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“Her son was…apologetic, but ultimately admitted her wishes were going to take precedence,” Rhonda continued with a shrug.
“A son?” I asked.
“Consider him the first line of defense and offense,” she chuckled. “He takes care of most of the day-to-day things for her, so he’s always the one you’ll deal with first. But when Sophia speaks about something, her word is ultimately law. Based on what I’ve heard, there’s very little he can dissuade her from, and her preference on the gender of her caregiver is one of those things.”
“Well, here’s hoping I don’t have some rich pervert groping me…again,” I muttered, shuddering at the memory.
“I wish you’d officially reported that,” Rhonda said with a grimace.
“Mrs. Everetts was senile as hell and convinced she was in a bar in Las Vegas and I’d been flirting with her for the past hour,” I said with a chuckle. “I mean, yeah, it was weird as hell to have a seventy-year-old woman grab my ass like it was the only life raft she had while drowning at sea, but…it wasn’t really sexual harassment.”
Rhonda sighed. “At least you made a note of it in your report, so we could make sure not to send any more men her way.”
I picked the paper up. “So, demanding, rich, and absolutely the queen of her ship, huh?”
“That’s Sophia in a nutshell.”
I smiled, setting the paper down. “I’ll take it.”
CHAPTER TWO
I gazed up at the house and tried to mentally calculate when the Victorian style in the US had picked up. I knew it had been late on the west coast, but I couldn’t remember if it was known this far north. I knew California had its fair share, but that was about the extent of my architectural knowledge.
It was enough for me to know I was staring at a Victorian-style house. Including a noticeable but moderate porch, though this one had an enclosed room with windows and screens, probably for the comfort of whoever lived there all year round.
I mounted the steps to the front door and smiled when I heard the stairs squeak slightly under my weight. In all honesty, I would have expected a lack of sound. Much like I would have orderliness to the planters in front of the porch, but I could see wild plants growing as well as flowers. Apparently, Sophia didn’t run as tight a ship as I’d expected.
The doorbell made a heavy gong noise, and I waited patiently until the sounds of swift but measured footsteps approached. Belatedly remembering I would need to introduce myself properly, I began digging through my pockets to find my work ID.
The door opened, and a curious male voice answered. “Yes?”
“Hi,” I said, finding my ID and pulling it up to shove toward him. “I’m Kevin McCully from the Lighthouse Care…”
I stopped, my words trapped in my throat as I stared at the man. He was older than me, but not by a lot. I would have placed him somewhere in his early to mid-thirties. Sweat completely drenched his skin and the rather small tank top and shorts he was wearing. It was clear I had interrupted some form of exercise, and from the looks of his body, he was no stranger to working out.
The arms corded with muscle were a pleasant sight, as was the obviously built chest and the flat stomach. It was the smattering of dark brown hair that peeked out of the top of his shirt that distracted me most of all until I looked him in the face, which didn’t help much when I found the most colorful pair of hazel eyes gazing down at me, framed by a rugged but not overly hard face.
“Lighthouse Care facility,” I finished, giving my ID a wiggle to emphasize my point.
His eyes lingered on me for a moment before finally looking at the object I kept waving at him. It hadn’t been that long since I last slept with someone, but I still found myself tracing the way his neck moved as he leaned forward to read the ID. I felt like a hormone-ridden teenager, which were days I did not think of all that fondly. At the very least, despite how little scrubs did to hide anything, I was glad I typically chose to wear tight-fitting underwear no matter the occasion.
“Oh!” His frown disappeared, and he leaned back into the doorway with a smile. “Right, right, the new caregiver! We were told to expect you today, but you’re a little earlier than I thought.”
“Ah well, for the first introduction, I always try to be early. It gives everyone a better chance to get a feel for one another,” I said, yanking my hand back to shove the ID into my pocket before I got the urge to get a feel of something else. “Is Ms. Perkins awake?”
He snorted. “My mother wakes at the crack of dawn and stays that way until long after the sun goes down. And if you don’t make sure to emphasize the word Miss instead of Ms., she’ll have your head hanging from the front gate.”
“She was married previously,” I pointed out.
“Yes, and you would do well not to remind her of that either,” he chuckled. “The less you talk about my father, the better off you’ll be.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
Christ, this was the son? I had expected someone older, considering Sophia was just over seventy. This was clearly not an older man and completely demolished the idea that the children of wealthy parents, in my experience, were typically slightly overweight lawyers with weird ideas about facial hair trends.
He chuckled, looking me over. “You’re uh, not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?” I asked before I could think about what I was saying.
