Amy Cousins - At Your Service

She ignored him and thought with pleasure of the end of her shift. For the first time in a month, she wouldn’t be going home to the dubious pleasure of her room at the Sherradin Hotel.

When she’d come into work this evening, Tyler had again asked her to fill out her as-yet-uncompleted paperwork. Although she’d been surprised he hadn’t reminded her of it before this, she’d still panicked at the question and blurted the first words that came into her head, cursing herself for repeating her original pathetic excuse.

“I’m so sorry, Tyler. I left my wallet back at the hotel room.”

“Your hotel room?” he’d asked sharply. She was certain he didn’t buy her lie for a second. “Where are you staying?”

“At the Sherradin Hotel over on Broadway” she’d said, and flinched at the anger that bloomed over his face in an instant.

“Are you an idiot? Do you know what kind of a place that is?” His voice had been loud, booming throughout the room. His eyes, which she’d once thought of as being like dark, starlit water, had been hard and jabbed at her like wrought-iron spikes. “Most of the people staying at that place are renting a room by the hour, whether they’re hooking or dealing. What the hell are you doing there?”

Gathering her pride around her like a tattered shield, Grace had answered him calmly.

“It’s cheap and the door has a lock.”

“A lock? At the Sherradin, you’d better wedge a chair under the doorknob before you go to sleep.”

“I do,” she’d said truthfully.

At her short answer, he’d stopped and stared at her, flexing his hands on the smooth varnish of the bar like a man looking for something to strangle. Pride alone had kept her looking evenly back at him. She might be embarrassed to be living in a room at a hotel patronized almost exclusively by prostitutes and drug dealers, but she’d be damned if she’d be ashamed of it.

After thirty seconds and a short, pithy curse, Tyler strode to the phone and started punching in numbers with stiff fingers.

“Sarah, it’s Tyler. I need a favor from you, darlin’. Can you go over to the Sherradin Hotel on Broadway before you come in here?” He let out a short bark of laughter at the woman’s response. “No, not me. You’ll be meeting Grace.” He looked over to where Grace sat stiff-backed at the bar and grimaced. “That’s exactly what I said when she told me where she was staying. I was hoping you could meet her over there in ten minutes, help her pack her bags and bring everything back here. We’ll figure out where she can stay later.”

When Grace started to protest, Tyler’s stare and the finger he pointed sharply at the chair next to her had her sitting without saying a word.

“Thanks, Sarah. She’ll be out front.” Another pause, and this time when Tyler ran his eyes over her, Grace could feel the heat in them from across the room. “Don’t worry. She won’t open that smart mouth to argue. Thanks again.” He hung up the phone.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”

“Shut up and sit down.”

“I am perfectly fine at the hotel.”

“Grace.”

The single word had her shutting up and sitting again. Tyler let out an audible sigh and pressed his fingers against his temples, shaking his head. When she worked up the nerve to meet his eyes again, she saw that all the anger had drained out of them and a calm sympathy remained.

“Grace, when I hire someone, I like to think that they’ll be able to go home and get a decent night’s rest before coming back to work the next day. At that hotel, you’re as likely to get your throat slit as sleep through the night. Now, Sarah’s going to meet you there and you are going to check out this afternoon. We’ll figure the rest out later.”

To her horror, Grace felt the tears fill her eyes again. She blinked them back. The thought of not having to sleep on nerves’ edge at every sound in the hallway was something she’d never thought to be so grateful for. But she wouldn’t cry, damn it. She stretched a hand toward him across the bar uncertainly. She let it drop after a moment, her palm resting flat against the silken grain of the wood.

“Thank you.” She hoped he could hear the sincerity in her words.

After a moment she looked down at her hand, feeling the break of the visual connection with Tyler like the sudden snapping of a taut cord. Would she ever get over the sheer presence of this man? As she watched, both of his hands came sliding over the bar to rest on top of hers, and the sudden catch of breath in her chest made it clear that, no, she might never get past this. His fingers curled around the sides of her hand to tug gently upward on her palm, pulling her hand toward his mouth.

“Don’t thank me, Grace. I try to take care of the people I like. And I like you.”

She felt his breath on her knuckles. Glanced up. Tyler’s eyes were heavy-lidded as he watched his thumbs trace small circles on the backs of her hands. Then his eyes met hers and a slow grin slid over his face as he leaned to kiss her fingertips.

“Just get your butt back here as fast as you can.”

She jerked her hand from his, turned and sprinted out the door.

When Grace had jogged up to the front of the hotel, she’d spotted Sarah at once. Her long, dark hair wasn’t teased high enough to fit in this area, the makeup too subdued, the skirt too long and the blouse not nearly tight enough.

I must have stuck out like a blinking neon light, too, she thought.

“I can’t believe you’ve been staying here, Grace. You’re braver than I am, that’s for sure,” Sarah said as she hustled them both up to Grace’s room and began a ruthless packing of her belongings.

“Are these sheets yours? I thought so. They don’t look dingy enough to belong to management. And the kitchen stuff, too, right? Although not this pot, obviously. What were you supposed to cook in that? A teaspoon of soup? How on earth did you end up staying here, Grace?”

Maybe it was the concern that ran so clearly through Sarah’s voice. Or maybe it was the guilt she felt, taking advantage of her help in folding up the scant contents of her closet. But either way, Grace found herself giving Tyler’s sister an honest, although severely edited, account of her recent history.

“I was working for my family. We all work together, but lately they’ve wanted to do some things with the business that I didn’t agree with.” Grace folded another pair of slacks and kept her eyes cast down, watching her hands work. “And I was, um, sort of involved with someone who thought my family was right and I was crazy to fight them. The only one who agreed with me was my grandmother, but then she died. And after a little while, I couldn’t take it anymore. The pressure.”

She looked up and saw that Sarah was watching her without a hint of judgment in her eyes.

“So two weeks ago, I just left. Packed up what you see here and decided to vanish for a while. To try and figure things out.” She blew out a breath and sat on the edge of the bare mattress. “You probably think I’m a total coward.”

“What I think shouldn’t matter to you, Grace. But just for the record, I don’t think you’re a coward at all. Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the whole picture, and that’s just what you’re doing.” Sarah’s voice was firm as she zipped up the suitcase and took one last tour around the small room.

Satisfied that they hadn’t missed anything, she grabbed Grace by the hand and tugged her off the bed.

“Now let’s get out of here. Tyler will be chewing nails by the time we get back to the bar.”

And that had been all that was said about Grace’s history and hotel choice.

On the way back to the bar, Sarah made it clear that she’d meant her kind words when she offered up a spare bedroom in her apartment. Her roommate had recently moved out and she was in no hurry to find another one. If Grace wanted to stay there for a while, she said, they could work something out between them.