Room Service Page 4

  “Shhh!” Olivia warned her when Rhys looked up, a bottle of Stoli in one hand and a bottle of Jim Beam in the other.

  “Pick your poison, ladies,” he said with a grin.

  “I actually need a drink,” Josie said in amazement. “Has the whole world gone whacko today?”

  Olivia shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “Tell them what the sodding fool said to you,” Rhys suggested as he poured a shot of bourbon and passed it to Roseanne.

  “Yes, please do,” Josie said, reaching across the bar for the bowl of pretzels. “The suspense is giving me a headache.”

  Olivia stared into the tumbler of vodka Rhys had poured for her. She’d never had liquor straight up, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to start now. But when she thought about Stuart’s voice as he hissed, “The hotel will be mine,” she decided to give it a shot.

  “Oh my God, it burns,” she choked out a minute later. “I think my eyes are actually watering.”

  “Make her something foofy, will you,” Josie said. “She’s not exactly a shot drinker on a good day.”

  “One Flirtini, coming right up.”

  “Are you a renegade bartender, too?” Josie demanded. “And will someone please tell us what Stuart said?”

  “He said the hotel will be his.” An echo of her earlier panic vibrated in the back of her head, like a headache threatening to take hold. “Exactly like that. He sputtered and criticized, just like he always does, but this time he said—”

  “The hotel will be his,” Josie repeated. Her eyes flashed fire when she glanced up from her drink to look at Olivia. “Who does he think he is, Darth Vader?”

  “Oh, honey.” Roseanne bit her bottom lip and fingered the end of her long, gray braid. “I’ve been afraid of this.”

  Olivia gaped at her. “What do you mean? He’s always hated this place.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what it’s worth.” Roseanne’s voice was softer now, and she reached out to pat Olivia’s hand. “You’re going to have to be very careful, sweetie.”

  “Careful about what?” Josie asked. She set down her glass and crunched into a pretzel with a little more violence than was strictly necessary. “The hotel is Olivia’s.”

  “That may be,” Rhys said, sliding a martini glass toward Olivia, “but there are a million ways he could make that very difficult for her, yeah?”

  “Driving me out, you mean?” Olivia said. There went her pulse again, fluttering like a caged bird.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, he won’t.” She stood up, ignoring her drink, and paced toward the middle of the room, absently pushing chairs into place at their tables as she went. “He can’t.”

  When she was a child, the bar had always been off limits. “Nothing for little misses to see in there, sweetie,” her father would say with a laugh. Her mother had agreed, but as often as not Olivia would run down the service stairs and creep through the lobby when she was supposed to be in bed. She’d find parents seated with friends or hotel guests at one of the round tables in the dark, smoky room, her mother in a cocktail dress with her good pearls on and her hair done, her father in his customary blue suit, his glasses polished but still sliding down his nose when he laughed.

  And now it was hers.

  She couldn’t remember the last time the bar had been as crowded as it was in her memories. Now, more nights than not, half the tables sat empty. She squinted and crossed the room to run a finger over one of the picture frames. The Chrysler Building reached for the sky from beneath a film of dust. The place wasn’t even getting cleaned regularly.

  The fact that she was here, not in a cocktail dress, not in pearls, but in her old gray pants and an even older sweater, drinking vodka on a Monday afternoon, didn’t exactly lift her spirits.

  She turned around and faced the others, all of whom were sipping their drinks and watching her as if she were about to break into song.

  “He’s not taking this hotel away from me,” she said after a deep breath. “He can’t. There’s nothing in the world that will make me give up this place.”

  “Bravo!” Roseanne said, clapping. The bourbon had already pinked her cheeks.

  “It’s a landmark,” Olivia continued, confident now. “It’s history, it’s my legacy. Mine.”

  Even Josie clapped this time, and Rhys whistled, long and low.

  Olivia sketched a bow, pleased with herself. Stuart couldn’t scare her, the big bully. Callender House was hers, and that was the way it was going to stay.

  Just then Angel pushed open the door and stuck his head inside. “Um, Olivia?”

  She smiled at him. “Yes?”

  “The nameplate outside just fell off completely.”

  Perfect. She sighed. “Where’s my drink?”

  Josie helped herself to another shot when Olivia left the room, with the yummy Brit following her. It was a workday, but around here, that didn’t mean much.

  “Hit me, too,” Roseanne said, holding out her glass.

  Josie poured bourbon for both of them. “It’s not usually this crazy around here, is it?”

  “Not quite,” Roseanne admitted. “How long have you been here now?”

  “Two months.” Josie knocked back the shot, and coughed when she’d swallowed. “And I really don’t want to look for another job. Again.”

  She wasn’t even sure why she’d taken this one. Okay, well, part of the reason was being “let go” from the St. Regis, but she refused to feel ashamed of that. If the manager couldn’t stand to hear the truth about what one of the guests had been found doing with a member of the housekeeping staff, it wasn’t her fault. A little flirtation between consenting adults was one thing, but fur handcuffs? In the linen room? Please.

  And Olivia had offered her a big promotion. Not a big salary, but at least a promotion. Guest Services Manager. It looked good on a business card, and it would have taken her a decade or more to get to the same position at one of the big hotels.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked Roseanne idly.

  “Twenty-seven years,” Roseanne answered with a placid smile. “Olivia’s grandfather hired me, and then I worked for Olivia’s dad. Who was just a little less eccentric than his father.”

  “Twenty-seven years, huh?” At the idea of twenty-seven years in one job, another drink seemed tempting, but Josie stifled the urge. Drunken subway riding was never a good idea, and passing out on her keyboard probably wouldn’t win her any brownie points around here either.

  “I wouldn’t change it for the world.” Roseanne set her glass down and propped her head in her hands. “I get my time off every year for the faire, I have my own office and free lunch, and I know if I ever get kicked out of my apartment, I can move in here.”

  “That’s a…plus,” Josie said dubiously. “Unless the hotel closes down. I have to say, registration is not exactly at an all-time high. And the residents? Most of them are paying circa-1978 rent.” She considered that for a moment as she lined up pretzels on the bar. “Which is a good deal, actually. Maybe I should move in here.”

  Roseanne snorted, but a moment later her grin faded. “I am worried, you know. Stuart’s never actually threatened to take the hotel away from Olivia before.”

  “I don’t know why he is now,” Josie pointed out. “I mean, I like it here, and Olivia’s great, but this place isn’t what you’d call a cash cow.”

  “Nobody knows that better than I do.”

  “Reassuring to hear from the woman in charge of my paycheck,” Josie said dryly. “I hope Olivia’s thought of some ways to get more paying guests in here.”

  Roseanne sighed, her faded blue eyes sorrowful. “If she hasn’t, she will now.”

  “Who will what?”

  Josie looked up to see Gus Fitch ambling toward the bar—and then ducking beneath it, just as Rhys had.

  She threw up her hands in defeat. “Did I miss the memo about fix-your-own-drink day or something?”

  “I’m filling i
n for Tommy,” Gus explained, squirting water into a glass he’d filled with ice. “He pulled out his back.”

  “But…you’re a guest,” Josie sputtered, looking at Roseanne for backup.

  The older woman shrugged and took a pretzel from Josie’s pile. Apparently, bourbon did nothing to fuel her righteous indignation.

  Gus had been a guest since Josie had started work at the hotel, but Olivia had told her he’d actually been at Callender House for nearly a year now.

  Which was, in Josie’s opinion, pretty weird. Gus Fitch had written two best-selling books, one on his childhood as the son of a famous film director and another exposing the truth about the Riverside Institution, a mental hospital. He’d been on Oprah, for heaven’s sake.

  Not that he looked it. Josie wasn’t sure what a best-selling author was supposed to look like, but it seemed to her it should involve a little more bling than Gus indulged in. He was wearing his usual uniform of faded jeans, loose cotton sweater, and baseball cap today, and Josie didn’t think she’d ever seen him in anything else. Even on Oprah, come to think of it. Coupled with his sad puppy dog eyes and his low, soft voice, he reminded her of an overgrown kid who’d just witnessed his baseball team losing the pennant race.

  But he was sweet. In fact, he was sort of the default hotel mascot, as far as she could tell. He knew everybody, and everybody loved him. Including Tommy, she guessed, who was famously territorial about “his” bar. There was even a plastic sign tacked up beside the mirror: Tommy’s Parking Only.

  “So what’s the occasion?” Gus asked as he refilled the pretzel bowl. For a volunteer bartender, he took his responsibilities pretty seriously, Josie noted. “You guys don’t usually knock back shots in the midafternoon.”

  “Stuart got nasty with Olivia at lunch today,” Roseanne said with a weary sigh. She settled back on her stool, which creaked under her weight.

  “Right after the chandelier fell down and Rick threw a cake at him,” Josie added.

  Gus blinked. “That’s not good.”

  “You’re a master of understatement,” Josie said, but she smiled as she did, and Gus blushed a little bit.

  And then he smiled at her, a real smile, a shy, just-for-her smile. Maybe it was the bourbon, but suddenly she understood why everyone liked him so much. Because she did, too.

  “That’s going to take some fixing,” Olivia said as she stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel and examined the now dented nameplate.

  “Fixing?” Rhys grunted. “Time for the rubbish heap, I think. Get a new one.”

  “No!” Bending to pick it up—and finding it far heavier than she’d thought—Olivia propped the tarnished brass gently against the wall. “This is the original sign. It’s …it’s…historic.”

  “Not everything old is historic,” Rhys argued, and slouched against the bricks as he folded his arms over his chest.

  Well, the Callender House nameplate was historic. Whether it was or not, Olivia decided, frowning at her own logic. After the cake and the chandelier and, frankly, the vodka, she wasn’t prepared to argue about it with a stranger.

  Which reminded her that Rhys Spencer, for all intents and purposes, was just that. Scowling at him, she asked, “Where did you come from?”

  “Right about there, I think,” he answered, pointing at a spot on the sidewalk with a wicked grin.

  She sighed. “I mean it. You just turn up out of nowhere, saving me from disaster. I can’t decide what kind of penny you are.”

  His brow lifted in confusion, disappearing beneath that shaggy, dark fringe of hair. “What kind of what now?”

  “Penny. You know.” She wasn’t going to blush this time, damn it. “See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck? But then there’s ‘turning up like a bad penny,’ too.”

  “I think you’re undervaluing me either way,” Rhys teased, but when she scowled harder, he threw up his hands in surrender. “No need to get narked, love. I’m a chef. I just arrived in town this morning, as a matter of fact, by way of London and lately L.A. In fact, I have to head back there for the finale of the show in a month.”

  “A chef? Really?” She tried to picture him in a white chef’s coat—and, even sillier, a white chef’s hat like Josef had always worn—and had to stifle a giggle.

  “I don’t wear the hat,” he said, and scowled right back at her. Goodness, the man was practically a mind reader. “And yeah, I cook. Always have. It’s the one thing I do brilliantly.”

  As she watched his lips form the words, she highly doubted that cooking was the only thing he did brilliantly, as he put it. Look at that mouth. He was probably an excellent kisser.

  A flicker of surprise skittered up the back of her neck. What was she thinking? No one had said anything about kissing.

  She realized she was still staring at him and dragged her gaze away to ask, “So what brought you to New York?”

  “Don’t know.” He grinned and pushed away from the wall to reach out and take her hand. “Hadn’t been here in a long while, and I needed a change after all that blasted Los Angeles sunshine.”

  It was hard to take in everything he was saying with his lean fingers clasped around hers. “Where are you staying?” she managed, trying to ignore the warmth of his hand, and the distracting way he was running his thumb over her knuckles.

  “Didn’t I mention that, love?” He pulled her closer, just an inch or so, but it was enough to send an electric tingle of awareness through her body. She glanced up into those smoky gray eyes, and felt her mouth fall open when he spoke again. “I’m staying here. I’m your newest guest.”

  Chapter 4

  D esperate times called for desperate snacks. Well, maybe not desperate as much as industrial-strength, Olivia mused as she flipped on the lights in the restaurant kitchen close to midnight. Most of the time, the idea of trekking downstairs from her small tenth-floor apartment was enough to keep her from raiding the stash in Josef’s pantry, but not tonight.

  Tonight she needed something big. Something strong. Preferably something chocolate. And the only thing that even came close in her tiny kitchen upstairs was an aging box of Count Chocula she’d bought on a whim one day, in a fit of nostalgia. But cereal—especially stale, not-really-chocolate cereal—was not going to get the job done tonight.

  All remnants of the Great Cake Battle had been cleaned up, and the dinner service had proceeded without disaster. Mostly because Rick had thrown his apron on the counter and quit shortly after Olivia found her way back to the kitchen.

  Which was after she’d heard that Rhys Spencer was ensconced in a room on the ninth floor.

  Boy, did she need chocolate.

  She padded across the clean swept floor to the pantry and swung open the door. Rhys Spencer could stay anywhere in the city. But to hear him tell it, he’d met her—for all values of “meeting” that included pushing her out of a taxi’s path—followed her into the hotel, discovered it was hers, and checked in without a second thought or a backward glance.

  It was…a little alarming.

  And she really hoped his bed had been made with the newest sheets.

  Staring at the neatly arranged contents of the pantry, she couldn’t help wondering what it meant. Rhys hadn’t only checked into her hotel, he’d come downstairs in search of her and tried to salvage the bizarre situation in which she’d found herself. And then he’d made her a drink. And followed her outside, where he’d been charming and sexy enough to make her head spin, lounging against that wall, all indolence and sly grins.

  It was…well, weird. Unexpected, at the very least. Men didn’t really do things like that, did they? Not outside of fairy tales and romantic movies, at least.

  But it was also sweet, and flattering. And completely nerve-wracking.

  She didn’t know what to do with a man like Rhys, she thought as she cut a piece of leftover cake from the dinner service and put it on a plate. She knew what she’d like to do with a man like Rhys, and that was surprising enough,
because it entailed the kinds of things she’d only read about in books.

  The kinds of things that made her a little dizzy with desire just imagining them.

  Forking up an enormous bite of cake, she bit into it and sighed. Chocolate was never a bad thing, but she was afraid even Josef’s sinfully rich dark chocolate cake wasn’t going to cut it tonight. If she wasn’t thinking about Rhys and all the ways he made her restless, she was thinking about Stuart and all the ways he made her nervous. She’d tossed and turned in bed for nearly an hour before she came downstairs. Usually she was asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.

  But not tonight. Today had been one long, strange wake-up call. If she ever got to sleep again, she’d be lucky.

  Taking her plate, she flicked off the lights and padded toward the door. It was eerily quiet tonight, and once the lights were out, she needed a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She knew the hotel like the back of her hand, but since her father had died it seemed…bigger. It was all hers now, even the few nooks and crannies she had never explored, and Stuart had managed to scare her into wondering if those unknown corners held anything but trouble.

  And her father was no longer around to reassure her. To call the plumber or the electrician, or handle the odd guest who tried to short them on the bill. It was up to her to make sure the elevators were running and the upstairs hallways got vacuumed.

  And the chandelier was checked out occasionally, she reminded herself grimly. Too late for that now.

  Too late for a lot of things. But not for a soothing cup of tea with her cake, and maybe some mindless television. She needed to sleep tonight. She could deal with everything else tomorrow. Or possibly the next day.

  Stepping into the service corridor outside the kitchen, she turned left to head toward the back elevator—and smacked into something that felt very much like a tall, strong man.

  She let out a nervous shriek as her plate—and her cake, damn it—hit the floor, and two strong hands grabbed her upper arms.