Victoria The Billionaire's Maid

VICTORIA's POV

I looked at my watch. It was almost noon. Four hours to go and I could soak my aching feet. I was on my fifth straight shift of the week and it had been a hectic one.

Alexander Reigns, my employer had simply lost his mind. That's what I thought anyways. I didn't blame him and I often felt bad for him... but lost his mind he most definitely had done.

Mr. Reigns was in the middle of a divorce.

I had worked for him while his wife lived in the mansion and within a few short weeks of working for them I had come to several conclusions: Mr. Reigns was smart, respectable, kind and with the combination of his dark brown hair and intensely sexy hazel eyes that were surrounded by ridiculously long lashes, he was also drop-dead gorgeous.

Mrs. Reigns, on the other hand, was petty, small, and unkind, and fortunately for her since she had no other likable qualities, she was also drop-dead gorgeous. The pending divorce hadn't come as much of a shock to the staff.

We had all discreetly heard the arguments and watched the couple slowly growing apart. It was in my opinion, for whatever that was worth, the best thing for them both since neither of them had seemed happy for quite some time.

Not that anyone was going to ask the upstairs maid for her opinion anyways. I had plenty of them saved up however if they ever did ask me.

Besides approving of the divorce, I'd very much like to voice my opinion to my thirty-year-old employer that a man in his position in the community should not spend every night throughout the work week partaking in wild partying and loose women.

I could easily have these thoughts as I dusted the pictures on the walls and the vases on the tables outside of the master suite, but I knew that if I were ever asked for my opinions, I would more than likely keep them to myself.

I could barely form two thoughts, let alone real words when he looked at me with those incredibly sexy eyes of his. With a sigh at that thought, I finished my dusting and began mopping the highly polished marble hallway floor.

Once I finished that, the only room I had left to clean before polishing the banister was the master suite. I hadn't seen any sign of Mr. Reigns this morning, so it was highly likely that he was still asleep.

Since the divorce, we had all been asked by the house supervisor Karen to wait for the doors to be open before we cleaned or took anything into the suite.

Mr. Reigns was prone to skipping board meetings and sleeping until noon some days and as kind, as he could be, you didn't want to wake the sleeping lion with a hangover; he was prone to hotheaded outbursts when he was under a lot of stress and with the divorce and the pressures of running a multi-national corporation, the stress was plentiful.

I almost whined though when I saw them closed. I wanted to finish up here before I went to lunch.

Because of his late mornings that turned into afternoons, I hadn't been able to get in there until the end of my shift the past two days and it needed a thorough cleaning.

I was mopping past the closed door when I heard his voice. "Please listen to me and hear me this time. I earned the fruits of my labor. I'm thirty years old.

Since I was eighteen I have either gone to school or worked twelve hours out of nearly every day to get where I am.

Being married to me and might I add, reaping many benefits while you were, does not give you the right now to take what is rightfully mine thanks to all of my hard work."

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but he wasn't whispering either. I assumed that he was talking to Mrs. Reigns. It wasn't the first time that I'd heard him tell her almost the same thing. It seemed that the woman wanted more and more from him.

I shook my head, wondering how someone could become so greedy. As I had that thought, the cell phone in my pocket vibrated with a message. I stopped, leaned on my mop, and pulled it out.

I smiled when I saw that it was from my boyfriend, Jason. I clicked open the message and as I read it, the smile quickly faded.

"Victoria, I'm not sure how to say this, but I'm sure you've noticed as I have that things between us aren't what they used to be. I've been doing a lot of thinking and I've decided that maybe we need to take a break. Maybe taking some time apart will help us decide if we want to move forward with this, or maybe we're both wasting our time trying to make something work that just isn't there. I wish you the best and I'll keep in touch." I stared at the phone for a long time.

What did he mean a break?

What the hell was that?

What are the rules when you take a break?

Do we see other people?

Do we just sit around and look inside ourselves and try to decide if we're really in love or not?

I seriously have no idea what a break means. He's also acting like I knew there were problems. I had no idea there were problems. What kind of problems?

I thought we were doing fine. I'm such an idiot. A single tear slid down my face. I was surprised until I tasted the salt at the corners of my mouth.

I don't know why I'm crying. He doesn't think this relationship is worth more than a text message to just call an end to it.

We were supposed to see each other tonight. This couldn't have waited? A steady stream of tears had begun to make their way down my cheeks. I had to pull myself together.

I was at work for crying out loud! I prided myself on my ability to always maintain a professional appearance at work.

My hair was always up, I wore very little makeup, my hideously ugly and unflattering uniforms were clean and starched and ironed... yet here I stood in the grand upper hallway of this beautiful mansion, unable to stop the tears.

I reached into my cleaning cart for tissue and that's when I heard the crack of the door opening. I didn't mean to look up, it was just an automatic response to the sound.

But I did look up and I hadn't wiped my face yet and now I was not only crying at work... I was face to face with my employer.

Oh God, I wish I could kick Jason's butt right now!

"Victoria?

What's wrong?" Alexander Reigns was looking at me with concern in his pretty eyes.

He looked so sincere and instead of making me stop acting like a sniveling idiot in his hallway, it made me dissolve into a torrent of tears accompanied by huge gulping sobs and the whole bit.

God, I wanted to crawl behind the two-foot-tall priceless vase that sat just to my left and disappear.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Reigns," I said between sobs.

"I'm, I'm just going to go pull myself together..."

"No, wait, Victoria, please." He came towards me.

Even in my current state I couldn't help but notice how the green of the shirt he wore matched the rim of green around the outside of his irises.

His full lips were set in a frown and his perfectly shaped brown eyebrows were drawn together in the middle giving him a sexy, introspective look.

Yet I still stood where I was, bawling like an idiot. He put his hand on my arm. It was the first time he'd touched me.

Electricity raced from the source of that touch down my arm, causing my hand and fingers to tingle. What in the world was wrong with me?

This was my employer. The only reason he was touching me was that he found me crying in the hallway outside of his room. I need this job.

Stop crying, Vicki. Stop it!

"Victoria? Come with me, let's have you sit down.

I'll get you some water." He was trying to steer me into the master suite.

I pulled back, softly, but enough to make him stop and again look at my face.

"I'm so sorry, sir. I'll just go down to the staff restroom and clean up.

I'm so embarrassed and I hope you'll forgive me." He smiled slightly and said, "What is there to forgive?"

"I'm being so unprofessional..." He let the slight smile turn into a full one.

His dimples showed on either side of his face and his full lips framed a set of the straightest, whitest teeth I'd ever seen.

He was so beautiful and I probably had mascara running down my face. "You're upset," he said.

"You haven't done anything to me so you have nothing to apologize for. I'm sorry that you're upset. Is there something I can do? Someone I can call for you?"

"Oh no sir, it's so silly really. I don't even know why I'm crying. It's ridiculous."

"What is, Victoria? What is it that upset you?" I kind of laughed and snot came out of my nose.

I covered my face with a paper towel and wanted to die.

"I'm sorry," I squeaked out again.

This time he laughed and he took hold of my arm again.

"Come with me. No arguments." I followed him.

He led me to the elevator at the end of the hallway. I started letting myself think all sorts of crazy things like he was walking me out and he'd ask me not to return for my shift tomorrow.

I tried to imagine how I'd pay my rent. We stepped into the elevator and he pushed the "B" for the basement. The basement was his private domain.

It was his playground; he had a wet bar and a private theatre and a pool table and even a room with a bed.

That was where my luscious employer did his partying since his wife left him. I'd always appreciated it for the simple fact that if he kept a woman over I didn't have to come face to face with her outside the master suite in the morning.

The doors slid open and Alexander held his arm out in a gesture for me to step off. I did. I didn't come down here often. Manny, one of the other house staff was in charge of cleaning this area during his regular shift.

I only did it on Manny's days off.

Mr. Reigns led me over to the dark cherry bar on the far side of the main room and patted one of the deep red velvet seats.

"Sit down, Victoria. I'm going to fix you a drink."

"Oh no, sir! My shift isn't over for a few more hours..." Smiling again he said, "I'm well aware of when your shift ends. You can't get fired for drinking with the boss though, so I'm going to pour myself one too. Then, I'm going to sit down next to you and you're going to tell me what has you in tears." He was being so kind.

It almost made me feel worse about my terrible behavior than if he'd just yelled at me. He had his back to me but I could see his face in the mirror above the bar.

He hadn't shaved today and dark stubble covered his chin and cheeks and across his upper lip.

It gave him an edgy, sexy look and it was contrary to his normal well-coiffed business look. His eyes were also rimmed in red; a lack of sleep, I presumed.

That added an element of vulnerability; it made him seem more human. I liked it.

"What do you drink, Victoria?"

"I'm not a big drinker, sir. Usually, if I have something, it's just a glass of wine."

"Wine it is then," he said.

"And stop with the 'sir' please. It's Alex."

I think I felt the color rush to my cheeks. There was no way I could call this man by his first name. I looked at him as some kind of deity... it seemed sacrilegious for me to even consider it.

He turned back towards me and sat a chilled glass filled with a burgundy liquid in front of me.

"Thank you," I said.

I glanced in the mirror now that I could see myself. Luckily since I hadn't worn much make-up, none of it was streaked down my face. I just looked redder than normal.

"You're welcome," he said softly.

Alexander poured himself a beer out of the tap and came around and sat in the chair next to me. "Now, what have you so upset?"

I sat at the bar in the basement on a plush velvet high-back chair that probably cost more than my month's salary with my boss staring into my blue eyes with his hazel ones, asking me why he found me crying in the hallway. This was not at all how I expected my day to go.

What was I supposed to say? I think I'd be too embarrassed to admit to my best friend that my boyfriend broke up with me in a text message.

How the heck was I supposed to sit here and admit that to Alexander Reigns, CEO of Reigns Biotechnical Incorporated? Ugh!

I want to die, I do.

"I just got an upsetting text message." I said that and then I remembered that Karen had put out a memo over a month ago telling us that she "frowned" on our use of our phones during working hours unless we were on a break.

I wasn't on a break... but Jason and I are.

Oh damn! Now I'm crying again. I'm a hot mess. I sucked down the alcohol in the pretty glass in front of me, barely tasting it.

"Alex" was smiling at me.

"I wish you weren't so anxious around me, Victoria.I'm just a regular person like you." Yeah, right. I don't think so. "I'm sorry, sir."

Laughing now he said, "Alex. What was the text message about? Is your family okay?"

My father took off for parts unknown when I was five. My mother was a pole dancer until she made enough money to buy her club and now she owns the poles. No, my family is not okay but I'm sure that's not what he meant.

"Yes," I said. Taking a deep breath I decided it would probably be better to just get this over with and then maybe he would let me get back to my work and we could get busy forgetting this ever happened.

"My family is fine. As I said, it's silly really. I got a text from my boyfriend. I feel foolish because I had the impression that he and I were doing fine. I was very wrong about that, I suppose. The text said that he thought we needed to 'take a break.' I have no idea what that would even entail." He laughed again.

This time it upset me just a little bit. He insisted I tell him and now he's laughing at me?

"I'm sorry, Victoria. I'm not laughing at you. It's not even a happy laugh. It's just that it's almost exactly what happened to me. I had no idea that my wife was even considering a divorce until the day I came home from work and she had moved out. Sometimes I think we are clueless because we want to be... Do you know? It's a defense mechanism, I think."

"I suppose if I gave it some serious thought, I could find more than one reason why he's right... starting with the fact that he broke up with me in a text message."

"Yes, I don't even know him and he lost a lot of points with me for that one," he said, with a wink and a smile.

Alexander picked up my glass and said, "Another?"

"I should probably get back..." He waved his hand at me and got up to go back behind the bar.

"This mausoleum is spotless, Victoria. One unmade bed won't make or break it." I watched him pour us another drink.

He sat the wine down in front of me and said, "How long have you been together with your boyfriend?"

"A little over a year," I told him.

"How old are you, Victoria?"

"You can call me Vicki," I told him.

"I'm twenty-three." "Is your boyfriend...?"

"Jason."

"Jason. Is he twenty-three also?"

"He's twenty-four," I said.

"I remember twenty-four," he said as if he were an old man.

"It's that age when you start thinking that you need to settle down and begin getting your life in order. Some people don't handle that well. They panic and think they need to go have some fun... one last fling before they're tied down for the next twenty years or so."

"I wasn't pressuring him at all. We hadn't even talked about marriage yet. We don't live together."

"That's my point though. Does Jason have a lot of friends who are either married or engaged?"

"His best friend got married a month ago and their other friend from college just got engaged." He nodded.

"I don't know Jason and I don't mean to put ideas in your head that aren't fact... so take this with a grain of salt, okay?"

I nodded and he went on, "That's probably where the pressure came from... not you, Vicki." I liked the way he said, "Vicki."

"You think he's afraid I'll expect him to marry me?"

"Well, after a year of dating at your age, that's the logical next step, isn't it? Do you want children?"

"Someday, yes."

"Does Jason know that?"

"Yes of course... he's not that thrilled about the idea of being a father. Neither of us had the best examples growing up. I think he's always been a little concerned that we'll mess it up too."Alexander surprised me then.

He reached over and picked up a piece of my hair that had fallen out of my bun and tucked it behind my ear. It was a quick, gentle touch but it seemed like such an intimate one between an employer and employee.

As soon as he drew his hand back I found myself wishing that he would touch me again. "You're beautiful," he said.

I almost fell out of my chair. Instead, I picked up my wine glass and drained it.

"Thank you," I told him, finally.

He smiled. He was beautiful... incredibly so.

"Again, I could be wrong and over-stepping but my thought would be that he said 'a break' instead of 'break-up' because he knows what a fool he would be to let you go, deep down. But don't let him make all the decisions here, Vicki. Remember your self-worth. If you're not truly happy with him, then spend your 'break' deciding what it is that you want from him if you do take him back. Realize that by initiating this, he thinks he has the power, but he doesn't. Your life and your happiness are in your hands, not his." I forced a smile.

My head was buzzing. I wasn't much of a drinker and the two glasses of wine had already gone to my head. "I will. Thank you. Is that what you've been doing?" That was such a personal question.

I wanted to take it back as soon as I asked it but Alexander didn't seem offended. Instead, he looked embarrassed.

"No, I give great advice, but I don't live it. What I've been doing, Vicki is avoiding it all. I don't want to fight over material possessions, yet I don't want to give this woman I was married to for five years everything I've worked for and amassed in my adult life. Does that seem selfish?"

"Not at all. I have always had difficulty with the idea of alimony. It's 2022 and female or not, I'm as capable of making a billion dollars as the person I decide to marry is. At least I hope I am. Lately, I haven't been feeling very proud of where I am at this stage in my life. I have always intended to do so much more. I want to give back to the community, you know? I don't want to live in this beautiful place surrounded by beautiful landscapes and only enjoy it. I want to be a part of the solution to problems like homelessness and environmental issues. I mean... I won't do that working as a maid, but I don't intend to do this job forever... Shoot! I mean, I love my job, it's just..." He laughed.

"It's okay, Vicki. I haven't had a lot of opportunities to speak to you one on one like this, but from what I do know about you, you're much too intelligent to be doing physical labor your entire life. I would be nothing but happy for you if a better opportunity comes along. What do you see yourself doing someday?"

"I finished my prerequisites for the Physician's Assistant program at UC Davis. I just took a year... or two off to save some money."

"Physician's Assistant, huh? That's admirable."

I shrugged. "I've just always liked healing things. I had a stray animal hospital in our basement when I was a kid." I laughed at the memory of birds with broken wings and stray cats that had been in fights and needed patching up. Back then I would tell my mom I wanted to be a surgeon.

She would tell me to "Marry one" instead. Gotta love my mom. "So why a P.A. why not a physician?"

"Medical school is really expensive," I said.

"Plus it's very intense. Even when I get into the P.A. program I'll have to keep working to support myself. I can't see myself doing that and still doing well in medical school."

"I admire your drive, Vicki. It was one of the many things that Cassandra and I fought about when she lived here."

Cassandra is his wife and I had heard one or two of those fights as I kept my head down and tried to pretend I didn't.

"She doesn't have any at all. She never wanted to work, which I was okay with at first. But I had pictured her heading up charities or at the very least having our children and caring for them. As it turned out, she had no interest in any of that at all. She informed me two years into our marriage that she wasn't interested in being a mother. I can't believe that I'm telling you this," he said suddenly.

I realized he remembered who he was talking to. Not thinking I shot my hand out and covered his with it.

"That had to be hard. Please don't worry. I will keep your confidence. I appreciate you talking to me about this so much. I know how busy you are and for you to take time out of your day like this for the likes of me..." He moved his hand, but he didn't take it away.

Instead, he wrapped mine up in it and looked intensely at my face as he said, "Don't do that, Vicki. Don't say things about yourself like that as if I'm better than you and I'm slumming by sitting here having a pleasant conversation with you. The things I just told you about Cassie... they're not things I shared with anyone else, except my attorneys, that's why I said I couldn't believe I was telling you. It feels good to be able to talk to someone about it." I smiled and nodded.

He was still gripping my hand. My heart was speeding up and I was suddenly having a hard time breathing.

"You can talk to me about any of it, sir. I won't tell anyone." He grinned.

"I wish you'd stop calling me sir," he said again.

"Tell me about you, Vicki. Where did you grow up?"

"I grew up in L.A. out near Glendale." "I grew up here too, in Orange County," he said.

Of course, he did. I wasn't certain of his background, but it was obvious wealth wasn't brand new to him.

He wore it so well though. I'd never seen him be haughty or arrogant about it, unlike his dear wife.

"I spent a lot of time in Orange when I was young," I told him.

"My mother worked in a place there and I'd go out and spend time on the playground near the pier at Seal Beach or watching the sunset or eating a burger at..."

"Ruby's!" "Yes," I said with a smile.

"I loved Ruby's."

"Me too, it was my favorite spot. "It was not!"

"Seriously, I used to sit at that booth in the far corner and play music on that little table jukebox and watch the sunset nearly every Friday night."

"I loved those jukeboxes and I loved that booth too! It was always taken. I think I only actually got to sit there once."

"It was probably me," he said with a grin.

I smiled back at him, who could help it? It was funny to imagine our lives intersecting like that as kids and us not even noticing. He was seven years older than me though.

I was about twelve when I started spending a lot of time down there. He was probably already in college. Still, it was nice to know we had that in common. "Thank you, sir," I said.

He'd taken my mind off of Jason and I was very appreciative.

He laughed and said, "You're welcome... for what I'm not sure."

"For making me forget my problems and remember being happy on the beach. It was so nice of you to take time out of your schedule for me, sir. I appreciate it."

He suddenly had a look in his eyes that wasn't amusement and his voice was husky as he said, "I wish that you'd stop calling me sir. I want to kiss you, Vicki... badly. When you call me 'Sir' it reminds me that I shouldn't."

I was shocked, excited, and scared all at the same time. I told myself to politely decline. I told myself to go back to work, and then, I don't know what came over me.