Page 39 of Tasty Cherry

“So, did you meet him on Saturday?” Brooklyn asks.

Everything flashes hot. “Do we have to talk about this?”

Now everyone is super interested. I should have played it so much cooler, but I’m no good at that.

“I saw him looking at her,” Aisha says. “He said y’all met before you got here. He didn’t know you were an intern.”

He told Aisha that?

I want to be sick. This is not happening. I press my hand to my belly.

But then, I’m saved.

Bertie walks up. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show the interns the holding area for suitcases. It already came up this morning when they were working the lines.”

Aisha frowns. “Bertie, we were just getting somewhere! Besides, I’m taking Brooklyn around for lunch. Her stomach sounds like it’s about to go on attack.”

“Then I’ll take this one,” he says, pointing to me. “We’ll be back shortly.”

Aisha sighs. “Come on then,” she says to Brooklyn. “Let’s go.”

I follow Bertie to a room off to the side of the entrance.

“Thank you,” I tell him.

“The rumors are flying,” he says. “Keep your chin up.”

I don’t want rumors flying!

Bertie opens the door to a large room filled with racks, a few suitcases neatly stacked on them. “Aisha asks a lot of questions.”

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Not really.” He heads to a desk near the back wall. “Sebastian didn’t tell her much of anything, so don’t let her fool you into saying more than you want her to know.”

“What did he say?”

“I wasn’t specifically listening in,” Bertie starts, but I wave him off.

“I’m not judging you. Tell me what you know.”

He grins and his eyes flash bright. “He said he met you in town, and that when he saw you here, he thought you were vacationing. That’s all Aisha knows. She thought that information was boring and moved on.”

I let out a long breath. “So I nearly said too much.”

He pats my shoulder. “She’s a tricky one. Lovely girl, but very tricky.”

“I’m warned.”

He raises his arm to gesture to the room. “This is my domain. You can always duck in here if you need a moment. Mostly, it’s just me and the luggage.”

“Do a lot of guests leave their suitcases here?”

“Certainly. Check-in isn’t until three, so if they want to go on a hike or head into Boulder, they’ll leave their luggage with us.”

“That makes sense.”

“Looking up a bag is as easy as logging in for check-in. The bin number for which luggage is theirs is right here.” He taps the numbers beneath each cubby on the wall. “If we get overloaded, we revert to the tags.” He points to a clear box attached to the wall, filled to the brim with luggage tags.

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