The older woman shrugged and took a pretzel from Josie’s pile. Apparently, bourbon did nothing to fuel her righteous indignation.
Gus had been a guest since Josie had started work at the hotel, but Olivia had told her he’d actually been at Callender House for nearly a year now.
Which was, in Josie’s opinion, pretty weird. Gus Fitch had written two best-selling books, one on his childhood as the son of a famous film director and another exposing the truth about the Riverside Institution, a mental hospital. He’d been on Oprah, for heaven’s sake.
Not that he looked it. Josie wasn’t sure what a best-selling author was supposed to look like, but it seemed to her it should involve a little more bling than Gus indulged in. He was wearing his usual uniform of faded jeans, loose cotton sweater, and baseball cap today, and Josie didn’t think she’d ever seen him in anything else. Even on Oprah, come to think of it. Coupled with his sad puppy dog eyes and his low, soft voice, he reminded her of an overgrown kid who’d just witnessed his baseball team losing the pennant race.
But he was sweet. In fact, he was sort of the default hotel mascot, as far as she could tell. He knew everybody, and everybody loved him. Including Tommy, she guessed, who was famously territorial about “his” bar. There was even a plastic sign tacked up beside the mirror: Tommy’s Parking Only.
“So what’s the occasion?” Gus asked as he refilled the pretzel bowl. For a volunteer bartender, he took his responsibilities pretty seriously, Josie noted. “You guys don’t usually knock back shots in the midafternoon.”
“Stuart got nasty with Olivia at lunch today,” Roseanne said with a weary sigh. She settled back on her stool, which creaked under her weight.
“Right after the chandelier fell down and Rick threw a cake at him,” Josie added.
Gus blinked. “That’s not good.”
“You’re a master of understatement,” Josie said, but she smiled as she did, and Gus blushed a little bit.
And then he smiled at her, a real smile, a shy, just-for-her smile. Maybe it was the bourbon, but suddenly she understood why everyone liked him so much. Because she did, too.
“That’s going to take some fixing,” Olivia said as she stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel and examined the now dented nameplate.
“Fixing?” Rhys grunted. “Time for the rubbish heap, I think. Get a new one.”
“No!” Bending to pick it up—and finding it far heavier than she’d thought—Olivia propped the tarnished brass gently against the wall. “This is the original sign. It’s …it’s…historic.”
“Not everything old is historic,” Rhys argued, and slouched against the bricks as he folded his arms over his chest.
Well, the Callender House nameplate was historic. Whether it was or not, Olivia decided, frowning at her own logic. After the cake and the chandelier and, frankly, the vodka, she wasn’t prepared to argue about it with a stranger.
Which reminded her that Rhys Spencer, for all intents and purposes, was just that. Scowling at him, she asked, “Where did you come from?”
“Right about there, I think,” he answered, pointing at a spot on the sidewalk with a wicked grin.
She sighed. “I mean it. You just turn up out of nowhere, saving me from disaster. I can’t decide what kind of penny you are.”
His brow lifted in confusion, disappearing beneath that shaggy, dark fringe of hair. “What kind of what now?”
“Penny. You know.” She wasn’t going to blush this time, damn it. “See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck? But then there’s ‘turning up like a bad penny,’ too.”
“I think you’re undervaluing me either way,” Rhys teased, but when she scowled harder, he threw up his hands in surrender. “No need to get narked, love. I’m a chef. I just arrived in town this morning, as a matter of fact, by way of London and lately L.A. In fact, I have to head back there for the finale of the show in a month.”
“A chef? Really?” She tried to picture him in a white chef’s coat—and, even sillier, a white chef’s hat like Josef had always worn—and had to stifle a giggle.
“I don’t wear the hat,” he said, and scowled right back at her. Goodness, the man was practically a mind reader. “And yeah, I cook. Always have. It’s the one thing I do brilliantly.”
As she watched his lips form the words, she highly doubted that cooking was the only thing he did brilliantly, as he put it. Look at that mouth. He was probably an excellent kisser.
A flicker of surprise skittered up the back of her neck. What was she thinking? No one had said anything about kissing.
She realized she was still staring at him and dragged her gaze away to ask, “So what brought you to New York?”
“Don’t know.” He grinned and pushed away from the wall to reach out and take her hand. “Hadn’t been here in a long while, and I needed a change after all that blasted Los Angeles sunshine.”
It was hard to take in everything he was saying with his lean fingers clasped around hers. “Where are you staying?” she managed, trying to ignore the warmth of his hand, and the distracting way he was running his thumb over her knuckles.
“Didn’t I mention that, love?” He pulled her closer, just an inch or so, but it was enough to send an electric tingle of awareness through her body. She glanced up into those smoky gray eyes, and felt her mouth fall open when he spoke again. “I’m staying here. I’m your newest guest.”
Chapter 4
Desperate times called for desperate snacks. Well, maybe not desperate as much as industrial-strength, Olivia mused as she flipped on the lights in the restaurant kitchen close to midnight. Most of the time, the idea of trekking downstairs from her small tenth-floor apartment was enough to keep her from raiding the stash in Josef’s pantry, but not tonight.
Tonight she needed something big. Something strong. Preferably something chocolate. And the only thing that even came close in her tiny kitchen upstairs was an aging box of Count Chocula she’d bought on a whim one day, in a fit of nostalgia. But cereal—especially stale, not-really-chocolate cereal—was not going to get the job done tonight.
All remnants of the Great Cake Battle had been cleaned up, and the dinner service had proceeded without disaster. Mostly because Rick had thrown his apron on the counter and quit shortly after Olivia found her way back to the kitchen.
Which was after she’d heard that Rhys Spencer was ensconced in a room on the ninth floor.
Boy, did she need chocolate.
She padded across the clean swept floor to the pantry and swung open the door. Rhys Spencer could stay anywhere in the city. But to hear him tell it, he’d met her—for all values of “meeting” that included pushing her out of a taxi’s path—followed her into the hotel, discovered it was hers, and checked in without a second thought or a backward glance.
It was…a little alarming.
And she really hoped his bed had been made with the newest sheets.
Staring at the neatly arranged contents of the pantry, she couldn’t help wondering what it meant. Rhys hadn’t only checked into her hotel, he’d come downstairs in search of her and tried to salvage the bizarre situation in which she’d found herself. And then he’d made her a drink. And followed her outside, where he’d been charming and sexy enough to make her head spin, lounging against that wall, all indolence and sly grins.
It was…well, weird. Unexpected, at the very least. Men didn’t really do things like that, did they? Not outside of fairy tales and romantic movies, at least.
But