here. She was so good at that.
Unfortunately Rosebud didn’t share Belle’s skills. Manipulating gadgets and electronics, remembering and recreating music she’d heard only once, a knack for remaining unnoticed by Miss Arlotta’s all-seeing eyes, and the ability to make herself so 3-D it would knock your socks off…. Those were her talents. Not that they did her a particle of good at the moment.
Rosebud cocked her head to one side, trying to figure out why she was so intrigued by this man. Yes, she liked the looks of him, but it was more than that.
She felt oddly drawn to him. It was the strangest thing. She just had to know who he was, what he was doing there, and especially what he looked like. All of him, dadblast it!
“First time for everything,” she murmured. Out of all the men who’d wandered through the Inn over the years, this was the first one who’d made her feel this curious warmth, this shiver of anticipation and…And what seemed to be lust.
“It’s not lust,” she said under her breath. She wasn’t like the other girls with their constant urge to merge. “Just curiosity.”
Maybe if she blew on his neck. Or in his ear. Or flickered the lights in the parlor. How about a little jolt of electricity transmitted through a pinch to his adorable derriere? If she gave him a tiny shock, surely he would have to turn to face her.
She checked behind her to see if any of the other girls had noticed him (or her fascination with him) but they seemed to be intent on some silly bickering over a card game in the far corner. She was safe for the moment, if she could just get him to turn around…
“You’re supposed to be looking for a woman.” Miss Arlotta’s aggravated tone rang in Rosebud’s ear, making her jump. “Tell me, does that gent look like a woman?”
“Not even a little,” Rosebud responded without thinking.
“The gal you’re looking for is in the ballroom,” the boss interrupted. “She’s about decided she doesn’t want her wedding here. If she walks, your goose is good and cooked. So get a move on.”
Much as she hated to tear herself away from the mysterious man at the window, Rosebud knew she had no choice but to leave him behind. Drat.
“Miss A told me my bride was in the lobby,” she complained out loud, reluctantly floating away from the man at the window. “How was I supposed to know she’d be in the ballroom?”
“Did you hear that? I could swear I heard a female voice talking about the ballroom, right in my ear,” the woman with the crackers whispered as Rosebud swooped past. “And I can feel a chill.”
“They say this place has ghosts,” her husband told her, holding her close.
Real wizards, those two. But Rosebud had forgotten herself for a moment. Apparently her long suspension had made her people skills rusty. Inaudible, you ninny, she told herself. Neither seen nor heard. She managed to keep her mouth shut as she flashed into the ballroom to catch up with her new assignment.
And there she was. The bride du jour.
“I don’t like the looks of her at all,” Rosebud remarked as she sailed up to take a position behind the main chandelier. “She looks like the Countess, doesn’t she? And every bit as snooty.”
Vanessa Westicott looked sharp, in every sense of the word. Her hair, as dark as Rosebud’s own, was pulled back into a severe knot at the back of her neck. From the pained expression on her face, the knot was too tight. She was pretty, very thin, and dressed in a snappy little black outfit with a skirt that Rosebud found scandalously short. And the woman was wearing high-heeled, pointy black boots that were not going to be comfortable as she toured the Inn.
Right now she was peering up at the chandelier Rosebud was swinging from, pinching her mouth together and making her unhappiness quite clear to one of the hotel’s wedding coordinators, a sweet young woman named Beth, who was giving her the grand tour.
“Wicked Witch of the West,” Rosebud whispered, swirling around the woman for a closer look. She’d watched The Wizard of Oz a few weeks ago, so the image was fresh in her mind. “All she needs is a green face.”
“What did you say?” Vanessa turned on her guide. “Green plates? Why in the world would I want that?”
“I didn’t say anything about green plates.”
“Well, I don’t like this ballroom, no matter what color scheme we use on the table settings,” Vanessa snapped. “The lighting is terrible.”
“These chandeliers are reproductions of what was here in 1895, without the gas, of course,” Beth said quickly.
But Vanessa had moved on, tapping her pointy foot on the parquet floor. “What kind of wood is this? I don’t like it. I prefer walnut.”
As if she would recognize walnut if she fell over it. Rosebud rolled her ghostly eyes. Princess Vanessa was a pain. A royal pain.
It went on that way as the tour continued, with Beth leading Vanessa on to the next space, a lovely, intimate private dining room recommended for the rehearsal dinner, and then up to the guest rooms. But the bride-to-be’s list of demands just kept getting longer, and she wanted it all at rock-bottom prices.
Beluga caviar. Cristal champagne. Special lace tablecloths from Belgium. Special caterer. Special masseuse. And on and on, down to her insistence on the Inn’s best honeymoon suite, although all the linens were going to have to be changed. She required Egyptian cotton with 800-thread counts, of course.
“This suite is the only thing you’ve got that’s even slightly acceptable for my honeymoon,” she sniffed, running a finger over the edge of a mahogany side table.
Hrmph. Rosebud might not have been the happiest hooker on the premises, but after 109 years, she had a certain loyalty to the place. Besides, she’d once lived in the lap of Denver society—during an era far more elegant than this one—and she knew there was nothing wrong with the Inn at Maiden Falls or its rooms or its chef or its linens or anything else.
And certainly not the gorgeous suite they were standing in, the one they called the Lady Godiva Suite, which reminded Rosebud of the inside of a candy box with its deep reds and pinks and chocolaty browns. Like the rest of the Inn, it was full of antiques and featured a beautiful, sensual pre-Raphaelite painting, one of the odalisques, over the fireplace in its sitting room. Right now, there were fresh flowers, a display of fine chocolates and a bottle of excellent champagne on ice, all awaiting tonight’s lucky guests.
Rosebud adored this room. She hoped Beth told Princess Vanessa to zip her narrow scarlet lips very soon, or she might just have to shove her out the window of the Lady Godiva Suite.
“But if she dies on the premises, with my luck she’ll be stuck here with the rest of us into eternity,” she grumbled.
The wedding coordinator was more diplomatic. “I can look into some of your other requests, but I can’t promise you this suite,” Beth said gently, referring back to her notes. “The Inn is insanely popular, and your dates are awfully soon. Are you at all flexible about, say, midweek? We may even be booked for those, but that’s your best shot.”
“You do know who my fiancé is, don’t you?” Vanessa asked, raising one dark sliver of an eyebrow.
Rosebud
