Room Service Page 20

  When Rhys had walked into the lobby the day he flew back from L.A., he’d found her waiting at the reception desk, nearly trembling with excitement as he pushed through the revolving door. After almost two weeks, the sight of her, the feel of her, even the scent of her had been too exhilarating to ignore—he’d had her in the lift and on the way up to her apartment with barely a wave of greeting to anyone else.

  He could, he’d decided, wait to find out anything about the restaurant until after they’d gotten good and naked.

  And Olivia certainly hadn’t disappointed him on that front, had she? He glanced up at her—she was biting her bottom lip as she typed, her hair in its usual cloud of disarray around her face despite her best efforts to tame it into place this morning. He’d woken her this morning with kisses—kisses that had turned into caresses, and more kisses, and then a fast and dirty shag that shook the headboard and made them both limp with pleasure.

  Of course, that was the same way he’d woken her up every morning since he’d been back in town.

  That first day back, though—hell, he’d given her no quarter. As if he could fuck the truth out of her, or something utterly mad like that. It made him a bit uncomfortable to think of it now—the first time, they’d barely been inside the apartment, and he’d yanked her pants down so quickly he’d ripped them.

  And, unbelievably, she’d reacted as if it were the biggest turn-on in the world.

  “Missed me, huh?” she’d whispered and tossed her panties over her shoulder.

  Olivia. He grinned, watching her type, her brow furrowing as she wrestled with something she wanted to say. He really hadn’t ever met a woman like her.

  He’d been back for a week, and every day that passed he waited for her to bring up the subject of the Coach and Four. She’d told him everything else that first night, when they’d finally spent themselves making love and were curled in her bed, mugs of tea on the night table and the window cracked open to cool their heated skin. She’d come up with a charity Christmas bazaar and the possibility of an open mike night in the bar, since she’d heard Louise Gilchrist singing one night with an old friend of hers.

  There was more, although he couldn’t remember most of it at the moment. She’d mentioned the restaurant, of course, but never once had she said anything about him being the obvious choice as the new chef. Never once had she hinted about what his money could do by way of renovating the place.

  And now, a week later, he was actually beginning to be—he winced to admit it—a bit hurt.

  No promises, no commitments, he’d made sure she knew that from the beginning. If not by saying so outright, then through sheer dint of saying nothing at all. Taught her well, he had—she was happy enough to have him in her bed, in her life, but she asked no questions and she made no demands.

  Once, that would have suited him perfectly. Now…

  He shut the magazine and sat forward, his elbows on his knees. Olivia looked up, curious but distracted. “You bored?” she said absently. “I just have to finish a few things here and then we can go out, if you want. Take a walk or get some lunch.”

  “Your call, love.” He ran a hand through his hair as she turned back to the computer screen.

  She was still the Olivia who’d knocked him over, literally and figuratively, but her agenda was definitely a bit fuller, wasn’t it? Every time he turned around, it seemed, she had another scheme up her sleeve, another phone call to make, another to-do list scribbled on the back of an envelope.

  Truth was, he was impressed. She was determined not to let her uncle intimidate her, and she was doing her damnedest to turn Callender House into a going concern.

  It left him, however, feeling a bit like a lazy sod. He’d finally convinced her to let him cook the Thanksgiving meal next week, since it was just another day to him and would give the staff a much-needed rest.

  “You’d do that?” she’d said, snuggling against him. “You want to do that? Because I’m sure I could figure out how to roast a few turkeys without burning anything down. I mean, it was my idea…” He’d finally silenced her with a firm kiss.

  Bloody hell. She seemed to think he didn’t want to do anything but shag her. A paranoid bloke would almost believe she didn’t trust him with her sodding hotel.

  Or her heart.

  “Oh man, he’s pissed,” Davey said to Marty a few days later, snapping shut his cell phone. “I’m so fucking over this job. I mean, what the hell does he want us to do, burn the place down?”

  They were sitting in a pizza place on Eighth Avenue. It was too warm inside compared to the frigid temperature outside, and the windows had fogged up with greasy steam. A blob of sauce had landed on Davey’s shirt, too, but he hadn’t noticed it.

  Marty tore his gaze away from his friend and stared across the restaurant blindly. He was sick of the job, too. He’d pulled scams for Callender before, and roughed up a few people once or twice, but they’d deserved it.

  He thought.

  Olivia didn’t deserve it. God, if he had a shot at a woman like her, he’d go to Mass every Sunday, just like his mother had always told him to. He’d fucking go to confession, even, although he hated to think of the number of Hail Marys he’d have to say just for swearing alone.

  He’d never worked a job where he had to look someone in the eye every day and lie. Lie, and then make trouble for her, and lie some more. It was getting to him, and what was even more fucked up, it was getting to Davey, too.

  Callender had all the money in the world, or at least that’s what it looked like to Marty. What the hell did he need the hotel for? Okay, more money, and more money was never bad, but there were a million different ways to make it without screwing over his only relative.

  Plus, he’d met a lot of the people who stayed at the hotel by now. The crazy little Russian lady was a hoot, as his mom would’ve said, and even the gay guys were pretty funny. They’d brought him a soda a couple of times when Olivia had them all ripping up carpet on the third and fourth floors.

  If someone was set on kicking his grandma out of the apartment building where she’d lived for thirty years…Well, in his family you didn’t stand for that kind of shit. And if you were going to fight, you threw a punch and stood your ground, you didn’t hide like a fucking coward and tie somebody’s shoelaces together.

  Or hire someone to do it for you.

  He glanced down at the half eaten pizza on his paper plate and felt his stomach turn. Trouble was, his mom lived in one of Callender’s buildings now. And Callender knew it.

  “We better figure out something else to do,” he told Davey. “Something to impress the asshole. Oh, and I gotta find a Duane Reade on the way across town. I need some antacids.”

  Limbo, Olivia had decided, was a pretty nice place to live. It was comfortable, at least. Not too hot, not too cold.

  Well, maybe it was pretty hot, she thought the evening before Thanksgiving, turning over in bed and watching Rhys stride back from the bathroom, still gloriously naked. She never got tired of looking at his body, touching his body—he was all lean muscle, his abs and his shoulders sharply defined, his thighs gorgeously powerful, and his ass…She bit her lip, fighting a grin. And it was all hers.

  Well, sort of. All hers for now. Now was a very important concept to keep in mind in limbo.

  He’d come back, which was wonderful enough. Back to New York, to the hotel, to her. Even after winning, although that was still a secret only the two of them shared, he’d come back here, when he could have taken off for anywhere in the world. He’d missed her, and he certainly hadn’t made any noises about moving on since he’d been back.

  And that had to be enough, didn’t it? She’d risen to the challenge of saving the hotel—she didn’t want him to believe that she was waiting around for a white knight, for Callender House or for her. If what they had together wasn’t going to be forever, well, she would live.

  She could ask him to marry her, she’d thought one night, when he’d already dozed
off, snoring gruffly beside her. She could ask him to…move in? Go steady? It was all so silly—she knew he wasn’t seeing anyone else, and he all but lived in her apartment as it was. Even so, she knew she could take the reins, do the asking, be the one to fight for what she wanted.

  She just wasn’t sure she’d evolved quite that far yet. Especially when the idea of him saying no and leaving again made her ache in places she hadn’t even known existed.

  What she knew now was that she didn’t need a daddy, or an uncle, or a grandfather. She didn’t need a man to take care of things for her. But, oh God, how she wanted this one. Not to shelter her, but simply to love.

  And she did love him, she thought as he sprawled on the bed beside her once more. They’d spent this afternoon in the kitchen, where he’d taught her how to make muffins and a coffee cake he intended to lay out for continental breakfast tomorrow. She’d decided to close the restaurant for the whole day, since they were serving dinner at two, and as if by magic every one of the usual dinner patrons, which meant Yelena and some of her local compatriots, had left word that they were eating at home tonight.

  Sadly, there was no reason yet to expect an influx of other customers, so she’d given the staff off tonight, too. Rhys wanted to make pies for tomorrow—he’d left the makings out on the counter, in fact, so they could get the job done quickly. The amazing thing was that she knew it would be fun to watch him. Life with Rhys was never boring. She’d laughed harder making the muffins this afternoon than she had at the last funny movie she and Josie had watched.

  “You want to stay up here, love?” he murmured, trailing a hand down her bare arm. “You look a bit knackered, and I can handle a few pies easy-peasy. I am a trained chef, you know.”

  He’d said that earlier today, and yesterday, too, and she hated to admit that she wasn’t quite getting the joke. So she ignored it and said, “No, I want to come. Anyway, I’m hungry. We skipped dinner, you know.”

  “We did at that.” He winked at her, and left a hot, hard kiss on her belly. “Get your arse out of bed then, woman.”

  It took her a while to get dressed. She’d lost her bra somewhere, and it turned out the cat had puked up a hair-ball on her pants while she and Rhys were otherwise engaged. Rhys sat on the bed watching, throwing out sly comments about this shirt or that pair of jeans, judging each on how well it showed off her body. “Oh yeah, those are the right jeans, love. God, you’ve got a smashing behind, you know that?”

  She was still rolling her eyes and batting his hands away when they rode down to the lobby. They turned into the hall leading to the kitchen, and found Marty and Davey there, pale with surprise.

  “What are you two doing?” she laughed, poking at Marty’s damp coveralls. “Work’s over for the day, guys. Take some time off and relax, you know?”

  Rhys nodded and went into the kitchen without her, flipping on the light. “How about some pasta, love?” he called, and walked into the pantry.

  “Sure,” she called back, and smiled at the guys. They’d fit in pretty well on Angel’s staff, even if they did tend to stick together like Siamese twins. And they were always so nervous around her, which she couldn’t understand. Angel was their boss, for one thing, and she wasn’t the yelling type, which they had to have figured out by now. “Are either of you coming to dinner tomorrow?” she asked. “You’re more than welcome, as long as you don’t show up with all twenty of your closest relatives. We’re planning the meal for about fifty.”

  They answered in unison, a jumble of something about a grandmother and a girlfriend, so she shooed them home. She could hear Rhys running water in a pot. “Go on, guys. Clock out. It’s a holiday.”

  Why did they look like she was the governor who’d just stayed their execution? She shrugged and wandered into the kitchen, where Rhys had already taken out a box of linguine and some fresh parmesan and tomato sauce he’d frozen a few days ago. “Ready to bake, Liv my love?”

  She shook her head and pulled up a stool. “Can’t I just watch? I think I flexed my culinary muscles quite enough for one day with those muffins.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, excuse me, your highness. Rummage up some fresh basil for me, will you? Or is that going to be too, too exhausting?”

  She smacked his rear end with a kitchen towel as she passed him to open the walk-in and stopped in surprise when the phone on the far wall rang. “Who on earth is that?”

  “It’s the house phone, love,” Rhys said, squinting at the red light. “You want me to get it?”

  “No, no.” She tossed a package of fresh basil on the counter beside him and hurried to the phone. “This is Olivia.”

  “Oh, Olivia, thank God.” It was Anna at the front desk, and she was whispering. “I tried your apartment but no one answered, and I didn’t see you go out, and I thought Rhys mentioned something about making pie—”

  “Anna,” Olivia interrupted with a sigh. She was a sweet kid, but Olivia was sure she was a wannabe actress. Any excuse for drama with Anna. “Is something wrong?”

  “Um, is Rhys with you? There’s a woman here requesting a room.”

  A woman? What did that have to do with Rhys? She glanced across the room, where he was busily chopping basil. “And the problem is?” she said evenly.

  “She claims she’s Rhys’s mother.”

  Rhys’s mother? Somehow, she’d never really given Rhys’s family much thought. In her mind, he’d sort of sprung from a cabbage patch. A wickedly sexy British one, of course.

  “What’s her name?”

  There was a pause, then papers shuffling, as well as a distinctly British and female voice in the background. “Um, Janet Spencer.”

  “Janet Spencer?” Olivia repeated.

  And looked up in surprise to find Rhys swearing and clutching a bloody finger he’d apparently just sliced nearly in two.

  Arms folded across his chest, Rhys stood to one side of the desk as Olivia helped Anna check in Janet Spencer.

  She was…well, nothing like Rhys was putting it mildly, but she didn’t want to be critical. In fact, she was afraid to say a word. Rhys was so furious, she practically had to smack him to get his finger wrapped before he marched into the lobby.

  So many family relationships were screwed up, she shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction to his mother’s name, but screwed up didn’t quite seem to tell the story here.

  “I tried to convince Gram to come,” Janet was telling Rhys now, running a hand through hair that had been dyed a bright cherry red. “But you know how she is about her programs, and she’s still never quite got the hang of flying, has she.”

  Rhys grunted in response.

  Olivia shot a glance at him as the last of the paperwork spit out of the printer. The room was on the house, of course, which Rhys refused to accept. “Charge it to me,” he’d hissed, and she’d nodded pleasantly while pretending to run his credit card. Damn it, she was going to have to have him pretend to sign for it, too.

  “Are you not even going to give your old mum a hug?” Janet complained, crossing over to him and flicking a nonexistent speck from his shirt. Aside from the hair, she reminded Olivia of a hold-out hippie, in faded jeans and an Indian blouse, with sterling silver to rival Roseanne’s jangling from her wrists and her ears. “Where are your manners, lovey?”

  If Rhys scowled any harder, Olivia was afraid his face would actually crack under the pressure. Stiffly, as if he were being asked to embrace a rabid dog, he put one arm around his mother and squeezed her briefly before backing away. “It’s late, Janet,” he said. “For me, at least. I’ve got things to do in the kitchen. Someone’ll see you upstairs, I wager.”

  He was gone before Olivia could say a word, and after a quick apology to Janet, she rushed after him. Anna would see the woman upstairs—they’d dispensed with the night porter long ago, since it was a wasted salary—and Olivia couldn’t imagine any other unexpected arrivals tonight.

  “What on earth was that about?” she said without thinki
ng once she’d walked into the kitchen.

  Rhys glared at her and went back to stirring the pot of pasta. “She wants something. That’s why she’s here.”

  “Maybe she simply wants to see you,” Olivia said softly and walked over to lay a hand on his arm. “Hey. You’re beating those poor noodles to death, you know.”

  “She never just wants to see me,” Rhys answered, but he put the spoon down and backed away from the range. “Believe me. I don’t trust a word out of her mouth, especially not ‘I love you.’”

  He paced away from her, unconsciously flexing his injured finger. She wrapped her arms around herself and frowned, but waited until he’d turned to face her before speaking.

  “Can you tell me why?”

  He shook his head with a laugh that was too bitter to qualify as humor. “Why? Because she’s lied to me all my life. She and Gram both.” He came closer, his eyes as dark as smoke and blazing with fury. “Do you know until I was thirteen, I thought she was my sister? I’d called my gran ‘Mum’ all my life, and her Janet, all because she got herself knocked up at sixteen and didn’t want to be a parent yet. Convinced my gran to raise me as her own, which worked just fine till I found my birth certificate when I was scrounging about in drawers for an odd pound or two.”

  Without realizing it, Olivia had clapped a hand to her mouth in shock. She bit the inside of her cheek when she felt tears well up, trying to stop them.

  It was too late, though. Rhys had seen, and it had only made him angrier. “Your pasta’s almost ready,” he muttered and turned away.

  Chapter 19

  S taring into the kitchen’s walk-in the next morning, Rhys blinked. He hadn’t slept well, and Olivia had tossed and turned like a leaf in a storm all night, too. He was knackered, out of sorts, and in need of another cup of coffee, immediately.

  Maybe he was hallucinating. It happened, yeah? It wasn’t unheard of. If he took a step back and cleared his head, he’d be all right, wouldn’t he?