“Did you tell him to go fuck himself?”
Scout rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Parker, I told the billionaire to fuck himself. Are you nuts? I need this job.”
“There’re other jobs, Scout. You don’t need to take any crap from some self-important asshole. You should’ve told your boss if you felt threatened.”
“I didn’t say he threatened me. He just intimidated me. It doesn’t matter. I’ll probably never see him again. I may not even have a job in the morning. Whatever was on those papers, he seemed pretty protective of.”
Parker was no longer listening to her. She followed his gaze, and the older man who’d been watching them the night before was leering at her again. Scout sighed and stacked her dishes. “Let it go, Parker.”
“I don’t like him.”
“He knows.”
Following supper they walked over to the old school. Parker headed to the men’s bathroom and Scout visited the ladies’ room. Once she used the toilet, she went to the sink and unraveled a bar of Patras soap. After scrubbing her hands and face vigorously and picking any flecks of dirt from under her nails, she took a wet washcloth into the stall to clean her body. Changing her pants and underwear, Scout shifted all her money into her money belt and tightened it around her ribs. Her belongings were stuffed back in her bag and she headed to the girls’ quarters.
Selectively, she pulled a mat from the pile, discarding the stained one at the top of the heap, and carried it to the far corner. The echo of a baby crying from the family quarters overwhelmed the silence.
Scout’s blanket withdrew from her bag in as practiced a move as a magician pulls flowers from his sleeve. She shoved the bag to the head of her mat as a pillow.
Nimbly, her fingers removed the laces from her shoes and tied them into one long string, then threaded the frayed edge through the tiny zipper of her bag and tied the other end around her wrist. As the last of the overhead lights shut off, leaving only the dim glow of the emergency signs, she settled in for the night.
The baby eventually stopped crying and other than a spontaneous cough, the room was quiet. Scout’s tired mind reflected her mother and what she’d bring her the next day. She thought about the man from dinner and decided to stay away from him in the future. But her last thoughts before she fell asleep were of startling black eyes and the warm scent of lived-in silk.
Chapter 3
What’s in a name?
Tamara handed her the key and Scout frowned. “Isn’t Bridget here today?”
“Yes, but Mr. Patras specifically requested you tend to the penthouses for now on.”
“P-Patras?” The man from yesterday must’ve really been upset to complain to the owner of the hotel. “Tamara, I don’t know what the man from the penthouse told you, but I want you to know I wasn’t snooping. I accidentally knocked over his things and he happened to walk in just as I was trying to straighten up the mess.”
The GM frowned at her. “He didn’t say anything about you snooping. As a matter of fact, he called down after you left yesterday to tell me how pleased he was with your attention to detail.”
Scout’s restless fingers twitched and smoothed her apron. “What about my other rooms?”
“Don’t worry about them. I put Miguel on your old section. We have a guest coming into master suite B tonight so you’ll need to clean that room tomorrow. Today you just need to freshen it up. In the service kitchen you’ll find fresh fruit and flower arrangements to take with you. Ask Raphael. He’ll show you which ones.”
Building trepidation made it difficult to focus on what her GM was saying. Scout wasn’t sure who Raphael was and only had a general idea of how to get to the service kitchen. Rather than allow her dread to ruin her day, she found her cart and took the elevator to the penthouse floor to do the general guest suites first.
Scout finished the thirtieth-floor rooms by noon and used her lunch to locate the service kitchen. Aside from the common areas and guest rooms, there was an entire labyrinth of service passages the staff used.
Reluctantly, she finally asked another maid named Mona where the service kitchen was. In broken English the maid explained it was in the lower level. Scout needed to take the west wing all the way down until a sign appeared that read “Kitchen,” then follow the arrows. This was going to be a problem.
Once in the west wing there were signs on every corner. Scout looked for words that started with C, hoping she’d find the word kitchen. No luck. Tears of frustration blurred her vision after more time than her lunch break allotted had passed. Taking a breath she slowly tried to sound out each word on the sign.