Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,119

bit of a daze. He had been so helpful and sweet. It was enough to make her think that something could happen between them. But she shook herself out of that fantasy. Cody was being helpful because he was just that good of a person. It was very unlikely that he would want a romance with her now. She just had to keep reminding herself that.

That night, Jessie put the kids to bed and curled up with the book Cody had given her. There was something comforting about reading about a doomed but passionate romance in a world so unlike her own. She pictured Cody reading it too and it made the simple pastime more exciting.

The next morning, she went about her usual routine with the kids, rousting them out of bed and fixing them breakfast. She did a quick sweep of their rooms, picking up scattered toys and gathering dirty laundry. The laundry pile was intimidatingly high. She’d had no time to get to the laundromat. She hated to think of the kids wearing dirty clothes and, on a whim, she tossed half the laundry in a duffle bag, hoping she could get away with using a washing machine at the lodge. There was a laundry room for guests. Employees weren’t supposed to use it but maybe just this once...

“Jessie!” Jason padded up to her just as she was on her way out, feeling as anxiety-ridden as always at the thought of leaving them all alone for another day. At least she had a day off coming up. She could catch up on some housework then and take them for a run, read to them for a while. She loved reading to the children. Jason handed her a fruit roll-up. She’d brought them for the kids. They ate like absolute fiends. She could not believe how much food six kids could eat. “Here! This is your snack for today.”

“Oh!” Jessie chuckled and reluctantly took the fruit roll-up from Jason. This was new. “Thanks, Jason. That’s really nice of you.”

“You need snacks,” Jason said firmly. “It’s important. Molly says you work really hard and when you work really hard, you have to eat a lot!”

Jessie sighed and tousled his hair. “You’re not wrong. Thanks, bud.”

She tucked the fruit roll-up in her purse and took her duffle bag and headed out to the car, bidding goodbye to the kids. Her maid’s uniform was looking a little wrinkled. It needed a wash and ironing. The Strauss brothers were kind employers but they wanted their staff looking as presentable as possible. Details like that meant a lot to them.

Yet another thing she had to do today. She wasn’t sure when she’d find the time.

Down at the lodge, the day blurred by she was kept so busy. She had agreed to go to Cody’s suite after work but she didn’t get a chance to see him the rest of the day. Every time she stopped to breathe, it seemed like somebody was asking her to go clean-up some guest’s mess in a suite. It was supposed to be slow in summer. But it didn’t feel that way.

She took an early lunch and ate cheap ramen, spending the half-hour in the laundry room, cleaning and pressing her uniform while wearing sweats in the meantime, and daydreaming about Cody Strauss while she ate her dollar soup.

Before she knew it, the day was over. She checked the time on her phone and ran back to the most deserted laundry room in the lodge to do the kid’s laundry before she headed over to Cody’s suite. Her feet were aching. She’d needed new shoes before she’d even started her job at the lodge. But the kids needed shoes first.

“Next paycheck,” she muttered to herself as she trudged up the stairs in the direction of Cody’s suite in the opposite wing. She was carrying the duffle bag over her shoulder. She was hungry and tired and the good mood lightening things the night before had dissipated after a long day of hard work.

Sometimes she actually liked her job. She didn’t mind cleaning and she could listen to music or podcasts on her phone as she went about her day. But today had been exhausting and she’d skipped her own breakfast. She’d ended up eating that fruit roll-up on a break, she was so hungry.

At five-thirty, Jessie knocked on Cody’s door.

She felt disheveled and unattractive in her maid’s uniform, with her hair up in a messy bun. But when Cody