Access All Areas: HarperImpulse Contemporary Fiction

‘You mean the hot new guy.’

‘He’s new?’

She deliberately ignored the ‘hot’ part of that comment. OK so his dark and brooding good looks wouldn’t have looked out of place in an aftershave commercial but she didn’t have headspace or lifespace for men right now. Even ones who pushed themselves to the limit to stop her from jumping off a window ledge. A wistful pang tugged at her stomach as she recalled how he’d gone from pavement to hotel room in seconds flat to save her. She ignored it. He probably only did that kind of rescue act for basket cases. She knew better than anyone that knights in shining armour didn’t really exist and no one was going to sweep all her problems away any time soon. After the colossal let down that had happened last time she got involved with a man, the single years yawned comfortingly ahead of her.

‘Got here a week ago,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s an ex-bodyguard to the stars. Supposed to lick the staff into shape when it comes to security.’ She pointed her teaspoon at Anna. ‘He might be dreamy but you can’t let him distract you.’

‘Honestly, how many times? I’ve sworn off men.’

Being let down by a man you thought was your future husband did that for a person. Andrew had been long gone before the fact had actually registered with her. When she’d finally pulled him up on his constant excuses and distance it turned out he’d got a whole new life going on. New girlfriend, social life, the works. It had all gone unnoticed because she was too preoccupied with supporting her ailing parents and he hadn’t had the guts (or in the bastard’s words, the heart) to tell her. The thought of her parents brought yet another pang of desperation to save her home.

‘Maybe it’s a sign,’ she said. ‘That we should rethink things a bit.’

‘Bollocks!’ Lucy said. ‘It’s a sign that you should have stuck to our original plan and staked out the suite door. The idea itself is perfectly sound.’

Anna hesitated a beat too long.

‘What?’ Lucy said.

Anna shrugged.

‘The whole privacy invasion thing doesn’t sit massively well with me, that’s all.’

Lucy sipped her coffee.

‘What about that last picture you made some money with? That soap star. Didn’t hear you mention scruples then.’

‘That was different. It was posed. The celebrity agreed to it. Right place, right time. There was none of this cloak and dagger stuff.’

Lucy gave her an incredulous look.

‘Save your guilt, for Pete’s sake. Betsy Warrender plays the press like a maestro. She’ll probably thank you for it, she’ll be coining it in with all the publicity. Let’s face it, she’s in her forties with three husbands behind her. Landing Kip Bevan is like a badge of honour for the older woman.’ She shook her head. ‘Nope, the only person you need to worry about here is the security guy. The good thing for us is that he’s just finding his feet. He wants to run a tight ship but he’s been saddled with the rudderless mess that is the Lavington’s minimum wage staff. He’s in at the deep end and it should be easy to slip under his radar if you’ve got the right insider information.’ She tapped the side of her nose.

Anna narrowed her eyes.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you. How exactly did you come by this piece of confidential information? If it’s all so cloak and dagger. You’re a waitress-cum-chambermaid. This place should be teeming with press if the waiting staff know about it.’

‘The waiting staff don’t know about it,’ Lucy said in a low voice. That’s why we have an advantage.’ She examined her fingernails. ‘I happen to have a bit of a thing going on with the hotel manager.’

‘For Pete’s sake, you’re sleeping with the management?’ Anna blurted. ‘Are you mad? I’ve seen the guy in charge swanning about in the lobby. He must be twice your age.’

Lucy flapped a dismissive hand in her direction.

‘I’m not mad. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.’

‘Excuse me? You mean it’s got nothing to do with actually liking the guy?’

‘It’s not serious. The way I see it, you can invest everything you’ve got in a relationship and it can still bite you on the arse.’

Andrew crossed Anna’s mind, bringing with him the usual surge of resentful regret.

‘He’s fun, he likes to treat me, the sex is great…’ Lucy carried on, counting off a list of benefits on her fingers ‘…I get all the best shifts, I’m first in the queue when it comes to booking time off, and I don’t have to pick up his socks. It’ll end when I want it to. No hassle.’

‘What if he ends it first?’

Lucy shrugged.

‘Then I’ll have some more free time. I really think we’re straying way off-task now. I’ve got the tip and it’s irrelevant how I got it. We both need the money, let’s just get the hell on with it.’

‘And what about the security guy?’

Lucy looked her up and down dubiously.

‘What?’ Anna folded her arms defensively.

‘You just need to blend in a bit more.’ Lucy stood up and crossed to the row of lockers along the side of the room. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. This is a classy establishment and you’re traipsing the corridors in jeans and a shirt. I’ll lend you my spare uniform, that’ll do the trick. You can use it to blag your way into the Purple Suite. Just don’t blow your cover by hanging out of a sodding window this time.’

Anna stared at Lucy as she opened a locker and pawed through the contents.

‘And what do you think your no-strings management squeeze will do if he finds out you’ve leaked the hotel’s top secret story?’

Lucy shrugged airily.

‘He won’t. And even if he does I won’t care by then because you will have scooped us both a fortune. I can spend a bit more time auditioning and putting myself out there and a bit less time serving coffee to moany tourists. Don’t let me down!’

She clapped an arm around Anna’s shoulders, directed her towards the ladies’ loo and thrust the pink and grey uniform into her hands.

So now she had Lucy’s acting dreams riding on her photographic prowess too. No sodding pressure then.

Joe returned to the lobby half an hour later having done a quick recce of the second floor and finding nothing whatsoever out of place. Still, his mind lingered on the girl from room 214, despite all attempts to just crack on with the day ahead. Make sure you have the measure of every detail of a situation, and if in doubt, check it out. Hadn’t he just gone through that mantra to the shambles otherwise known as staff this morning? This was about effective security protocol. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Miss 214 was extremely cute with her green eyes and her freckles and her breezy attitude. Of course, his senses still kicked into action when he encountered attractive women, even nutjobs who hung off window ledges, Rome wasn’t built in a day. His previous life had been so different to this, jetting around the world in the wake of his celebrity boss, a girl in every city. His body was still living in a different sexual time zone, one where he was never in one place long enough to stick out a meaningful relationship, where women lasted a night or two before he moved on and his bed was never empty for too long.

He hadn’t had any female company since he’d flown home to England, which actually amounted to a considerable drought by his standards. Not that it felt like home after all this time. Being told his job with Stan Taylor was no longer a job had been the final push to do what he’d never thought he would. His mother was in a nursing home. He had no roots, owned no property, lived out of a suitcase. A contract in one place for once, near enough to his mother to keep an eye on her care, had seemed a good idea at the time. But he was feeling more and more by the day that he wasn’t cut out to have roots and normality at all. She’d never needed him or anyone in her entire life and he could easily have continued to oversee her care by telephone.

‘Can you give me the guest name for room 214?’ he asked one of the receptionists, glancing around the lobby as she pressed a few buttons on her computer. A group of tourists congregated at one of the tables, a stack of leaflets of the London sights being passed among them.

‘That room’s currently empty,’ she said. ‘Did you resolve the suicide situation at the side of the hotel?’

He snapped his eyes sharply away from the tourists.

‘Empty?’

She nodded.

‘There’s a problem with the ceiling in the ensuite. Maintenance are handling it, it’s on their work schedule for tomorrow…’ She raised her voice to call the last part of that after him as he dashed back across the lobby.

Afternoon tea in the lounge? He immediately checked the room. Miss 214 was nowhere to be seen and there was not a bloody cupcake or teapot in sight.

Operation Betsy, Take Two. Anna tried to take shallow breaths because she was squeezed into Lucy’s slightly-too-small uniform and it threatened to pop a button with the slightest wrong move. The effect was topped off with a rickety linen cart which she trundled into the service lift. She took a deep breath and pressed the button marked 2. As she waited for the lift to rumble into life beneath her feet, her mind wandered to her father. In their back garden, just the two of them and a camera. Endlessly patient, explaining to her over-eager and full of big ideas teenaged self about lighting and weather conditions, how to take and develop a picture that captured a moment flawlessly. She wondered what he would make of her now, wearing a disguise and using her feminine wiles to get an unsolicited photograph. Warmth crept uncomfortably into her cheeks.

He would surely care a lot more about her losing the house. She clung to that justifying thought. Her parents had poured their heart and soul lovingly into every brick and they were no longer here with her. This was her best shot at hanging on to what she had left of them.

Stick to the plan, Anna.

Her heart thumped thickly in her chest and her palms, curled around the handles of the linen trolley, were slick with sweat. All she needed to do was gain entry to the Purple Suite on the pretext of changing the towels, take a quick picture and then leg it. A piece of cake, according to Lucy. Instead of dwelling on the past she focused on mentally preparing herself to knock on the door of the most glamorous forty-something actress in the country. If she could get herself in the room using the towels as an excuse she would be able to see how the land lay. Maybe Betsy Warrender would be in a massively generous mood given the amount of amazing cougar sex she must be having and would offer to pose for a fan picture with her new squeeze. Job done, no guilt.

The lift came to a standstill with a ping and the doors slid smoothly open. The corridor was empty. She heaved the cart out of the lift with a bump. The Purple Suite was down the length of the corridor and then she needed to take a left. Her heart pounded thickly in her head as she pushed the cart down the hallway.

A skinny guy in a Lavington Hotel uniform rounded the corner carrying a tray of dirty crockery and she nearly leapt a foot in the air. Yet he simply nodded briefly as he passed her, with not the slightest hint of surprise or interest. Clearly Lucy must be right. Staff must come and go so frequently here that a new face didn’t deserve a second glance.

It occurred to her that this was all too damned easy as she knocked on the door of the Purple Suite. She should have known the moment it opened that it was all too good to be true. Luck hadn’t been on her side for the past few years, so why the hell would it take an upward turn now?

One of Betsy Warrender’s entourage stood before her with a notebook in one hand and the door handle in the other. She wore no make-up and had large, thick glasses and short dark hair. Then again, if Anna were dating Kip Bevan, who had the nation’s female contingent in a swoon, she’d hardly shoot herself in the foot by having model-material staff. He was a notorious womaniser.

‘Laundry,’ she said stupidly, as if she hadn’t been carrying a teetering pile of towels.

The woman opened the door wider and walked back into the suite. Anna followed, blinking around the opulence of the Purple Suite, the sparkling chandeliers, ankle deep carpet and velvet sofas. Sitting in the middle of the room was a woman in a fluffy Lavington Hotel bathrobe reading a newspaper. Anna stared. Last seen adorning the TV screen in a costume drama that was sweeping the nation, in real life Betsy Warrender looked a lot less glossy and a lot older. Her hair wasn’t as full and bouncy and her face was scrubbed of make-up. She looked pale and more than a little tired. In short, she looked normal. The kind of normal that could sell tabloid newspapers by the million if captured on film. As if on cue, Kip Bevan appeared through a door on the other side of the room, leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed Betsy’s cheek. He wore jeans and a designer T-shirt that showed off his ripped upper body, and looked dark, sleek and utterly gorgeous, like a dressed-down James Bond.

A resounding knock on the door behind her made Anna jump.

Betsy and Kip glanced up in unison and the minion with the glasses turned on her heel and returned to the door just as Anna realised with a spike of churning nerves that she was staring at the celebrity couple, rooted to the spot, like a starstruck peeping Tom. Worse, as voices became louder behind her she spun round to see none other than Joe Marshall entering the room, undoubtedly to perform some security sweep or other. Same black suit that set him apart from the hotel staff, same crisp white open-neck shirt, same broad shoulders and muscular build. His dark good looks were jaw dropping. He easily gave the man of the moment Kip Bevan a run for his money and her stomach gave a melting flip in spite of her resolve. His eyes widened in incredulous disbelief as he caught sight of her.

Oh crap.

She’d just witnessed the perfect money shot and had missed her chance.

Chapter 3

Joe Marshall spread his hands.

‘Excuse me for a moment,’ he said to the room. ‘I’ll just take the opportunity to brief your housekeeping assistant on the security update for the day.’

As Anna floundered, he took her by the elbow and escorted her from the suite with zero fuss or fanfare. For all Betsy and Kip knew, no one more threatening than a chambermaid had entered their perfect bubble of happiness. Her heart sank as he closed the door of the Purple Suite behind them. She might have been able to somehow pass herself off as a guest after their first encounter, but there would be no second chances this time. He stood over her as she pushed the stupid linen trolley until they reached the end of the corridor, well clear of the Purple Suite and anyone who might emerge from it.

As she came to a standstill he met her eyes with his stern grey ones.

‘Bedding change?’ she attempted brightly.

‘Really?’ he snapped. ‘Are you taking the piss?’ He held out a hand, palm-up. ‘Where’s the camera?’

This whole thing had been doomed to failure. Her shoulders sagged.

‘How did you know?’ she said.

A grin touched the corner of his mouth, lighting up the gorgeous face and causing another ill-judged surge of squidginess in her stomach. She imagined just how perfect he would look if the grin hadn’t been laced with sarcasm.

‘You are joking?’ he said. ‘Could you be any more conspicuous? Laurel and Hardy would do a better stakeout than you.’

‘I fooled the concierge,’ she countered defiantly.

‘He’d probably pass his own mother on the street.’

She gazed innocently up at the ceiling.

‘Where’s the camera?’ he repeated, not to be distracted.

She shrugged.

‘Don’t play games with me. I don’t have time for this. I’ll ask you one more time – where’s the camera?’

She made the mistake of glancing at the huge pile of towels on the linen trolley and saw the instant flash of comprehension on his face. Less than five seconds later, he’d uncovered the camera underneath the top layer of towels, primed and ready for action.

Bugger it.

She followed him meekly down the stairs to the ground floor with a heavy heart, the laundry trolley abandoned somewhere on the second floor, toying with making a run for it as they crossed the lobby. Who was she trying to kid? The nearest she’d got to fitness this past year had been nipping to the corner shop to pick up her father’s newspaper, whereas Joe Marshall looked like he chased down errant photographers every day of the week. She braced herself for being kicked out onto the pavement in full embarrassing view of the gawping public.

Instead, he showed her into what was apparently his office, a tiny room behind the reception and not far from the staff quarters. Floor plans of the hotel adorned the walls, along with what looked like staff rotas.

‘What’s this about?’ she said, a brief stab of concern in her gut as she wondered if he was going to call the police. She hadn’t really broken any laws, had she? Seeing as she hadn’t actually managed to cop a photo. Groping for a way to smooth things over, she wondered if she might be able to charm him into letting her go. It was a long shot at best – he probably had glamorous women throwing themselves at him constantly; he was hardly about to be seduced by boring Anna Clark from the back of beyond. Then again, anything was worth a try.

‘Sit down.’ He nodded at a beige office chair next to the desk.

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘Suit yourself.’

Joe sat down behind the dark wood desk and leaned back in his own, larger chair, trying to keep his expression professionally neutral when his libido was zipping hotly into action at the view before him. The pink and grey hotel uniform was definitely not meant to look that sexy. Clearly too small, it hugged her every curve. The A-line skirt was a good couple of inches too short.

He needed to focus. The Betsy Warrender booking was clearly not the top secret that he’d demanded it be. In short, that meant there was a security leak at the hotel, and when he found out who it was, heads would roll.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked. He really couldn’t keep thinking of her as Miss 214.

‘Are you going to call the police?’ she countered.

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