The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield

by Ninya Tippett

  He smiled. "So you don't mind my feelings for Tessa? When just several weeks ago, I was laying out my heart at your feet, ready to take you away if you so much as hinted that you would let me."

  I shook my head. "Jake, to be perfectly honest, if you’d really wanted me, I don't think anything would've stopped you. Same way that Brandon would’ve fought you to the death, your friendship notwithstanding, if you tried to take me away with any real effort. So no, I don't mind at all. You and I will always be great friends, no matter what."

  His green eyes sparkled despite the exhaustion in them. "You'll help me with her then?"

  I looked at him directly. “You’re not doing this just because you were used to knowing that Tessa adored you, are you? If this is just about your ego, Jake, I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Of course, not! I’m not that self-centered, Char,” he protested. “I’m sure she’d stopped adoring me years ago as soon as she heard what a bed-hopper I was, but that never really bothered me before. But everything’s changed after last night. My ego is the last thing I’m worried about right now.”

  "Alright, I’ll help you," I said with a sigh. "And only because I think Tessa might feel the same way about you. I understand her reservations. If I were her, faced with a notorious playboy, I would be on the cautious side too.”

  He smirked at me. “You’re lucky you married Brandon before you dated him long enough to discover just how much of a playboy he was before he met you.”

  I stuck my tongue at him. “I have an idea but from all reports, you are way worse and by a long shot.”

  He wiggled his brows. “Only because I’m more good-looking. And less of a bore.”

  “And more modest too,” I snorted as I smacked him on the arm.

  He laughed briefly before he sobered up again. “Are you going to tell Brandon? I would understand if you feel that you have to. He’s your husband. I don’t want to force you to keep a secret from him.”

  Like he’s keeping a secret from me? I almost blurted out. I chastised that little vindictive voice in my head and reminded myself that these secrets encompassed far more than just mine and Brandon’s relationship.

  We burden ourselves with secrets because sometimes, there's no safer place for them than on our shoulders. It’s like stepping on a land mine. Freeing yourself can usually cost more lives—yours included.

  “I’m not going to think of it as keeping a secret,” I told Jake with a smile. “I’ll think of it as helping you keep a promise you made a long time ago.”

  ***

  The thought of bringing Jake and Tessa together got me out of my somber mood.

  For the first time in the last couple days, I felt like I had a purpose—that someone needed my help about something important.

  It comforted what Brandon had left chafed in me when he didn’t need me for either Nicole and Zach or for the pulp mill crisis.

  I decided that when he returned, I was going to prove to him that I could help him—that he needed me for anything he might be going through right now. There wasn’t going to be any ifs and buts about it when it came to involving me.

  Energized by the idea, I decided not to spend my day sitting around.

  I gave both Gilles and Felicity the day off because I didn’t think I was going to go anywhere today until later this evening, for a family dinner at Martin’s. I didn’t mind one bit doing things myself though. In fact, it was always freeing, doing things on my own once in a while. I sometimes missed the old me.

  A short while after Jake left, Brandon called briefly to say that depending on what he learned from the inspection, he might be head home today or tomorrow.

  I wanted to tell him to head home today because I couldn’t stand not having him around without being driven to impulsive ideas, like matchmaking his sister and best friend. But I didn’t want to add to the pressure he was already dealing with at the mill so I told him I was fine with either possibility.

  Putting on a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved plain white shirt, bright yellow rubber boots, and a cherry-red rain coat, I went out in the steady drizzle and headed to the grocery store.

  I met a few paps on my way there and we chatted while they walked the few blocks with me. Once in the grocery, I rounded up ingredients for the seafood paella and sans rival dessert I was taking with me to the family dinner.

  Carrying a couple of grocery bags, I walked home, stopping by the window of an RMV (Registry Of Motor Vehicles) to read the requirements for getting your learner’s permit. That gave me an idea.

  I went home and started on the sans rival because I needed time to set it aside in the fridge to chill.

  An hour later, Gwen, our occasional housekeeper, arrived to do some cleaning.

  She fixed us both sandwiches for lunch and we chatted while we cleaned up the mess from my baking.

  She was starting the laundry when the I left her to go back to my official bedroom (the one Brandon set up when I asked for a separate room when we first hatched up this marriage of convenience). I had recently transformed it into more of an office—especially as my work with the Championettes increased—although I kept the bed for when I occasionally felt like lounging in it with a good book when I had some free time.

  I went online to find a quick self-review of the driving rules.

  I already knew how to drive—Aimee had taught me one summer, on a few weekends—and I knew most of the rules, but I wanted to be better prepared when I took the written exam.

  With a cup of coffee and the steady blast of some music from my playlist, it took me a good two hours to go through a couple of reviews and do a mock-test online.

  I was trying to print off my results when I kept getting an error about the network printer being offline so I tiptoed barefoot to Brandon’s office where the printer was.

  The music was floating through the penthouse from my open door that I didn’t hear anyone in Brandon’s office.

  I paused by the door slightly ajar, surprised at first that it wasn't closed shut as Brandon usually left it. He never locked it but the firmly closed door was usually a good enough message to anyone to not wander in when he wasn’t home.

  I was free to waltz in and out but I always shut it behind me as Brandon preferred it.

  My heart sped up, thinking that maybe he was home.

  I poked my head in silently, bracing to surprise him with a loud ‘Welcome Home’ greeting, when I stopped short, my smile abruptly curving down to a frown.

  Gwen was bent over Brandon’s desk (the same one we danced on because it was now too sentimental for him to replace with something a little more reasonably sized), thumbing through a small sheaf of documents he’d left out in the open.

  I drew back behind the door to keep myself out of her view as I continued to watch her.

  This Gwen certainly didn’t look like our usual housekeeper. Gone was the softened, motherly expression on her face. Instead, her eyes were squinted in a sharp, narrowed gaze, searching and assessing as they moved over the contents of Brandon’s desk.

  I thought maybe something just caught her attention but the way she was methodically pulling out sheet after sheet, scanning it quickly to assess its contents before placing it back in the pile, seemed too blatantly intentional.

  Suddenly, my view of our housekeeper altered significantly.

  There is something very wrong about this picture.

  Unable to stand back in silence, I cleared my throat loudly and strode into the room, halting when Gwen looked up in surprise, jumping a couple of steps back.

  “Gwen! What are you doing here?” I exclaimed in as naturally casual a voice as I could manage.

  I watched and caught the few seconds it took for her typical placid expression to settle back in place as she smiled with fake innocence.

  “Oh, Charlotte! You startled me!” she said with a light laugh, holding up a small duster she’d been clutching with the hand she hadn’t been using to skim through Brandon’s stuff. “I was just dust
ing in here. This room hardly gets cleaned so I thought I’d give it a quick sweep.”

  Quick sweep, alright. For what, is the mystery.

  Questions burned at the base of my throat but I summoned all my self-control not to start launching them at her.

  Snakes are best captured with lures. If you try to bludgeon their heads, you might miss and either let them strike back at you or slither away to freedom. Gwen is a snake I can't allow to slip free quite yet.

  "Do you need a hand?" I asked, and it wasn't exactly a silly question. Although I was technically also her employer, I've helped Gwen with some of the chores before when I was home and had time to do them. I was used to working—idly sitting around drove me a little crazy sometimes.

  She shook her head a little too enthusiastically. "Oh, no. I'm done here. I'll get out of your way."

  And before I could say or do anything else, she hurried past me and out of the room.

  I stared at the door she'd shut behind her for a long moment before I finally budged.

  Gwen had always been a sweet and soft-spoken woman from the moment I met her. She came and went with no fuss. But something about finding her in Brandon's office, which was normally off-limits, had unsettled me, and I didn't like it—because my instincts were usually pretty right on the mark when it came to people.

  I went to the printer and reset it out of its standby mode and waited for it to spew out my document.

  Still disconcerted, I glanced at Brandon's gigantic desk and studied the items on it.

  Brandon was very organized but the massive size of his desk gave him room to leave an assortment of small, well-ordered piles all around it. He'd once told me that he would usually group documents by project so he can just move from one pile to another depending on what project he was focusing on.

  Most of the paperwork on the desk was work-related.

  I leafed through the files Gwen had been perusing and found nothing but a stack of personal bills from last month that had been paid and stamped. We had a personal accountant, a grumbly Mr. Funker (yes, that’s his last name) who dealt with all our bills and finances. His firm usually just forwarded us all the completed paperwork because Brandon liked to occasionally review them.

  The bill on the top of the pile was for Brandon's cellphone. The two or three pages detailed the plan inclusions and the logs for calls, text messages and data usage.

  "Interesting," I murmured as I scanned through the call logs and the long directory of numbers that Brandon had called.

  He was an important man running a giant business—it was no surprise that he was in contact with a lot of people. I wondered if seeing proof simply fascinated Gwen or if there was something more to just her plain old curiosity.

  The only points of interest in the bill were the text messaging and call logs.

  The data-usage was hardly detailed—it was mostly a graph showing the upload and download activities.

  I studied the call logs, noting the calls Brandon made to my number.

  Only outgoing calls showed phone numbers, of course, because of this whole privacy thing about telephone numbers for incoming calls being the private information of the caller, not the receiver.

  I didn’t recognize any of the other phone numbers really, except ones that I vaguely remember to be those of our relatives, friends and direct staff.

  I scanned the rest of my bills, finding nothing worth of special notice, and I felt more puzzled than ever.

  Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe because I knew just how capable people were of deception, Brandon and I included, it wasn't hard to assume that everyone else was doing it too.

  I stood and grimly stared a hole into the center of Brandon’s desk.

  And a lot of them are lying in some way or another, aren’t they? You and Brandon, Anna and Jason, Bessy and Don—even Jake and Tessa. We lie for different reasons, at different degrees, in different ways. The fact is, we lie. Whether by necessity or sheer inclination, we’re capable of it.

  I debated what to do, nearly crumpling my mock-test result in my tight, clammy fist, before exhaling sharply in resignation and heading out of the room to speak to Gwen.

  I didn’t want to wrongly accuse her of anything without giving her a chance to explain.

  I’d appreciate the same courtesy if I get caught.

  I stopped in my tracks though when I realized that there was no one else in the penthouse but me.

  Gwen was gone.

  I went to the mudroom where she often hung her jacket and her bag and found no sign of her.

  My gut clenched tightly with a sudden sense of foreboding.

  The housekeeper never left without saying goodbye if anyone was home.

  She clearly ran.

  Even without a confrontation, she knew I caught her red-handed. Doing what exactly was still the puzzle.

  I couldn’t really tell if she’d stolen anything because nothing obvious was poking out of her pockets and Brandon’s desk still looked as it always did.

  What else could she steal if not for tangible items?

  Information.

  My heart started to pound and I ran to my office/bedroom to get my phone.

  I rang Brandon, pacing restlessly as I waited for him to pick up.

  “Damn,” I muttered when his voicemail picked up.

  “Hi, babe,” I started brightly, suddenly unsure of how to tell him—if I even had anything to tell him. He was still in the middle of a clean-up at the mill and I didn’t want to further trouble him especially if my suspicions turned out to be completely unsubstantiated.

  “So, um, I really need to talk to you,” I said, smacking the side of my head when I realized the emphasis I put on really.

  I worsened it by adding, “When you’re not busy. It’s not, you know, the world-is-ending-asteroids-are-heading-for-earth-while-zombies-run-amok kind of calamity. I mean, it’s not even a calamity.” I let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Because a calamity constitutes a real emergency where lives are at stake and all that. Because there’s none—no lives are at stake, I mean.”

  For God’s sakes, Charlotte. Shut up.

  “So anyway, call me when you can!” I wrapped up cheerfully. “I love you and I miss you. Bye, babe!”

  I made loud, smacking kissing noises before hanging up.

  And then I let out a loud sigh and dropped on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  The only thing Gwen could be hunting for would be secrets.

  If I only knew which one.

  ***

  I didn’t have a lot of time left to contemplate on Gwen’s mysterious behavior and motives.

  I had to rush down to the RMV to get my learner’s permit before all testing was done for the day. The line up for it was thankfully short. After presenting all my documents, taking the vision test and having my photo taken, I went and passed the exam for it which wasn’t too bad with only a little over twenty questions on it.

  When I finally got my learner’s, I hurried back to the penthouse to make the paella.

  Then I got on the shower and spent another half hour getting ready, putting on a raspberry pink, belted tunic dress and flat summer sandals, and pushing my wavy hair back with a thin white headband decorated with a small, pink silk rosette.

  Brandon rang me while I was in the shower and left the beginnings of a message on my voicemail before he got interrupted by someone.

  I tried calling him back but it went to his voicemail again. I wanted to talk to him but I had no time to play phone tag when I was running late for the family dinner.

  Since Gilles was off, I used the car service the concierge provided to head to Martin’s house just right around five in the afternoon.

  Having grown up practically like an orphan, I craved family gatherings.

  There was something warm and tight in my chest every time I found myself sitting around smiling and affectionately bantering people—even the occasional drama.

  Since having been initiated into t
he Maxfield’s circle, I haven’t once missed a family gathering. So even without Brandon, I came, armed with square cake-sized sans rival and a warm dish of paella.

  The dinner guests were lounging in the formal sitting room, snacking on some appetizers and talking casually, when I arrived.

  The Maxfield brood was there, except for Brandon, of course. Jake was sitting across from Martin on a leather armchair, talking business although I caught the conspiratorial gleam in his eyes when he saw me come in. Tessa was in a corner with Mattie, humming some kind of duet with him probably for a new composition. She looked up at my entrance but quickly looked away, doing her best to turn her attention back to her brother instead of the man she was clearly aware was watching her in the corner of his eye.

  Their awkward avoidance of each other was obvious to me but no one else seemed to notice—or if they did, no one uttered a word.

  I promised Jake I’d help champion him to Tessa but now, in front of everyone, wasn’t the right time for it.

  Anna was swirling a glass of wine as she stood by the half-open french doors that led to the patio, speaking with one of my least favorite people in the world—Francis.

  I spent nearly twenty minutes just talking and catching up with everyone but eventually, I had to face Francis.

  He’d been standing in the periphery of the group the whole time, long after Anna had left him to his devices to sit with Tessa and Mattie. Like a stranger looking in from the outside, he just stood there, sipping his drink and watching the scene, occasionally tossing in a comment here or there.

  I wanted to avoid him because I didn’t want to get into another ugly argument with him but I reminded myself that he was family and no matter how I felt about him, I had to try and be civil for sake of the others.

  “Hello, cuz,” he greeted politely when I completed my round of hugs and greetings and finally turned his way. “You look a lot less stressed out than you were when I last saw you.”

  I forced a polite smile. “Yes, well. When leeches suck the blood out of you, you get a little lightheaded and nauseous. Same effect with the Championettes.”