Dirty Damsels (DotComGirls Series Book 1) Read online

  Dirty Damsels

  DOTCOMGIRLS SERIES

  BOOK 1

  PEGGY JAEGER

  Dirty Damsels

  Copyright © 2019 by Peggy Jaeger.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: June 2019

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing, LLC

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-839-4

  ISBN-10: 1-64034-839-5

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To everyone who believes in fairytales and happily ever afters. ~ Peg

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  I punched the END CALL icon on my cell phone and cursed.

  “That’s the last name on the list.” With a sigh, I rubbed my eyes. “Everyone is busy. Not one single girl can take this.”

  What had begun as a bad day had instantly turned worse.

  The headache brewing before I’d left my condo pounded full force now behind my eyes. After selecting the wrong cup size on the Keurig, I was forced to clean up a coffee mess before my much-needed first caffeine shot of the day. My favorite blouse came back from the cleaners with a vitally placed button missing, and I didn’t realize it until I’d taken it out of the plastic wrapping. My cob-webbed pantry needed restocking, so my breakfast consisted of a small handful of dry, stale Cheerios before I bolted out the door.

  “This stomach flu outbreak is killing me,” I told my best friend, Nell. “Marley Waters has it now, and she can’t do the Burton condo.”

  “That’s a big job too,” Nell said from behind her desk. “Cal Burton needs it done today, right? There’s a client arriving tonight?”

  I blew out an exasperated breath and frowned. Then I remembered frowning caused wrinkles and eased my face back to normal. “Yeah. This blows. Big time.”

  “I’d lend you one of my guys, but they’re all booked today. Three big moves.” She glanced down at her tablet. “And the rest are out on home visits.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll figure something out.”

  Could this day get any worse?

  I headed back to my office, where I plopped down onto the couch, kicked off my shoes, and propped my feet up on the glass coffee table. I let my head fall back against the cushions, all the energy draining from my body.

  Since opening my specialized cleaning business, Dirty Damsels, I’d worked nonstop to ensure its success. True, there’d been plenty of stops and small catastrophes along the way. There were with any startup. Supplies didn’t arrive on time, bookings got canceled at the last minute, leaving holes in my cash influx resembling Swiss cheese, and workers left for various reasons.

  I’d weathered them all, and my eclectic business took off by leaps and bounds.

  Dirty Damsels catered to an elite population of clients who all demanded one thing and one thing alone: excellence. The concept was simple: I took two things I loved—organizing and cleaning—and married them into a lucrative, successful niche business. My staff consisted of college girls and out-of-work or between-job actresses and models. The schedule of this diverse group was always flexible and easy to work around. I came up with the idea for my company while in college when I found myself abruptly without funds after my father died and my stepmother—forever referred to as the Evil Bitch—refused to fund any more of my education. I’d hired myself out to the single professors and the wives of the married ones. There was no house too dirty for me to handle.

  Within four months, I’d made enough money to see me through to graduation. By the end of the term, I’d saved enough for graduate school. Business school taught me how to capitalize on my idea, and at twenty-seven, I’d developed Dirty Damsels with a $150,000 business loan paid back, in full, through hard work and perseverance.

  Now, I was financially successful and employed a hard-working group of girls who rotated in and out of my office daily.

  Until this morning, when no one could cover a bad case of stomach flu.

  I folded my arms over my chest, frowned again, then thought better of it. The easiest thing to do would be reschedule. But I didn’t want to disappoint a faithful, powerful client like Cal Burton. Word of mouth was a powerful tool in a private business, and Cal had sent a lot of rich clients my way.

  A lot.

  I crossed back to my desk and booted up my PC. After checking my schedule for the day, I knew what I needed to do to fix this problem. After a few phone calls, I told Nell my plan.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “Yup. I’ll have my cell phone if you need me, only—”

  “Don’t need you. I get it. You’ll be done in time for Carrie Ann’s party?”

  “Promise. I’ll see you all at Diablo at seven. Have a drink waiting for me.”

  With a quick kiss to her cheek, I flew from the office.

  It took me fifteen minutes to cab it back to my condo uptown, where I changed into the Dirty Damsels work uniform: a formfitting lacy and sexy black tank top with a tiny feather duster logo emblazoned over the left breast, comfortable, slim-fitting yoga pants—also black—and track shoes. I braided my long, brown hair, tied it off with an elastic band, and wrapped a black kerchief over my head, knotted at the back of my neck. From my hallway supply closet, I pulled out the Dirty Damsels starter kit I gave every girl when she started with me, chock-full of environmentally safe cleaning supplies. A quick glance at my watch and I was out the door again in a flash.

  Cal Burton’s condo, a massive three-thousand square foot two-bedroom penthouse, came complete with a working fireplace and a kitchen a Top Chef Master would envy. Burton’s wide array of friends and business acquaintances were spared the inconvenience of a hotel stay when in town and were instead invited to crash at the condo. Cal’s guests tended to be the sort who craved privacy. The kind of privacy even the most exclusive New York hotels found difficult to provide.

  I showed the doorman my ID, and he walked me to the private elevator.

  The last time I’d been in the penthouse was a little over six months ago, when I’d brought one of my newbies to show her the most time efficient way to clean a place this size. All my girls worked solo because I’d found they were much more effective and productive when I didn’t send them in teams. Two or more twenty-somethings together liked nothing more than to chat, compare notes on their latest boyfriends, and catch up on all the celebrity gossip. By working alone, each girl had a specified time frame to get the job done and could keep to the schedule if not distracted.

  When I’d first started cleaning as a profession, I’d always began with what I considered the dirtiest place in the home, the family bathroom. I’d work my way out to the bedrooms, t
hen the kitchen, and save the main living areas for last. Even though I no longer did the actual heavy cleaning but managed the people who did, I still stuck to my old routine.

  With my hands gloved, my hair pulled back, and my iPod blasting in my ears, I started.

  Cal’s last guest had been a complete slob. The bathroom reminded me of the frat houses I’d cleaned in college. Open bars of half-used soap sat on the sink and in the bathtub, congealing into a sickeningly pasty colored goo. Dollops of dried toothpaste encircled the sink, along with thousands of tiny dark hairs I prayed were the remnants of a shaving kit and not something else.

  The bathtub mat hadn’t been pulled up to dry, and small inky globules of mold grew with ferocious zeal beneath it. Water stains dotted the glass mirror above the sink like a blood splatter pattern, reminding me of an old Law & Order episode, and the tissue bin overflowed. Whoever had stayed here last used all the toilet paper and hadn’t replaced it.

  Overall, not the way I’d pictured my day when I woke up.

  After washing the bathroom floor, I moved through to the bedroom, pulled the sheets from the unmade bed, and tossed them into the laundry machine. There wasn’t much dust covering the beautiful cherry wood dressers and tables, but I polished them anyway, along with everything else in the room. The second bedroom hadn’t been occupied, so it appeared as good as new. I took a cursory glance to make sure there were no hidden problems and moved on to the kitchen. This took me almost an hour to clean, scrub, and sanitize, but it looked Good Housekeeping ready afterward.

  The living area came next. Five days’ worth of New York Times and Posts cluttered the coffee table, read, strewn about, and forgotten. The previous guest liked to drink coffee, evidenced by the four half-empty coffee mugs on top of the table, ring stains fanning out from underneath them. It took me ten minutes to find the television remote underneath one of the couch cushions, a mashed-up fast food wrapper next to it.

  I threw the bed sheets into the dryer, moved to the second bathroom which, praise the Lord, stood spotless. The dining room hadn’t been used, but I did a quick walk-through anyway and ran a gloved finger over the furniture to make sure there was no telltale dust. Then I moved back to the living room to clean the fireplace, which I’d noticed on my first run through was filled with ashes.

  I wrapped a spare handkerchief around my mouth and nose, turned the volume on my iPod up a level, and removed the grate.

  With mechanical precision, I swept the ashes into a pan and dumped them into the garbage bag next to me, back and forth, several times. The ashes swirled around my face, but the handkerchief prevented me from inhaling any. Robin Thicke serenaded me as I dropped my last pan-full into the bag. I leaned back on my heels and straightened my back, rolling up in a slow pitch. After being stooped and hunched over for long periods, my spine tended to stiffen. I bent my elbows and placed my hands along the small of my back to massage it, reveling in how good it was to stand upright again. After a little butt wiggle to jiggle everything back into place, I unwound the kerchief from my face, turned around, and screamed.

  ***

  He was massive. At least six-three with shoulders so wide they blocked my view of the room behind him. Jet-black, military-style, close-cropped hair surrounded a face constructed of sharp angles and etched planes with a concrete-hard and square jaw. Thick eyebrows the same color as his hair framed two of the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. They mimicked jade crystals, freshly mined and polished. I would’ve bet cash his light gray suit was tailor-made because it hugged the width of his shoulders with sartorial precision and tapered down to a trim waist.

  All this ran through my mind as I devised a plan to escape from him to avoid being attacked. I held the plastic dustpan and brush against my body, two pitifully ineffective weapons, should I need them against this potential ax murderer.

  Okay, I was pretty sure ax murderers didn’t wear Armani to their kills, but still.

  His brows pulled together, his lips moved, and he motioned with his hands. When he pointed to his ears, I got it. I yanked out the earbuds and let them fall to my waist.

  “Can you hear me now?”

  Before nodding, I let the sound of his voice wash over me. It was deep, rich, and warm, like a glass of perfectly aged, room temperature, Irish whiskey on a chilly night. In a heartbeat, I realized a girl would be happy to do whatever that voice asked her to.

  “I tried to get your attention.” He dropped his hands into his pants pockets—exceptionally well fitted pants, by the way. “Then I realized you couldn’t hear me when I saw you swaying back and forth. I’m sorry I scared you.”

  I found my voice. “How did you get in? I know I locked the door behind me.”

  “You did. But Cal left a key for me with the doorman. I didn’t expect anybody to be here.”

  “You’re Cal’s guest?”

  The smile working its way across his angular face had the same effect on me as his voice. To call it charming would have been an understatement. His mouth moved with a slow, purposeful amble from the middle of his bowed upper lip, down across his thick bottom one to finish in a deep dimple on each of his cheeks. Perfect teeth lived under those sexy, full lips. On a girl, they’d be described as pouty. On him, they were completely and utterly masculine. And devastating. Just as a girl would do anything the voice asked, she’d also give anything for a taste of those lips.

  “Buddy,” he told me, pointing to his chest. “And you are?”

  “The cleaning service. I thought I had enough time to get the whole place done before you arrived. You’re way early.”

  “I hopped on an earlier flight. And don’t be sorry.” His smile changed into a boyish grin. “I enjoyed the show.”

  For a second, I didn’t know what he meant. Then it hit me.

  He must’ve seen the realization in my eyes and the embarrassment that heated my face and neck, because his smile widened and grew a tad wicked, crinkling the corners of his gorgeous eyes. “That was a pretty impressive rendition of the Thicke song.”

  I’d never been the kind of girl who could be teased and be comfortable with it. Probably because the Evil Bitch and her twin spawns of terror teased and chided me mercilessly during my adolescence. My face grew even hotter as my discomfort danced within me. I usually had a pithy comment handy to pull out of my back pocket to shoot down anyone who made fun of me. It was an old and trusted defense mechanism I’d tried to curb for years, but I hadn’t yet succeeded. For some reason, though, I couldn’t think of a response. A little niggle in the back of my mind reminded me he was the guest of a client. A high-paying client. A client I didn’t want to lose or annoy. Maybe my subconscious was working for me for once instead of against me, as it forced me to keep quiet.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” He moved closer while he pulled something from his pocket. Before I realized what he meant to do, he cupped my chin in his hand and placed a handkerchief against my cheek, giving it a little rub. This close, I could see the dark rim of deep moss surrounding the brighter jade color in his eyes. Eyes that never left mine. I couldn’t blink or look away. For the first time in my life I understood what the saying “like a deer caught in the headlights” meant.

  The skin across his fingers was rough where he held my chin prisoner, but his touch was disarmingly gentle. His warm breath blew across my face as he wiped something away, inspected the handkerchief, then pulled his gaze back to mine. His eyes were heavily hooded and so damn hot, a tiny tug yanked low in my belly then pushed its way down lower. Much lower. His eyelashes were long and thick, and jealousy stabbed through me. No amount of mascara or lash plumping product ever made my skimpy, spiky little lashes look like his natural ones.

  “Ashes,” he said, folding the handkerchief then sliding it back into his pants pocket.

  I bit back a whimper when he let go of my face.

  “Since I’m here now, Cinderella, why don’t you go?” He took a cursory glance around the room and added, “It looks great in he
re. I can’t imagine you have more to do. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Call it a job well done?”

  “I still have the bed to make,” I told him, not surprised my voice sounded a little breathless. “It shouldn’t take me much longer to finish up.”

  He sighed, deep and long. “Sweetheart, I’ve been on a plane for the past sixteen hours. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I need a shower, and the airline somehow misplaced my luggage, so I need to get some clothes. I don’t care how clean the place is, as long as it’s got a functioning bathroom with some fresh towels and a bed I can crash in for a few hours. I’m still on Asian time.”

  I never wanted to leave any job undone. It’s not how I was wired. Plus, it was bad business. But he did look exhausted, and a pang of pity hit me.

  I bit my bottom lip, debating.

  “Let me just get rid of this mess,” I said, lifting the garbage bag, “and then make the bed. Is that okay?”

  “Deal. I’m gonna take a quick shower.”

  I nodded.

  Alone now, I took a deep breath and ran a hand over my shaking stomach muscles. A windstorm of butterflies flapping on a cross country trek had nothing on me. I bound up the garbage bag and, with a quick eye to the fridge, took out some grapes and cheese, found a box of gourmet crackers in the pantry, and put a little nosh together for Cal’s guest. He’d said he was hungry, and I figured this might help. I laid it all out on a platter, slipped it into the refrigerator, then took the sheets out of the dryer. The bedroom door stood open, the connecting bathroom door shut. The sound of the shower told me Cal’s guest had done exactly what he’d said he would. His clothing was haphazardly scattered across the rug, tossed and forgotten on his way to the shower.

  After shaking out as much of the wrinkles in the sheets as I could—and believe me, 1,000 thread count sheets do wrinkle, despite the manufacturer’s claim—I attached the bottom sheet and shook out the top one when the shower cut off. As quickly as I could, I smoothed the sheet over the bed so I could tuck the ends in.