Her soul wanted to shake him until he woke up and then ride him like a rented mule.
Instead, Dree lay on her side of the bed, naked as Sir requested, and fitfully dozed until late the next morning when Augustine finally stretched and woke up, blinking at her with a sleepy smile on his handsome face.
She wanted to slug him.
He said, “You have a spa day scheduled for today.”
Dree asked, “A what?”
“At the hotel spa.” Augustine stretched and fluffed his pillow behind his head. “We are to attend that charity ball tonight. Since leaving the hotel seems to attract unwanted attention, I thought you’d like to take the occasion to have your hair and makeup done and the other things girls do before they attend a high-profile event.”
“Wait a minute,” Dree said. “You didn’t say this was a ‘high-profile’ shindig.”
“They all are. Anyhow, I booked you into the spa for whatever you want. I do heartily recommend the massages here. I’m planning on a hot-stone massage because I think one of our adversaries wrenched my shoulder yesterday.” He rubbed his left shoulder gingerly.
“Let me see that.” Dree assisted him to a seated position, and then she manipulated his shoulder joint to assess his range of motion and level of pain. “Does this hurt? How about that? Nope, only that? It’s probably a mild sprain. Yep, massage and ibuprofen.”
“Thank you, Dr. Dree,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, I’m not a doctor.”
“But you are a—” Augustine grinned at her with one eyebrow raised.
“You are not going to trap me that easily, mister. I am a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and I am going to have a massage, and a pedicure, and other things that I don’t know what they are because I’ve never been to a spa before.”
Dree took fifteen minutes to decide which of her clothes she should wear to the spa, which seemed like a very upscale place. She didn’t want to wear any of the pretty and expensive clothes that Augustine had spent money on, because he should be the recipient of all that pretty. Finally, she decided on the black trousers and pink sweater that had miraculously been laundered and placed back into their closet.
Augustine had already gone somewhere. Maybe she’d see him in a sauna or something.
She followed the gold-plated signs on the marble walls through the hotel to the spa, where she was promptly told to take off her clothes and wear only a terrycloth robe around the place.
Okay, then.She could have thrown on her ragged ol’ gym clothes for that.
A very prim Parisian woman with chalk-white skin but black nail polish and lipstick handed Dree a menu of services with a flourish of her hand. Dree checked most of the boxes. Most of the spa services seemed to have nationalities, like the French Riviera sea-salt scrub, the Vietnamese kelp seaweed wrap, and the Chilean clay facemask.
Dree picked all the ones with exotic names because she was probably going to go back to Arizona and never be able to travel again, so she might as well have the Madagascar chocolate detoxifying foot rub.
Seven hours later, Dree inhabited a body that was smoother, satinier, massaged and defoliated, and far less hairy than her usual one. She should have remembered what a Brazilian wax was, but she would never forget again.
But at least she had gotten a hair cut-and-color out of the deal. The beautician had tut-tutted over her home-chopped hair and done a great deal of work to mend Dree’s panicked scissoring. Her blonde hair now had “moonlight baby-lights,” whatever those were, and curled softly around her face.
Between her scheduled treatments, Dree had been ordered to lie on a chaise lounge around the reflecting pool or in the sage-smudging meditation room, where attendants were pleased in a bored sort of way to bring her smoothies with weird vegetables in them, fruit essence waters that tasted like flat soda, or really expensive wine, but Dree was frantically texting people for more information because the news she had received was bad.
Very bad.
The texts began at about ten o’clock, which meant it was one o’clock in the morning back in Phoenix. Dree had just finished having her face scrubbed with salt, which was not as much fun as it sounded because saltstingswhen it gets into abrasions, like when your face is being scrubbed with sharp little crystals.
The first text that pinged Dree’s phone was from her work-friend at Good Sam Hospital, Caridad Santos, who must be working the overnight shift this week.Good for her. More money.
The police were here again, asking about you, last night about nine. A friend in HR said they have been here every day. I am sorry, I did not know that they have been doing this. HR says that you were placed on administrative leave a few days ago and now you are fired. I am so sorry, all this just came down, and I do not know what to do. They told us that if you came into the hospital, we were to call HR to call the police. You should not have been fired because you had already put in to take off these days of work for that big trip with your boyfriend, the scumbag. I looked at the schedule, and your leave is extended for the next three days, so that cannot be it. I do not know why they are talking about the police.
When Dree read that, she sat down with her hand on her head. She didn’t even have a job to go back to now, and the police were looking for her.
Her sister Mandi had texted sometime during the night in Paris with the routing and account numbers of the new bank account she had opened up, and she promised Dree that no one else had any access to it.
Dree checked her own brand-new bank account.
She lost her breath at the staggering sum that had been deposited that morning while she’d slept.
