The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield

Chapter Two: The Lesser of Two Evils

"You're kidding me!"

I groaned as I kept refreshing the browser page and got the same message over and over again saying that I have no internet connection.

It was my day off the next day and after sleeping in a little, I got up, ate a granola bar I grabbed from Marlow's snack room yesterday, and sat down in front of my laptop to check on some job listings. I needed a second job or something better-paying than my current one.

After checking all my connections and power-cycling my wireless modem, I grabbed my cellphone and called the cable company. I didn't have cable or phone but I kept the internet service, the cheapest and slowest I could possibly get.

"Hi, I'm just wondering why you guys cut my internet off," I said nicely when a girl picked up twenty minutes later. 

She asked for all my information and reluctantly, I gave them to her.

I didn't even know why I was calling. I knew the answer.

"Ms. Samuels, the reason you were disconnected is because we haven't received a payment from you last month and what had been current had just rolled over to a past due today. If you can pay us the overdue, we will be able to reconnect your service for you," she said and I sighed out loud.

We made arrangements and she restored my services for a few days until my online banking payment came through. After we hung up, I went into my web-banking account and grimaced at the negative balance. I was in overdraft on my checking account and my small line of credit was already maxed out. Even with my paycheck from Marlow's coming in a week, I wouldn't have enough to rise above the water. The internet bill was only one of the many unpaid ones I had stacked up on the kitchen table.

You can have a million dollars if you just put up with Brandon Maxfield for a year.

It wasn't the first time I recalled it since yesterday. In fact, his outrageous offer kept popping up in my head every fifteen minutes.

A million dollars would definitely get me out of debt and set me up comfortably. It could put me through pastry school and still leave me with enough to start my own small bakeshop. All I had to give up was a year of my life.

That plus your principles, your sanity and possibly your virtue.

Despite his awful behavior yesterday, I highly doubted that I would be able to fight my attraction to the man while living with him for a year. There was no mention about the more intimate parts of the marriage he proposed but recalling how enthralled he was with me, I didn't think he'd want to exercise his husbandly rights. I didn't want to go there either because so many things about it will just be so wrong—we didn't love each other, he's paying me to marry him and everything will just be a pretense.

It's like being an exclusive, high-class prostitute who gets a ring on her finger as temporary as her new last name.

The thought immediately doused any interest I had in the money. Sure, the money would make everything easier but I wasn't too far gone yet.

I dialed a number on my phone again. "Hey, Bobby. Do you need any shifts picked up today?"

An hour later, I was waiting on tables at the diner. It was lunch time—a busy couple of hours—and the tips were good. The bustle also took my mind off two of the biggest things that kept bothering me—Brandon and Bills. 

My good mood soured a little when I saw a man walk into the diner and stand by the elevated entrance, scanning the crowd. His face lit up when his eyes fell on me and I inwardly cringed.

Dustin Clarence was a junior partner in one of the top law firms in the city. He was in his mid-thirties and still attractive with his light blond hair and blue eyes but something about him just seemed... slimy.