“Or maybe not?” he corrected as everyone stared at us. “Sort of? I mean, we . . .”
“Have seen each other around town,” I said quickly.
Joseph glanced at the lily tucked behind my ear. “Dude. The flower girl?” he murmured to Daniel, slapping the back of his hand against Daniel’s chest, making him flinch.
The breath in my lungs disappeared.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. This couldn’t be happening.
Was I blushing? I think this was blushing. Or I was about to have a stroke. Inside my frantic brain, a dozen scenarios flashed. Of Daniel, bragging bro-style to Joseph and Chuck, talking me up as a laughable conquest. Or as the weird girl who freaked out and ran away. Do I already have a reputation here? DO I?
Things were being whispered. I think Daniel told Joseph to “shut the hell up, man,” and then Joseph, grimacing, responded, “Oh shit.”
Indeed. A huge, stinking pile of it.
“Well,” Melinda said to me. “Now you get to see each other every night, because it’s Daniel’s job to make supply runs that you get to log at the desk.”
“What?” I said, trying to make my brain work. I wished he’d stop staring at me.
“Time out, time in,” Melinda said. “You log Daniel’s comings and goings in the hotel’s system. But we aren’t an airport shuttle service, so everyone who begs for a ‘quick ride’ to the bank at two in the morning, inform them you can call a car.”
“Unless they’re on the fifth floor,” Daniel corrected while I looked anywhere but at his face. “Those are the VIPs.”
“Floor-fivers are all, ‘I forgot to get my niece a Christmas present, boo-hoo,’ ” Chuck mocked, imitating wiping tears. “ ‘I need a specific wine from a special year from some fruity gourmet merchant across town or my anniversary will be ruined.’ You wouldn’t believe what they ask for. . . .”
This certainly wasn’t the same speech Roxanne had given me in training about going “above and beyond to create unforgettable moments” for guests, treating them like family.
“Please stop by my office before your break,” Melinda told Chuck. And before he could protest, she excused us and herded me back into the hotel. I was in such a state of shock about Daniel, I could barely keep up with her high heels.
Despite the dangerous panic levels filling my brain, I immediately had to switch gears and concentrate on the actual work part of work, because Melinda was passing me off to the midshift desk clerk who was done with her “mental health break” and staying late to help me transition. She got me up to speed with all the outstanding guest issues of the day, reminded me to feed the goldfish, made sure I’d been trained on how to use the reservation system, and then—boom! She was clocking out, and I was left all by my lonesome.
In a luxury hotel lobby.
At night.
On the first shift of my first real job.
With my greatest humiliation standing outside the front door.
Once the shock of it all wore off a little, I realized that a secret part of me was happy to see him. Practically ecstatic. If I were an actual daring dame and not a wobbly wallflower, I might even have done what Aunt Mona suggested and attempt to talk with him. Apologize for running out on him. Explain that what we did was an anomaly for me. But as my shift ticked by, the longer I went without seeing him, the more I convinced myself that maybe he didn’t want an explanation.
If I were to write up a profile on Daniel now, it would look something like this:
Suspect: Daniel Aoki
Age: 19
Occupation: Hotel van driver, graveyard shift
Medical conditions: (1) Hearing-impaired. (2) Distractingly good-looking. (3) Excellent smile. (4) Good kisser. (5) Good hands. (6) Re-e-e-eally good hands.
Personality traits: Knows a million card tricks and enjoys performing for people. Cheerful. Gregarious. Maybe too gregarious, as he seems to have blabbed to a coworker about what we did.
Background: Need to investigate further.
Trying to banish thoughts of Daniel, I put on a cheerful face and embraced the work that began trickling in like the soothing sounds of the river-rock waterfall that covered the wall behind the registration desk. I helped a guest find the downstairs restrooms. Helped another with the Wi-Fi password. Rerouted a call for room service to the kitchen.
See. I really could do this. I am working! Like a real person! Daniel who? That was a month ago. Who cared that he worked here? Not me. Not even worth starting a case file.
It was all good. Until I checked out a businessman who had a red-eye flight and needed his car out of the hotel garage. That’s when I had to radio the Bats out front. Joseph answered, thank goodness, and the businessman lounged on a sofa in the lobby until his car was brought to the entrance. Then Daniel suddenly appeared, jogging past the gold elevators to inform the guest that his car was ready. The businessman wheeled out his carry-on, and the lobby was empty again.
Mostly. Daniel was heading toward the front desk.
I panicked, wishing I could duck down. But he’d already seen me.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine,” he said, flashing me that stupid-sexy smile that got me in trouble the first time around. The shock of seeing him had worn off, but my body was still overreacting. Pulse erratic. Thoughts fuzzy. Fingers tingling. I couldn’t tell if it was panic or attraction, but I sure as heck didn’t want him to see how much he affected me, so I bent behind the counter to straighten a stack of paper sleeves for room key cards and tried to sound casual.
“Guess the small-world cliché is an actual thing.”
“What’s that?” he said.
I stood up. “What’s what?”
“I didn’t hear you.” He tapped his right ear. “Deaf in this one. Sometimes I miss things.”
He’d failed to mention this when I’d met him in the diner, so now I wasn’t sure what to say.
But he was unfazed by my silence.
“Happened a couple of years ago, when I was young and stupid. Still stupid, actually,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “It’s weird how it messes with your depth perception. Sometimes I miss pieces of conversation, and other times I can pick out crazy-specific sounds over vast distances. Like, when you’re talking to guests up here? I can hear your voice across the lobby when the door opens.”
“Mine?”
He nodded. “Clear as a bell. Something about the pitch of it. You’re a dog whistle.”
“Oh,” I said stupidly, embarrassed.
Then it was quiet between us. Nothing but the waterfall tinkling.
“Okay,” he said. “Wow. Shit. This is weird, huh?”
“A little,” I admitted.
Should I apologize for running out on him? Should I try to explain? Bringing it up here, out in the lobby, where everything echoed, made me anxious. What if Melinda were monitoring our conversation back in her office? Was that a thing they did here?
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong were duetting over the hotel speakers about the pronunciation of potatoes and tomatoes. I tried to focus on their relationship problems and not mine and ignored Daniel. That was a little trick I did when I didn’t know what to say to people—I just pretended they weren’t there. I learned it by observing people in the city, a local phenomenon affectionately known as the Seattle Freeze. And it worked. When I froze people out, they usually got the hint and left.