Maid for Advertising - Susie Tate Page 0,29
her pjs and this isn’t the Dark Ages. Tell us what’s up, big man.”
“I, um . . . breakfast’s nearly –”
“Crap,” I said, forgetting about my embarrassment and starting to route around to find my clothes again. “I’m so sorry but there’s no alarm in here and this one is completely useless in the morning.”
“Hey!” Kira objected.
“Don’t even start,” I told her, pausing from my frantic bag digging to point at her. “I’ve dressed you the last two mornings.” I breathed a sigh of relief when I found my uniform, which had been kicked under the bed, no doubt by Kira, and turned back to Jack. “If you give me one minute, I’ll be good to go and help with the breakfast service. I promise. I just need to get dressed and then I can – “
To my absolute shock Jack strode into the room, grabbed the uniform I was holding in my arms, and threw it out into the corridor. His mouth was pressed into a firm line and a muscle was ticking in his jaw. The embarrassment I could have sworn was there before was gone, replaced by what looked like fury.
“What is your blood glucose?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice, taking a step into the room. I took a corresponding one back and bit my lip. His eyes flashed down to my mouth and he blinked before shaking his head as if to clear it.
“Er . . . I . . .”
“Before you get dressed, before you start fussing about the fucking breakfast service, can you please, please take your goddamn blood glucose.”
“Whoop! Whoop!” Kira cheered from the bed, punching the air in delight. “You tell her, Alpha Man. Oh, I love the smell of testosterone and an attractive male in the morning. Every day should start like this.”
“Shut up,” we both said to Kira in unison before I turned back to Jack to give him a scowl of my own.
“Don’t boss me around,” I told him. “How I manage my diabetes is none of your business.”
“It becomes my business when you don’t manage it and collapse on my boat I’m afraid,” he shot back, and I closed my eyes, humiliation washing over me.
“Right, well,” I said. I felt a familiar prickle behind my eyes and sniffed once before squaring my shoulders and continuing. “Th–that’s fine. I’ll remove myself from your boat so I won’t be your problem anymore.”
“Urvi,” his voice was softer now, sounding almost pained. “Please, I didn’t mean it like that. Of course you don’t have to leave the boat.”
I’d started shoving anything of mine I could find into my tiny case and the stupid sniffing was getting out of control. My eyes stung with the effort of holding in the tears and my body felt rigid with tension, making my movements jerky and aggressive.
“Hey,” his voice was closer now and even softer than before. “Look, Urvi, take a minute to calm down. We can – ”
“Fuck calm!” I shouted, whirling around and up from my bent-over position and nearly bowling into him before I managed to get my balance. “You can be calm, you bastard. You don’t have to try to subsist on part-time bartender earnings to afford your rent so that you can go to your dream college. You haven’t been told, ‘Yes Miss Radia, there is a monitor which could help you but it isn’t available on the NHS yet and it has an initial cost of £160 . . . oh and the sensor has to be replaced every ten days and they cost £70, so that’s another £210 every month - but we really would advise you purchase it anyway’. You haven’t disappointed your family so badly that they are no longer speaking to you and don’t even know you’re sick. And you haven’t just fucked up the one chance you might have had to earn enough money to afford the one thing that could help with this fucking unfair, stupid, wanky disease.”
I didn’t notice Jack approach during my rant, but by the time I was finished he was right there in front of me, his big hands encircling my upper arms, his eyes burning with something I couldn’t identify – a mixture of concern, that fury from before, and maybe even some sort of possessiveness? It was too much. My life felt like it was weighing me down and I was drowning. Without pausing to think I let my head fall forward onto his chest, and