Just in case anyone was there, waiting for her to grovel, she decided to check every corner. In the laundry room, she found towels and a tee-shirt in the washer. She couldn’t be sure, but there may have been a vague scent of puke in the air. Her stomach roiled again, in embarrassment rather than sickness. Learning that someone must have cleaned up after her was humiliating. She decided that doing the laundry before she left was the least she could do. It seemed only right.
To make up a load, she collected towels from the powder room and kitchen. She also grabbed the shirt she’d slept in the night before. Shyla stripped down her bed to wash her sheets too. Score would have to hire a new housekeeper and they wouldn’t want to sleep in her dirty sheets.
Next on her list was the hamper in the master suite. After emptying her arms in the laundry room, she strode into Score’s bedroom, set on her task.
What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
The bathroom was to the left, but her attention was drawn to the right. How could it not be when he presented such a mouthwatering sight? Him. Yes, Score, her employer. Sleeping in the middle of the bed on his chest, his arms were wrapped around the pillow bunched under his head.
Squeezing her eyes closed, her lips moved to mouth, “Oh God.”
Startled and frozen to the spot, Shyla couldn’t stop studying him. The bedsheet over him stopped just beneath his hips. The top of his muscular ass was on show making it clear that he was very naked.
His tanned skin stretched over his defined form that was lit by the sunlight streaming through his windows that weren’t even covered by blinds. Her bedroom and his shared the same part of the terrace. If she’d gone out that way, she’d have been able to see him, but still, her gawping felt like a violation.
In spite of that, she was tempted to move closer to explore the black ink on his back. Spread on his shoulder blades almost like wings, the tribal design curled around in the direction of his collarbone and down his upper arms. It was all part of the same motif and related to the almost birdlike head on his spine in the center of his back. The figure descended toward his ass in a curled tail that matched the tribal black ink above.
Tilting her head, she examined it as closely as she could from a distance. When Shyla realized what it was, she smiled. “It’s a phoenix,” she whispered.
Speaking out loud was a mistake. His next inhale was louder than the previous. Hit by panic, she backed up to slip out of the room. To remove the temptation, she closed the door without making a sound.
Score was still in bed, which implied he’d stayed up through the night to check on her. As if she wasn’t going through enough shame… Shyla clutched her stomach, the weight of guilt ate her up. In an attempt to distract herself, she went back to the laundry room and put on the first wash.
The distraction didn’t work. Shyla was still fretting about the previous night when she left the laundry room and found Fish coming from the direction of the elevators.
“Hey!” he said, smiling and holding up a bunch of dry-cleaning bags in one hand and some tickets in the other. “I picked up the clean stuff.”
Going to meet him, she took the hangers from around his finger and the tickets from his other hand. “What are these?”
“The tickets for the stuff you have to pick up tomorrow.” Peeling them back, he showed each one. “That’s your dress, that’s Score’s stuff, mine, and Beeks’… You don’t mind picking up Beeks’ stuff, do you? He’ll pick it up from here, you don’t have to take it anywhere… He’s here like every day… and I’d get mine, but I never know what Score will tell me to do, you know?”
Done with his explanation, he left her side to go into the kitchen and open the fridge. Fish was a sweetheart, but she didn’t think he was really the brightest crayon in the box. He had obviously forgotten about last night.
“Uh…” she said, joining him in the kitchen, still holding the clothes and the tickets. “I made a fool of myself last night.” Fish took a carton of juice from the fridge and began to drink straight from it, but he twisted enough to show that he was listening. Shyla laid the dry-cleaning and the tickets out on the white marble island that separated the kitchen from the dining area. “I don’t think I’ll be here tomorrow.”
Frowning, he took the carton from his lips and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why not? You got vacation time already? Oh…” Putting the carton on the counter and leaving the fridge open, he came over, digging something out of his pocket. “Beeks said I should give you this. He’s on his way over, but he gave it to me just in case.”
Taking the piece of paper Fish had retrieved, she unfolded it, expecting it to be a demand for her to vacate. Instead, she discovered a credit card wrapped inside a list of chores. Next to that was what appeared to be a grocery list.
“When did he give you this?” she asked.
“This morning.”
Score probably hadn’t had time to tell his lawyer about last night. Fish would be too polite to spread stories. Shyla couldn’t tell the story because most of the details were foggy. In truth, she was sort of grateful for that, the clues she’d left weren’t encouraging.
She’d obviously been sick. If her dress had to be dry-cleaned with such urgency, she’d probably made a mess of herself. She couldn’t remember
