out like a cheap piñata at an exquisite soirée.
“All righty,” Chloe said. “You’ve got a table by the window, but it won’t be ready for another ten or fifteen minutes. I’d love to take you for a drink in the Manzanita Lounge. It’s right through here.”
“You don’t have to stick with me.” Alice lowered her eyes so that the other woman wouldn’t see how much she really didn’t want to be on her own tonight. “I’m sure you have other guests to attend to.”
“I can spare ten minutes.” Chloe looped a hand around Alice’s elbow. “In fact, you’d be doing me a favor. The new night concierge is a taskmaster. I don’t get to mingle with guests very often since he came on the job.”
“Well, if you put it that way…” Alice said with a light laugh that eased the strain in her throat. She wasn’t as prepared for this adventure as she’d have liked.
Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow she’d have adjusted and would feel more equipped.
They went into the adjacent lounge and sat at the bar to order drinks. The bartender was a good-looking young Mexican whose dark eyes were set off by the high collar of the staff uniform. After serving them with a flourish, he was called away to the other end of the bar.
“Do you know him?” Alice whispered before taking a sip of a prickly-pear-flavored rum punch.
Chloe had settled for the nonalcoholic version. “Ramon? He’s new. Cute, don’t you think?”
“Young.”
“He’s putting himself through college, but he started late. He’s only a year younger than I am.”
“You’re young, too.” This was one of the times that thirty-four and never a bride seemed ancient to Alice. “Sounds like you know him pretty well.”
“We’ve talked.” Chloe grinned. “And flirted.” She swiveled to gaze longingly down the polished stone bar before swinging her stool back in Alice’s direction. “What about you? No significant other waiting for you at home?”
Alice spun her straw, swirling the ice in her drink. “No one.”
Chloe’s eyes creased. They were tilted up at the corners by the pull of her tightly anchored high ponytail. “Has your heart been broken?”
Alice blinked. Did it still show? She’d been jilted by Stewart almost five years ago.
Five years—wow. She hadn’t added it up lately. She felt as if the breakup had only recently happened. Yet she knew that she’d been lucky to be rid of the faithless man and that there were much deeper losses.
Under normal circumstances, she might have been able to get over Stewart and move on. But romantic options on Osprey were limited. She’d been left with far too many empty hours to brood.
“Water under the bridge,” she said, putting on a nonchalant front. “And way down the river.”
Chloe nodded sagely. “We’ve all watched that stream flow by.”
“Some of us more than others,” said a plump, older woman who was passing by. “My rowboat’s capsized a few times, but I keep on paddling.” She raised her hand, calling out, “Yoo-hoo, cutie!” to a silver-haired man in cowboy boots and a bolo tie before hurrying away.
“That’s Leilani Steen,” Chloe said, “assistant to the boss.”
“The taskmaster?” Alice asked.
“Not my taskmaster. A different one. Actually quite a hot one, if he’d ever loosen his tie and pop off his cuff links.” Chloe spun right around, sitting straighter as she did. “Speak of the devil. There he is now.”
Alice glanced over her shoulder and saw the rowboat woman talking to someone who towered over her, while the woman’s suitor hovered at her elbow. “Which taskmaster?”
“Lani’s boss. Mr. Kyle Jarreau.” Chloe’s tone was filled with admiration. “Manager of the whole PM shebang.”
PM meant Prince Montez, Alice remembered, as a second look had her straightening up right alongside Chloe. There was something about the man who’d just walked into the lounge that made a woman draw a breath all the way to the bottom of her lungs.
Lani and her date had moved on and the “taskmaster” stood alone in the archway between bar and restaurant. Alone but at ease, his presence effortlessly commanding as he surveyed the area.
The air in the room became electric, the employees galvanized. Alice rubbed her palms over the goose bumps on her arms. She swiveled toward the bar. The back of her head and neck tingled as if he’d looked her way.
“Uh-oh,” Chloe said without moving her lips. “He’s seen me.”
Alice exhaled. Not me. Of course, not me. “You’d better go on, then. I don’t want to keep you from your job.”
Chloe slid off the stool. “Have a nice dinner.” She laid her hand on Alice’s arm. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow and we’ll plan your schedule.”
Alice watched obliquely as Chloe passed the boss with a nodding bounce of her ponytail and a perky, “Good evening, Mr. Jarreau.”
He returned the nod without smiling.
He was solemn, but young for such a position of authority. Probably no more than forty, tops. Not that Alice knew much about the ins and outs of resort management, her only experience being the cakes she’d delivered to the White Gull Inn from her best friend Susan’s bakery.
She tipped forward and caught the straw between her teeth. The tingles returned, but when she flicked her gaze at Mr. Jarreau, he wasn’t looking her way. She wished he’d move. Go away. Prove that there was no cat-and-mouse awareness except in her overheated imagination.
Suddenly he appeared beside her, leaning past Chloe’s abandoned stool with his hands on the edge of the granite slab of the bar. He pressed forward, flexing tanned forearms beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. “Busy night, Ramon?”
Loose tie, no cuff links, Alice noted with a shiver. Only a chunky platinum watch around one thick wrist. Chloe had got it wrong.
The bartender smiled, revealing his white teeth. “The usual, sir. The conference attendees drained five gallons of margarita mix in twenty minutes flat. Chef Chavez is causing a ruckus in the kitchens. Can I get you anything, Mr. Jarreau?”
“No.” He pushed away from the bar, ran his dangling tie between two fingers. “Yes. I’ll have a whiskey sour. Light on the whiskey. I have an empty stomach.”
While Ramon busied himself, Jarreau’s glance rested on Alice for a second. She felt overly conscious of her elbows pressed to her ribs and her tongue against her teeth.
I’m nothing to him. Just another guest. One face among hundreds.
The thought rankled her. Why was she so dismissive of herself? Had her status as everybody’s helpmate become that ingrained?
“It’s a beautiful hotel,” she said.
