Except for the Moroccan wrist-cuff by her plate. The damn thing held court there, looking at her with its bloody coral teardrop and bone-white hamsa. Challenging her; forbidding. Layla reached out, touching the bone hamsa with her fingertips. But there were no fireworks now and the silver had warmed in the restaurant. Sliding her hand out, she set her forearm in the open clamshell. Nothing. No burn, no sparks. Closing the cuff, she slid in the silver pin, setting it. Turning her wrist over, she admired the hamsa design, now on her outer forearm. It gazed back as if asking a question with its burning coral centerpiece.
What was she going to do with everything she had discovered tonight?
What was she going to do – with the rest of her life?
CHAPTER 3 – SEARCHING
Gazing down at the hamsa-cuff upon her wrist, Layla twiddled the embossed business card for the Red Letter Hotel in her fingertips. She was good and drunk now and the quiet restaurant fuzzed around her, most of the patrons gone with happy laughs that they didn’t have to pay for their meal. In the back of the restaurant, Layla could hear the wait-staff, cooks, and managers popping bottles of champagne to celebrate their thousands of dollars in tips tonight – all made off one devilish black credit card from Layla’s mystery man.
“I don’t fucking know, Arron. I don’t know anything about this guy. Or this hotel of his.”
“Well, you know he’s filthy rich.” Her sweet housemate Arron gave her a knowing eyeball from where he sat across from her, his shift now ended. Refilling his wineglass and hers from the fourth bottle on the table, he leaned back in his chair, adjusting his slim-fit black vest. “This restaurant would have maxed out any normal business card with all the shit you put on it tonight, but his little black beast just kept chugging along! I mean, what could it hurt, trying a Concierge stint at some fabulously elite hotel? I don’t imagine it’s much different than tending bar. I mean, you deal with rich assholes everyday. If it gets youthiskind of cash in your pocket – hell I’d do it.”
“Yeah, but what if it’s too convenient?” Layla objected, sliding her fingertips over the stem of her wineglass. “He knew myname, Arron. My degree, my credentials. Like a stalker.”
“Yeah, but he was hot as sin.” Arron gave her another eyeball with a teasing lift of one blonde eyebrow. “Besides, you can learn a lot about people from the internet these days. Nothing he told you about yourself wasn’t anything that wasn’t written up in that UW article on you this past spring. Remember that thing?UW Rising Stars: Ambassadress on the Move.Maybe he saw that article and decided to come find you. Besides girl, if you don’t want that hot stalker ass of his,I’dtake it. Fuck, he was fine.”
“Damn. Yeah – damn.” Those arresting aqua eyes surfaced in Layla’s memory, and just the thought of them sent shivers down her spine and deep into her groin. Her mystery billionaire had been hot as sin and her blistering reaction to him had been thrice that. “But why’d he run out just as our conversation was getting started?”
“You said he got spooked.” Arron gestured with his wineglass around the empty restaurant, lights turned low as the late revelry of Capitol Hill moved in a drunken lurch down the sidewalk beyond. “Maybe international hotel ownership comes with risks, like Yakuza. Maybe he pissed someone off and they’re tailing him.”
“Another reason to not get involved.”
“Well, he did give you a lovely piece of arm candy.” Arron shrugged winsomely, gesturing at Layla’s new wrist cuff with his wineglass. Gazing down at the ornate silver cuff still on her wrist, Layla found herself absorbed in it. The crimson of the coral teardrop swallowed her vision and she blinked. It might have been her drunken imagination, but she thought she could feel a pulse coming from the thing; like waves of heat washing through her wrist.
“Kinda feels like a manacle.”
“Don’t be silly. It’sgorgeous.” Reaching out, Arron lifted her arm, inspecting the piece of antique jewelry. “You said it burned you?”
“It’s gone now.” Layla dismissed, though she could still feel a prickling sensation like a simmer of fire ants beneath her skin, that ebbed and flowed with the heated pulse through her wrist.
Her gay bestie watched her with keen grey eyes, then at last gave a sigh. Sitting back, Arron gestured with his wine. “You want this mystery hottie, Layla. Don’t think I don’t know what that looks like with you. So take his little nugget of black gold,” he pushed the black credit card, sitting between them upon the table, closer to her, “and go get what you want for a change. Doing his gig might put you in a position to see him again, plus you need the money. Screw the U.N. They screwed you and killed your momentum, sugar. You had what – seven job offers just after graduation that you turned down while you were waiting on those asshats?”
“Ten,” Layla spoke, watching the red coral teardrop; feeling it burn as she thought about the vast career mistake she’d made waiting on that U.N. job in Paris.
“Well it’s time to get that back,” Arron held court decisively with his wine. “Screw eating ramen noodles and restaurant leftovers and barely making rent. Go do what you werebornto do. Go travel, be fabulous, make some serious cash. Work this job of his a few months, a year, then split. That’s what I’d do.”
“He hesitated when I asked if it was a prostitution thing,” Layla retorted, her cheeks burning from the wine and from the memory of their conversation.
“Youalsosaid he insisted it wasn’t necessarily a sex thing but aonce in a lifetime experience.” Arron shrugged his lean shoulders. “That’s what you need, Layla. You’re stuck here, drowning in this dead-end since the U.N. rejected you. It’s not like you. You need to go be the Layla we all knew and loved before this shit went down. And if you’re worried if its some weird sex hotel, as I understand it, Concierge is a position where you help guests find resources. Not fluff their bedsheets, if you know what I mean.”
“What about fluffing their balls?” Layla snorted into her wine, still conflicted but feeling that Arron’s argument made sense. She had been drifting ever since the debacle with her employment prospects three months ago. And she had always loved to travel, one of the main reasons she had done International Studies in the first place. The excitement of foreign locales just made her blood heat – it was something she lived for, the adventure, the intrigue, and unpredictable situations. But life in Seattle had achieved a dull monotony – like the steady drum of the nearly year-round rain.
“Balls aren’t what you fluff, sugar,” Arron chuckled. Leaning forward, he locked eyes with her, not quite as drunk as Layla but not far from it. “Seriously. What do you have to lose?”
What did she have to lose?Layla sat back in her chair with a sigh. “What if they abduct people? I might get dead.”
Arron gave her an eyeball. “Honey, if they abducted people that cuff truly would be a manacle, and you’d have been hustled into a black van halfway to Malaysia by now. But he bought you antique jewelry and dinner. Hell, he bought the whole restaurant dinner! It says something. I don’t know exactly what, butget in my shitty abduction vanis not the right phrase.”
Layla smiled. Running her finger around the rim of her wineglass, she lost herself in the low lights and her fuzzed inebriation. “Some part of me feels like you’re right, Arron, but—”
There was a bustle from the back as a number of waitstaff staggered out from the kitchens, saluting Layla as they laughed their way to the door. Arron watched them go, but before Layla could resume speaking, he held up a hand.
“Layla – hang on. The restaurant’s closing and I amwaytoo drunk to drive.” Retrieving his smartphone from his pocket, Arron opened an app and tapped through a few screens. Then he stood unsteadily, holding out a hand for Layla, who accepted it and rose. “Our Lyft is on the way. Andyou, fabulous woman,” Arron slid the black credit card and red-letter business card off the table, tucking them into Layla’s cleavage with a little pat, “you are taking this black piece of destiny and this hot stranger’s phone number, even if you don’t want them. We’ll go buy a boat or something with his plastic tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s go home and ogle men on the telly and continue this conversation in our jammies.”
Yelling his goodbyes to the remainder of the staff and getting a drunken cheer in return, Arron escorted Layla to the front of the restaurant. It took him a moment to fiddle with his keyring to unlock the glass door, but by the time he had it open, the Lyft car was waiting outside by the curb. Leaning on each other and giggling, they made it to the car without stumbling. Sliding in the passenger seat as Arron took the backseat, Layla found the driver was a gawky young Indian guy who took one look at her cleavage and blushed furiously.
He mumbled, “where to, miss?” She gave directions, and they were off. It wasn’t long before Layla and Arron were tottering up the front steps of their five-bedroom shared craftsman house in northeast Capitol Hill. Unlocking the stout wooden door and setting the Irish door-harp chiming, they passed through the last dregs of a Friday night party her housemates had thrown. Bottles of microbrew were everywhere, music was still pumping, and they were greeted by a drunken chorus of “Layloo! Arrrrrron!” from the living room.
