Maid to Fit
Wanted: One Household Hero
Single mom Kayla Clark is ready to wave the white flag. Between a demanding career,
caring for her elderly mother and raising a teenager, she needs help! A housekeeper
is the answer—but Kayla doesn’t expect the former army sergeant she hires through
Man Maid to be young, fit and
sexy
….
Ronnie Brown hasn’t yet adjusted to civilian life, and he welcomes the normality of
whipping Kayla’s home into shape. Flirting with her is just a perk. But when he realizes
just how much Kayla and her daughter need him, he quickly takes charge of a lot more
than scrubbing floors. As he becomes more and more a part of the family fabric, soon
he can’t imagine his life without the two of them in it.
Now Ronnie just has to convince his beautiful boss she can trust him to take care
of
all
her needs….
Maid to Fit
Rebecca M. Avery
Harlequin E Contemporary Romance
Thanks to my loving husband, Derek, and ornery children, Harley and Kevin, who never
miss an opportunity to laugh at me while I’m dancing in my chair, headphones on and
happily typing away, lost in my own imagination…you guys are great! My sincere appreciation
to the real Rhawnie and her overgrown German shepherd dog, Moses, for being such an
inspiration and allowing me to twist things into a whole new reality. For taking a
chance on an unknown author with absolutely no clue what she’s doing but who always
has a story to tell, a special thanks to my editor Stacy.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to my world of what ifs and maybe just maybe. This book is a combination of
personalities, memories and life experiences that I shoved into a bag, shook up with
all my might, then pulled out the result and combined it with my overactive imagination.
I sincerely hope you get as caught up in reading this little bit of folly as I did
when I wrote it and that you’ll see a little bit of yourself in one or more of these
characters.
I am truly amazed at how I can fall asleep within minutes while watching a television
show or movie, even in a theater or with the surround sound on, but I can’t sleep
through my own dreams. While I might be able to take or leave a film, the images a
good book provokes in my mind stick with me for years. Those thoughts, ideas and feelings
a story can provide feed my soul and I sincerely hope that this story does just a
little bit of that for you.
The characters in my head have been there my whole life and they call out to me in
the dark of night asking me to tell their stories. In the case of this series the
characters are a tight bunch of friends finding their way in life and love. Fear kept
me from letting them leave my head and make their own way in the world. Now that I
am releasing them by writing down their adventures I find that I haven’t lost them
at all—I’ve just made room for more.
Leave your world for a little while and enjoy mine.
Rebecca M. Avery
Table of Contents
Prologue
Master Sergeant Russell “Rusty” Hawkins needed a game plan.
He sat in his recliner facing three men from his unit who were lounging on his sofa.
Only, they weren’t really in his unit anymore. Now all four of them were just regular
guys…
civilians
.
These men had served under him during their last deployment to Afghanistan, which
had ended a few months ago, but Rusty was no longer in charge; now he was just their
friend. Yet somehow they still expected him to push them in the right direction. The
problem was that the only thing he could suggest to them right now was to start taking
college courses to prepare themselves for the workforce.
“You should take the money Uncle Sam gave you for school and use it wisely,” he said,
eyeing each of them.
“I plan on it, sir. But at night, when the fresh-out-of-high-school students are out
partying. I’m not real big on the idea of being the weird old guy in the class,” Sergeant
First Class Ronald “Ronnie” Brown said.
Ronnie was built like a tank. He was also a handsome man with a strong jaw, brown
hair and blue eyes, and Rusty had noticed that Ronnie often caught women’s attention.
Unlike some of the rowdy characters who had been under Rusty’s command in the United
States Army, Ronnie was different—quiet and serious. Rusty understood where Ronnie
was coming from, but these guys needed college degrees. They had no training for civilian
jobs—unless shooting an M-16 or sniffing out insurgents happened to be listed as required
skills for job applicants.
“I was hoping for a little fun before hitting the books myself. I was thinking of
an easy job with nights and weekends off,” Sergeant First Class Seth Lewis chimed
in. “After being on the clock every second of every day, I could use a break.”
Of course he wanted plenty of free time.
Seth was a horny bastard with a face that seemed to leave women blushing and giggling.
The guys in the unit had nicknamed him “Pole” to remind him of his roots as a former
exotic dancer. Getting Seth to think with the head containing his brain was often
easier said than done.
“You could always give dance lessons, Pole,” Staff Sergeant Ian Hamilton said, then
snickered.
Ian was the clown of the group, always quick with a joke. He could pull off pranks
worthy of a medal. He was also the youngest of the group and even bigger than Ronnie.
He was effectively an overgrown ten-year-old, but his heart was always in the right
place. He tended to be the therapist of the group.
This crew needed direction—that was all there was to it. Being tired and burned out,
they all wanted to be as far away from war and the potential of violence as possible.
Their last deployment had been an experience that was forever burned into their minds.
It was one none of them wanted to repeat. Killing was never pleasant, but after the
mission that nearly cost them all their lives, none of them wanted to carry a weapon
anytime soon, if ever.
The fact that they’d all managed to make it out without a scratch was fate’s way of
offering up something different for their lives…but what?
Security work wasn’t appealing because it involved guns and the possibility of having
to use them. These men needed jobs that would utilize the
other
skills they’d learned in the military.
Rusty had run a well-oiled unit and each of these men had impressed him. They followed
orders, kept their barracks and living areas up to his standards and could multitask
and then some. If only there were jobs for
those
skills.
He’d thought of one option, but he wasn’t sure how the guys would react.
Along with the little house he now lived in, Rusty’s grandfather had also left him
a small commercial cleaning business. There was enough work to keep Rusty, and possibly
one other person, employed now that his grandfather was gone and the woman who had
worked for him had retired. There wasn’t much money in the business, but cleaning
offices was mundane and easy. If he expanded the business to include residential services,
maybe he could keep these guys going for a while, until they decided what they wanted
to do with their lives.
Did people hire men to clean?
He would put any of these three men up against a professional cleaning crew any day
of the week. Rusty was meticulous about inspections of both the soldier and the soldier’s
personal living space, and none of these guys had ever disappointed him. He could
offer it up as an option and let each man decide for himself. “How about cleaning
houses?” he asked the group of men.
“You mean like a
maid?
” Ronnie asked in shock.
“Do you have a better option, Sergeant? You are welcome to see what kind of job you
can find on your own—all three of you should start job hunting—but if you’re interested
in making a little money in the meantime, I could make some changes to my grandpa’s
cleaning business and you all could work for me. Startup costs would be minimal, as
would overhead expenses,” Rusty explained.
“Might want to dust off those cute little maid outfits of yours, Seth,” Ian said with
a laugh.
“Kiss my ass, you oversized troll,” Seth said, punching Ian on the arm. “Count me
in, that sounds perfect. Flexible work during the day…evenings and weekends free.”
Ian brushed off Seth’s punch as though shooing away a fly, laughed and said, “I’m
in, too.”
“What about you, Ronnie?” Rusty asked.
“I’m in. At least until I can find something else or start school,” Ronnie replied,
his hand falling to the German Shepherd at his side. “You sure you don’t mind Buck
staying with you for a while? I talked to the landlord again and he said no way.”
Buck was a ninety-pound service dog who had earned his place in their squad by saving
them from a roadside bomb when a routine mission had suddenly gone all wrong. Rusty
forced the memories of that horrible day to the back of his mind and concentrated
on what they were going to do about Buck.
The dog wasn’t as young as he used to be. He’d been retired, but the guys had been
unable to give him up after they’d all opted not to reenlist at the end of this last
tour of duty and followed Rusty to his hometown of Beavercreek, Ohio. Ronnie had adopted
Buck before he’d settled into his current apartment with Seth and Ian, which didn’t
allow pets. Rusty owned the small house that his grandfather had left to him when
he’d passed away, which meant he was the only one with the ability to house Buck at
the moment.
He didn’t mind hosting Buck. All of his guys could have gone their separate ways once
they were out of the service, but surviving what they had endured together had somehow
made them more than just brothers in arms…it had made them family—Buck included.
As the surrogate patriarch of this group of misfits, Rusty was in charge, even though
he was no longer their commanding officer. Now, instead of looking to him for military
orders, they were looking to him for instructions on what to do with their lives.
Hell, he didn’t know what to do with his own life.
Expanding his grandfather’s cleaning service was the best he could come up with at
this point.
“Give me a week or two to do a little research on the industry, come up with some
prices and do a little advertising. For now, we’ll all split the work that the business
already has. It’s not much, but I’ll let you know when I have something more for you,”
he said with more confidence than he felt.
* * *
The guys weren’t going to like their paychecks.
Over the past month, Rusty had managed to scrape and scrounge and even call in a few
favors to get each man one or two additional cleaning jobs. They hadn’t done a bad
job; a good 90 percent of the customers had scheduled weekly cleanings. However, unless
business
significantly
picked up, this just wasn’t going to pan out.
“Well, if you thought military wages were lousy, just wait until you get a load of
these
paychecks,” Rusty said, handing each of them a check for two weeks’ worth of work.
“What the hell?” Ronnie said, glancing at his check. “Where is the rest of it?”
Rusty handed each of them a printout that showed how he had broken down the business
expenses, keeping only what was needed to restock cleaning supplies, print flyers
and run an ad in the local newspaper.
“You didn’t even pay yourself, did you, sir?” Ronnie asked after reviewing the document.
Rusty shook his head no. There was barely enough to pay
them
. He’d split the money from the jobs three ways. He had some money in savings, and
he knew they most likely did not. If he’d taken out a percentage to pay himself, they
would have been making next to nothing.