Seducing my hot maintenance man

Chapter 4

Greyson’s POV

Well, that certainly could have gone a whole lot better!

“I’ll just go get started on it, then,” I say lamely, pointing in the direction of the bathroom right next to where I’m standing in the hallway.

“Sure,” she replied, giving me a very brief look of disdain, as if I’m beneath her notice. I’m obviously just a lowly maintenance man as far as she’s concerned. A pathetic loser. I’m not good enough for Miss high and mighty lawyer! She shuts her bedroom door firmly.

Well, I suppose that shows me exactly how much interest that woman has in me as a person. None whatsoever.

I head into the bathroom to get started fixing the toilet. The sooner I’m done with this repair job and out of Miss Downing’s apartment the better, in my personal opinion.

I do feel a bit bad about frightening a tenant like that, though. I hope she realizes that it obviously had not been done on purpose. And she HAD given permission for me to enter the apartment to fix the toilet, even though she hadn’t known it would be ME personally coming to do it. I can see how she might have easily misconstrued the situation.

I’m just triggering the flushing mechanism to get rid of the disgusting contents of the toilet bowl when the brother comes in carrying a box.

“What are you doing here?” He asks curiously.

“Your sister apparently thinks I followed you home to kill you both,” I joke as I begin to remove the flush mechanism. “But then I decided to fix the toilet while I was in the neighborhood. Apparently it wasn’t working due to a missing chain in the flushing mechanism. By the way, I’m Jude Greyson, building owner and maintenance wizard extraordinaire. But everyone around here just calls me Greyson.”

“Haha! Nice to meet you,” Nick says, holding his hand out for a hand shake, which I return after drying my hand off. “I knew I hadn’t broken the toilet! But my sister Aubrey made me go downstairs anyway to the bathroom near the office all because she didn’t want me to break both toilets.”

“Mhm,” I say, thinking out loud for a moment. “I should maybe check on the other toilet, too, for any signs that the previous tenant did something to that one as well.”

Then the sister joins us in the small room, pretending to ignore me as if I wasn’t there, and asking her brother if the car was completely unloaded now. I explain what is wrong with the toilet, and my best guess as to how it got in this state, and then she and the brother suddenly leave.

Whew! That felt far more tense than it ought to have been. I finish repairing the toilet in record time, and then go to check out the other toilet just to make sure it’s in good working order.

I enter the master bedroom, glad that Miss high and mighty Downing and her brother are away right now. Not that I’m overly curious, but a woman’s bedroom can say a lot about their personality. And Miss Downing seems to not have much of one, if her choice of furniture and bedding is any indication. It’s all beige and cream. I suppose she is still bringing more stuff, so maybe it’ll improve. But I kind of doubt it. I notice briefly that the closet is very well organized, and seems to contain little more than a half dozen boring power suits in your basic office wear shades, a few neutral toned blouses, and only a few things that look casual or colorful towards the back.

Well, I can’t really stay here all day with my nose in other people’s business. I head towards the en suite master bathroom, accidentally stepping on something hard.

“What the hell?” I say out loud, bending down to find that I had stepped on an AirPod. “Why would this be on the floor? Is the fool woman trying to booby trap the place?”

I look around and find a second one more than a foot away, and almost hidden under the bed. I place them both on the nightstand.

I finally head into the master bathroom to find that the toilet there has also been tampered with just as expected, but at least the chain was still present. It was just disconnected.

Sometimes I really hate people!

I have it reattached and operable within seconds, and even take a bit of extra time to crimp the chain link tightly to the spot where it had become disconnected, to prevent it from easily coming loose again. I certainly don’t need Miss Aubrey Downing calling me constantly to come repair a bunch of s**t like Naomi Patterson used to do. Although maybe this particular apartment is just jinxed with high maintenance tenants, the type who look down on me with disdain because I’m ‘just a maintenance man’ to them. Not someone worthy of respect. Although using me is typically not off the table! I knew very well that Naomi Patterson had been inviting me to come scratch her b***h itch.

On my way out I notice that all of the living and dining room furniture looks dull and devoid of actual color or personality, even though it’s obviously all new and very modern. I just shake my head, and leave. I need to go order more toilet parts, just in case I end up with more tenants with toilet troubles. I’m bound to get a dozen complaints for broken toilets this week if I haven’t got any replacement parts in stock.

Then I go about the rest of my day, trying to forget all past and present tenants of 1202, like a sensible guy. Hopefully Miss Aubrey Downing and I are able to keep out of each other’s hair for the most part. It’s a big building with 16 floors. And she works as a lawyer, probably in some office that’s far from here. We aren’t likely to run into each other all that often.

Except I run into her again the very next morning when I am heading into the fitness room. She is already there and working up a sweat using the stair master. And she’s looking so damn tasty in her skintight workout clothes that I could eat her up! But I haven’t forgotten yesterday, and I get all irritated again.

I would have just left, but she had already spotted me. Damn! I can’t just leave at this point and let her think that somehow she has more right to use the fitness room than I have! I’m going to have to stick it out.

“Good morning,” I say with a friendly nod. She says the same. I hop onto the rowing machine, and then we spend the next 20 minutes avoiding each other until she finishes her morning workout and leaves with just a small regal wave of her hand.

I’ll just switch to evening workouts, I suppose. As long as I do something physically active every 24 hours, it’s all good. Right?

So the next day I go down to the fitness room in the evening, and Aubrey is already there again? What the hell!

“You don’t actually workout twice a day, do you?” Aubrey actually blurts out in surprise when she sees me enter the fitness room.

“No, what about you?” I ask.

“Me neither,” she claims. “This morning I just didn’t feel like getting out of bed that early.”

“Yeah, same,” I reply, hopping onto the treadmill for my warm up cardio before switching to weights later on. “In fact, I liked sleeping in so much this morning, I might just switch to evening workouts permanently.”

“Really?” She asks, sounding thoughtful. “I can’t do this most nights, as I’m usually too busy in the evening. I’m glad that it sounds like evenings will work well for you, though.”

“Mhm,” I reply, noticing the slight dig she took at me. Like her evenings are so much more important than mine. I suppose she probably has a busy social calendar and dates almost every night of the week.

We manage to ignore each other quite satisfactorily for the rest of our workout, thank goodness. I don’t need to hear about all of her many boyfriends, or the places where they take her to on their date this weekend, thanks.

By the time she leaves, I’m in a foul mood. Maybe I need to install a punching bag in here. I’m really in the mood to hit something right now, and hitting the person who put me in this mood is highly frowned upon in civilized society.