Daisy Tucker and Mr. NYC novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Closet Rules

"Hay," Simone said again, and turned the stalk in the light like a jeweler.

"It's the carpet," Rhodes said. "It sheds."

"Does it?"

"Simone, the numbers."

"Of course." She dropped the stalk into the wastebasket, delicately, and looked at me.

"Do you keep a barn, Miss..."

"Cartwright," I said. "I come from one."

"How rustic."

She walked him down the hall, and I stood there holding a mop and wanting to hit someone in a cream suit.

I finished forty-one.

I finished forty and thirty-nine.

At five in the morning Rhoda clapped me on the back.

"Not bad for a wall," she said.

I rode the freight elevator down with my feet throbbing.

Rhodes was standing at the curb outside the service door.

No driver, no car.

He had his collar up and snow in his hair.

"I'm walking you home," he said.

"I know the way."

"You've been in this city twelve hours."

"I took the subway here."

"Willa."

I let him walk next to me.

It was a long way down Sixth Avenue in the blue dark, and neither of us said anything until Houston Street.

"I'm sorry," he said then. "I should have told you what I was."

"I thought I had a reason. I don't think it was a good one."

"No," I said. "It wasn't."

"I'll tell you everything else, if you'll ask."

"All right. Who was that woman?"

"Simone. She runs operations. We dated for a few months, two years ago. It's over."

"Does she know it's over?"

He didn't answer, which was an answer.

"New rules," I said. "I keep the job. I'm not quitting because you're embarrassed."

"I'm not embarrassed."

"And I'm not hiding in a closet to keep your secret. You tell me where you'll be and when."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Daisy Tucker and Mr. NYC from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.