Husband Sit (Husband #1) Read online

  HUSBAND SIT

  By

  Louise Cusack

  Cover design © Hang Le byhangle.com

  Title: Husband Sit

  Copyright © 2016 by Louise Cusack

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgement

  About the Author

  Coming Soon

  Praise for the author:

  “Hold onto your panties! Husband Sit by Louise Cusack is sexy and titillating from page one. But its more than that. It’s also funny and has a surprisingly deep emotional core that sneaks up on you. It’s utterly unique.” Amy Andrews, award-winning, USA Today best-selling author

  “Crazytown. I loved it.” ~ NY Times & USA Today Best Seller Kylie Scott, Stage Dive series

  “Just as you think you can predict what will happen, Cusack throws up surprise after surprise - guaranteeing that you will be picking up the next book, almost before you have finished the first. This is addictive storytelling.” DoubleDay Book Club

  PROLOGUE: Crazy Has A Name

  Have you ever had a moment where you had to admit, I’m not as smart as I thought I was, or worse, I could be a fuckwit.

  No?

  Well, welcome to my world, of standing in the foyer of a multi-million dollar Sydney apartment, staring at the front door, waiting for a locksmith to arrive and let me out. Yes, out. I haven’t lost my keys. This isn’t my apartment. I’m a husband sitter, and the husband I’m currently sitting has not only fucked me up the ass and whipped that ass until it burned, he’s locked me into his apartment.

  The money, I need. The danger, not so much.

  I should have told one of my girlfriends what I was doing before his wife went on holiday and I moved in with him. Then I wouldn’t be waiting for a locksmith with my teeth chattering and my heart thudding in dread, hoping like hell that Mr. Domination didn’t arrive home before I got out. I should have used common sense instead of worrying that my girls would judge me.

  If I was lucky, I’d live to regret that.

  Not that I could regret the sex. It had been mind-blowing, and I’d had the sharpest orgasms of my life. But the whole thing had been overwhelming—my first experience of bondage and butt-fucking. When it was over, I was aching and sore and I wanted time-out. Instead, he’d decided he wasn’t ready to stop, so he’d locked me in, and there was nothing erotic about that. It was stone-cold scary.

  In my moment of terror at realizing I couldn’t escape, I’d rung the last person I should have—lickable Finn with this sexy green eyes, his clever hands and his gigantor cock. I’d promised myself I’d never see him again. He was married. Our husband sit was over. It didn’t matter that his wife was a cheating bitch who’d only hired me so he could feel guilty too. I liked him too much. I should have left him alone.

  He regretted his infidelity and wanted to put it behind him, but in my desperation, my illogical brain had decided that he’d been as ‘bad’ as me, so I knew he wouldn’t judge me for my current predicament. My girlfriends would see things differently. Two of them were married and, much as they loved me, they’d never condone adultery even if the wife was paying for it. Fritha was single but she’d try to stop me if she heard about this, because she’d think the money wasn’t worth the risk.

  But it was.

  I might be scared now, but I wasn’t going to let that deter me from my purpose. Finn would get me back on my feet and I’d put safeguards in place next time. I’d be more careful, because I wasn’t stopping. The consequences of not making that monthly payment were unthinkable. So I stood in the cold marble entry foyer beside my suitcases, hands clutched together at my waist, staring at the door, giving myself the only comfort I could—remembering Finn’s warm, slightly-rough voice.

  Go and pack, Jill. I’ll text you when the locksmith is on the way. Ring a taxi when he gets there. With luck, you’ll get out quickly and I’ll see you at the airport.

  Finn was flying in to help me. We’d work this out together, although, I’d probably be an emotional basket-case when it was over and we parted again. Funny how ditching Doug after ten boring years had been easy in comparison. But then trouble had caught up with me and I’d been desperate for cash.

  My brief shining window into normality had slammed shut, and then a single conversation was all it took to turn my whole life into a sex tape…

  CHAPTER ONE: Ground Zero (one month earlier)

  I raised my head from patting Princess Jasmine to ask, in what I hoped was a normal voice, “Is the kitty litter stocked up?” Chinchilla fur was spreading all over the charcoal lounge and my jeans, but I kept my attention on Helen pouring coffee beans into the machine over at the breakfast bar. I must not think about the phone call I’d had that morning, although the memory of it churned my stomach like a washing machine. If I got overwhelmed, Helen would ask what was wrong and I’d promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even strangers.

  Helen pushed a button and looked up. “I ordered some online. It’ll be delivered tomorrow along with a fortnight’s cat food. There’s plenty in the pantry to last until—”

  That was as far as she got before the coffee maker started with its appalling grinding sound, echoing all through her cavernous waterfront home, making my already-stretched nerves twang. The dreadful sound encouraged Princess Jasmine’s claws to bite into my thighs. As a highly strung feline herself, she did the same thing if a speedboat roared past on the canal outside, so I kept stroking her, hoping the noise would abate quickly, but it clunked on for almost a minute.

  When Helen had finished making our two cups of coffee, she put them on the low table in front of me before sitting on the lounge at my side, at which time Princess Jasmine exited my lap in a cloud of shedding fur and stalked over to hers.

  I pasted a smile on my face. “Saying her last goodbye.”

  Helen always got sniffy when it was time to leave her darling—not a result of allergies as I’d first imagined when I’d started house-sitting for her. This was separation anxiety, and I did my best not to think it was theatrical. Helen had no children. Her cat was her baby, and she lavished attention on her.

  “Pretty darling. I won’t be gone long,” she crooned.

  I tried to keep my attention on them, or on anything mundane, but my mind wouldn’t cooperate. It kept circling back to the phone call from my crazy little sis Brittany who was lying in a Bangkok hospital bed, desperate for money to pay her exorbitant medical bills. If she
couldn’t find the cash, they’d threatened jail.

  A Bangkok jail.

  I shuddered and looked away, taking my time to pick up my coffee cup and have a sip. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get the Too Hard basket out until after Helen had left. But the problem was enormous, and time was ticking over. I had to find a solution. Getting cranky with Brittany for not telling me about her breast implants wouldn’t help. She was independent. I got that. But she was also my only family, and it drove me crazy that she was so reckless.

  When her “cheap and cheerful” Asian boob job had gone wrong and infection had set in, she should have rung me. Instead, she’d booked herself into the only decent Bangkok hospital that would take her without money up front, and now that she was on the mend, she’d realized the enormity of her problems. Her usual quick-fix option of running away wasn’t available because the hospital was holding her passport until she paid her bill—a hundred and twenty thousand Australian dollars.

  I’d asked her to tell me the amount twice, because I couldn’t grasp it. This was so far beyond any debacle she’d laid at my door in the past. My freelance secretarial job paid eight hundred dollars a week and I had precious little savings after my recent car repairs.

  Even more infuriating, she’d sounded cranky, rather than apologetic.

  …and then they told me you need to pay twenty thousand for the first payment. In a fortnight.

  Fuck! Brat. How the hell do you expect me to—

  Borrow it from Louella. She lives in a mansion.

  Oh, right. Tell her that the Brat who stole her makeup when we were teenagers—

  Don’t you dare tell anyone that I got breast—

  Don’t you think they’ll notice?

  Silence. A rare thing from Brittany.

  Shit. I should never have rung you.

  I knew that tone. It came within seconds of her hanging up.

  Brat, wait! I’ll get the money and I won’t tell anyone. I promise.

  Make sure you don’t! Those bitches already hate me.

  They don’t hate you. Just let me think.

  Silence again before she snapped, Can’t you just get a bank loan or something? As if she was disappointed that I wasn’t smart enough to work out how to fix this, quickly and discretely. It had taken heroic self-control, but somehow I’d managed to hang onto a shred of patience and tell her I’d work on it and ring her back. She hadn’t sounded the slightest bit sorry, and I could put that down to her being sick or stressed, only, she was always like this.

  Brittany’s mere existence created havoc for others to clean up. Usually me. Only this time she couldn’t run away. This time she had to stay and watch the clean-up. So while I’d like to imagine she’d learn something about responsibility and consequences, I knew damned well that her take-home would be the same that it always was—can I rely on my sister or can’t I?

  And no matter the bullshit she brought, I wanted her to think that she could. Because neither of us had been able to rely on our parents. Gran, yes, for a while. But then it had just been Brittany and me trying to navigate a scary world, and I couldn’t live with myself if I let her down. I just couldn’t.

  Unfortunately, the five different banks I’d rung all said the same thing: We’ll only loan that much money if you have an asset of equal value to mortgage against it.

  And I didn’t.

  My only assets were a ten-year-old Ford sedan and a collection of nice shoes.

  The other option, which Brittany had pointed out, was ringing Louella, or Missy Lou, as I called her, and saying I need a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and I can’t tell you why.

  Just thinking about that idea added nausea to the churning in my stomach. Sure, we went back twenty years. I’d met Missy Lou in high school, along with Fritha and Angela. Of the four of us, Missy Lou had been the one most likely to do well. She’d come from old money and married a mogul, so she was rich. And exactly because of that, I’d always gone to pains never to ask her for anything. She constantly had trouble with moochers who saw her as a cash-cow and tried to befriend her. We joked about that, but I could see that it hurt her. I never wanted her to suspect me of that, for a second.

  But it was testament to how desperate I was to rescue Brittany, that I would even consider it. And if I did ask, would Missy Lou say yes? Then after Brittany was blithely on her way to more rack and ruin, would my twenty-year friendship with Missy Lou be over? Would she think I’d only been friends with her all this time because she was rich?

  A gagging sickness rose in my throat and I clunked down my coffee cup to try and shake it off. If I wasn’t careful I’d start losing my shit, and that wasn’t a good look, not when you wanted clients to think you were reliable. House sitting was saving me rent money, and I needed every dollar I could find right now. So I switched off my poor me program to tune into Helen who’d started telling me a story while we waited for her airport pickup to arrive.

  It turned out to be a good distraction, about a society friend whose husband had just left her for ‘some slut’. Apparently, the friend had been visiting family, and wouldn’t have minded her husband having an affair, but divorce was another story. It would uproot her life, her status and her future.

  I nodded sympathetically, keeping my attention on Helen’s face, rather than on Jasmine’s swishing tail. Even I knew she didn’t like having her ears rubbed.

  “…he should have conducted a sensible fling that ended before Catherine came home.”

  I nodded again, but I couldn’t help wondering why any woman who loved her husband would approve of a sensible fling. Although… I wouldn’t have gone mental if Doug had played up—might have been a good excuse to leave him sooner, before boredom had worn a hole in my brain.

  “…and she told me she would have paid a woman to Husband Sit him if she’d known he was that desperate for new sex!”

  Helen smirked and tweaked those furry years, which only made Jasmine swish harder.

  I wanted to say, Stop rubbing her ears, but Helen cut in with. “You’d be a perfect husband sitter, only, you wouldn’t want to sleep with her husband. He’s old.”

  I offered a wan smile, playing along with our standard joke that anyone older than forty was ancient. Helen was in her sixties but she had a niece my age who lived in New York. Her boyfriend was twenty-three. Helen thought that was shockingly risqué, dating a man ten years younger, but the twenty-something men of my experience were over-groomed, over-confident and looked like they’d be over-too-fast. At least I’d been able to count on Doug’s consistent twelve minutes, give-or-take. Plenty of time to organize my own orgasm. The fact that it had felt like the same old burger at McDonalds was a matter of interpretation. I’m sure a new woman would find him steady and reliable.

  “…having said that, older men can be experienced.” Helen winked at me and I tried not to shudder. The last thing I wanted was to picture older people and sex.

  Luckily, Jasmine took that moment to jump off Helen’s lap in a huff, leaving a handful of fur on her cream wool skirt as she stalked off to the kitchen. Helen brushed at it absently, then she looked at me over the top of her glasses, “I’m quite sure you’d acquit yourself admirably, my dear. You’re very good at keeping Jasmine happy. A husband couldn’t be any more challenging.” Her eyes were alight with mischief, so I bantered back.

  “I’m sure I could keep a husband happy, but I’d have to be paid a lot.”

  “Oh, ten thousand dollars a week. No less!” she said, poker faced.

  In the next second, the world around me paused, and my mind dropped into a deep stillness where the only sound was a single phrase: Stop the clock.

  I stared into Helen’s faded grey eyes while my brain scrambled to catch up with how much ten grand was in relation to Brittany’s medical bills. One twelfth? Was that right? Twelve weeks and it would be paid? Fuck. A pulse started throbbing at my temples.

  “You’d cook,” Helen bantered on, oblivious to my inner dialogue. “But
no cleaning, and…” She held up a finger. “Be available for sex whenever the husband wants. But you don’t make the first move.” She winked.

  “Absolutely.” My voice sounded flat, but I batted my eyelashes coyly to keep up the pretence of a joke. “And there must be a contract. A binding contract.”

  “Then…” She paused for effect, mock-serious. “When it’s over you must agree to leave and never come back—”

  “Unless contracted by the wife to do so.”

  She dimpled, clearly impressed with my foresight. “You are good. I’m handing your number out at airline dinners. Pilots’ wives will be all over this.”

  I forced out a bark of a laugh. “I’ll have my first million before I know it.”

  She patted my hand, then said, “You hear that, Jasmine?” and leant forward to look into the kitchen where the cat was spreading imported salmon across the glossy white-tiled floor. “Jill’s leaving you to go and pat husbands.”

  “I hope they don’t shed,” I said straight-faced.

  She chortled at that and shook her head. Then we both heard the taxi beeping outside.

  “Love my cat,” she commanded, and gave me a hug.

  “Easy peasy,” I replied, as I always did. But after Helen’s departure, I wasn’t thinking about cats and their proclivities. I was cold and alone in her big canal-front home with its huge plate-glass windows and sparkling pool—alone with the terrible idea she’d planted in my mind.

  Ten thousand dollars a week to husband sit.

  Could I even do that? For some reason my brain wasn’t cooperating. It was slowing down, as if it was clogged with cotton wool, and my cheeks felt cold. Was I was going to faint? Maybe the very idea of exchanging sex for money was so terrible, my mind couldn’t deal with. I could have turned on the huge, flat screen television to distract myself with some inane morning program. But I didn’t, because I had to face this, and the sooner the better. Unlike Brittany, I didn’t have anyone rescuing me. I needed to sort out my own problems. And hers.