and decorated the penthouse with some of my stuff to make it feel more like home, and then I set up my office on the dining room table. I usually ate on the coffee table in front of the TV anyway, and I wanted to keep the guest room open for company. Not to mention I probably wouldn’t get much work done in a room with a bed.
Now here I was, ready to jump back into work like a normal person, with no hint of faerie magic or death djinns anywhere in sight. It was a wonder that I wasn’t cowering in the closet or wallowing beneath the covers in depression. I couldn’t decide whether it was residual forgetfulness from the wish, or just my amazing aptitude for denial.
I’d lied to Jeremy and told him I was staying at my boss Hannah’s spare apartment. It wasn’t as if the truth was an option.
Hannah was a jewelry designer from France who owned a little couture shop called Haute Hannah’s on Worth Avenue—the most exclusive place to shop in Palm Beach. She was a tiny spitfire of a woman in her fifties, the top of her head barely coming up to my shoulders. I had never seen her anything other than perfectly coiffed, and bedecked with as many of her most mammoth jewelry designs as she could cram into her ensemble for the day.
And she adored expensive French perfumes. Her small shop was permeated with an amalgamation of her favorite scents, ranging from spicy to flowery to cloying. The paperwork that I’d picked up from her a week ago still reeked of it. I worked from home doing her bookkeeping, making her travel arrangements, and taking care of her administrative needs.
Unfortunately Hannah’s was only a part time job, so I also worked for Cindy, a permanently frazzled woman with an abusive husband named Leslie and an ungrateful teenage son named Mickey. Her husband was her ‘boss’ at their store, Designer Jewelry Direct, and he made her call him ‘Mr. Horowitz’ at work.
Mr. H, or ‘The Horrorwitz’ as I called him, was well known around Palm Beach for verbally flaying both innocent employees and customers who didn’t spend enough money at his store. D.J.D. only stayed in business because he constantly advertised to bring in new clients and usually held his tongue for the big spenders.
He was a compulsive gambler who siphoned all the profits from the store during season, and kept things running during the summer off season by only paying the rent and utilities. Employees and vendors were left unpaid for months at a time through a campaign of Cindy’s sob stories and Mr. H’s threats.
This made things difficult with Hannah because she was one of their vendors. Whenever her bill came too far past due, she begged me to talk to Cindy for her, who would only give me empty reassurances to pass along. It always made me feel guilty and stuck in the middle.
I often thought about quitting my job at D.J.D. But it was convenient to work from home, and I did their online banking, so I always managed to get paid. Not to mention the fact that I felt sorry for Cindy, even though she sometimes drove me crazy.
Each time Mr. H scared away their office manager the responsibility fell on her to keep up with things until she found a new one. I was the most recent in a long series of them and she’d agreed to let me report directly to her so that I never had to deal with ‘The Horrorwitz’.
I wrinkled my nose and settled back into the cream cushions of a heavy dining room chair, staring moodily around my new makeshift office. My laptop and printer were set up on the polished wood table, along with my fax machine and a cordless phone. My working file boxes were stacked neatly along the rear wall and my cache of office supplies resided in one of these.
There was a constant whisper of scratching sounds behind me, due to the fascination my cat, Jasper, had developed with the row of open boxes. He had an inordinate fondness for rubber-bands and paperclips, and seemed to have decided that this was some sort of breeding ground for them.
The first words out of my mouth that morning had been a rude result of my stepping on the pointy end of a bent paperclip that he’d managed to liberate onto the carpet. Jasper was smart enough not to be anywhere in sight when it happened. He no doubt knew that the earlier it was, the less charitable my mood tended to be.
The cordless phone rang and I frowned because I hadn’t given the number to anyone yet. The caller ID read ‘Cleaning Svcs’ and my spirits soared immediately at the reminder of one of my new perks as a hotel resident.
“Hello Miss Corrigan, this is Angelica. Would it be convenient for me to come by to clean now? If not, I could come by later this afternoon.” Her voice was sweet with a hint of huskiness, and an odd impression of warm, drizzling caramel flashed through my head. I blinked at the image and at her use of my maiden name.
The guy at the front desk had also called me ‘Miss Corrigan’, despite the fact that no one at the hotel should have known me by that name or any other. I guessed it must all be a part of the living in the penthouse wish.
I realized she was waiting for a reply and cleared my throat, “Um, yes, now would be great. Thank you.”
“Sure thing. I’ll see you in a minute.”
She hung up, and soon after I heard a soft knock at the door.
I opened it expecting a woman in a subdued hotel uniform, but standing there was a six foot blonde in a French maid’s outfit. And she made it look like naughty lingerie without even trying. I couldn’t help gaping at her. It was like having a Victoria’s Secret model show up to clean the house.
“Is there anything in particular you’d like me to focus on today, or should I just give everything the once-over?” She offered me a smile, and between her luminous blue eyes, perfectly straight white teeth, and infectious warmth—the effect was dazzling.
“Uh, the once-over would be great,” I stuttered.
“No problem, Miss Corrigan,” she replied cheerily, turning to pull some cleaning supplies from her cart.
“Thanks.” I returned to my ‘office’, shaking off a strange reluctance to leave her side.
“Ooh, I love what you’ve done with the place!” she exclaimed as she stepped into the living room. “These pre-furnished rooms can feel so cold without a few personal touches. This is a lovely coffee table—so much nicer than that formal hunk of metal that was here before,” she remarked as she began Windexing the scratched, glass surface of the table I’d brought from home.
“Thank you,” I replied, taken aback by her friendliness. “Uh, the base was hand-crafted from driftwood by an artist that collected his materials from the beach. My Mom bought it before I was born.”
“It’s so primal,” she commented, her voice dropping into a soft growl. “I love it! And look at all these adorable frogs!” She smiled at one of my figurines as she picked it up to dust it.
“Yeah, I’ve always loved frogs—as evidenced by their sudden take-over of the room,” I added self consciously.
“It’s important to surround ourselves with the things we enjoy. Did you know that there’s a yoga pose called ‘frog’?” she asked.
“Really? I’ve taken a class or two, but I don’t know much about it,” I answered as she paused in her dusting to glance up at me.
“The frog pose works to open the pelvic region. It’s been known to initiate spontaneous orgasm in some women.” Her eyes sparkled with contagious humor.
“Wow,” I chuckled.
“Mmhm.
