Rich Bitch: Everything's Going to the Dogs Read Free Page B

upon to prepare Escalopes de Veau Chasseur for a dog.
    Of course, she hadn’t imagined back in those days that she’d end up in New York as a nanny, either.
    Bien sur
, there was a demand for a woman who could teach the little Brittanys and Morgans, the Adams and Zacharys, a second, or third, or fourth language while she walked them to school, drove them to ballet, Karate, and Junior Achievers. In her last job, she was also supposed to cook elegant gourmet meals for the children of the family so they’d grow up with refined palates.
    She shuddered to think of the number of meals she’d prepared and then quietly thrown out. If a child wanted to eat like a child instead of a sophisticated diplomat, she tended to look the other way. Still, her work was lucrative, and for the most part, she enjoyed it.
    However, she was certain a little dog was going to be no trouble at all in comparison to her usual overachieving charges. And at least she wouldn’t have to teach Mimi French as they walked the park every day. La petite chienne was French.
    It wasn’t her language skills but her culinary ones that Mimi was in need of. Bah, the stuff that man had put in her bowl was
degoutant,
when Mimi was obviously used to the best of cuisine. The dog clearly needed her, and she was happy to help.
    No. It wasn’t Mimi who put a frown between her brows and a sliver of unease beneath her ribs; it was
 the dog owner who did that. Monsieur Vince was going to be a problem.
    Une grande probleme.
    A big, tall, brawny problem with eyes that were like slow, sleepy sex. She shivered a little when she remembered the way he’d looked at her.
    Well, she couldn’t turn down a fellow Frenchwoman in a time of need, especially when her sparkly leash was attached to a man who couldn’t speak her language or give her decent food to eat.
    Sophie had been attracted to Vince from the first moment she saw him struggling over a French/English dictionary looking huffy and helpless. Though, if he were responsible for the blue rinse in Mimi’s hair, she might have to reconsider her attraction to the man. Except there was something so sexy about a big, virile man with a tiny poodle in his arms. She got the same melting sensation when she saw a macho young guy with a baby. So sweet, with all that power, cradling such a small creature so he appeared both endearingly clumsy and reassuringly protective.
    She’d dressed for her new job with more than usual care, certain that a dog who sported a fresher manicure than Sophie was going to notice.
    She struggled into the skin-tight jeans she’d bought in Italy last year, paired them with the sage green cotton designer shirt she’d bought on sale at a little boutique off the Champs Elysee. Her boots were from a Prada sample sale, her sweater from Bloomingdales. She was an international fashion maven.
    Since she wasn’t about to be outshone in the jewelry department by a canine, she stuck with small gold hoops in her ears and left it at that.
    As she sped to her destination on the subway, she knew she hadn’t really dressed for Mimi. Mimi, for instance, didn’t care that her lingerie (also French, naturally) was absurdly wispy and utterly decadent. Sophie was Gallic enough, and fatalistic enough, to accept that sexual attraction happened. She couldn’t help her unmistakable lust for her new employer. She could, however, decide when or if it should be acted on.
    In this case, she hadn’t yet made up her mind.
    Still, her pulse skipped a little when she walked into her new employer’s building on Forty-fourth and announced herself to the doorman.
    The dog began barking hysterically when Sophie knocked on the door of 17A. The timbre of the barking changed when Vince opened the door and Mimi clattered across the hardwood floor, her manicured nails like two pairs of castanets.
    No sooner had she sniffed Sophie than her barking changed from hysterical fear to hysterical excitement, as she leaped in the air a few times,