Helen was a tricky situation. As far as I knew, I was the only man she had slept with in the last two weeks except maybe her husband. For some reason, the thought of Roger and her together didn’t summon the green-eyed monster like with Erin, but I hated injecting anyone else into the equation.
So, I clearly wasn’t into the idea of sharing Erin or Helen with other men. What about Danni?
I immediately hated the thought of her being with anyone else, but unlike the other two, we didn’t have an understanding. As far as I knew, she could find Mr. Right tomorrow and disappear from my sex life just as quickly as she appeared. Was there a future for me and Danni? Did I want that?
As I sipped and navalgazed, the elevator doors in the living room rolled open and footsteps sounded on the hardwood floors as someone approached. A moment later, Erin entered the kitchen with a bright smile and said, “Chloe’s got the car parked out front, bags are packed, Ray and the Johns are ready, and no paps in sight.”
“Paps?” Bobbi asked.
Erin mimed taking a picture as she made a clicking sound.
“Ah,” I said, looking back at Bobbi. “Paparazzi.”
“Oh,” Bobbi said. “Fuck ‘em. One of them ambushed me yesterday outside of Marduke. I told him to fuck off, and he wouldn’t leave.”
“What did you do?” Erin said, a bit of wariness creeping into her voice.
“Broke his camera across his nose,” Bobbi said, taking another sip of coffee.
“Ha!” Erin said.
I watched Bobbi thoughtfully, realizing this may have been the closest thing to a normal conversation I’d ever had with her. True to my natural tendencies, I had to stop myself from actually feeling some kind of human connection with this swamp hag of a woman, reminding myself how loathsome she had treated everyone we worked with.
“Okay,” I said, putting my coffee on the table, “We need to go.”
“Okay,” Bobbi said dismissively. “Bye.”
“Come here,” I said.
Bobbi stared at me for several unnecessarily long moments, then got up and slowly walked around the countertop to stand in front of me. The pace she set was sending a clear message – she was taking her sweet time and if I didn’t like it, then I would have to do something about it. Sure, I needed to leave soon, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of telling her to hurry up. She stopped less than a foot away and looked at me with a dead-eyed expression on her tired face.
“What?”
I placed a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her around, facing her away from me. Surprisingly, she didn’t resist at all. I reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it up just enough to expose her ass, showing off the high-cut emerald panties she wore. The faded marks Helen had given her last night peeked out from underneath her emerald panties. I ran my fingers gently over some of them, getting a little jump from her. I released the shirt, letting it fall back over her ass as I tugged at her hip, turning her back around.
“Not putting up much of a fight,” I observed.
“Compared to last night,” she snapped, “I’m getting the royal treatment.”
“Having Erin here doesn’t bother you?”
“She’s already seen everything,” Bobbi said.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Kiss me. Then clean this.” I gestured to my coffee cup.
Bobbi regarded me for a full thirty seconds, and I could see her working through the scenarios of how to obey my orders. Then she leaned forward and placed her lips on mine for a quick peck. She straightened, clearly waiting for my response.
I sighed and decided not to push it. She was being relatively tame this morning, and I had already asked Helen to take it easy on her. When I didn’t ask for more. Bobbi grabbed the coffee cup and dumped the hot coffee on my lap.
“Fuck!” I said, jumping out of my stool. Erin gasped and was immediately on me with a towel.
“Oh shit! You okay, Marcus?” she asked as she dabbed at my pants.
“Yeah,” I said, taking the towel from Erin so I could clean myself. “It’s not that hot.”
We both looked up at Bobbi and saw that she had the mug dangling from one finger; as soon as we made eye contact, she let the mug slip from its perch. It fell to the floor and shattered and shattered into countless pieces.
“Shit!” Erin exclaimed.
“It’s fine,” I said to Erin, backing us both away from the shards as they skittered across the floor. “Go ahead and go downstairs. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Erin glanced between me and Bobbi and then backed away before turning around and heading for the elevator.
I turned back to Bobbi and gave her a sickly sweet smile. “Looks like you just made more work for yourself.”
“I’m not cleaning up shit,” Bobbi said as she calmly walked back around the counter and sat back down. She took another sip from her mug.
“You will,” I said. “I have a feeling it’ll be clean before I get back.”
“We’ll see,” she said, giving me a sickly sweet smile in return.
“Have a good week, Bobbi,” I said and left, heading to my room to change my pants before meeting the rest downstairs. I had to admit, she got the best of me that round, but we were far from through.
Wednesday 8:54 am
I assumed we would pull into a parking lot and take a tram or bus to my plane, but I was dead wrong. After being cleared at a special gate, Chloe drove onto the tarmac and stopped about ten feet away from my plane.
My plane. I had my own personal plane. I was having a hard time getting over that fact. No more going through security checkpoints. No sitting in economy class with barely enough room to move. No more cramming myself in a gross bathroom and having to sanitize the entire thing before doing my business. What I was about to do could easily be ranked in the top three – right behind buying my apartment and having orgies.
The trip had been uneventful, with Erin and I mainly talking in low tones about what Helen and I had done with Bobbi the night before. She sounded a little scandalized, but the way my assistant adjusted herself in her seat was telling; she was more than a little interested in our project.
Erin also filled me in on the new hires, letting me know that the chef would start this week, as would the new groundskeeper. She left Helen an email with the specifics and Chloe had informed the team she’d left behind at my apartment building. She had anticipated that I would want the chef to go ahead and prepare meals for Bobbi and Helen and had told her to have something ready for when we returned Sunday evening. She had also hired a housekeeping service to temporarily take care of the place until we decided to get a more dedicated cleaning staff. I told Erin to make sure they didn’t touch the broken mug Bobbi had dropped.
As I stepped out of the SUV, a man in full uniform walked up to me from the bottom of the plane’s steps with an extended hand. “Mr. Upton?” he said. “Quinn Ryan. Miss Malik hired me to be your pilot.
My first thought on meeting Quinn was to ask him for his pot o’ gold. He was the most ginger man I’d ever met, with orange-red hair, and freckles covering his face. They even dominated the back of the hand he’d offered me. His accent, however, was mid-west American..