MARIA

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I NEVER KNEW HOW TO behave around Mister Bradley.

He had told me a hundred times to call him Fin, but I never felt comfortable addressing my employer by his first name, even though I privately thought of him as Fin.

I came from a humble household and my own mother used to be a housekeeper. She imprinted on my mind the need to always keep a safe personal distance between yourself and your employer.

My father died tragically in a car accident shortly after I was born. There was a head-on collision between my dad’s car and a truck while he was on his way to go and meet my Mama at a restaurant.

Mama had to work extra hard just to make ends meet and our lives became very difficult after that.

Fin was different from anyone else for whom I’d worked. My first job had been to clean the house of a prominent lawyer and I could still remember how proud Mama was when I told her I had landed the job.

“You just make sure you don’t allow him to get too close, you hear? And don’t you go getting too close, either. Keep your distance and never let your guard down,” Mama had said before I left to go and live in the lawyer’s house in Long Island.

I was only eighteen years old at the time and worked for the lawyer for nine months before I met Fin at a party which my employer had held in his house.

Fin was adamant that I should come and work for him and I was just about to run away from the conversation when my employer showed up and interrupted us.

He bluntly asked me if I wanted to go work for Fin and the truth was that I did. Something about Fin intrigued me and it wasn’t just his good looks. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but my instinct told me I should accept his job offer.

The next thing I knew I was on my way to start working for Fin Bradley as his household personal assistant, which meant I’d not only be helping to keep the house clean, I’d also be running errands, scheduling any necessary household maintenance and keeping his calendar, among other things. It was a step up from my previous job.

At twenty three, I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of life yet and working for Fin suited me just fine, for now.

Fin was always saying how beautiful I was and how I should’ve been a model or an actress. But the truth was that he was the one who should have been something other than a businessman. He looked like a movie star and when he explained to me one day that he used to be a football player before he got injured I asked him why he hadn’t tried to play again after his injury healed.

He never really gave me a good answer and I could see that I had touched on a sensitive issue, so I remembered what Mama had told me and didn’t talk about it again.

I really enjoyed working for Fin and I knew that he was paying me way too much, but I didn’t complain. I made sure I sent Mama some money every month and loved living in the beautiful bedroom which Fin had given me in the mansion.

Even though Fin was a real ladies’ man and he often brought women home, he never crossed the line with me and was always a perfect gentleman, although sometimes I wished he wouldn’t be, if I’m being really honest.

At twenty three, I was still a virgin. I sometimes found it hard to hide my physical attraction for Fin.

I’d only really had one boyfriend in school and I thought that we would get married one day and live happily ever after. But soon after we finished high school, he went off to go work on an oil rig and I never saw him again.

At first, I thought that something had happened to him, but then I heard that he was living with some girl and after that I never really trusted men again. My heart was broken. So I focused on making my way in the world instead.

“Fin really has a serious thing for you. Why don’t you just let go of your inhibitions and jump him?” Sally asked.

“Maybe because he’s my boss,” I said.

Sally was always telling me how Fin couldn’t keep his eyes off my behind and she made it even more difficult for me to act properly around him. I guess I was torn between my desire for my gorgeous employer and my general resentment for men.

The fact that I could always hear Mama’s voice in the back of my mind whenever I fantasized about Fin didn’t help much either.

“Well, I would jump his bones if I ever got the chance,” Sally said.

I loved Sally. She was two years older than me and the head housekeeper in Fin’s house.

She was really nice and naughty as hell. Sally did what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it and she didn’t care one bit what people thought of her. She and I had become good friends.

“If you can seduce Mister Bradley, I’ll run around the house naked,” Jeffrey said.

“What? You would not!” I exclaimed.

Jeffrey was about sixty five years old and just as naughty as Sally, but I didn’t think he would ever really run around the house without his clothes.

“I would do it if that’s what it took for you and Fin to stop messing around and avoiding each other when you could be happy together,” Jeffrey said.

I suddenly had a mental picture of Jeffrey running around the house naked and I couldn’t stop myself from giggling.

“Well, there you have it, this is now officially a dare and I will do all of your cleaning for a whole month if you succeed in seducing Mister Bradley,” Sally said.

I realized that she and Jeffrey were dead serious.

“I’m going to my room to get ready for the party before the two of you talk me into doing something stupid,” I said and left Sally and Jeffrey behind in the food court where they were getting the tables ready for the feast.

I slipped my hand across the golden banister as I walked up the staircase and wondered what it would be like to live with Fin, not as an employee but as his lover.

Stop thinking like that before you get into trouble, I thought as I closed the door of my bedroom behind me. I sometimes wondered if Sally and the other staff hated me because I had such an awesome bedroom.

The other staff members all lived in separate quarters behind the house and even though they were more than comfortable, they certainly didn’t have the kind of privileges I had. If they did resent me they never said anything to me about it.

I sat on the edge of my bed and wondered if there was anything else I needed to do to get ready for the evening.

Fin had already said I didn’t need to put on another outfit so I decided all I needed was a bit of makeup.

I put on some pink lipstick to match my pink collar, black eyeliner and a hint of blush and then brushed my long black hair.

Mama always told me I was very pretty but after the way my high school sweetheart had left me so unceremoniously I‘d lost a lot of self-confidence. I guess that’s why I never really knew what to do when Fin started flirting with me.

I always ended up running away.

I put on my pin labeled, Staff, and then walked to the window to take a look at the scene below.

The sun had just set and all of the lights which had been hung on strings between the Marquee tents had been turned on.

Fin’s red Ferrari was parked right in front of the large fish pond and I felt the same excitement rushing through my veins which I always felt when I saw the Ferrari.

I often wondered what it would be like to sit in the passenger seat while Fin raced down the highway. I could almost feel the wind in my hair.

It would be amazing to take a ride in that Ferrari with Fin. A dream that most likely was never going to come true.

Fin was not serious when he flirted with me. He loved to date movie stars and supermodels. I wasn’t a model or an actress.

I’d seen some of them around the house. He never dated them for longer than a week or two, though.

Still, I would never be able to compete with the girls he brought home so I always checked my feelings for Fin and did my best not to fall for him.

A black Cadillac came up the driveway. The first guests had arrived.

It was time for me to go downstairs.

I suppressed my personal feelings for Fin and made my way down to the reception foyer.

The night was about to begin.