Free The First Time Again: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 3 by Barbara Meyers Page B

much choice. Maybe he’d start by going through his voice mails and text messages. Then the FedEx envelopes. He should probably institute some sort of filing system for his investment reports, contracts, bills and miscellaneous mail. His lip curled in distaste.
    Tires crunched on gravel. Coffee cup in hand, he went out to the porch to watch Baylee exit her car and load up her cleaning supplies. She hesitated only a moment when she spied him watching her.
    “Good morning.”
    “Good morning.” He opened the screen door for her and followed her in, a smile on his face. He’d found his assistant.
    Forty-five minutes later, replete with two helpings of French toast and sausage along with orange juice, Trey settled back in the kitchen chair and studied Baylee from across the table. He’d insisted she take a break after she made breakfast and cleaned up. She sipped her coffee and held his gaze.
    “Would you be available to work for me full time?”
    She set down her cup. “Full time? You don’t need a full-time cleaning person.”
    “No. I had something else in mind.”
    She raised her eyebrows, waiting.
    “I need an assistant.”
    Baylee frowned. “To do what?”
    Trey waved in the direction of the dining room. “The mess on the dining room table you dusted around the other day? I need help getting it organized and keeping it that way.”
    Baylee sipped some more coffee. “What makes you think I’m qualified to do that?”
    “You used to work in a bank.”
    Baylee glanced away for a second and then back at him. “I never told you that.”
    “Was it a secret?”
    “No. I didn’t think you’d snoop into my background.”
    “I didn’t snoop. Ryan mentioned it.”
    “Oh.”
    “Are you interested or not?”
    Baylee propped her chin in her hand and regarded him. Something was going on behind her eyes. Some sort of calculation, Trey thought.
    “I’m interested in hearing your proposal.”
    “I’ll pay your hourly rate for forty hours a week, but I’m the boss. You clean, you cook, you shop, you organize and anything else within reason I ask you to do.”
    “Who gets to decide what’s within reason?”
    “You do. If I ask you to do something you object to, say so. We’ll work it out.”
    Again, he saw her calculating. Numbers? How to take advantage of him? He wished he knew.
    “What if you don’t have enough work to keep me busy for forty hours?”
    “I’ll pay you for forty hours. There might be weeks when it’s more or less. You can keep track of your hours and tell me if it balances out to more than that in a month. If you’re caught up, you can take off no matter what time it is.”
    “You’re overpaying for this kind of job. You know that, right?”
    “I was already overpaying for you to do nothing but clean.”
    Baylee grinned. Trey liked her smile.
    “How much notice do you want if I decide to quit?”
    “You haven’t said you’d take the job and you’re already planning to quit?”
    “I don’t plan to stick around here forever cleaning houses and running errands. I’ve plastered my résumé all over the Southeast. It’s only a matter of time before I find something comparable to what I was doing before. Will two weeks’ notice be enough?”
    “Sure.”
    “Great. Should we start now?”
     
     
    Baylee managed to contain her glee until she left Trey’s house. Organizing him wasn’t as hard as he apparently thought it was. Working in bank operations, she’d had to be organized in order to have vital information at her fingertips if an emergency called for it. Overseeing a couple of months of paperwork for one former pro athlete paled in comparison to keeping track of the amount a large bank holding company generated.
    She didn’t think she was being overly optimistic when she’d told Trey she’d find another banking position soon. She stayed in touch with every worthwhile contact she’d made during her banking career. Even though her résumé had generated hardly any