The Reckless Engineer (23 page)

CHAPTER 30

Wednesday, October 27 — Twelve Days Later

Jeremy walked back to The Royal Atlantic in Otter’s disguise having again parked his Audi on a side street.

‘Welcome back, Mr. Brown. I have you down in the same room as before for three nights, extendable. You must have liked us, ha?’

It was the same blond receptionist as before, Annie Wren, smiling and flirting with him. Coming up the hotel stairs Jeremy had stopped and glanced around for Gavin, and spotted her seeing him and covertly popping the top two buttons of her shirt and adjusting her hair.

‘Yes, I loved it. It is very sweet that you remember, er, Annie, right?’ He winked. ‘Anything good in the restaurant menu? I am exhausted and I am starving.’

‘I have the room service menu here. I also have leaflets from some very nice restaurants a stone’s throw from here. I can personally recommend a couple of them. Why don’t you come down to the bar after you are settled in?’

Just then Jeremy recognized a voice behind him, and peals of laughter. Caitlin McAllen! With a side-glance over his left shoulder he could see Caitlin and Gavin Hunter walking in through the hotel entrance, hand in hand.

‘Let me pick up some cold beers and a bottle of champagne from the bar before we go up. We used up the drinks in the room last night.’

Caitlin turned right and headed towards the bar.

‘It’s all right, Mrs. Hunt. I shall send housekeeping up to your room right away to restock your bar.’

Annie put a hand on Jeremy’s arm on the reception counter to gesture him to wait, and spoke around his shoulder to Caitlin.

‘Thank you. I shall pick up just two beers for now.’

As Caitlin walked towards the bar Jeremy placed his case upright on the reception counter to his right to hide his upper body, then leaned forward, and pretended to study the menu. After what seemed like an eon of Jeremy holding his breath, Caitlin and Gavin picked up their drinks and headed up the stairs.

Caitlin seemed nothing like the cool, calm, ice queen, or the ice queen melting in distress that Jeremy had seen before. She had held onto Gavin’s hand and laughed like a teenager. From the corner of his eye he had seen her twirl around Gavin and cling to his arm like a vine.

‘If you are too tired, I can bring these up to you in an hour when I get off for my afternoon break about 2:30. I can also have housekeeping pick up the food for you.’

Annie had leaned over the counter and was picking out some of the restaurant menus, revealing creamy cleavage.

‘Thanks, love. I do need lunch, but I am too tired to go out again. I shall use the guest restroom first and then I’ll head up to my room.’

Jeremy smiled and briefly touched her upper arm.

As he went into the rest room, he heard Annie sending the concierge up to replenish the bar in the Master Suite. Jeremy waited until he heard the bottles in the trolley rattle past as it went into the elevator, then came out and picked up his cases.

‘See you soon, sweetheart.’ He winked at Annie and headed up the stairs.

Halfway up the flight of stairs to the second floor, he put his cases down and waited for the ring of the elevator bell upon its reaching the second floor. At one in the afternoon the hotel was silent and was falling into a siesta ready to wake up to the buzz of activity around dinnertime. Half a storey above him the drinks trolley finally rattled and clanged its way out the elevator and down the hallway stopping, no doubt, outside Gavin’s and Caitlin’s suite.

‘Housekeeping,’ the waiter announced loudly.

Jeremy waited, half-expecting the disappointing click of Gavin or Caitlin’s opening the door and letting the waiter in.
If so I shall have to resort to my backup plan
.

‘Come in.’

A voice, faint from being behind a door, cheered Jeremy up and he resumed his ascent, emerging into the hallway as the tail end of the trolley and the concierge disappeared into the master suite. Quickly and silently taking the hallway with a few strides, Jeremy reached Gavin’s door. He could see the waiter’s key card in the lock of the door that had closed behind him and stopped just a tenth of an inch ajar.

It was surely a master key. He slipped it out the door and into his back pocket. He opened his own suite’s door with his own key card, disappeared behind it with his cases, and quietly closed the door.

In his mind, Jeremy could imagine the waiter coming out and looking for his key card, tapping down his own pockets, and puzzling where it could have gone. He would conclude that he must have dropped it in the trolley or misplaced it somewhere and he would take the trolley down and look for it later. If the waiter reported the card lost, it could be deactivated by security, and if it were deactivated before Jeremy could use it, he would have to revert to Plan B again.

After the concierge was gone, Jeremy checked the master key card on his door and the door opposite. It let him in through both like a charm, for now.

Back in the living room of his suite Jeremy could hear Gavin and Caitlin in their living rooms—the noises and the tones, but not the words. The suites were arranged such that the two living rooms and the two front doors were next to each other, and the two bedrooms, away from each other.

There was nothing to do right now but get some well-needed rest. He switched the plasma TV on to an episode of Monk and kicked back on the couch with a chilled lemonade.

Jeremy was woken from his sleep by a sharp noise.
Knock, knock
.

‘Mr. Brown, it’s Annie Wren from the reception.’

‘Come in,’ he said instinctively, sitting up from where he had fallen asleep on the couch.
My Plan B is here, just in case.

‘Oh, er, Jeremy Smith, I presume? I was looking for Mr. Charles Brown. He wanted me to bring these menus up for him.’

Shit, he had forgotten that he had taken off Otter’s disguise and washed the makeup off himself. It took a minute for him to improvise.

‘Oh, yes.’ He smiled. ‘Charlie went out. He mentioned that you would get my lunch for me. How do you know my name?’

‘Mr. Brown left a note the last time he was here to direct you to his room if you came in. All such requests go on the computer under the guest’s reservation and we study the notes on our guests’ previous reservations when they arrive here again. All part of the special service we offer here at The Royal Atlantic.’ Annie smiled and held out the menus to him.

Jeremy got up and moved to the small round table with two chairs set around it.

‘Your special service is very sweet, Annie. I missed lunch and I’m starving.’

She set the menus on the table before him and, and seeming unsure what to do with herself, moved to the sliding glass doors and looked out to sea while Jeremy shuffled through the menus.

‘You have a lovely view from this suite, and we have such fine weather today.’

Jeremy picked the room service menu and moved to the doors right behind her. Her golden hair smelled of sandalwood. He felt intoxicated by it as he never was from the excess of alcohol the night before.

‘Yes, it is a beautiful view from here. Thanks for moving your client to get us this room again.’

‘No problem.’ She turned sideways and looked up at him, their eyes meeting inches away from each other.

Bluer than the sea, Jeremy thought.

As if sensing his thoughts, she blushed and looked out to sea again, at ripples of waves running playfully onto the sand and breaking into white foam in the sun.

Jeremy put a light hand on her shoulder. ‘Annie, might I invite you to lunch? Charlie mentioned you are off on your lunch break now. If you can, room-service lunch and drinks are on me.’ He stepped back as she turned.

‘That would be nice. It’s a date, and I can pay for my half. Pick out what you want and I’ll get it ordered right away.’

‘Pick something good for me. Surprise me.’

She laughed, taking the menu from him. Jeremy moved sideways to let her leave for the door.

‘And give me fifteen minutes to freshen up.’

‘See ya soon then.’

His charming Plan B disappeared out the door.

He moved the small round table next to the French window and set a chair for Annie next to his, facing the French patio doors out to sea, one chair at a right angle to the other. Then he went into the bath to wash off the stench of violent death he was sure was all over him from earlier that day.

Jeremy was still in the bath when Annie got back with room service. He answered her knock with only a towel wrapped around his waist. A minute later he pulled on his blue jeans and socks on in the bedroom while Annie set the table, and decided to use the living room mirror to put on some talcum powder and scent, and to pull on a white muslin shirt, hoping to make the way to try to seduce Annie later on.

Lunch went down well with Annie asking the normal questions one does to get to know a guest, interspersed with funny anecdotes of situations with hotel guests to make him laugh. Afterwards, he moved them back to the couch, asking her to stay for desert and drinks and watch one of his favourite episodes of
The Good Wife
with him.

A hot scene was on the screen with Will kissing Alicia. He put his right arm around Annie over the couch. She lightly touched his leg that was touching hers and with her hand and gestured for him to refill her glass from the bottle on the side table next to him. She kept her hand on his thigh and did not resist when he leaned in to kiss the side of her neck. Soon they was locked in a kiss, initially playful, but growing increasingly passionate.

She sighed when his hand went under the blouse and cupped her breasts. She did not stop him when he hesitantly unbuttoned her shirt, the top two buttons of which she had undone for him in such a sexy manner as he had walked in the door earlier that afternoon. She touched his chest with soft hands as he peeled off his shirt. Her belly button was pierced and a pearl was set in the crevice. A coloured tattoo of a fine vine with dainty flowers, butterflies, and humming birds around it ran from the nape of the back of her neck, along her spine, and down to her waist. She moved against him, sighing softly as he ran his fingers down tracing its path, hugging her to himself. And she didn’t resist when, upon reaching her bra, he snapped its latch. She sighed and moaned when she felt his hands and lips on her milk and honey breasts—firm, round, and perfect.

However, when she was naked against him but for black lace nickers and he reached for the button of his jeans, Annie tensed. She pulled away slightly and stopped moving or responding. What was wrong?

Jeremy took his hands off the button and tried to pull her back against him, placing it against the small of her perfect back, his fingers between her thighs trying to excite a response again; but she firmly tensed her legs together. Jeremy knew that that was as far as she was going to go with him right now. Still a stranger to her, he sensed that his urgency and passion had scared her a little.

‘Jesus, Annie. Can I see you again?’ Jeremy groaned and almost pleaded, moving his hands up and holding her back.

She nodded and blushed shyly, sensing his eyes on her.

He got up and turned away, putting his shirt on slowly with his back to her, letting her get dressed.

‘Are you single? What do you do?’ she asked, as Jeremy combed his hair back and watched her put her blouse on in the mirror.

He paused, taken aback.

‘I’m an engineer. I see my estranged partner on and off,’ he confessed to her reflection. ‘It has been like that for a few years now and I don’t know where I stand or where we are going with that. We are more like friends now, friends with benefits.’

‘Phew, an engineer,’ she flashed him a look of admiration.

‘I am a writer,’ she continued hesitantly. ‘At least I hope to be published someday.’

‘Really? What do you write?’

‘Mostly short stories, for now, and romances. I’ve had a couple of short stories published in magazines so far. Someday, you know, I shall publish books, I hope. I was reading Fine Arts and English at Southampton as a mature student, but I’m taking a year off to work by the seaside and to write. I felt a bit like a fish out of water at Uni, my being 25 and the other students in my class being almost seven or eight years younger. But I am definitely going back next year.’

‘Might I read some of your writing? I could put you in touch with my friend Harry. He’s a solicitor and his firm provides services for a few publishers and agents.’

‘That would be lovely.’ She paused. ‘So why do you dress up as “Charles” in a wig and a moustache then?’

Annie was looking at him in the mirror, sitting up sideways, her right foot tucked under her.

He turned around abruptly and searched her eyes.

‘How did you know? Am I so transparent?’

‘Well you have seven freckles on your nose, and a slight birth mark on the side of your right cheek near your ear, in the same spot as your “friend Charles.”’ She laughed mischievously as if pleased with herself. ‘I noticed them downstairs as you leaned forward when the Hunts came in, and I only noticed them again when you leaned in to kiss me just now. And then there are the dark eyebrows, obviously coloured, against your sandy blond hair, not to mention your voice. No one else would have noticed I am sure. So your double identity is safe.’

‘Can you keep a secret then?’

She nodded earnestly.

Jeremy laughed and went back to the seat on the couch behind her, put his arm under her arm and pulled her back to him; then placed his hand over her breasts. She didn’t resist and sighed softly again as his hand moved against her and his lips nuzzled the side of her neck. She was enjoying the open sexuality and passion in their exchange.

His Plan B was exquisite. No way he going to allow this one to hit the dreaded “friend zone”.

‘Well I’m gonna tell you first, and then I’m gonna kill you.’ He laughed. ‘I’m also a kind of investigator, a private eye, in a manner of speaking. I am doing some investigative work for one of Harry’s cases, keeping an eye on the movements of the couple next door. I’m kind of trying to get my best friend and business partner out of some deep shit he has got himself into.’