The Spanish Tycoon's Temptress Page 0,34
she smiled and almost bounced into the kitchen to start the coffee maker as she accepted his order for once. She’d take the day off, maybe even buy some cheap shelves to store all of her books so she could at least get them off of her apartment floor.
And when was the last time she’d bothered to vacuum? Did she even have a vacuum? These were all interesting questions that were probably going to negatively impact her savings account. But after cleaning up the papers last night, she simply couldn’t stop getting things under control.
She sifted through her old dresses first, pulling on one black sheath dress with sparkly spangles all over the front and back. When she surveyed her figure in the dress, accepting that it would suffice for the night, if perhaps being a bit on the sexy side, she jumped into the shower, then pulled her hair into a loose pony tail, grabbed an old pair of jeans and a tee-shirt before heading out the door.
It was time to regain control of her life. An hour later, she was lugging the shelves up the stairs to her apartment. She’d bought three of them, not to mention a relatively expensive vacuum cleaner. She thought about going cheap on the vacuum, but since she hadn’t used one in her apartment since she’d moved in over two years ago, she knew it would require a great deal of power to get through the grime that had accumulated. Now that she thought about it, she was more than a little disgusted with the way she’d been living.
Putting the shelves together was relatively simple. After assembly, stacking the books up, all in a very specific order by subject, felt enormously wonderful. When she was finished, she surveyed her new digs and was surprised at how much extra space she actually had. She dusted, vacuumed, sorted and cleaned every surface until the whole place shined and smelled clean once again.
Elana looked around and felt more than satisfied, wanted to do more, but knew it was past the time when she should be getting back into the shower. She needed to get ready for the night but as she surveyed her space, she catalogued all the items she’d like to replace. She wanted new, colorful pillows for her sofa and pretty curtains, things to brighten up the apartment. The garage sale items she’d been using were still serviceable, but they looked like they’d been owned by about five other people before her. The color of her carpet was also transformed by the vacuum, making the apartment feel much larger now that the color was brighter, crisper with the dust gone.
Her sofa wasn’t anything to brag about. The tan color wasn’t really her style, but it was comfortable and sturdy. Nothing a good throw blanket couldn’t fix, she told herself as she jumped back into the shower and scrubbed herself with scented soap and shampoo, trying to get the dust off from her day of cleaning.
Out of the shower, she dug through her shelves and actually found some scented lotion. She smoothed it over her arms and legs, not because she wanted to do anything nice for Gaston though. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way he used to comment about how good she smelled. No, the use of the rose scented lotion was for her own benefit. She’d been smelling dust all day long, and even last night so her hands were sore from being dry and her nostrils were filled with the scent of dirt and dust. She simply wanted to feel and smell something clean now.
Drying her hair, she considered pulling it up and letting the curls around her neck float freely, but when she saw herself in the mirror, she thought it might look a bit too seductive and left it down. Then she remembered how much Gaston preferred her hair down around her neck and she pulled it back up, pinning it in various places. She bit her lip as she surveyed her appearance in the mirror. Was the dress too short on her legs? Or too low cut? Was her hair too sexy? She ran to her closet to slip the shoes on, then changed them for a pair of lower heels. When she looked at her appearance again, the shoes looked dumpy compared to the shimmery dress. So she slipped the other shoes back on. She should take off the black stockings, she thought. But were