Anna stared at Lucy as she opened a locker and pawed through the contents.
‘And what do you think your no-strings management squeeze will do if he finds out you’ve leaked the hotel’s top secret story?’
Lucy shrugged airily.
‘He won’t. And even if he does I won’t care by then because you will have scooped us both a fortune. I can spend a bit more time auditioning and putting myself out there and a bit less time serving coffee to moany tourists. Don’t let me down!’
She clapped an arm around Anna’s shoulders, directed her towards the ladies’ loo and thrust the pink and grey uniform into her hands.
So now she had Lucy’s acting dreams riding on her photographic prowess too. No sodding pressure then.
Joe returned to the lobby half an hour later having done a quick recce of the second floor and finding nothing whatsoever out of place. Still, his mind lingered on the girl from room 214, despite all attempts to just crack on with the day ahead. Make sure you have the measure of every detail of a situation, and if in doubt, check it out. Hadn’t he just gone through that mantra to the shambles otherwise known as staff this morning? This was about effective security protocol. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Miss 214 was extremely cute with her green eyes and her freckles and her breezy attitude. Of course, his senses still kicked into action when he encountered attractive women, even nutjobs who hung off window ledges, Rome wasn’t built in a day. His previous life had been so different to this, jetting around the world in the wake of his celebrity boss, a girl in every city. His body was still living in a different sexual time zone, one where he was never in one place long enough to stick out a meaningful relationship, where women lasted a night or two before he moved on and his bed was never empty for too long.
He hadn’t had any female company since he’d flown home to England, which actually amounted to a considerable drought by his standards. Not that it felt like home after all this time. Being told his job with Stan Taylor was no longer a job had been the final push to do what he’d never thought he would. His mother was in a nursing home. He had no roots, owned no property, lived out of a suitcase. A contract in one place for once, near enough to his mother to keep an eye on her care, had seemed a good idea at the time. But he was feeling more and more by the day that he wasn’t cut out to have roots and normality at all. She’d never needed him or anyone in her entire life and he could easily have continued to oversee her care by telephone.
‘Can you give me the guest name for room 214?’ he asked one of the receptionists, glancing around the lobby as she pressed a few buttons on her computer. A group of tourists congregated at one of the tables, a stack of leaflets of the London sights being passed among them.
‘That room’s currently empty,’ she said. ‘Did you resolve the suicide situation at the side of the hotel?’
He snapped his eyes sharply away from the tourists.
‘Empty?’
She nodded.
‘There’s a problem with the ceiling in the ensuite. Maintenance are handling it, it’s on their work schedule for tomorrow…’ She raised her voice to call the last part of that after him as he dashed back across the lobby.
Afternoon tea in the lounge? He immediately checked the room. Miss 214 was nowhere to be seen and there was not a bloody cupcake or teapot in sight.
Operation Betsy, Take Two. Anna tried to take shallow breaths because she was squeezed into Lucy’s slightly-too-small uniform and it threatened to pop a button with the slightest wrong move. The effect was topped off with a rickety linen cart which she trundled into the service lift. She took a deep breath and pressed the button marked 2. As she waited for the lift to rumble into life beneath her feet, her mind wandered to her father. In their back garden, just the two of them and a camera. Endlessly patient, explaining to her over-eager and full of big ideas teenaged self about lighting and weather conditions, how to take and develop a picture that captured a moment flawlessly. She wondered what he would make of her now, wearing a disguise and using her feminine wiles to get an unsolicited photograph. Warmth crept uncomfortably into her cheeks.
He would surely care a lot more about her losing the house. She clung to that justifying thought. Her parents had poured their heart and soul lovingly into every brick and they were no longer here with her. This was her best shot at hanging on to what she had left of them.
Stick to the plan, Anna.
Her heart thumped thickly in her chest and her palms, curled around the handles of the linen trolley, were slick with sweat. All she needed to do was gain entry to the Purple Suite on the pretext of changing the towels, take a quick picture and then leg it. A piece of cake, according to Lucy. Instead of dwelling on the past she focused on mentally preparing herself to knock on the door of the most glamorous forty-something actress in the country. If she could get herself in the room using the towels as an excuse she would be able to see how the land lay. Maybe Betsy Warrender would be in a massively generous mood given the amount of amazing cougar sex she must be having and would offer to pose for a fan picture with her new squeeze. Job done, no guilt.
The lift came to a standstill with a ping and the doors slid smoothly open. The corridor was empty. She heaved the cart out of the lift with a bump. The Purple Suite was down the length of the corridor and then she needed to take a left. Her heart pounded thickly in her head as she pushed the cart down the hallway.
A skinny guy in a Lavington Hotel uniform rounded the corner carrying a tray of dirty crockery and she nearly leapt a foot in the air. Yet he simply nodded briefly as he passed her, with not the slightest hint of surprise or interest. Clearly Lucy must be right. Staff must come and go so frequently here that a new face didn’t deserve a second glance.
It occurred to her that this was all too damned easy as she knocked on the door of the Purple Suite. She should have known the moment it opened that it was all too good to be true. Luck hadn’t been on her side for the past few years, so why the hell would it take an upward turn now?
One of Betsy Warrender’s entourage stood before her with a notebook in one hand and the door handle in the other. She wore no make-up and had large, thick glasses and short dark hair. Then again, if Anna were dating Kip Bevan, who had the nation’s female contingent in a swoon, she’d hardly shoot herself in the foot by having model-material staff. He was a notorious womaniser.
‘Laundry,’ she said stupidly, as if she hadn’t been carrying a teetering pile of towels.
The woman opened the door wider and walked back into the suite. Anna followed, blinking around the opulence of the Purple Suite, the sparkling chandeliers, ankle deep carpet and velvet sofas. Sitting in the middle of the room was a woman in a fluffy Lavington Hotel bathrobe reading a newspaper. Anna stared. Last seen adorning the TV screen in a costume drama that was sweeping the nation, in real life Betsy Warrender looked a lot less glossy and a lot older. Her hair wasn’t as full and bouncy and her face was scrubbed of make-up. She looked pale and more than a little tired. In short, she looked normal. The kind of normal that could sell tabloid newspapers by the million if captured on film. As if on cue, Kip Bevan appeared through a door on the other side of the room, leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed Betsy’s cheek. He wore jeans and a designer T-shirt that showed off his ripped upper body, and looked dark, sleek and utterly gorgeous, like a dressed-down James Bond.
A resounding knock on the door behind her made Anna jump.
Betsy and Kip glanced up in unison and the minion with the glasses turned on her heel and returned to the door just as Anna realised with a spike of churning nerves that she was staring at the celebrity couple, rooted to the spot, like a starstruck peeping Tom. Worse, as voices became louder behind her she spun round to see none other than Joe Marshall entering the room, undoubtedly to perform some security sweep or other. Same black suit that set him apart from the hotel staff, same crisp white open-neck shirt, same broad