Stacey Stapleton replaced the phone in its fancy-pants cradle, casting it a glare as if it had done her a personal wrong. Everything about this room on the fifteenth floor screamed high-end, and there was no way for her to replicate it. Number one, she only had one floor, so she could never provide the bay view that this new hotel, Sweet Breeze, did.
Number two, she was currently saving every penny she had to replace the carpet in the five rooms she had available at her bed and breakfast, and she now had a huge charge sitting on her credit card for this little espionage escapade she’d indulged herself in.
She should’ve known coming to Sweet Breeze was a bad idea. The air here felt a little too sticky, the smiles on the staff’s faces a little too sweet, and the service a little too slick.
“I don’t need to replicate it,” she said. People didn’t come to Getaway Bay for the high-tech room phones or even the five-hundred thread count sheets on the king bed where she sat to wait for her room service order.
“Shoot.” She dove for her phone, which she’d left on the clear glass top of the dresser. She started the timer on her phone, mentally telling herself to add a minute to the delivery time. No way this place could provide her a breakfast in the amount of time her cooks could down the beach at Aloha Hideaway.
Plus, while the view was nice for the first selfie or two, Stacey herself much preferred the privacy her bed and breakfast provided, the way the jungle grew right up to the building, almost like it was trying to erase the evidence of mankind’s existence on the island, and the sound of waves from the nearby beach.
Here, she couldn’t even open the window. The best she could do was press a button set into the wall near the bed to simulate the wave sounds. Lame.
With her timer going, and her stay coming to an end, Stacey gathered her personal hygiene items and got in the shower. The spray was hot and strong and perfectly fantastic. So this ritzy hotel that had been siphoning off customers for the ten months since it had opened had excellent showers.
Did people really choose a place to stay based on a shower review?
“Nope,” she said into the spray. Then she turned and squirted some of the hibiscus-scented body wash out of the dispenser stuck to the wall. “And they’re going to waste a ton of money with this thing.” Just to prove her point, she sent a few squirts of the surely expensive soap directly onto the floor of the tub.
She scrubbed herself down, wondering why the owner of Sweet Breeze couldn’t just provide those tiny bottles of bland body wash like every other hotel in the area. Her frustration frothed like the luxury bubbles still foaming on her loofa, and she turned to wash off, wishing her negative attitude and desperation would go down the drain too.
She slipped on the excess body wash she’d deliberately wasted, her arms splaying to the sides, searching for something to grab onto. But this shower was impossibly smooth on all sides, and she ended up grabbing onto the shower curtain. It wasn’t even standard, as it didn’t rip off the rod like hers would have.
Cursing herself for being spiteful, she found her feet and regained her balance, smoothing down the shower curtain like it was a cat. She almost expected it to start purring, not that she had any experience with a content cat.
Her feline friend was as grumpy as they came, and Malificent skulked around the bed and breakfast with a general disdain that applied to everything she came in contact with. If Stacey even tried to pet her, she was met with a hiss and the baring of claws. So she put out food and water and let the cat do what it wanted. No sense in poking the bear. Or in this case, the tabby.
She got out of the shower and dried off, pulling her reddish hair into a turban with a second towel. Heaven knew this place could afford to launder an extra towel, and she considered throwing a perfectly clean one on the floor too.
In the end, she remembered the fiasco with the body wash and left the unused towels on the rack. Plus, she wanted to do her part to use water wisely and a pin of guilt pushed into her heart that she’d used two towels when she could’ve done the job with one.
Back in the room, her phone had just ticked past the twelve-minute mark. “Seriously, how long does it take to make French toast?” she asked the spacious room. She’d booked their basic room, with one king bed, over a month ago, under a different name. She wasn’t sure why. The owner of this swanky new monstrosity on Getaway Bay lived across the Pacific, probably in his equally ridiculous penthouse overlooking the city of Los Angeles.
No one from the Davenport Development Group would ever know who she was or when she’d stayed with them. They had supervisors and managers and assistants to handle everything for average guests like Jaida Moore, the name she’d registered under.
At Aloha Hideaway, Stacey managed everything. Sure, she had a small staff that were like family to her, but when the buck stopped, it was always in her wing of the house she’d inherited from her grandfather five years ago.
She started to dress, leaving her wet towel pooled at her feet. A loud, hollow noise came from the window, causing her to jolt with shock and fear. Her heart pounded up into her throat, and she hurried over to the pane she couldn’t open to find a smudge of…something. A feather drifted down on the other side of the glass, time slowing as it wafted back and forth, back and forth.
A bird had just flown into the hotel. Probably a pigeon, which in Stacey’s opinion, were the rats of the bird world. But still. A living creature had died because of this towering building on the beach that totally did not belong. Even Hawaii’s fowl knew Sweet Breeze shouldn’t be here.
Something clicked behind her, and she spun, her pulse dancing from the front of her ribcage to the back.
“Room service,” a deep voice said and a cart started to push open the door.
A squeak of surprise flew from Stacey’s mouth and she tried to cover her bra with her bare arms as she half hopped, half tiptoed back around the corner.
“I’m not dressed,” she managed to say, her voice trembling and weak, two things Stacey never allowed anyone to see. In front of her family, her staff, her friends in the Women’s Beach Club, Stacey was calm, cool, controlled. She cracked jokes and ordered extra fruity drinks for everyone. She gave people weekends off and brought pineapple cookie monster salad to family picnics.
And now she was currently wearing only her bra and panties, and apparently the man pushing the cart through the door hadn’t heard her.
“I’m not dressed,” she called again, and the squeaky wheels on the cart stopped.
“You ordered room service?”
“Yes, but I need a few minutes to put on some pants.” Did this guy speak English? She hadn’t seen him in her haste to conceal herself behind the wall, and she bent to grab the first article of clothing she could.
It was her bathing suit cover-up and she pulled it on. Her bra straps stuck out the top, but at least she was as covered as she would be on the beach.
The door slammed closed, but the edge of the cart remained. Stacey took a deep breath and dared to peek around the corner, finding the man gone and her food producing the delicious aroma of bacon and sweet maple syrup.
“Impossible,” she muttered as she looked at her phone. With all the commotion, she decided to subtract the minute she’d been planning to add on and saw her phone said the food had been delivered in thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds.
“Ridiculous.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking about herself or the room service. She also wasn’t sure if she could produce food as quickly.
She lifted the cloche and found condensation on the inside of it. This food was still hot.
“Unbelievable.” Stacey wondered if she’d ever speak in full sentences again. It seemed her whole vocabulary was made of single words. She looked at the cloche in disgust. They were probably ordered from somewhere secret, like the Cloche Underground or something. The metal looked like brushed nickel, far superior to anything Stacey had ever gotten from the restaurant supply store on the other side of the island.
Knocking sounded on the door. “Are you dressed now?”
He probably wanted a tip. And delivering a piping hot, smells-so-good-her-stomach-rumbled breakfast in only thirteen minutes, he deserved one.
Stacey shimmied out of the cover-up and pulled on a maxi dress in dark purple, the color of the hibiscus flowers that could only be found in the gardens at Aloha Hideaway. Her grandfather had cultivated them, cross-breeding the flowers to produce the unique color, the blooms fringed with white, and then he’d patented it. Now Stacey had three workers who dedicated full-time hours to the gardens, and she made a nice profit from selling them to locals, other hotels, cab companies, travel agents, and anyone who wanted to provide a special Hawaiian experience to the tourists arriving on the big island.
After squeezing past the cart, she pulled open the door, ready to chew the man out for entering her room without knocking first. She opened her mouth as her voice lost its ability to form sound.
The man standing in the hall didn’t look like the serving type. He had strong, broad, powerful shoulders that spanned nearly the width of the doorway. His body narrowed to his waist, where he’d tied a long, black apron. He wore a black pair of slacks beneath that, with a black shirt that strained across the chest and biceps.
His blue eyes, almost the same beautiful ocean blue as the bay beyond the window, pierced hers, and went well with his military-style haircut and clean-shaven face. He was tall, tan, and muscular, perfect for a pair of board shorts for early morning surfing, or the board room for an afternoon meeting.
“Sorry about that,” he said, and his bass voice caused vibrations to tumble through Stacey’s chest. They also got her heart going again, which sent blood to her brain, which told her voice to say something!
“It’s fine.”
Not that!
He rubbed his thumb across his right eyebrow, drawing her attention to the slice through the middle of it, like he’d been in a knife fight and lost. But he was too clean-cut for a knife fight, and Stacey’s mind ran rampant with possibilities for that scar on his face.
“How’s the food?” He nodded behind her, obviously seeing that she’d removed the cloche while he stood in the hall.
“I haven’t actually tried it. But it’s hot, so that’s good.” Why she was speaking at all, she didn’t know. This server didn’t need her critique of the food. “And delivered fast. Thirteen—I mean, less than fifteen minutes. Wow.”
A smile pulled across his strong mouth, rendering Stacey weak in the wrong places and staring at such a gorgeous grin. Men as good-looking as him didn’t seem fair. She wondered what his life had been like. Did he get special treatment in school? Did anyone ever tell him no? When he got pulled over for speeding, did he walk away with a ticket the way she did?
“Thank you.” She held out a twenty-dollar bill. A ridiculous tip, but probably one that was expected for a hotel-resort such as Sweet Breeze.
He waved the money away without even glancing at it. There was something…not quite right about him. What room service attendant turned down money?
“Sorry about barging in. I thought….” The grin appeared again, and Stacey almost leaned against the wall so he wouldn’t see how he affected her. “Sorry.”
She nodded since her voice had gone on vacation again, and he turned and walked away. Wow, the view from the back was just as spectacular as the front, and Stacey pulled herself back into the room before he reached the corner just in case he turned back from the weight of her stare.
She leaned against the closed door and pressed one hand over her heart. She felt stupid for a lot of reasons, the biggest one being that she’d felt a spark of attraction for the handsome stranger who’d almost seen her naked.
