Maid for the Rock Star (29 page)

UNAUTHORISED.

GUEST NOT PRESENT.

CONTACT RECEPTION.

Someone had revoked her access to the villas. Probably a good thing. And if Jay wasn't home, she wouldn't have to face him. Setting the box carefully on the doormat, Audra turned and bolted back to the function centre, hoping Pamela hadn't missed her yet.

FIFTY-FIVE

Audra beat Pamela and the porter to the seminar room by less than a minute, she figured, glancing at her wristband as the porter loaded the boxes onto his trolley. No one need ever know about the camera or her unscheduled excursion to the villas.

She worked in silence for most of the day, turning the function rooms from a shambles into the uncluttered spaces they normally were. Good thing they'd dealt with the guests' rooms the previous day, because it was dinnertime before she cleared away the last load of boxes.

Serge was waiting for her outside the staff dining room, carrying a familiar package in his arms. "Looks like you've really impressed the VIPs, Audra. Jackie said this was yours."

Reluctantly, Audra took the box.

"She said he wouldn't use any packing tape, either. VIPs have their own strange ideas. I mean, who'd close a box with half the first aid kit?" Serge laughed.

She glanced down and realised that he was right. Jay had sealed it with some of the adhesive dressings from the hospital, then used a red marker to scrawl her name across them. The letters bled into the gauze, making it look gorier than it truly was. She wondered if even the illusion of bloodstained bandages had made Jay dizzy. Audra dropped the box on a table, and returned to sit beside it when she'd loaded her plate.

Serge slid into the seat beside her. "So what's in it?"

Something she didn't deserve, Audra thought but didn't say.

Jackie appeared beside the table, a look of grim determination on her face. "I'm under orders to make sure you don't try to return it. He said he'd pay for some of my son's flying lessons if I agreed. Don't you mess this up for me. Now, open it. We're all dying to know what it is."

One of the chefs appeared with a box cutter that she handed to Audra with a flourish. Now she was attracting a crowd – every staff member in the room was staring at her.

"All right." She sliced through the dressings and peered into the box. The folded receipt was on top, now with a message scrawled on the back:

Audra

Thanks for not letting me die
.

Jay

She pulled out the well-wrapped camera and almost snorted as she realised he'd imprisoned two mango beers in the bubble wrap, bracketing the camera.

"If you try and take it back, I'll sit on you," Jackie announced. "Flying lessons don't come cheap."

Laughter surrounded Audra on all sides. She knew she was beaten. If only for Jackie and her son, she'd be forced to keep this outrageously expensive gift.

More than ever, she needed to find the money and return it to Jay. If she didn't, she'd have to take it out of her savings. No, she couldn't do that, but she did have to tell him. He deserved to know the truth.

Serge reached over her and snagged the beer. "I'll put them in the fridge for later, if you like. I'm up for tonight, if you are." He winked.

More laughter erupted, but it wasn't as loud as before, because people started to drift away, returning to their dinner and whatever had occupied their attention before. Uneasily, she wolfed down her food so she could leave and stash the camera away where she wouldn't have to look at it any more. Damn Jay for finding a way to make her feel worse.

As she scraped the last forkful of lettuce into her mouth, Serge snatched her plate and carried it to the washing-up racks. "Time for that interrogation," he said when he returned, rubbing his hands together.

Half an hour later, clutching a printout from the gym office computer, Serge walked beside her on the path to the Penguin jetty. "It's the only place on the island where we definitely won't have anyone listening," he insisted and Audra knew he was right. After all, they'd been sitting on the Penguin jetty when he'd told her his big secret and, to the best of her knowledge, no one else knew it. Shit, even Jay had thought she had a relationship with the personal trainer. As if any woman could tempt a man who preferred men.

She found her gaze drawn to the windows of Maxima as they walked past. Jay sat on the sofa with what looked like a bottle of bourbon in his hand, or something amber, anyway. Audra swore she'd take her room apart to find the money on her day off. It had to be there.

"You like him, don't you?"

Audra met Serge's eyes and then dropped her gaze. "Maybe," she said finally.

"He's a good-looking bloke, Jay Felix. Just my type, if I was his."

Audra sighed. "I wish he was, Serge. But he's a boobs man – or tits, as he calls them. He's made it abundantly clear that he's definitely into women and not men."

"I bet he is. Don't let them rule your life, Audra."

She stared at him. "What? My boobs?"

Serge burst out laughing. "Those, too, but I meant the hotel management. He's no better than you are. In fact, he probably has no idea that behind those boobs is an amazing woman he has no hope of winning. You and your new camera will be winging their way to paradise and a new job soon enough, and he'll have missed out."

"You're the only one who's even guessed. Most people think you and I are an item. Please, don't say anything."

"Keep my mouth shut for three more days? Sure. Well, unless Jay Felix's super-sexy gay doppelganger visits the island. Then you're on your own."

Audra nodded. "That's fair."

He wrapped a hand around her arm. "I mean it, though. The day you quit, go up to his house and ask him to have a drink with you."

Audra tugged her arm free. "I can't. I...just can't. Please, can we talk about something else?"

Serge pointed at the jetty that extended past Villa Penguin. "Get on that jetty, woman, and we can start the interrogation."

FIFTY-SIX

"What do you think is the biggest disadvantage of working at an isolated location?" Serge demanded.

Audra took a long, slow pull from her beer and lay back on the jetty. Now that she was finishing up her second beer, the timbers didn't feel so hard. "It attracts those with a sense of adventure who will never be satisfied with a normal job. Having to rely on your own skills and experience, often without access or even open communication channels to your superior, and defend your decisions later. Working in places most people would kill to visit, let alone live in. Knowing that if you make a mistake, the risks are higher because it's harder for help to reach you, and hence weighing your decisions carefully. You know you're doing a job that someone has to, but you miss those you love back home. Email and phones and video calling can only go so far to alleviate how much you miss being able to touch them.

"Here at Romance Island Resort, I've seen all of that. I took the job because the location was somewhere I'd never been and the isolation allowed me to save money because there was nowhere for me to spend it, except on alcohol. It's hard to find the enthusiasm for more than one or two quiet drinks in the evening because you're still at work, being judged by your colleagues, and if you get drunk you could put everyone in danger. An ambulance took four hours to reach a car accident and take the injured driver to hospital. He could have died in that time and he was lucky to live. I found myself practicing first aid skills I only knew from theory and courses, then later having to assume a level of responsibility I hadn't expected.

"I have no partner and no children, but I still have family and my absence affects them, too, because where they might have relied on me in the past, now they have to rely on themselves and each other. But in my experience, meeting the challenges of working in an isolated location like a remote island resort makes you more resilient and better able to meet even greater challenges in the future. Even if you don't have a sense of adventure to start with, you soon develop one. It's hard not to. At the end of the work day, just standing out in the dark and looking up at the millions of stars in the sky...it's like no city job anywhere."

"Hmm." Serge frowned at the paper in his hand, holding his phone over it to illuminate the words. "What would you do if one of your colleagues took the last mango beer and refused to share it with you?"

Audra sat up. "I don't believe that's on the list."

"Answer the question!" Serge barked.

"If he was both a colleague and a friend who'd paid for the beers, and I'd already drunk half of them, I'd probably wish he'd share it with me. But I wouldn't say so because I've probably drunk more than I should have, anyway." Audra drained her beer. "Do I get the job?"

"I'd hire you, and I'd send you to one of those adventurous places before looking for a transfer for myself. You make working in the arse-end of nowhere sound exciting."

Audra laughed. "This isn't the backside of anything. This is paradise."

"That's the beer talking for sure. Cleaning toilets is paradise? Weren't you ready to kill some VIP the other day?" he teased.

"Cleaning toilets in paradise. There's a difference. You know I got the permanent position? Annette told me today. All I have to do is fill out the paperwork and I'll have a job until the graduate one starts next year."

Serge cracked open the beer and raised it. "Congratulations." He passed it to her and waited until she had her mouth full before he added, "Adam's had to let me go. The day of your job interview's my last day."

"Oh no!" Romance Island wouldn't be the same without Serge and his easy humour.

"It's only a week early. No big deal, really. The resort's pretty low on bookings next week, so that's it." He retrieved his beer and drank deeply.

"Will you have enough hours to get your certification?"

He shook his head. "My brother's got me a job at one of the wineries near home, so I'll work there through the summer and see if I can do those hours at one of the local gyms. I'll get there. We're all working toward our dreams, but you'll get there first. I know it. And now you have a camera, you can send me pictures of paradise, here or wherever you get sent, via email."

"I still have to do the interview. They might hate me," she admitted.

"Nah. Just repeat what you said to me, especially the bit about adventure. They'll give you anything you ask for after that."

"Even the last beer?"

Serge handed it over. "Even the last beer."