Room Service. Amy Garvey
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to kiss it? He pumped it instead, and flashed his most charming smile. “Rhys Spencer. Formerly of…London.”
“Beautiful city,” she said, and slipped her arm through his. “I have lover there once. And what brings you to New York?”
A lover. Right. Aware that his mouth was hanging open, he snapped it shut. “I’m a chef, ma’am—madam.”
“You cook?” She smiled up at him from beneath a layer of heavy blue eye shadow. “I love a man who knows his way around kitchen. I will teach you to make blini.”
It was a declaration, not a suggestion, so Rhys wisely didn’t argue.
Madam Belyakova had led him down the hall, he realized with a start, tottering on a pair of heels he wasn’t at all sure it was sensible for a woman of her age to wear. Not that he intended to argue that point, either.
“What brings you to the city, then?” he asked when she gazed up at him expectantly. Anything to keep cooking lessons out of the conversation.
“I live here, silly boy.” Her laugh was a rough bark, full of gravel.
She lived here? Then why was she wandering about this hotel, way up here on the ninth floor? He searched for something else to say, but she beat him to it.
“My apartment is on tenth floor,” she said with a sage nod. “Almost thirty…well, many years now. I like to walk in the halls sometimes. Is easier than the streets. So many brash young men out there, with their falling-off pants and their big radios. Is not music, what they play. Music is Stravinsky and Mozart.”
Rhys was trying to keep up, with her words if not her pace—they were practically crawling along the hallway. “You live here …in the hotel?”
“Why yes, silly boy.” She laughed again, another grating rasp. An old-school smoker, he bet. “Top two floors are for residents. Have been always.”
He lifted a brow as he considered this. Maybe meeting Madam Belyakova was a blessing in disguise. “You must know Olivia then.”
She gave an artful shrug, and fluttered one of her scarves with her free hand. “Olivia Callender? Of course, darling. I know her since she was child!”
“Really now.” That was a convenience he would be a fool to pass up, wouldn’t he? He gave the old woman’s arm a companionable squeeze. “I’m sure you don’t like to gossip…”
“Gossip? Bah. I am too old for such things.” But her hot pink smile was sly.
“Of course, it wouldn’t really be gossip to tell me, say, if Olivia was married, now would it?”
“Married?” Amusement echoed in her laugh. “Oh no, not our Olivia. I tell her she must find young man—or older man, for they are sometimes better, you see—but she say she is too busy here. Too busy with hotel, too busy dreaming her life away. Is a shame, really. She is lovely young woman. She does not have dancer’s body, but lovely nonetheless.”
Rhys bit his lip to hold back a snort of surprise. Olivia’s body was lovely, all right, dancer or not.
And she was single. Too busy for men, Madam Belyakova had said. Brilliant.
Well, not brilliant, really, because it meant she might decide she was too busy for him, he realized with a stab of alarm. Then he remembered the flash of heat in her eyes when they shook hands, and smiled to himself. He could persuade her to make time for him. Show him around her city, perhaps.
In the meantime, though, maybe Yelena could be persuaded to not gossip some more.
“Madam Belyakova?” He stopped at the ancient brass doors to the lift and pressed the DOWN button. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to lunch?”
Clearly, she was still asleep, Olivia told herself as she stood at one end of the Coach and Four’s dining room, Uncle Stuart beside her. It would certainly explain the crooked nameplate, the cake debate, and the fallen chandelier. Not to mention the sexy Brit who’d rescued her from certain maiming, if not death, via taxi cab.
It was, quite simply, a nightmare. A nightmare with one very pleasant interlude, but who could explain dreams, really? The subconscious was a strange place.
And hers had apparently had a nervous breakdown.
“If this is a typical afternoon around here, you’re in more trouble than I thought.” Stuart arched a brow and waved at the chaos. Most of the diners were huddled at the maitre d’s station, clamoring for refunds. Willie and Helen were arguing over the best way to clean up the remains of the chandelier, and in the kitchen, Rick and Josef were apparently still arguing, oblivious to the newest disaster.
For a dream, it was uncomfortably realistic.
“This isn’t a typical afternoon,” Olivia said, and realized she was actually wringing her hands. That was bad. No more hand wringing, she admonished herself. It was a dead giveaway. “Not at all.”
Stuart’s response to that was a snort, and Olivia took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to panic. Or cry. Even if she really, really wanted to.
Most afternoons at the Coach and Four were lovely. Dinnertime, too. It was never too crowded, for one thing, and it was…friendly. Comfortable. A bit like family, really. Which wasn’t what Stuart seemed to think a hotel restaurant should be, but Olivia liked it that way. Some nights the hotel’s permanent residents ate together, taking one of the big tables in the corner, and on really quiet evenings Frankie Garson sometimes played the old baby grand piano and everyone gathered around to sing show tunes and old standards.
When she was a child, her father used to play that piano the same way.
All right, she was wringing her hands again. She had to somehow move from this spot, and more importantly move Uncle Stuart from this spot. To Siberia, preferably.
“I’m so sorry about this,” she said after another deep breath. Wow. The man had eyebrows like a villain out of a silent movie, she noticed. Black and bushy and somehow malicious. “Can I take you to lunch somewhere? My treat.”
“I highly doubt you have the funds to take me anywhere but the corner deli.” He rolled his eyes and folded his arms over the neat gray pinstripes of his suit jacket. “I’m not particularly interested in lunch, in any case.”
“Well, we can talk in my office,” she said. Pretending the idea didn’t make her want to run screaming from the room. “It’s quiet in there.”
“Yes, I’ve been there,” he said with something uncomfortably close to venom in his voice. “It was your father’s office, too, as well as your grandfather’s.”
There wasn’t really an answer to that, since it was true. It didn’t explain why he seemed so angry about it, of course, so instead of answering she simply swallowed hard. Any minute she would be back to wringing her hands. Or very possibly hiding under the piano.
“Well?” Stuart demanded, spreading his hands in impatience. “Let’s go on with it, shall we?”
Oh, there were no words for how much Olivia didn’t want to do that. Nothing Stuart could say now would be good. How could it be? No one looked that frightening when they were about to tell you they’d bought you a pony, after all.
So she sucked in another deep breath, aware that she was probably overdosing on oxygen, and said, “Yes, let’s go into my office. I’ll have the kitchen send in some tea.”
But when she turned to head for the door, she saw something so strange it took her a moment to process it. It was Rhys, gorgeous, funny, rock star Rhys from this morning, with Yelena on his arm. Her pulse gave a startled little kick and she heard, as if from far away, her own gasp of surprise.
That couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be him, could it? With Yelena? Maybe this really was a dream. A bad one, yes, but a dream nevertheless. Only in a dream would Yelena flutter her fingers at Olivia while Rhys winked, slouched