***
“Lily!”
She heard his voice from her second floor bedroom and was immediately startled by the sharp sound. She went flying to the door.
“Is there something you need?” she called down the stairs.
“Yes. You. In here now.”
She arrived in the den seconds later and out of breath, finding that along with her husband was Ally, the new maid he’d just hired. She’d only been in the house a few days – a green card transplant from the UK. In that vein, the girl was a twenty-year-old saucy tart with short blonde hair, a pixyish grin, and a pair of the roundest biggest eyes Lily had ever seen. She wasn’t all that pretty, but she packed a good deal of sass into her five-foot-four frame, filling out her clothes so she was practically popping the buttons on her snug blouses. Her skirts were much t
