“You?” She squeaked. “Help me?”
“Maybe?”
The leaning tower of towels was about to topple, so Zoey grabbed the ones at the top of the stack while Quinn the hospitality specialist still considered her options.
“Thank you.” Decision made, Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re dangerously close to being out of towels. I would have gotten in so much trouble for dropping these. They’re the special towels.”
“You have special towels?”
“Special guests require special towels. Erm, not that all our guests aren’t special. But you know…”
“What’s a hospitality specialist?” Zoey asked curiously.
“It’s their fancy way of saying I’m the maid for the high-profile guests.” Quinn made a playful face. “It’s still cleaning up people’s crap no matter how you spell it.” Already widened eyes widened even further, a deer in the headlights look if Zoey had ever seen one. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, hahahaha.”
Some laughs made everyone else want to join in too. This was not one of those laughs. This was a glance around the immediate vicinity, just a little too loud, awkward kind of laugh. Zoey was tempted to save Quinn from herself by clamping a hand over her mouth.
“I heard nothing,” Zoey promised, mimicking zipping her lip. “Where are we taking these?”
“Up to the top. Here, this way.”
Following Quinn down a series of hallways to a staff elevator, Zoey balanced her own towels as Quinn used a staff keycard for access. She hit the button for the penthouse suite.
“I didn’t bring you up here,” Quinn said, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “Hannah would kill me.”
“Hannah?”
“The hotel night manager. Technically, Mrs. Harris is the general manager, but everyone knows Hannah’s actually in charge. We’re all just waiting for Mrs. Harris to croak.” A naughty snicker escaped around the pillar of towels. “She might have already. Mrs. Harris spends all her time napping in her office with the door closed.”
Zoey opened her mouth to say something, but Quinn soldiered on cheerfully.
“The guest list is crazy. We’re usually full up during peak season, but there’s never been so many high-profile guests in the resort at the same time. And they all need something special.” Quinn glanced at her from behind cotton. “Not that we mind. Our jobs are to keep everyone happy.”
“There’s a silent ‘but’ in there,” Zoey said, squishing her towels to see what made them so special.
“But it’s nice when there’s only a handful of you know what’s in the hotel at once. They’re running me ragged.” Quinn made another face, her eyes crinkling in mischief. “At least the tips are good.”
Considering Zoey’s profession as a career waitress, she could appreciate a strong tipper. A few more of them and she might have made it here a couple of years sooner.
The elevator door opened to a private hallway entrance, the staff elevator doors hidden from view at the end of the hall, blending into the décor so no one would notice the elevator—or the people working there. When they stepped into the penthouse suite, Zoey’s jaw dropped. Between the massive stone fireplace and a kitchen bigger than her place back home, the suite was the perfect combination of cozy, rustic opulence and space, with window after window revealing an utterly spectacular view of the Chugach Mountains.
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah, it never gets old. If you have to clean toilets, there are worse places.”
Prying into a stranger’s private room was wrong, but as Zoey stood in her spot, towels balanced in her arms with Quinn bustling around her, she couldn’t help but stare. The expensive purses just draped over the backs of chairs, bottles of champagne in buckets of ice already chilling despite the early morning hour. Gucci luggage stacked everywhere. She was astonished at the luxury around her.
“What do people pay for rooms like these?”
“More for one night than I make in a month.” Taking the towels from her, Quinn offered Zoey a grateful look. “And trust me, it’s not worth it. There’s nothing in here that we don’t have better down in town.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that either.”
Zoey had the feeling Quinn’s secrets were secret to very few, if the last few minutes had proven anything. Still, she nodded in reassurance. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“I’ll have to unpack their things in a moment. They just arrived and went down for breakfast.”
“This isn’t Killian’s room, is it?” Trying not to touch anything, Zoey edged out of the room and into the open doorway, a backward kind of shuffle with her hands firmly in her pockets.
“Mr. Montgomery? Do you know him?”
“We didn’t meet in Greece last year.”
Quinn blinked, then powered through her confusion with vibrant optimism. “I’ll tell him you’re here, then. Have you been to the Tourist Trap yet? Everyone has to go there when they first get into town. It’s tradition.”
“Oh, I did. And I will never go back. I made an idiot of myself. The owner had to bring me home.”
Quinn’s jaw dropped.
“You? You’re her?” Her. As if Zoey was Moby Dick, an elusive whale of a tourist. “Did Graham Barnett really carry you? Oh, that is so romantic.”
Cringing, Zoey edged half an inch into the hallway. “I don’t really remember.”
“The whole hotel has been talking about it. Poor Grass thought he was going to have to fight Graham.”
“What?”
“Then Hannah got control of the situation. She’s so good at that.”
“Wait, what situation?”
“And all for a burrito. I know Graham is crazy, and not just crazy hot, but seriously. Grass has skills. He trained in jujitsu in Anchorage for a long time. I bet he would have won.”
“Won the…burrito?”
Confusion didn’t begin to cover this.
“Okay, we’re all set! I’ll tell Mr. Montgomery you’re looking for him. Thanks again! Goodbye!”
With a bright smile, Quinn shut the penthouse door on Zoey’s face.
“He doesn’t actually know me—” Zoey started to say through the door, then she sighed. “Okeydokey.”
It took a while to find her way back to the lobby without a hospitality specialist to follow, but eventually, Zoey managed it. The hotel had several stations posted about the lobby with employees just itching to be helpful. Zoey knew where she was going, and she managed to avoid most of them. As she passed a souvenir shop dripping with handcrafted Alaskan-themed jewelry on display, she spied Lana seated at a table by the window with three other people, one of whom Zoey assumed was the secondary Killian whose suite she’d been in without permission.
Everyone at the table was enjoying themselves and their smoked trout, so Zoey scurried past before Lana could notice her. Zoey turned a corner and ran nose-to-name tag into another body, a tall, rawboned young man in his early twenties.
“Hi, my name is Diego” was trying to beam. This one was definitely trying and failing to beam.
“Did you need any help today, ma’am?”
Diego the bellhop might have sounded friendlier if he hadn’t spoken in a monotone, his eyes and voice flat. So close. Freedom and sunshine were within Zoey’s reach, but Diego the bellhop was right in her way.
“Oh, I was just wandering around. There’s supposed to be some hiking trails connected to the resort.”
“Yes.” He stared at her. Zoey stared back. Neither blinked.
Maybe it was the starch. His uniform had an awful lot of starch.
When she sidestepped, Diego the bellhop followed suit, determined to do his job. “On the far side of the grounds, take a left past the miniature golf course. Would you like a complimentary bottle of water and locally sourced organic granola bar to take with you today?”
Why yes. Yes, she would.
Shoving the granola bar at her, Diego continued in his dispassionate voice, “As valued guests of Moose Springs Resort, we encourage our patrons to dispose of all food wrappers in one of our provided bear-proof waste bins. Please refrain from carrying food items on the walking trails.”
He forced his lips to lift away from gritted teeth. “A hungry bear is a grumpy bear.”
“Umm, yes. I’ll eat it on the grounds.”
“Also, if you’d like breakfast before you leave, our head chef is world renowned for her fine dining cuisine. Her specialty is a lightly smoked trout on toast, served with house-made wild berry jam.”
Zoey shuddered and made her escape.
The instant she stepped through the doors of the hotel, the fresh, crisp mountain air filled her lungs, and the sweet, earthy scent of evergreens washed away the lingering scent of breakfast fish.
The resort was everything rustic lodge glamour, fitting in perfectly with their surroundings. Even in July, the weather was much cooler here than it would be back home in Chicago. Within the grounds alone, there were so many activities, Zoey could have spent the whole summer there and not done them all. As she wandered, smiling shyly at the far more robust guests taking advantage of the on-site amenities, Zoey munched on her granola bar.
Taking pictures on her phone from every angle imaginable, Zoey sighed in pleasure. Perfect. This was absolutely perfect.
Despite Diego’s lack of personality, his directions were excellent. The resort had paid special attention to providing signs for the trails spider-webbing away from the main grounds. The head of this jogging trail was marked with an information station, complete with a map of the trails and a list of local wildlife that could be found. Even the large government-produced sign was nicer than she’d ever seen, tucked beneath the shade of a log structure and protected from the elements by a thick casing of clear plexiglass.
“Warning. Numerous wildlife encounters have been known to occur on this trail,” Zoey read aloud. “Know your bears.”