The hidden painting chapter 10

As Cindy's alarm goes off at 7:30am rather than the usual 8, she renders it silent with the same smile she sported as she drifted off to sleep. She jumps out of the bed and turns the shower on to let the water warm as she brushes her teeth.

‘The plumbing is shot in this place!’ she says under her breath as the shower is on the hottest setting possible, yet the water is still only lukewarm.

Whilst she sings her favourite artist ‘P!nk’s’ new song, ‘Trustfall’, she breezes through, what is usually the laborious task, of washing her thick, naturally blonde hair. She often wonders what she would look like as a brunette, but this morning, her thoughts are littered with different scenarios, all of which include Jasper.

As she exits what is now a cold shower, she wraps a week-old towel around her and ties it into itself under her left arm. She looks in her bag of tricks, hoping to find some make up. To her surprise, she finds some foundation and eye liner, both of which she doesn’t remember purchasing, and applies them before getting dressed.

As she wishes she had purchased some nicer clothes in the discount store, she takes out every item she has and puts together an outfit that she thinks might just do the trick…impress Jasper.

She looks at the clock beside her bed. It reads 8:35. She sits on the edge of the mattress, knowing it only takes ten minutes to drive to the mansion, and watches as the minutes pass by slowly, waiting as if being tortured until 8:45 when she jumps up and makes her way towards her car. She is relieved she was able to convince Jasper to let her drive herself to the motel the previous night, figuring it would take the guts of an hour to walk the journey, and didn’t want to turn up sweaty!

 

As she lets herself into the mansion, she calls out, ‘it’s only me!’ and closes the heavy wooden door behind her. On her way to her office, she passes by Jaspers open door, a strange woman sitting on the desk kissing the man she was intending to impress. She stops for a second, a tear escaping her right eye, and continues towards her office quickly, hoping her eye liner doesn’t run.

When she gets comfortable in her black, swivel chair, she opens the laptop to input absolutely every word verbatim from ‘the bible’, the notebook she held that includes all the notes of the previous day’s interview. She begins to fan her face with her hands, hoping that will stop the tears that are building up, as the last thing she wants is to portray her crush on Jasper!

She begins to input the details from ‘the bible’, a notebook that will never be entitled as anything else and finds her mind moving as quickly as her fingers. The words are just spilling out in the program which she has finally grasped how to use. She isn’t only transcribing the information from the pages in front of her but is inputting data from her own mind in the margins.

After an hour, she hears the thud, thud, thud of the infamous coffee cup hitting her door. She presses save before getting up to receive the undoubtable black coffee. As she opens the door to a smile that shows off the dimple she finds so enticing, Jasper hands her her first coffee of the day and she smiles through her heartache, not wanting Jasper to notice.

As he hands her her coffee, just about to say something, a woman’s voice echoes through the hallway.

‘Jasper, honey, do you want more coffee?’ the woman asks, Cindy noticing she has an accent.

Cindy’s heart skips a beat as Jasper asks, ‘have you met Melina yet?’

Cindy, who is lost for words, simply shakes her head as she takes a sup out of the cup she had just received. It tastes different to the normal ‘black tar’ he makes. It tastes better!

‘Different blend?’ she simply asks.

‘Yea,’ he smiles widely, his perfect teeth making it hard to concentrate on his answer. ‘Melina bought us a Nespresso! She knows she can’t help with the biography, so she did the only thing she could think of…provide us with a decent cup of coffee!’

Cindy felt like telling him that she ‘liked the other stuff better!’ but it was undoubtably a superior blend! She began to kick herself as she brought the cup close to her mouth for more!

‘Thank you, Melina!’ she shouts in the direction of the kitchen, mirroring Jasper’s smile, minus the perfect teeth!

After she finishes her first cup, Jasper automatically takes it from her and hands her the second. He has grown to know that Cindy needs at least two cups of coffee in the mornings to function productively, and, as she is his employee after all, he wants more than anything for her to have the tools to make her as productive as possible.

‘Is she you’re girlfriend?’ Cindy swallows hard, the question loaded with eagerness to know whether she wasted her time this morning applying makeup that he might never notice.

‘Yeah,’ Jasper says and rubs the bit of stubble that is sprouting on his chin, his signature move when he is thinking. ‘She flew in from Mexico last night and was here when I got home!’ Cindy watches as the cogs in his mind turn, trying to ignore the chemistry the two of them obviously have, well that’s what she thought anyway!

As Cindy points her thumb towards her desk, indicating that she had better get back to work. Jasper lingers in the doorway a second more than he should have, closing the door as Cindy returns to her black swivel chair. When she hears the lock click closed, she breaks down crying, not caring whether her make up runs.

 

When she is halfway through transcribing the notes, Cindy hears a definite, fully loaded, knock on the door. She presses save once again, giving her peace of mind as she opens the door.

In front of her stood a five foot eight, extremely fit goddess of a woman, who she presumes is the infamous Melina.

‘Would you like some lunch?’ Melina smiles with yet another set of perfect teeth!

Melina’s teeth brings Cindy back to a memory she has lodged in a box in the back of her mind. It is of her mother, who gave her the option of braces, on the condition they cut down on their living expense’s exponentially and informed her that she would have to get a third job. There was no way Cindy was going to allow her already exhausted mother get yet another job just for straight teeth, even though all of her peers at the time had braces. She used to say to herself, ‘well you don’t have a mother you hardly see because she is either working, or asleep as she is juggling two jobs!’ The same thought enters her mind now for some reason.

Cindy, who, once was back in the room, found herself saying, ‘yes’, without thinking about it first.

‘Jasper has made his signature sandwiches!’ Melina announces, her smile growing wider.

Cindy knew what she was talking about a toasted ham and cheese sandwich, and she finds herself salivating over just the thought of them! As she pats down her pockets in her jeans for her keys, she can’t help but presume Melina is wearing designer clothes, something her discount store garments couldn’t stand up to! She returns to her desk, her keys beside the computer, and follows Melina, a person she intended to hate, but in reality, she is beginning to like, to the kitchen where Jasper has three sandwiches made and set out in front of three adjoining chairs at the dining table.

As they ate, Jasper breaks the sound of masticating sandwich coming from the three of them with a loaded question, ‘why don’t you check out of the motel and come and stay here? It’s not as though I’m short on spare bedrooms!’ he smiles a smile which is hypnotic.

‘Yeah,’ Melina chimes in, ‘you must be broke staying at that place for such a long time already!’

Cindy bows her head and begins to do the math in her head as to the cost of living in the motel, verses moving in with Jasper, a man she is falling hard for.

Eventually, after a moments silence, Cindy closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she realises staying there would bring her one step closer to the painting. She begins to smile, ‘it would be a great help…but I don’t want to be an inconvenience or interrupt your routine!’

‘How could you possibly be an inconvenience?’ Jasper asks, ‘sure you’re practically here every night anyway!’ he says and giggles.

Cindy smiles, as he has a point. It would mean that she would no longer have to pray for him to leave her alone in the house so she could have the opportunity of trying to use the keys, which lay safely under the bookcase in her office! She could simply just wait until he fell asleep!

Eventually, after much deliberation, she gratefully agrees to check out of the motel and move into one of the vacant bedrooms Jasper possesses.

‘I’ll pay you for it though!’ she adds, not wanting to be a freeloader.

‘You will in your ass pay for it!’ he insists, ‘it’s a room I’m not using, and it would be nice to have another body around the place!’

Cindy smiles at him.

‘Besides,’ Jasper continues, ‘you won’t have to worry about going back and forth for clean clothes and a shower anymore! You can have one of the three rooms with an ensuite, so you will have your own bathroom and everything!’

‘Thank you so much,’ Cindy beams up at him, ‘that would be a great help!’

‘Right!’ Jasper claps his hands together suddenly, making both Melina and Cindy jump, ‘it’s settled then!’

 

Although the motel only charges by the night, the check-out time is three o’clock, and Cindy didn’t want to have to pay for the following night when she wasn’t going to be staying there. After the remnants of lunch were cleaned up, she high tailed it out of there and packed all of her belongings, which were surprisingly piling up, and fit them in the duffle bag that she carries to the reception desk.

The man behind the desk moves slower than a turtle, and Cindy was frantically aware of the seconds ticking by, three o’clock approaching rapidly. She pushes the little bell for what seems like an eternity before he looks up from his phone, frustration plastered on his face at the interruption.

‘I want to check out please!’ she announces.

The man began to go through a questionnaire with her, reading each question with as little enthusiasm as he could muster.

‘This is a man who doesn’t like his job!’ she thought to herself before stating that she didn’t have time for the vaguest questionnaire she had ever come across!

‘I want to check out now please!’ she says with conviction, the man looking at her up and down before printing off her bill.

‘Now Ms Spencer,’ he began, ‘you have stayed here a total of eight nights,’ he quickly but obviously looks up at the clock which read 2:45, before continuing looking disappointed that she is fifteen minutes away from it being nine. His shoulders slouch and he sighs, ‘eight nights, at $99 a night is….’ he began to read the bill that was printed, ‘$792! How would you like to pay?’

‘I’ll pay by card please!’ Cindy responds knowing her card doesn’t have that kind of money in it, but tries it through the machine anyway, all the while praying that the transaction goes through as she didn’t want the shady character knowing she had a lot of cash in her duffle bag!

‘Please work, please work, please work,’ she chants in her head, holding her breath until she hears the receipt being printed. ‘Oh, thank god!’ she says quietly, relief washing over her.

Cindy thanks the man who just grunts as his attention returns to the program he had been watching on his phone before she had the Gaul to interrupt him!

 

As Cindy carries her bag to the car to drive to the mansion, she wonders ‘what the hell am I doing?’ She goes through a state of talking herself into and out of her decision millions of times until she finds herself parked in an empty space in the driveway. She sits in the car for a moment and rests her weary head on the steering wheel, only looking up when she jumps after hearing Jasper wrap on the window.

‘What are you doing?’ he laughs.

She reacts to his laughter with a smile, only then certain she has come to the right decision.

Jasper opens the door for her and asks, ‘where is your luggage?’

‘In the boot!’ Cindy answers, lust flowing through her veins.

Jasper opens the boot and when he sees she only has a half full duffle bag, reacts with astonishment as he is under the impression women need a hell of a lot more stuff than men. ‘Is this it?’ he asks, his brow furrowed. Cindy just nods, her face contorted by the fact that all of her belongings don’t even fill a duffle bag!

‘C’mon and I’ll show you to your room!’ Jasper says in an upbeat manner and enters the mansion heading towards the stairs, Cindy on his heels. She somehow keeps up with him as he takes the steps of the stairs two at a time and leads her to the bedroom she is all too familiar with…the bedroom her parents once slept in. Jasper gently places her bag on the bed and points to the ensuite, ‘see, your own bathroom and everything!’

Cindy smiles up at him with infinite gratitude, as he is saving her, not only $99 a night, but because she knows, from memory, that that particular ensuite has a shower and a bathtub. She loves her bubble baths does Cindy and hadn’t had one since Mr Godfree died and she was forced to stay with Mike, who only offered her use of a pokey shower.

Tears begin to form in her eyes, Jasper noticing, and as she wipes them away, he pulls her in close to his chest, close enough she can hear his heart beating.

‘Thank you so much!’ she manages to say between sobs.

Jasper is a stand-up guy, and he shows this through his actions as they are ever so thoughtful! When he pulls away eventually, he asks, ‘would you like to come down for a cup of tea or coffee?’

Cindy, unable to respond verbally, shakes her head, an indication Jasper interoperates as his queue to leave her be with her thoughts.

As she sits on the edge of the mattress, thoughts spinning around her head like a merry go round, Cindy remembers the keys that she left under her bookcase. She smiles, not only because of the keys, but because Jasper’s cologne lingers on her clothes, something small but comforting!

She decides she needs to pull herself together, wiping what she promises herself to be the last of the tears for now, and enters the sizeable ensuite. Laid neatly over the side of the bath, she sees fresh towels and three different scents of bubble bath. She smiles and turns the taps of the bath fully, ecstatic that there is hot water!

As she relaxes in what turns out to be the nicest bubble bath she has ever experienced, the tub being so big, she moves the tepid water over her arms and around her neck, exhaling the woes of the day and inhaling with her newfound opportunity to find her mothers hidden painting.

Cindy replaces cold water for hot a couple of times, noticing her fingers getting wrinkly, before she pulls the plug holding the water in, out by her toes. She notices the level of the water decreasing, her body feeling heavier and lays there until the water is no more. Relaxed, she exits the tub, wrapping a fluffy purple towel around her body, tying it into itself under her left arm. She wipes the condensation off the mirror with her hand in one swipe and inspects one particular area on her cheek that she can feel a spot trying to emerge from. She then gets ready for bed.

 

As she lays her head on the freshly laundered sheets, the same place her mother laid hers all those years ago, all she can think of are the keys. She looks at the clock. It reads 02:04. She inhales deeply, listening for sounds of Jasper and Melina. When she hears none, she rises from the bed and walks to the door, opening it and listening intently.

Wearing only socks on her feet, a conscious choice as she knew they didn’t squeak on the hardwood floor, she creeps downstairs and uses her keys to open her office door. She closes it tightly, thankful Jasper had treated it with WD40 from what now seems like years ago, and not days. She grabs the keys and tip toes back up the stairs.

Cindy takes the stool from, what she will now call, ‘her room’, and positions it under the hatch to the attic. She see’s that she is going to need a small key, but upon inspection, realises that most of the keys on the bunch are small. She tries them in order of their position on the ring, only taking her five attempts before she hears the lock click open. She pulls with all her might, the recently painted ceiling obviously stuck in the hinges. On her third attempt, the hinges give way, and she exhales with genuine relief because she has finally gained access to the attic!