Page 11 of Spark
Matt had always been her rock, quiet and thoughtful where Chris was confident and a little brash. Like the rest of the Swansons, Matt was extremely protective of her—sometimes a littletooprotective—and a good guy right down to the bone.
“Don’t worry about that,” Chris told him, grinning. “I’m going to be working with her on this, since it’s got the guys at the restaurant all freaked out. I’ll protect her.”
Matt stiffened. “So will I,” he declared. “Whenever she's at work.”
His arms tightened around her again. “Sophie, I don’t want you going out to that hotel by yourself,” he ordered. “If Chris isn’t available, you take me.”
Sophie blinked. He sounded jealous and. And kind of competitive. Which wasn’t like Matt at all. “Um, okay.”
Is he interested in me?
Nah, she answered herself instantly.
She’d been best friends with Chris and Matt since she’d first met them. During her high school years, she’d desperately hoped that one of them would make a move on her, and save her from graduating dateless and un-kissed.
But nothing ever happened, and she’d eventually accepted that they’d firmly placed her in their friend zone.
Maybe things were changing now.
Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting things, just like I've done with every other man I hoped might be interested in me.
* * *
Bearpaw Springs Resort
One hour later
“I don't know about this. Eddy’s gonna be real mad if he finds out that anyone’s been talking about the ghosts,” said the handsome, dark-haired Latino man wearing chef’s whites. “Especially to a reporter.”
“Rafael, she doesn’t have to put your name in her article,” Chris promised.
He was sitting on the banquette next to Sophie, closer than he normally did, and she was having a difficult time not reacting to his proximity. She liked that their hips and legs were touching, but at the same time, she wanted to put a little space between them because she was enjoying it a littletoomuch, and it would be embarrassing if Chris, with his super-senses, figured that part out.
Chris nudged her with his elbow.
She nodded quickly. “Um, yes. I can just reference a source who asked not to be named, or attribute your quotes to an anonymous hotel employee, something like that. Your boss would never have to know.”
After running into Matt, Sophie and Chris had driven to the Bearpaw Springs Resort so that Sophie could begin interviewing the kitchen staff and hotel employees about any strange things they’d witnessed or experienced at the hotel. They drove separate cars, since Chris’s shift at Calidus began mid-afternoon and would run through the end of dinner service and the nightly kitchen cleaning after the restaurant closed.
She and Chris were now sitting at one of the tables in the empty dining room across from Rafael Ornelas, the restaurant's Assistant Executive Chef. He was one of the many Ornelas clan members who worked at the resort, and looked to be somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties, with an easy smile and a collection of tattoos that rivaled Daniel's.
At Sophie’s assurance, Rafael sighed and spread his hands. “Okay. As long as Eddy doesn’t find out that it was me.”
“He won’t, not from me,” Sophie assured him. She quickly turned on her phone’s recording app, and slid it across the table so that it ended up in front of Rafael. “So, Daniel told me about the pot lid mysteriously flying across the kitchen and hitting you.”
He nodded. “Did he tell you that I screamed like a girl? No offense, Sophie,” he added quickly.
“No offense taken. I would have screamed, too,” she said with a smile. “And no, Daniel didn’t mention that part. Just that both of you were understandably startled.”
He nodded. “You can say that again!”
“Has anything else like that ever happened to you while you’ve been working here?” she asked.
He frowned. “There have been a few other things. Not like getting hit with flying shit, but weird stuff.Creepystuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like, there’s this big walk-in cooler in the kitchen. It’s L-shaped and it's got two doors, one on each end. So, last summer, while I was alone in the kitchen one morning, prepping something, I went into the cooler through one of the doors. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone dressed in red and white go in through the other door. It felt…weird…and then I realized I hadn’t heard the other door open or close, and that none of the kitchen staff working that day fit the description of the person I just saw.”
