Maid for the Single Dad Read Online Free PDF Page B

toward the door. Cookbook under her arm, she tiptoed up the silent hall to the kitchen even though she knew she was alone in the house. Mac had said he and his children would be gone the entire afternoon, yet she still felt as if she was doing something wrong.
    But she wasn’t. She could cook. She simply hadn’t memorized recipes for anything beyond burgers and spaghetti. All she had to do was find a recipe, prepare the food, and serve it like a good maid, then Cain and Liz would both get the recommendations they needed.
    Sitting at the weathered table by the French doors, she took the cookbook out of the plastic bookstore bag. Easy Main Dishes in Under An Hour. Ellie laughed. Ava was nothing if not perceptive! This should be a cinch.
    She perused the recipes, with one eye on the canal so she would see the Carmichael family if they returnedunexpectedly. Spotting a recipe she liked—penne pasta with portabella mushrooms and red and yellow peppers—she took the book with her as she walked around the kitchen, checking for supplies.
    The well-stocked refrigerator had both red and yellow peppers and portabella mushrooms. The cabinet held penne pasta. Next she found the ingredients for the Alfredo sauce. Interestingly, in the last cabinet on the row closest to the door leading to the stairway, she also found the controls for the gate, including a small computer monitor that displayed the feed from the video camera. One button said “Open gate.” One said “Close gate.” A system couldn’t get any simpler than that.
    Because the meal would only take an hour to prepare, she decided to do laundry and some light cleaning while Mac and the kids were out on the ocean.
    She found baskets of dirty clothes in each of the kids’ bathrooms, but she stopped at the master suite. Mac hadn’t even opened the door to let her peek in as he’d done with Lacy’s room. A bedroom was such a private space, it felt like an invasion to even look inside. Forget about walking in. She’d feel like an interloper. She’d already had to talk herself out of being suspicious of this guy. She didn’t want to give her free-wheeling imagination any more grist for the mill!
    Maybe tomorrow she’d be adjusted enough to collect his laundry, but she’d handled enough for today.
    After sorting the kids’ clothes, she put a load into the washer then returned downstairs, this time using the fancy curved cherrywood stairway.
    She walked past the living room with shiny marble floor, heavy tapestry drapes and ultra-modern furniture with glass tables. Not exactly her taste, but in keeping with the rest of the museum-like décor. The room wasn’t evenin need of a light dusting. So she checked the dining room, playroom, sitting room and den and found them all in the same spotless condition. She walked to the kitchen where she grabbed the notepad on which she’d made the list of everything that needed to be done as Mac had suggested, and began arranging things in the best order for cleaning. Whether the rooms “needed” dusting or not, she would begin a rotation that maintained the spotless condition of this home.
    By the time the yacht returned, she had a schedule developed that would assure the entire house would be kept spotless, the laundry would be done and three meals would be prepared.
    Chopping the peppers, she watched out the window as Mac carried Henry on his arm and led his daughter up the dock to the backyard and toward the house. She fought the suspicion again that something was wrong with this picture because she didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t something she could see or something she’d heard, only a sense she had. If she just had something substantial to base the feeling on, she’d know how to handle it. Instead, she had only an unhappy imagination that was making her crazy.
    Annoyed with herself for not dropping this, she waited for them to enter the