Page 17 of Just My Luck

Something about the couple seemed off to him. He eyed them more closely, noticing that her Chanel bag was a knockoff and his watch was a replica of the famous Grandmaster Chime.

After the two had headed to the bar for a celebratory piña colada, he spoke to Zara in a low voice. “Double check their form of payment. And keep them away from your top-tier customers.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you see his watch? It says Patel Philippe.”

“So?”

“So it’s a fake.” When she continued to look at him blankly, he added, “Patel, not Patek? Not only is it a fake, it’s an insultingly obvious one.”

Her eyes widened. Pretty eyes, he thought, like sunlight shining through honey. “How do you know that?”

Hell. Didn’t everyone? “I, uh, saw it on the Internet.” That seemed like an all-purpose explanation. Better than telling her that he owned two of them himself, so he happened to know they cost sixty thousand dollars and you had to go through an application to purchase them. Not just anyone was entrusted with a Patek Philippe.

That couple certainly hadn’t been.

A few days after that incident, he was running the leaf blower near the kitchen storeroom when Zara appeared before him, waving her arms to get his attention. He turned the machine off, removed his ear protection, then waited while she caught her breath. A few tendrils of her hair had escaped that tight knot and curled along her hairline.

“I…want to tell you…that you were right about that couple. They tried to skip out on their bill.”

He nodded, unsurprised. “Did they manage it?”

“No, which is great because I could have gotten fired. Even if it wasn’t my fault, nothing pisses off management more than a scammer. Can you believe they were using someone else’s identity?”

He almost flinched, but controlled his reaction just in time. He too was using a false identity, although not in order to rip anyone off. Did that distinction matter? “Ballsy,” he said.

“You think conning people is ballsy? Then you’d love my—” She snapped her mouth shut, then changed direction. “They were good, I’ll admit. I should have caught onto them myself, but I didn’t, so I wanted to thank you personally. The manager thinks they were here to rob other guests. In fact, I’m not even sure that ring you found was actually theirs.”

“The ring was definitely real,” he told her. “Four-carat diamond, emerald cut.”

She folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose you saw that on the Internet too?”

Damn it. Why did he keep blurting out unhelpful things?

He shrugged, which was better than telling her that he’d bought his first wife a similar ring. His second wife had gotten an even more expensive one. Ironic, since they’d broken up six weeks after their impulsive, doomed wedding. The length of his marriages seemed to be in inverse proportion to the cost of the rings.

Next time—not that there’d be one—he’d go for something from a bubble gum machine.

“Well, I just wanted to say thanks.” Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and rolled her eyes. “It’s nuts how rich people can’t wait two extra seconds for their restaurant reservations. Can you find an explanation for that on the Internet? Oh, one little thing, if you don’t mind.” She lowered her voice. “Eddie is hanging out in hale eighteen, would you mind keeping an eye on him in between leaf blowing?”

“An eye on him?” He’d never kept an eye on a child in his life. What did that even mean? What if the kid swallowed a rock, or threw up, or needed to know the meaning of life? “I’m on the clock, I have to work.”

“Of course you do, those leaves most definitely need to be swept out of view, our guests shouldn’t be subjected to the sight of a single brown dead thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind me, I’m having a day. Leaf blowing comes first, obviously. But if you could just poke your head in while you’re passing by and ask Eddie if he needs anything… he doesn’t have a way to reach me. And he was kind of moping around when I picked him up from school. He doesn’t do well with hot weather.”

“What about—” He couldn’t think of another objection, so he didn’t finish the sentence.

“The guests staying there, you mean? Late arrival, so there shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a family flying in from Switzerland. Mia’s at a play rehearsal and my usual babysitter ditched us. I haven’t had a chance to interview—” Her phone buzzed again. ”Anyway, would you mind?” she continued, rapid-fire. “Thanks so much, you’re a champ, I owe you, what do you want in return? A latte? A new car? Philippe Patel watch? Okay, gotta go.” She flew across the close-cropped grass—Zoysia grass, he now knew—then spun around and blew him a grateful kiss from midway across the lawn.

It was a light and teasing gesture, completely devoid of significance, but it had a strange effect on him. That leaf blower barely seemed to weigh anything when he got back to his task. He even found himself whistling.

He never whistled, as it was a habit Violet Kerr despised. “Well-brought-up gentlemen do not whistle,” he’d been instructed. “You can leave that to the lower classes.”

Well, here he was, to all intents and purposes what she would call lower class, and right now, he felt like whistling. It helped the time pass and distracted him from his sore lower back. You don’t know what you’re missing, Mama.

In order to properly earn that air kiss, he made his way in the direction of hale eighteen. There was no reason he couldn’t work around that one first. All of the hales had to be cleared of dead leaves in the next hour or so, when the next batch of guests would start arriving.

It was midday, the sun at its peak, beating down on the top of his head. Even through the straw hat, his scalp was heating up. The hales were air conditioned, so hopefully Eddie wasn’t too miserable.