One Night with Cinderella - Niobia Bryant Page 0,13
date.”
Well, that answers that.
“But what can I do for you?” the chef asked as she moved around the long dining room table for ten, topped with charcoal leather and surrounded by steel blue suede armless chairs.
“N-nothing,” Monica stumbled. “Just taking a little break and thought I’d check on you.”
Jillian gave her a polite smile. “I’ll be honest, Monica, I’m too swamped for much girl talk today,” she said with another a look of regret before swiftly walking into the kitchen to set the basket on the island.
“No problem. Another day,” Monica said, already turning toward the elevator to ride back up to the fourth floor.
Lucas wouldn’t make a lunch date and then ask his secret lover to prepare the food? Would he?
“Hmm,” she said aloud.
Monica thought of the youngest Cress brother’s steady merry-go-round of beauties since he’d lost fifty pounds and gone from chubby to chiseled in the last year. In fact, she remembered seeing him sneak one woman out of the house early one morning and catching him sneaking another in later that night.
He had only wiggled his eyes in mirth at her wide-eyed shocked expression as he hurried his “date” into his suite.
With him anything was possible.
Back in Gabe’s suite, she was able to finish making his bed with fresh linens and tidy the sitting area and walk-in closet only by forcing herself to focus, pinching her wrists anytime her mind became occupied by naughty thoughts of the man with the name of an angel.
Monica rolled her cleaning caddie behind her to take the elevator to the third level, entirely devoted to Phillip Sr. and Nicolette. To her, it was the most beautifully luxurious space of the entire town house. As always, she paused in the doorway and took in the pure elegance of the massive bedroom, sitting room and office space, all flowing seamlessly from one room to the next, with elaborately carved wooden doors that blocked the views of the en suite bathroom and walk-in closets. The decor, flowers and plants, elaborate accessories, and the light streaming through the glass wall made for a stunning look.
It was like the glamorous set of a 1940s movie.
For a moment she pictured herself dressed in a satin gown with perfectly coiffed hair, large diamond baubles and painted with elaborate makeup, smoking from a long and slender cigarette holder as she blew perfect rings in succession.
The idea made her chuckle.
Allowing herself a quick stretch, Monica pulled on a fresh set of gloves and set about putting the room back to showcase status. She smoothed out any wrinkles in the gray coverlet before she folded it down to the edge of the king-size bed. She turned and noticed the edge of a folder sticking out from the mirror-trimmed antique nightstand. Normally she didn’t venture inside private spaces, but she didn’t want it to appear that she ignored her duties. She pulled the drawer out just enough to ease the folder back inside but found resistance when she tried to close it. She tried twice more with a frown. It felt off track.
Monica pulled the drawer out again to get it back on track. An inadvertent glance down revealed a typed sheet atop the file. She gasped as it registered just what she was seeing, and she rushed to ease the drawer closed. But then she thought one of the Cress parents would know she’d seen the file, and that could lead to her dismissal, so she quickly took the drawer back off track and tried her best to place the file peeking out just the way she’d found it.
She’d rather be admonished for overlooking the drawer than fired and kicked out on the street for seeing that one of the Cress parents—maybe both—currently had their family under surveillance by a private detective.
They were wealthy and powerful but still human, and there was no such thing as a perfect human being. Nor perfect parents. Or family.
Not that she had much experience with one of her own.
But she knew she would rather tackle her loneliness than be in a family that was slowly shifting as the sons all vied for their father’s position as Cress, INC.’s CEO. In the six months since Phillip Sr. had first alluded to stepping down, the closeness she’d witnessed between the five brothers was beginning to fade. That troubled her, but she was a hired employee and said nothing about the more frequent arguments, the sly observations of another brother’s missteps or failures whenever they were in their