey, neighbor,” Josh called.
She tried not to look, but how could she not? He was too good-looking. That black curly hair and the blue eyes. His shoulders, his chest, his arms... He was built but he didn’t try to show it off by wearing a shirt two sizes too small for his body. She bit her bottom lip,