Page 22 of Taste

“Oh, shush. I know. I’ve tried to tip you young people since the first time I stayed here, so now I must resort to other things. Just take the envelope and share it with your colleagues, Mr Christensen, and please believe me when I say whatever is troubling you will pass. I promise you that.”

She took my hand, stroking it with her wrinkled fingers.

“I see happiness in you. There are good things to come. So put a smile on that handsome face of yours, because life will be good. See?”

I smiled, squeezing her hand in gratitude for her kindness and for the other customers like Mrs Travazzo, who didn’t come here to demand but to enjoy and give. I was tempted to go around the desk and hug her, thank her for being the guest I needed today, but I couldn’t swallow past the lump in my throat, so I stayed put as, with a little wave, she trotted off after Stewart, who was pushing her bags on a trolley. And there was Reuben, offering the use of his arm and branded Clouds umbrella as Mrs Travazzo exited the building like a queen on a state visit, stopping only to stroke Reuben’s cheek.

Swiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I pulled up Mrs Travazzo’s next reservation: a small street-view room for two nights for her and her daughter. I swiftly changed the room to a junior suite and ticked the box for full VIP treatment including an invite to Sunset Cocktails in the Rooftop bar. Mrs Travazzo deserved a nice surprise too, and if being treated like a queen was part of the charm we could deliver, I was goddamn well going to sign that off, which I did with a quick note not to change anything without consulting me first.

The envelope I opened discreetly under the desk yet in full view of Eddie, so I wouldn’t be accused of any wrongdoing or, God forbid, bribery or misconduct. I needn’t have worried though, as it contained a stack of small Starbucks-logo-embossed envelopes, every one with a personalised greeting to the members of the reception team. I had a sneaky suspicion we weren’t the only ones to receive little gift cards for a cup of coffee courtesy of our lovely guest, as I spotted the doormen holding similar envelopes with smiles on their faces. It wasn’t much, but the gesture counted; I stuck the gift card bearing my name in my pocket and greeted the next guest with a surprisingly comfortable smile on my face.

Things would be fine. Mrs Travazzo had said so.

My conviction lasted about five seconds or however long it took the red-faced guest in front of me to inform me in a loud, painfully high-pitched voice, that he had missed his flight and it was all my fault. He went on to blame the Clouds Hotel chain for getting him drunk in the bar and not waking him up in time, because surely we knew he was booked on the early morning Amsterdam shuttle?

I swiftly fixed that with a phone call to the airline in question and a promise of extending his reservation at a discounted rate, leaving him to stew on hold to some call centre. If he apologised, I might suggest Oliver phone his contact at the airport, who performed miracles on a daily basis, but I wasn’t doing that until the guy calmed down enough to behave. He didn’t, but luckily for him, the weather had caused enough disruption to sway the airline to offer a later flight, which was also lucky for me because that was the moment our computers went down.

Things like this made me break out in full-on panic mode, and I was already half there. I sent the angry plane-misser off to the bar for a complimentary drink to soothe his stressful experience and called up in advance to limit him to one drink. Then I called IT support, sighing when I was placed on hold myself by some imbecilic duty person who turned up an hour later smiling like a loon, his sodden umbrella leaving slippery trails across the lobby’s marble floor as he stomped around showing off some dance routine—‘Singing in the Rain’, for God’s sake—to the delights of my reception staff.

I must admit I almost cracked a smile before dressing him down with gusto and barking orders at housekeeping to come sort out the floor before a guest broke their neck and sued us for everything we had. They would probably all sue us anyway, with the racket the glass repair company was making rebuilding what was left of our sliding doors.

I gave up at this point and hid in my office, leaving the more than capable Eddie to handle the fallout of the computer screens still being black. I was sure he was running a tight ship of manual paperwork out front without having to put up with my miserable self. I knew I should have been out there taking the brunt of it, but instead I went through our backup printouts and wrote manual invoices, stapling credit card slips to pieces of paper like we were still stuck in the nineties. My cowardice came back to bite me in the afternoon when our systems finally sprang to life and I had to input all the charges to accounts and all the other paperwork that had accumulated during the unfortunate blip. Blip, ha. These things were always a massive fuck-up.

It was some consolation to know Mark would also be hard at it. Even so, I’d expected our paths to cross at some point during the day. And that was another thing: I thought of him as Mark now, rather than Quinton, which disturbed me more than I wanted to admit. One way or another, we still needed to address last night.

We hadn’t fucked. We hadn’t messed around—well, apart from that awkward bit of kissing in the pool. I shook my head in shame, trying to shrug off the memory of how he’d held me in the water and then later in bed. Whatever was going on with us had shifted, and I had no idea where we stood. I needed to know what happened next. I needed to know what was going on in his head and to fix the shit that was going on in mine.

I needed him.

He never came.

I gave up just after five, shoved my chair into the wall and stomped across the lobby floor, expecting to find him in the back area where his office was, all dressed up in one of his fancy shirts. Except his chair was taken by Mabel, who should have been as dishevelled as I was, yet took my breath away, looking incredible in yesterday’s suit but with a bright-red scarf tied up in their hair.

“You!” they snarled, surprising me with their hostility.

“Mabs…” The name rolled off my tongue with ease these days.

“Don’t fucking Mabs me, babe.” They turned to face me, uncrossing those legs into a more challenging stance. “You serious, Finley? You fucking him? You fucking Mark Quinton?”

I retreated, just a centimetre, taken aback by the sudden tirade of accusations. Mabel was fuming, and I didn’t blame them one bit. If it had been me in their stiletto heels, I would have been fuming too.

“Are you seriously asking me that?” I snapped, already fighting a losing battle against the long-familiar rage and another more recent feeling. Guilt.

“He. Slept. With. You.” The words were scalpel sharp, each one stabbing me in the chest. “Don’t try to deny it, because he told me. And that, coming from you, is a brand-new low. I thought we were past all of this by now, for fuck’s sake. You knew. You fucking knew, yet you just had to go and fuck him?”

“I haven’t fucked him,” I hissed out, moving closer until I was pretty much in their face. “And even thinking that is a new low from you too,my dear. Mark Quinton is an incompetent waste of space. I wouldn’t fuck him if he was the last man on earth, and he knows that.” I was shouting, but right then I didn’t give a damn who heard me. “I can’t stand the imbecilic twat, and that is the God-honest truth. You of all people should know that,Matt. Shit. I’m…I’m so sorry.”

And just like that, the two of us were whooshed back to a time I had no wish toeverrevisit. Neither did they, as a well-manicured hand shoved into my chest as they stood to face me head on.

“Don’t.”

“Then back the hell off.”

“Do I need to spell this out to you, Finley?”

Fuck, Mabel was raging, and it would take a few rounds of grovelling to get them back on side. My bad. Again. It was always me. Me and my temper. Them and theirs.

“Stay away from Mark.” They were still in my face, but there were tears in their eyes, and it made my heart ache.

---