When he got home from practice, Cam took a good hard look at his house, trying to see it as a stranger would. Unfortunately, Max was right. His place was hideously messy. It wasn’t that he didn’t like things clean; he did. He appreciated cleanliness. When on one of their twenty-some annual road trips, he liked how spotless everything was in the hotel. He could usually keep it that way for the one or two nights he was in the hotel room. At home it was a different story. It all boiled down to how much dirt and disorganization he could handle, and his tolerance level was pretty high. On the spectrum between Buckingham Palace and the aforementioned crack house, he landed squarely on the crack house end. As a public figure, he had a responsibility to the team to keep up appearances and he didn’t particularly want to be that guy, the one who everyone thought of as the slob first and a hockey player second.
Even so, on the morning the maid Max ordered for him was due, Cam fought the urge to tidy up. From the moment he got out of bed, he questioned himself. Would he normally have thrown that water bottle away, or would he have left it on the counter? He was toying with the idea of making this a regular gig, but only if he didn’t have to perform the pre-visit tidying ritual that Max and Paul’s wife, Natalie, did. As much as possible, he wanted the state of his house today to be “authentic.”
The doorbell rang and his two dogs erupted in a cacophony of barking. He had an Akita/Shepherd mix, Zeus, and a tan-and-white Chihuahua, Gizmo. Gizmo could be counted on to behave, but Zeus was still a pup at heart.
Cam checked the front door video feed. His security system allowed him to use his phone to view several spots outside of the house. Holy shit. She was a looker. Mid-twenties. Hourglass figure. Long brown hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Oddly, she wore makeup that made her look like she was going to a club rather than cleaning his house. Maybe she had a date afterward. She also wore some kind of electronic device about the size of an Oreo on a cord around her neck.
Holding on to Zeus’s collar, Cam opened the door. Warily eyeing his dogs, she had a gym bag slung over her shoulder and a rolling crate of cleaning supplies.
“Hi. I’m Suzette,” she said with a damned pretty smile. “I’m here to clean your house.”
“I’m Cam. This is Zeus and this little fella is Gizmo. Come on in. They’re friendly,” he said. “They just need to get used to you.”
Zeus pulled to get loose, but Cam held on. “I hope you’re prepared for a mess,” he said as his dog attempted to inhale all the olfactory atoms he possibly could.
“I’m used to messes,” Suzette said. “Is there a room where I can change?”
Change? He flicked his gaze over her—skinny jeans that clung to her superbly rounded ass, a gray T-shirt, a pair of red Converse shoes. Maybe she wanted to put on a smock or an apron or something. Zeus was now sniffing her feet, his tail wagging at a slow enough tempo that Cam risked letting him go.
“Ah, sure. There’s a bathroom right over there, on the right.”
“Thanks.” She pulled a piece of paper out of a folder in the crate and handed it to him. “If you could, I need you to sign this waiver thing before we get started.”
She left the cart of cleaning supplies in the foyer, but took her duffle with her.
Shit. Now that she was here, he felt even more embarrassed about the state of his house. Despite his earlier intent to leave his house in its raw state, he hustled to the kitchen and attempted to consolidate the dirty dishes into a pile instead of leaving them on every available square inch of counter. Damn it. Shouldn’t he get a pass just by virtue of being a single guy living alone? People knew that single guys were messy. They expected it. He’d just make sure to give her a really big tip. That should do the trick.
“Okay, let’s get started. Did you sign it?” she asked from the front hallway.
Shit. He’d forgotten. He grabbed a pen and scrawled his name on it. In his haste, he put his jersey number too, like he’d done thousands of times when signing autographs. Dumbass.
He scratched out the number just as she came into the kitchen. Wearing only lingerie.
A black lacy push-up bra, matching panties, a garter belt, thigh high stockings, and some fuck-me pumps.
What.
The.
Ever-loving.
Fuck?
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