“Where the hell is my list!”

Lily Green loved lists. Lists made sense. Lists kept her life organized. Lists were pretty. Without her daily to-do list, her day would be an unmitigated disaster. For so many years her lists helped her navigate the rocky social ladder in high school. Helped her during those hard early years of building her business.

Her lists were her crutch. She acknowledged it. She owned it. She wasn’t about to change. Without her lists she wouldn’t be the CEO of her own company. She wouldn’t have money in the bank. More money than she thought she’d ever have. So she’d keep making her lists for the rest of her life. No one would tell her otherwise.

Lily had even made a list for her perfect man. Every now and then she pulled it out, which was unnecessary as she knew exactly what she’d written on it. Not the clichéd tall dark and handsome, although that would be nice. She didn’t want him to be butt ugly, so easy on the eye would be good. Being only five feet two, she didn’t want a guy towering over her either. Five feet eight would be the maximum height for her Mr Right.

The most important item on her perfect man list would be: nice eyes. Compassionate eyes. Eyes that looked at her with love and desire. To her, eyes were the windows to a person’s soul. For too long people’s eyes had tricked her. Thinking what she saw in them meant the person cared for her. She knew better now. If a man she met didn’t have nice eyes she’d tell him to take a hike. She wanted a kind man. A beta type man. A man who didn’t think the world owed him everything. No way would she want an alpha male who wore his arrogance like a winter coat. Her perfect man would be a nice gentle soul who had no issues with her being a list making multi-millionairess.

Lily sighed, one day she’d find the man who matched the items on her list. Until then she would make her daily lists and every day she would cross each item off.

Only she couldn’t find today’s list. She’d searched everywhere. She knew she’d made it last night before she’d left the office. It should be sitting in the middle of her desk ready for her to start crossing things off.

“Rita?” She called out to her assistant, anxiety building inside of her as she continued her frantic search.

The door opened and her assistant breezed through the door. “Good morning, Lil. What’s up?”

Some days Lily wished she had Rita’s carefree attitude. “It’s not a good morning. I can’t find my list. Have you seen it?”

“Uh no, should I have?”

Lily practically growled when she looked up at Rita. “You were here before me. You came and put—” she paused and picked up a manila folder. “—the photos from yesterday’s catalog shoot on my desk. Right in the middle where my list should’ve been. Only when I picked the folder up my list wasn’t underneath. So have you seen it?”

Rita started laughing.

Lily shot her another deadly look. “Remember I can fire you, Rita. Any time I want.”

This only made Rita laugh harder. “Lil, there’s no way you’d fire me. I’m the only person who puts up with your idiosyncrasies. Your threats don’t scare me.”

“They should.”

“Honey, I’ve known you too long for anything you say to scare me. Besides we’re a team. Have been for a long time. You’re stuck with me until our last dying days.”

Lily sat down and blew out a long, anxiety cleansing breath. Rita spoke the truth. They’d become friends when they’d both been put into a group home when they’d turned fourteen. Even though they’d gone and done their own thing, the friendship forged during that tough time remained true and strong. When she’d needed an assistant, once her business had taken off, Rita had been the natural choice. Now Rita was married to a nice guy and every day Lily feared Rita walking through the door to announce her pregnancy.

A hand landed on hers, pulling Lily from her thoughts. “You’re thinking too hard again, Lil. Yes the day will come, but not for a while and when it does, you’ll just convert a spare office into a nursery and hire a nanny so I can keep working with you and have my baby close by.”

Lily laughed. She would do exactly that. She’d never been able to hide anything from Rita. Her friend always seemed to know exactly what went through Lily’s mind. It made her a great assistant and sometimes an annoying best friend. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Depends if you took my list or not.”

Rita shook her head and squatted down to look under the desk. “I didn’t take your list.”

The words were mumbled but Lily heard them anyway. “Well where did it go?”

Rita came out from under the desk and stood. “It’s not there, so it didn’t fly off and land on the ground when you picked up the folder. Why don’t you just write a new one?”

If only it were that easy. She had a routine. A routine she stuck to each and every day. For her day to go the way she wanted, her list had to be written the night before. She placed it right in the middle of her desk ready and waiting for her when she arrived for work the next day. Even the cleaning staff knew not to touch her list.

“Shit, did we have a change in cleaning staff last night?” Lily asked.

Rita lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so.”

“But it’s possible isn’t it?”

“Well yes. But we have a standing instruction that no one is to touch anything on your desk. They’re supposed to clean around the edges.”

Lily nodded, she always gave the center of her desk a wipe over before writing her list and leaving for the day. She’d done it last night too. She sighed in defeat.

“You know what happens if I have to write a new list, Rita. The day goes to shit.”

“Lil,” Rita sighed heavily. “It won’t go to shit, okay. It only goes to shit because you convince yourself it’s going to go to shit. Write your new list and think how disaster free your day is going to be.”

Lily reached for her note pad and pen and started writing again, knowing no matter what Rita said, her day wouldn’t be smooth. “You keep thinking that, Rita.”

“If I didn’t love you, Lil, I’d throw my pen at you. Don’t forget you’ve got the appointment with Bent Diamond Company at ten. They want to talk about security while you make the collection for them.”

In her list-making zone, Lily nodded. She knew all about the appointment. Had been thinking about how she could let Bent’s know she didn’t need to have someone watching her twenty four/seven as she worked on the diamond bra collection. While she knew she’d be working with an exorbitant amount of diamonds, she hoped they could come to an agreement which satisfied them both. Working on designs with someone looking over her shoulder gave her the cold sweats. If the company insisted on security, maybe she could get the person to sit outside her workroom.

As she wrote the last item, Lily let out a breath. Again her list was completed, she could start her day. Although how good it was going to be, only time would tell.

* * *

Taking a deep breath Lily walked into the boardroom ready to face the executives from Bent Diamond Company. She had no reason to be nervous. They were the ones who approached her to design a collection using their diamonds. They’d given her free reign to design whatever she wanted. The only stipulation they had was that one bra had to be totally covered with diamonds and have one of the large stones as the centerpiece. She had the perfect design for the showstopper piece and preliminary designs for the rest of the collection. The purpose of today’s meeting was to show them her concepts.

As she looked around the room confidence filled her. She could do this. The men were all older than she expected. Even with their power suits they didn’t look threatening at all. Perhaps Rita was right. This day didn’t have to be so bad just because her original list went missing.

“Good morning, gentleman I see my assistant has provided each of you with a folder containing my design ideas. Please, take a few moments to look them over.”

She paused and waited for them to do as she suggested. She had to stop herself from tapping her pen on the table. Anxiety to hear what they thought of her designs built inside her, bubbling like a piece of Mentos candy in a Coke bottle.

After what seemed endless hours, but was in fact only five minutes at most, the men all looked at her, smiles spread across their faces.

“These designs are stunning,” said Paul, the CFO of the company. “You’ve captured what we’re looking for and more.”

“Yes indeed,” another person spoke.

Lily allowed the compliments to wash over her, pleased with their reactions to her designs. She’d poured over them for hours, working until the lines on the designs blurred and her eyes burned with tiredness.

“I’m pleased you like them. I’m looking forward to receiving the stones to start working on the designs. When were you looking at having the show again?”

People thought because she designed lingerie she could whip bras and panties out in quick succession. No one had any idea how much design went into bras and even panties. The fabric choices had to be well thought out. What may work for a bra, may not work for the matching panties. There would be plenty of fabrics discarded when designing this exclusive collection.

“We are wanting to have the show on Valentines Day.”

For once, a client had given her plenty of time to develop her collection. It was only the beginning of November, but taking into account all the holidays, she should be able to have the collection completed by the end of January. Giving her a couple of weeks to finalize model selection and ensure the garments fitted.

“Good, that’s plently of time to guarantee the collection is perfect for you. I have some possible fabric samples, would you like to see them?”

“No,” Paul spoke. “We trust your decisions will accentuate our diamonds. Now speaking of diamonds, we understand you will need to have them as soon as possible to enable the stone selection for each garment.”

“That’s correct,” Lily confirmed. “I’m anxious to see them, especially the stone for the finale piece of the collection.”

“I think you’ll be pleased with the variety of stones provided to you. We’ll give you more than you can use so we expect the surplus to be returned to us.”

For a fleeting moment indignation filled her at the veiled threat she would keep the unused diamonds. “You can trust me gentleman, I will return the unused stones to you. I have my own business, I’m not going to jeopardize it for a few diamonds.”

“We have no doubt you won’t return them. But we will be taking an inventory of all the stones we give you—as per our company policy.”

“I hope you’ll give me a copy of the inventory. At the end of each week I’ll email you an updated copy listing the diamonds I’ve used so you can keep your records up to date as well.”

“That sounds good. Now another thing we need to talk about is security.”

Lily dreaded this part of the meeting, even though she knew it was coming.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable having someone watching my every step,” Lily told the men in the room. “I like to be alone when I’m working on my designs and as I’m going to have to place the diamonds on the garments to the best advantage I know I’m going to be working all hours. The cost of hiring security is going to be prohibitive to me.”

In the back of her mind, she knew she was being unreasonable. Their stance on security made sense. It really did. But she had a system. A system that worked well for her. She didn’t do well with changes to her system or her routine. Having security twenty four seven watching her was a huge change.

“This is a non-negotiable part of the deal, Lily. No security then no diamonds.”

And her day just went south.

* * *

Grayson ‘Storm’ Warren looked at his laptop screen. He’d really hit rock bottom if he was contemplating opening the email which had just landed in his inbox. He couldn’t even believe he’d signed up on that stupid Manservant website. In a moment of drunken weakness he’d let Wayne talk him into signing up. It had seemed like a good idea. Some easy jobs that paid well and gave the company extra income. Now not so much. Now it seemed like the stupidest idea known to mankind.

He should’ve removed his profile the moment he’d sobered up and his hangover had cleared.

The only thing preventing him from deleting the email was the fact he’d looked at his bank account and knew he needed to get an injection of cash. And quick. Staying signed up with a match.com security service company equivalent seemed to be the best way to get some cash. Do a few easy security jobs while waiting to get one of the big contracts he’d submitted proposals on.

Grayson hoped one or two of the contracts would come to fruition. He’d worked hard at keeping the news his former partner had all but fucked up his business quiet and away from prospective clients. But he’d recently missed out on some contracts he’d been sure the company was going to be awarded. Those missed contracts were now hurting him financially.

He tried not to think about what Wayne had done. The way he’d almost killed everything Grayson had spent the last three years building up. He never should’ve trusted Wayne.

Why had he let Wayne talk him into being in total control of that particular job? He should've taken a look at what was happening. It was Grayson’s name and reputation that almost ended up being tarnished. Wayne had fucked off to places unknown with the clients half a million dollars and Grayson had had to use his life savings to ensure the client never knew his money had been stolen.

Grayson had been so stupid. Hadn't listened to his gut when it had told him to watch and check in with Wayne. But he'd been so focused on his own security job, which had gone to hell in hand basket too. If he was looking at employing a security firm he'd bypass his own firm after the shit that had gone down in the last few months.

He was still no closer to finding where Wayne had disappeared to. Sometimes he wondered why he’d ever left the military to start his own company. At least in the military he didn’t have to worry about where the next job was going to come from. Being an ex-Seal, he’d never been short of missions. He’d follow the orders given by his team leader. Everything was structured. He never had to stress about where his next influx of cash was going to come from.

Grayson would find Wayne make him pay back the money he took. His business would have its financial security back, and Grayson could plan for his future.

Until then, knowing he had no choice but to accept he was indeed this desperate, he opened the email.

_{Hi Grayson,}

_{My name is Rita Knowles and I work for Lily Green owner of Lily's Lingerie. We are in need of a security guard to come and work with Lily while she designs a new collection using diamonds from Bent Diamond Company. The company has requested a security presence at our offices. I've looked over your profile on the Manservant site and believe you will be perfect for this job.}

_{If you are interested, please contact me via return email so that we can arrange a time for you to come to our office and discuss our requirements with you.}

_{I look forward to hearing from you soon.}

_{Kind Regards,}

_{Rita Knowles}

_{Executive Assistant}

_{Lily's Lingerie}

Grayson read the email twice. He couldn’t possibly land a job this important from a website called Manservants.

He composed his email response in his mind wondering if, for once, his life was turning around for the better. If he could land this job and provide a good service, it could be the start to rebuilding his firm and his bank account.