Rough Cut by Wendy Church

Author:Wendy Church [Church, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House

SEVENTEEN

The next morning I was up before the alarm went off. I’d gotten little sleep. When I did I had nightmares of Mason finding Smith’s phone and dragging me down to Nottingham’s basement.

My discussion with Smith the night before had done nothing to calm my nerves.

“It’s likely standard operating for them,” he’d said, after I told him about Mason tossing my room. “It’s his job to be paranoid. And you don’t know that he doesn’t do that to all of the staff on a regular basis.”

I was standing in the bathroom with the water on. “You don’t think he suspects I’m working with you?” I whispered. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure Mason hadn’t bugged my room.

To his credit, Smith didn’t lie to me. “I doubt it, but we can’t be sure. To be on the safe side, try to avoid going out alone. And lock your door when you’re in the room.”

After we hung up I headed down to the kitchen. I was grateful the event was today, and that Percy wasn’t there to help with the dinner, apparently brought along only to make Nottingham’s special meals. Nothing focused me more than cooking.

Most of my part of the food prep was done, and I was in the kitchen waiting to brief the hotel staff on the evening’s schedule when Celeste walked through the swinging doors.

She stood close to me, whispering. “After the dinner, later on, maybe we can get together for a nightcap? You’re in room four, aren’t you?”

I wondered how she thought we’d be able to do anything with the security team all over the place. Or maybe this was something she did often, and they were all in on her affairs. And maybe Alan didn’t care.

Thinking about his plastic face, it was hard to imagine him having any emotion about anything.

It occurred to me that if I did hook up with Celeste, it might help me with Mason. He could hardly rough up one of her lovers.

No, I thought, looking at her. I couldn’t do it. She was beautiful, but not even close to my type. If nothing else, I didn’t think I could spend any up-close-and-personal time smelling her unique bouquet of perfume and alcohol.

“Thank you. I’d love to, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be working. And after doing something like this I’m usually pretty beat.” This was a complete lie. I was always jacked up after cooking and it took a while for the adrenaline to dissipate.

I was saved from further discussion by several of the lodge’s staff filing into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, I need to get going. I hope you enjoy the meal.” I forced a smile.

She gave my arm a squeeze and walked away. I noticed her looking over the hotel staff on her way out. Maybe one of them would get lucky tonight.

The staff assembled around me and I went over the menu, the service, and the bar protocols for the evening.

They would be tending the four open bars stationed around the main room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.