I Was Her Servant for Five Years, Now She Begs Me to Stay novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Doormat

The video goes viral. Nolan tells his brother he is Camille's fiance, and the Ashworths' lawyer arrives with a gag clause tied to the garage's mortgage.

By the time I reached the garage, the video had forty thousand views.

Dean was sitting on an overturned bucket in the bay with his phone in one oily hand and a wrench in the other.

He didn't say hello.

He turned the screen toward me.

It was me on my knees on the marble, wiping the floor with an apron.

Underneath, someone had typed, "Who lets someone do this to him?"

Someone else had typed, "Doormat of the year."

"Five years," Dean said. "I thought you were saving up. I thought you were working off a debt."

"I know what you thought."

"I told everyone at the diner you took a butler job because it paid well."

"That's what I told you."

"Then tell me the real thing, Nolan."

He put the wrench on the bench and stood up.

My brother is six feet tall and broad, and he looked at me the way he did when I was nine and had broken Dad's wrench set.

So I told him.

I told him I had proposed to Camille in the diner on the coast road, and that she had said yes with her mouth full of pie.

I told him about the bridge, the rain and the fire.

I told him she woke up in the hospital, looked straight at me and asked a nurse who I was.

I told him her parents said I couldn't tell her, and that the job was the only way they would let me stay.

Dean didn't interrupt once.

When I finished, he picked the wrench up again and put it down again.

"They made you her butler," he said.

"Houseman."

"They made my brother her servant. And she's engaged to a guy in a tuxedo."

"She doesn't remember."

"Does she remember how to throw a drink on you?"

I had no answer for that.

He pulled a bottle of whiskey from the shelf above the tool bench and poured two fingers into a coffee mug.

He handed it to me.

"I'm going to the estate," he said. "I'm taking the tire iron."

"Dean."

"I'm going to take it in my hand and ask Gerald Ashworth what exactly he thinks he's paying for."

"He's paying me twelve hundred dollars a month," I said. "And he gave me a roof."

"A roof."

"A room off the kitchen."

Dean's jaw worked.

"You could have told me," he said, and his voice went rough. "I could have helped you."

"You'd have gone up there with a tire iron."

"Yes!"

"That's why I didn't tell you."

He laughed once, hard, and wiped his face on his sleeve.

I drank the whiskey.

It tasted of the shop, of rubber and old metal.

I slept on the cot in the back office with my coat over me.

At six in the morning, someone knocked on the glass door of the front bay.

A tall man in a charcoal suit stood on the apron, holding a leather folder.

I knew him.

He was Gerald Ashworth's lawyer, and I had served him lemon water in the library a dozen times.

Dean came out of the back with his hair standing up and the tire iron already in his hand.

"Put that down, please," the lawyer said. "I'm not here to fight."

"Then why are you here?"

"Mr. Ashworth would like Mr. Tierney back in the house," the lawyer said. "He's authorized me to offer a raise."

"No," I said.

"Triple your wage. A paid vacation, and a letter of reference."

"I quit last night. You saw the video."

"I did." The lawyer opened the folder. "And I'd like to remind you of what you signed."

He took out a stapled agreement and laid it on the bench between us.

I recognised it.

I had signed it in a study five years ago, with Gerald watching me and Lucille pouring tea.

"Paragraph nine," the lawyer said. "You agreed not to discuss Miss Ashworth's medical history, her past relationships or the events of the accident with her or with any third party."

"Third party," Dean said. "That's me."

"It is. Mr. Tierney has just discussed it with you, which I'm choosing to overlook for now."

"What happens if he tells her?" Dean asked.

The lawyer turned a page.

"Then Mr. Ashworth will call in the note on this property."

I felt Dean go still beside me.

"What note?" he said.

"The mortgage on this garage," said the lawyer. "Your father borrowed against it ten years ago, and the lender sold the debt on. Mr. Ashworth has held it for five years."

Dean looked at me.

"You told me the bank gave us an extension," he said.

"The bank did," I said. "That's what I was told."

"The bank didn't give us anything," said the lawyer, gently. "Gerald Ashworth bought your mortgage two weeks after the accident."

He closed the folder.

"He's been holding it ever since," he said. "He wanted to be sure Mr. Tierney would stay."

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