Allison is a transcriptionist bored out of her mind, so when she is offered the job of a secretary to a well-known author, she leaps at it without reading the fine print. She didn't know she was agreeing to moving to a different state and into a mansion!

The increase in salary is significant, and room and board are all included, so it is a win-win for her, especially when she sees the handsome man she would be spending the majority of her time with. Dalquiel — You will address me as Mr. James. I prefer to keep our relationship strictly professional — is a good employer. It helps that he is so easy on the eye, considering that they are going to be spending so much time in each other's presence.

There are secrets abound in the mansion that she is insistent on keeping away from. After all, she finally has her life in order. There's a young nephew who has been kicked out of three schools, a housekeeper who thinks their employer's business is failing and fears the mansion is going to be put up for sale, and a woman who is adamant that Mr. James and her are meant to be and makes it clear that Allison is 'just staff'.

Will she be able to keep her own rule on not getting involved in the business of others, or will she find herself trapped in the mystery that has wrapped itself around her like a second skin?

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

Mr. James's people gets in touch with her and those conversation is even more surreal. The hourly pay is three times higher than what Mr. Hector had been paying her and she's given the updates on how long the job will last and what is expected of her throughout her contract.

When the call ends, she calls up her landlord to let him know that she will no longer be staying here once her lease ends at the end of the month. It's a conversation that has her giggling happily to herself for five minutes afterwards. She has a less happy conversation with the owner of the diner, who is sad to see her go, but happy that a better opportunity has presented itself for her.

And then, because she really should have asked more questions, she is packing up to leave her apartment and move into the — apparent— millionaire, she had agreed to work with because he lives in a mansion out of town.

It is depressing that it only took three trips for her to come down from her apartment to get rid of everything that she owns, everything that she doesn't mind parting with. She'll just buy new things once she returns. She knows better than to keep paying rent without actually staying in her place, regardless of how she can afford to do that now.

It still makes her head spin when she thinks about how much more she'll be earning.

“It's a fair rate,” the woman on the other end of the phone had said reproachfully, as if worried she would complain about it being too little. “But if you want more, we can discuss this for future works. I understand that Mr. James have been having some problems with his wrist and he absolutely abhors the voice typing system his publisher has attempted to set up for him.”

“It's a fair rate,” she says at the end of the woman's rant. She wonders if she had shared the same thing to the other woman who was hired.

Agreeing to start the very next day was definitely not a good idea, considering she needs to take a train to get there.

The railway station is a reassuring sight for her, though, passengers heedless of the disaster that she is probably walking herself into.

It is impressive of Mr. James's people to have arranged something so quickly for her. Someone had picked her up at her apartment and driven her to the station. “I could drive you, but we have made the trip several times and the train is far more comfortable, especially through the dirt and gravel roads.”

She is definitely going to get sold into some sort of sex trade.

Romance