Page 4 of Room Serviced
“Then put me to work in whatever boring way you want. Jesus. Is it a bet or not?”
Sloane glanced over her shoulder. Nicole and Gillian hadn’t been dating that long, as far as she knew, but Sarah and Michael had been together since high school—half the people she’d gone to high school were married to their high school sweethearts—so probably, they’d get engaged first.
“Fine,” she said, and couldn’t help letting a tiny smile onto her face. “You’re on.”
“Excellent.” Max smiled in the warm, pretty light with his imperfect teeth, and Sloane had to look away for a moment.
Chapter One
Three Months Later
Behind the front desk, the clerk had gone quiet, and Max didn’t like it. In his experience, people going quiet and then frowning at their computers was a bad sign, and the longer they were quiet and frowning, the worse it was.
“It might be under Maxwell Golding,” he said, just to say something. She’d probably looked it up by last name already, but he was getting antsy.
“Sorry, sir,” she said automatically. “I’ve found your reservation, but it appears that there’s a slight problem. Can you give me a moment?”
“Hope my warrants didn’t catch up with me,” Max said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. In return, he got a smile that very clearly said, I am required to tolerate stupid jokes from guests.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and walked through a doorway behind the desk.
Max stayed where he was and wished he hadn’t made a stupid joke. In what world was Hey, I could be a dangerous criminal funny to some poor hotel employee?
Behind the counter, the wall was tastefully wallpapered in some sort of stripey gold paper with a vaguely old western feel. On it hung an elaborate sign that said Welcome to the Hotel Bellwether. So, at least he was at the right place. He’d made the reservations for the right day, right? Monday? Once, he’d accidentally made a flight reservation for the wrong week, and his friends still hadn’t let him live it down.
He checked the calendar on his phone twice, then moved on to looking at a brochure about couples’ massages when the doors at the other end of the lobby opened and a woman walked in.
Not walked. Swept. Swept in like the whole place belonged to her—the carpet and the wallpaper and the desks and the chandeliers, everything. Swept because she was wearing a giant hat and big sunglasses and some sort of frothy, floor-length robe concoction straight out of the 1950s. Except it was—Jesus, was it see-through? Or was it just white? Or made of something with a lot of little holes, or whatever that word was, the one that meant sort of see-through? The dictionary in Max’s brain had gone offline.
He’d been in the car for a little over ten hours. The Central Valley had been hot as fuck, and none of his usual podcasts had been any good. He’d gotten stuck in traffic a little ways north of Los Angeles. He felt rumpled and like his hair was plastered to his neck and also like his brain had finally popped out of his head and made a run for it somewhere around Anaheim, and so, yeah, he stared. A little. In a non-weird way.
And then, halfway across the lobby, the sweeping woman finally took the giant sunglasses off, and there was Sloane.
“Oh,” Max said aloud, to no one.
Shit, he said silently, to himself.
“There’s some problem with the rooms,” Sloane said when she’d walked up to him, sliding her sunglasses into the neck of her garment. The weight pulled the neckline down a little further. Max tried not to notice.
“What problem?” he asked.
Sloane shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I just told them my colleague would deal with it when he got here and went to the pool.”
“You couldn’t text me?”
“You were driving.”
“It was a really boring drive.”
She rolled her eyes, and not for the first time, Max noticed they were somewhere between pale blue and green and brown. Gray? But not, like, silver gray. Warm gray, the color of—river rocks or slate rocks or—other rocks, probably. It had been a very long drive.
“Okay, I should have texted you and risked your life for what, so you could worry in traffic? You’re figuring it out now. It’s fine.”
Max frowned at her. For too long, probably. Because first he was frowning at her and then getting a little distracted by—well, by Sloane’s whole current look. The frothy, floaty, sheer thing she was wearing and how he was positive she had to be wearing something under it but couldn’t for the life of him find its outline, and it had been a very. Long. Drive.
“Who are you, and what have you done with Sloane Vanzetti?” he finally asked. “You know, the woman who organized a full-day wine tasting for fifteen people and sent out individualized itineraries to every one of them at Manny’s wedding back home last fall?”
“You told me to relax,” Sloane said loftily. She tilted her chin up and therefore also the brim of her giant hat. “This is me relaxing. Ta-da.”
