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“Hey, boss,” Josh greeted her.
“Morning. Okay, y’all, boss is here, step away from the coffeepot.” She reached for the carafe and held it up, swirling the dregs. “I should randomly fire someone for this.”
“Like to see that,” Josh said as he took the carafe from her. “I’ll start a fresh pot. I told you to invest in one of those Keurig things.”
“I should. It’s almost cruel and unusual to make me face the lot of you without coffee.”
“It’s cruel and unusual for you to make us get up at this ungodly hour on a Monday,” one of them called from the conference room.
“Whoever said that is the randomly fired guy,” she yelled back, and a wave of laughter and hooting rolled from the room. She touched Josh on the arm as he poured grounds into the machine. “I want to talk to you after the meeting.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
She walked into the conference room where almost every employee was gathered around the large dining table. Others were holding up the walls. A silent scuffle at the end of the table caught her attention. The two went still when they realized she was watching. Malik gave her his best choirboy face. But Eric’s redhead complexion was giving him away. She stared at the faces around the table. Everyone had gone still with expressions ranging from innocent to amused. Except Wyatt Anderson. He lounged back casually in his chair, but his eyes were alert and appraising. She got the impression of a cat watching the spot where its prey hid. A little thrill ran through her, and she frowned at her body’s reaction. This had to stop. She turned Malik and held out a hand.
“Gimme. And it better not be porn again. Y’all drank my coffee, and it’s too freaking early for porn.”
A folded newspaper made its way down the table to her. She picked it up. The urge to laugh was accompanied by a prickle of irritation. It was an ad campaign by Marcus Canard, her closest competition. Well, she wasn’t competing with him. But he definitely was competing with her. For the first time, the Cleaning Crew had won the Charleston City Paper’s coveted Best of Charleston Award for Best Cleaning Company, beating out Canard’s Happy Housekeepers.
The photograph showed a diverse group. Three women, one white, one black and one Hispanic, and two young, handsome men, one white and one black, smiled at the camera. They were dressed in khakis and blue button-down shirts. “We meet all your cleaning needs!” the caption proclaimed.
Sadie tossed it on the table. She smiled and shook her head. Show no weakness. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But, hey, any of you want to go work for Marcus Canard, I’ll give you a glowing recommendation.”
Josh handed her a cup of coffee, steaming hot and black. “Forget him,” he said as he took his seat. “Dude doesn’t get it. Never will.”
“Get what?” Wyatt asked, sitting forward and propping his arms on the table. He looked at Sadie. She shrugged and gestured at Josh.
“Simple,” Josh said, “you get what you pay for. We work our asses off. We go beyond the basics and go out of our way to make everything right for the client. Why? One, it’s what Sadie expects from us. Two, it’s what the customers pay more for. Three, it’s what she pays us good money to do. Marcus pays his staff minimum wage. He keeps them all part-time so he doesn’t have to provide benefits. Sadie offers benefits even to part-time employees, plus extras, like free gym memberships. He doesn’t care about his employees, so why should they care about him or his company’s reputation?”
Sadie sat down. Her knees were a little weak. Josh’s praise meant a lot to her. The guys clearly agreed with him, too, which made tears start in her eyes. She sipped coffee to wash down the lump in her throat. They believed she had it together. None of them knew she was running scared every day. It wasn’t about Marcus and the competition. It was about her. She had to succeed. She had to. She was supposed to have been a loser living in poverty, probably marrying a similar loser and having a passel of kids.
The Cleaning Crew was a fluke. She’d left her first maid job and was on her own. She’d cleaned private homes from sunup to sundown six days a week. It’d started with a conversation about the Powerball lottery, which was up to some unimaginably huge amount. The client had asked Sadie what she’d do if she won. Sadie replied she’d buy a nice house and hire a team of gorgeous guys to cook and clean for her. The client laughed and said, “Who wouldn’t? I’d pay extra for a hot man to clean my house.” The purr in the client’s voice had amused Sadie. When her client list grew to the point where she didn’t have enough hours in the day to do all the work and was thinking of hiring another person to help she remembered that purr. And hired a hot guy. It had grown from there. A joke. But she could point to it and say, “See, I’m not a loser. I’m doing fine, thank you very much. I don’t need help. I don’t need anything.” The fear that at any moment she could do something stupid and ruin it all haunted her. Then everyone would shrug and say, what do you expect from someone like her? She sipped more coffee and forced the doubts from her mind. Show no weakness. Wrap it up tight, shove it down deep and keep plowing forward.
“Okay,” she said when she thought she could speak. “Let’s get this meeting going. You have jobs to get to.”
“I’ve got a hot blonde in my bed to get back to,” Cody quipped.
“I don’t want to hear about your sister,” Sadie replied tartly, opening her notebook to the list of topics she wanted to cover.
The room erupted with laughter and shouts. Sadie looked up and her eyes met Wyatt’s. He was smiling but raised his eyebrows in a question. She shrugged and quirked up a corner of her mouth. Sometimes you had to play the audience.
“All right, come on. First item. We have two new employees, Wyatt Anderson and Aaron Stone. Welcome them.” She paused for the guy razzing and grunting that passed for welcoming. “Aaron, you’ll be with Sam. And Wyatt, you’ll be working with DeShawn. Now for the boring stuff. The state of South Carolina is requiring me to provide proof you know how to properly dilute the new floor-cleaning solution. Molly has the sign off sheets. Go tell her how to do it properly and get signed off. She may give you a lollipop.”
She ran through the list quickly. She hated meetings. Hated everyone looking at her, expecting her to be all boss-like and perfect. And she was beginning to hate the way she could feel Wyatt’s gaze on her skin. He seemed as though he was going to fit in and do a good job. She was going to have to get her hormones under control. She opened the floor to questions.
“What are you going to do about the ad?” Malik asked.
“Nothing. Marcus Canard advertises. We don’t. The work we do is the only advertising we need. Almost all our new clients, about 95 percent, come from referrals. The rest stumble on us by Google search. We have almost zero client loss. The last three clients we lost, it was only because they moved away. No one has canceled the Crew because of our service.”
She stood. “I need more coffee, and y’all need to get to work. Anyone who doesn’t have a client scheduled in the next hour needs to get Molly to check you off on the cleaner. Wyatt and Aaron, get with your partners. I gave them the packets already. They’ll show you what needs to be done. Everyone have a great day. Call me if you need anything. Don’t forget first Friday is this week.”
She caught Josh’s eye and tilted her head, indicating for him to come with her. She ran upstairs to let Jack into the office. He got too excited when so many people were here. While he amused himself by sniffing around the conference room, she poured more coffee and went to her office. Josh sat across from her desk, quiet and watchful as she slurped down the second cup.
“New guy seems interesting,” he said.
“Which one?”
Josh grinned and lounged back in the chair, his long lanky legs stretched out before him. He stretched and rested his clasped hands on top of his head. “Come on, Saff, how long have we known each other? You get a little panicky when you know he’s watching you.”
Was it obvious? “I do not. Do I?”
Josh laughed and her cheeks burned. “Yes, but I think I only noticed because I know you so well. I meant because he’s a little older than most of the guys.”
“He’s not too much older than you. He was a house painter. Economy is still shaky. Got custody of his niece and needed more steady hours and pay.”
“Seems like a decent guy. What’d you want to talk to me about?”
Sadie took another sip, appraising Josh over the rim of her mug. He was good-looking, with dark wavy hair and blue eyes. He could probably pass for her brother. He was the hot guy she’d hired for the experiment that became the Cleaning Crew. Barely a man back then. He’d been about to turn nineteen, full of attitude and anger and a desperate need to belong to something. Sadie had understood. She’d taken a gamble with him and it had paid off. Paid off very well. They clicked immediately when he told her he’d aged out of the foster-care system. Eighteen and on the street. Exactly like her. Only he had been lucky and his foster family had let him stay until he finished high school. Sadie hadn’t been as lucky. She’d been put on the street the minute she turned eighteen, four months from graduation.
He was one of two people who knew her whole story. And she was the only one who knew his. Her instincts had been right about him. Given a chance, some guidance and sisterly affection, his loyalty had become a fierce thing. And she paid him well for all he did. He’d trained every new guy for years. He set the tone and enforced her expectations in guy speak that carried more weight than her rules and regulations. She trusted him like no other. This was why she hesitated to say what she’d brought him here to say. But she knew her hesitation was nothing but selfishness.
“I’ve been getting inquiries,” she said. “About if we would consider franchising. And Molly’s been logging at least five calls a week from the Columbia area asking if we take clients there. So there’s a potential market.”
“But you’re against selling a franchise. Don’t want to lose control over the quality.”
“Exactly. Here’s what I was thinking. Not a franchise, but a second office.”
“Uh-huh. Might work. Would keep you in charge.”
She sat back, tenting her fingers and pressing them to her lips. “I was thinking about offering it to you, Josh.”
He sat up from his sprawl. “Offering what?”
“To head up a new location. To be the manager. Get the whole thing off the ground. Hire the guys, train them, everything. You’re the only person I’d trust to do it, Josh.”
“Wow.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Wow. I’m, um— I don’t know what to think.”
“I’m floating it out there as an option. As much as I’d hate to lose you, I don’t want to waste your talents holding you here.”
“How would it work, though? I’d be the manager?”
“We’d have to sit down with Lena and a lawyer and work out the details. I wouldn’t be against giving you a franchise so you’d be the owner. I trust you.”
“I’ll think about it. My gut reaction is to say no because I don’t want to leave. But it would be a challenge.”
Sadie rose and walked around the desk. Josh stood also and she pulled him into a tight hug. “I wish you were my real brother,” she said.
“I am your real brother.”
She stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “I know. I’ll miss you if you go to Columbia. But I want it for you. I know you’ll do an awesome job.”
“I said I’ll think about it, Saff.”
She swatted at his arm. “Stop it. You’ll slip up one day and say it in front of the wrong person.”
After Josh left, Sadie took Jack for a walk around the block. An idea began forming in her head. She wasn’t the type to engage in a battle. It was far safer to ignore and evade. But this Marcus thing was starting to irritate her. When she got back, she called Lena.
“How much money is in the advertising budget?”
“None. You don’t advertise. I don’t budget for it. Why? What do you want to do?”
Sadie pulled open the bottom drawer and opened her stash of jelly beans. She needed a sugar high for this. “I was thinking of doing an ad thanking the people of Charleston for voting for us in the City Paper thing.”
“Uh-huh. I’m liking it.”
“A group shot. Of all the guys.”
“And you in the center.”
“Um. No. I stay out of the limelight.”
“Then I won’t approve the funds.”
“You have to. It’s my money.”
“Come on, Sadie. This is an awesome idea. Your gorgeous self, surrounded by all that hot beefcake, thanking the people of Charleston? Marcus will choke on his breakfast opening up the paper.”
Sadie picked out a cream and a strawberry jelly bean to eat together. While she chewed, she pictured the look on Marcus’s face when the ad came out. The image appealed to her after all his nasty comments. “You got names?”
Lena heaved a long, mournful sigh. “This is why I take you to those business association meetings. For you to meet people, build up a network.”
“I know. You got names?”
“Hold on.”
After scribbling down the name of a woman who ran an advertising agency, Sadie popped another jelly bean in her mouth. “I was thinking about going to see Abuelito this weekend. Would it be okay?”
“Better than okay. We can go together. He’d love to see you.”
“Can I wait until then? Should I go sooner?”
“There’s time. Not much, but time.”
Sadie ended the call and leaned back in her chair, propping her feet up on the desk and holding the jar of jelly beans on her stomach. Jack put his head on her thigh and sighed. She scratched his ears and let out her own sigh. “Oh, Jackie Boy. I don’t know if I know how to say goodbye.”
A brief rap on the door pulled her attention away from the jelly beans. Molly walked to the desk, holding out an envelope. “Mail for you. Looks personal.”
Sadie took the envelope. White business-letter size. Hand written and addressed to S. D. Martin. Her eye and breath caught on the return address: G. Rogers, Florence, SC. “Okay,” she said, dismissing Molly with a voice that sounded faint and tremulous inside her head. “Thanks.”
After Molly left, Sadie dropped the envelope. Florence. Where her mother lived. Rogers. Her mother’s married name. Grant, the baby her mother kept. The one she was pregnant with when she signed away her parental rights to Sadie. Throw it away. Tear it to shreds and burn it. She wanted—needed—nothing from those people. Still she remained frozen, her hands curled into fists framing the envelope. But how? Why? Had her mother told her new family about her? And how had he found her? Open the letter. Find out. Instead, she swept the letter into the top drawer. Out of sight, out of mind, right? She had a business to run here.
* * *
WYATT’S MIND KEPT going back to how Sadie had motioned for Josh to follow her once the meeting had ended. He was beginning to suspect Josh was much more than just another employee. The way he’d joked with Sadie about the dead cat, the way he’d passionately defended her against Marcus Canard and now the way they disappeared to her office together. Maybe Josh needed a little investigating.
He was on a tour of headquarters, following his preceptor, DeShawn, down the hallway, past Sadie’s office and the classroom and to the third door.
“This is where you’ll start every day. You’ll have an assigned group of clients. Each day is scheduled out. I know mine by heart so I don’t have to check, but there’s a calendar there.”
The calendar took up the only wall space not filled with bookshelves. There was a small round table in the center of the room. The bookshelves were filled with white binders. Each binder had a name printed along the spine.
“These are the client books,” DeShawn said with a wave of his hand. “We’ve tried to talk Sadie into going paperless, but she wants to keep these.”
“Wow. That’d be a huge job to transfer all this to computer,” Wyatt said. He was slightly stunned by the number of books.
DeShawn crossed the room and began to pull binders from the shelf. “We’ve got a pretty easy day today. It’ll be good for your first full day.”
They sat together at the small table and DeShawn opened a binder. “Every morning, you see who’s on the schedule and pull their books. All the information you need is in here. Name, address, contact number. Any special requests will be here.” He turned a page and pointed. “See, for example, this is an elderly couple. We moved their cleaning day to coincide with the recycling pickup day because they have trouble getting the full bins out to the curb. We do that for them.”
“That’s a nice touch,” Wyatt said.
“It’s more than a touch. Sadie expects this. It’s part of what sets us apart. Anytime a client asks for something extra, we do it, every time if needed. If we see something like this we’re supposed to offer to take care of it.”
“Great.”
He had no idea how cleaning services were usually run, but he could imagine this individual attention was rare.
“So we get the books, go over them to remind ourselves of anything extra to do and we take them with us so we can update them. There’s a cleaning log here where we log time in, time out and the date. Also, anything unusual goes here. Any new requests or needs are put at the bottom of the special requests list. Got it?”
Wyatt nodded. “Seems straightforward enough.”
“Questions?”
Only about a hundred, Wyatt thought. “I’m still a little concerned about the whole ‘guys cleaning your house’ aspect of this. I know about the behavioral contracts, but there’ve been no problems, have there?”
DeShawn shook his head as he stood and gathered the day’s books. “It’s a thing with some of the newer clients. Most of the people who’ve been with Sadie for years know it’s all about the job we do, not who’s doing it. It’s an attention-grabbing gimmick, nothing more. Our service is beyond excellent. Now, come on and let me show you how to properly clean a house.”
Wyatt, who had been cleaning house since he was twenty and his mother became ill, was a bit offended by that...until they started. He’d known the work would be mostly physical: mopping, sweeping, vacuuming. He wasn’t prepared for the military-level precision with which DeShawn went through a house. He could clean a house twice as well in half the time Wyatt could do his own home.
By lunch, Wyatt was beginning to wonder what he could report to Marcus. Every client they’d seen so far had been an elderly couple. Surely they weren’t buying drugs or sexual services. Even the idea that Sadie was running the cleaning service as a front to some criminal business was hard to believe. Front operations were usually poorly run. Most attention went to the criminal activity as it was the more lucrative. Fronts were only that—fronts, barely functioning covers. The Cleaning Crew was no front. It was a thriving business.
“So, how’re you liking it so far?” DeShawn asked over lunch.
Wyatt smiled at him. “It’s good. Pretty much what I expected.”
“You’re picking it up very quickly. Better than most, trust me.”
“Probably the military training. I like order and plans.”
DeShawn’s eyes lit up. “You were military?”
“National Guard.”
“Did you get sent over?”
“Two tours in Afghanistan.”
“Can I ask you some questions?”
“Sure.” He braced for the usual questions from young men who thought war some exciting real-life version of the video games they’d grown up playing.
“I’m thinking of joining after I graduate next year. I can go in as an officer but I can’t decide which branch. The air force appeals to me, but with my engineering degree, some have said the army might be best. What do you think?”
Wyatt dropped the french fry he was holding. Whoa. Okay. This kid was serious. “I’m not an expert on all the different branches. I was in the Army National Guard. There was a demand for engineers. Mostly for rebuilding. What do you want to do with your degree? Say you enlist, do your twenty years and retire. What experience would you want to have to transfer to a civilian job?”
“Structural engineering.”
“So compare what’s available in each branch to what jobs are comparable in the civilian market, and go with that.”
DeShawn lifted his hand. “Boom! Right to the center of it. Thanks, man.”
Wyatt did the fist bump thing and grinned. This made him feel a little better about the whole undercover-and-lying thing. He’d maybe helped this guy. “Let me ask you a question now.”
“Shoot.”
“Sadie said everyone went out with a partner. But you don’t. Neither does Josh. Why’s that?”
“There are only a few of us who go solo. The ones who’ve been here the longest. We have the older client lists. The clients Sadie had back when she worked alone. Before there was a Crew.”
Wyatt nodded. That wasn’t going to help him much. He needed to get in with the newer clients and newer employees. See what was going on with them. He gathered up the remains of his lunch and followed DeShawn to the trash bin. This is only day one; give it some time.
They finished up just after three and headed back to the office. Sadie was in the back room, filling out the next month’s calendar when they went in to put the books away. Wyatt felt his heart rate amp up a few notches at the sight of her. The jeans and T-shirt hugged her curves and her hair was down, loose curls spilling to the center of her back. She turned and smiled as they walked in.
“Hey. How’d it go?”
“Good job with this one, boss.”
Sadie’s gaze moved to him and he felt every inch she looked over. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Picking it up so fast, he probably doesn’t need a full two weeks. In a month, he’ll be ready to go solo.”
Wyatt grinned at DeShawn. This was good. Yes, take me off orientation early. Put me on a team with one of the new guys. “It helps when you’ve got a great teacher.”
DeShawn held out a fist and Wyatt bumped it. “Tomorrow.”
“How’s Julietta doing?” Sadie asked after DeShawn left. “I’ve been thinking about her. Is she okay after what happened?”
Wyatt blinked and stared for a moment. People usually avoided talking about Jules. It was messy and painful. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s okay. I was expecting it to be like a dam breaking but she hasn’t said anything more. I called her therapist and told her what happened. She said to let Jules lead the way on when she wants to talk about her mother.”
Sadie pressed a hand over her heart. “Good. I was so afraid I said something wrong and made it worse.”
“No. The therapist said you did perfect. Didn’t make a big deal out of it. So thank you again.”
“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t anything I did. She chose the moment. I haven’t forgotten about the curls. I’ll grab something from Walmart and show you how to use it sometime this week.”
“That’d be great. Anything else I can do for you?”
The faint blush on her cheeks was interesting, but he only caught a glimpse before she turned back to the calendar.
“No. See you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOUR DAYS INTO the job and Wyatt was starting to feel really horrible about this investigation. Between the morning interactions and midday resupply runs that allowed him interaction with other teams, Wyatt was getting a better idea of how the Cleaning Crew operated. There wasn’t anything going on. Better work ethic, better gimmick, better management and leadership. That was it. Marcus was going to have to accept the facts.
He consulted his kitchen cheat sheet. Clean microwave, inside and out. He glanced around to find it. They were in a large, gorgeous home on Albemarle Point overlooking the marsh and the Ashley River. The kitchen was huge. It had two stoves and the biggest refrigerator he’d ever seen in his life. So, this was how the other half lived.
The front door opened and his pulse kicked up a beat or two when Sadie called out. She could really get him going. For all the good it did. Sure, I know I was lying to you and spying on you, but do you want to catch a movie or something? He shook his head. She was the first woman to catch his eye since Victoria had walked out on him. And with the way she’d responded to Jules, a little chunk of his heart was trying to get in on the action.