“She’s smart. Make sure you get her to sign tomorrow. Don’t touch her. And find Roark. They might have gotten it fucking right this time.”
I’m still trying to dissect what the heck it means. She’s smart—well, thank you. But why wouldn’t you want a smart person to curate and catalog your collection? You wouldn’t if you were hiding something. The NDA. That makes it obvious there’s something I don’t know. But I will soon.
I roll off the bed, and my body complains. It’s not the bed’s fault I didn’t sleep enough. It’s my overactive brain.
I’m guessing Roark is the fourth plate at dinner last night, the one they didn’t mention. The one whom it took every ounce of my being to not bring up.
But who are “they?” And what did they get right? Hiring me? Or something else? I just wish I could leave it alone and let it be that they hired the right person. They could have had a bad collection curator before.
Teeth, shower, hair, clothes are all done while puzzling out what “they” could mean. I put my toiletries in the cabinet on the bottom shelf to the left side like I did when I was sharing with dozen room-mates. Then I laugh and spread out the few products I have so they all have their own shelf.
Right. A light application of makeup, though nothing’s going to fix the bags under my eyes but coffee. Coffee might get me through the day. It might make me appear to be human. A whole lot of it. A strong Turkish coffee, but in a giant American mug. If I’m lucky.
I pad my way down the stairs, leaving the balcony and its secrets alone. I take a moment to look at the panels of thecurtains. It’s a story, I think. There’s a lot of fruit, birds, and cute mushrooms. Back at the stairs, I find one of the birds carved into the banister. It’s on the tapestry curtains too. Not once but at least three times.
Right. Coffee. The curtains are pulled across Kieren’s room and the doors that must not be touched. The dining room is empty. Well, not empty. There’s a large spread of pastries, cold meats, and fresh fruit on the sideboard table. There are two place settings. The spots where Evander and Kieren sat last night are cleared, with not a crumb on the linen tablecloth. Have they already come and gone? My watch says 6:30. I suppose I should have asked what time they expected me to be here. But Evander did say breakfast wasn’t a formal affair.
My phone buzzes, and I pull it out. It’shimagain. I should block him. I put it on the table facedown without reading it. With my plate filled, I place it on the table. Unlike last night, there isn’t anyone around.
I push on the door across from the one through which I came in, the one the servers came in and out of last night. “Hello?”
But there’s no answer. I step back into the room and sit. Someone will come check on the food, I’m sure. But when I’ve finished my fruit and a hard-boiled egg and no one has come, I enter into a full butler’s pantry. It’s an endless corridor of glass-front cabinets filled with china and stemware. A few feet down is another door, and behind it I can hear people moving around.
“Hello?” I push through it into a modern commercial kitchen. Two chefs stop what they are doing. They stare at me as if they’re deer and I’m a speeding car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
“Leopold,” the closest one yells, then continues in a language I don’t know.
“I’m here,” says a voice behind me. I turn to find Leo in his full uniform. “Miss Fischer, pardon. I didn’t expect you to be up yet.”
“I’ve never experienced jet lag. But I have a lot of friends who have. They all say the best thing is to jump right into the new time zone. And this place seems to start early. So here I am.”
“Yes, Mr. Alder and Mr. Slate are gone for the morning already. So I’m afraid you’ll be on your own.”
I nod. “There’s another plate at the table. Will you be joining me?”
He laughs. “No. That is for Mr. Lang. He was traveling yesterday, and I’m not sure when he will be dining this morning.”
“Just for clarification, it’s Kieren Alder, Evander Slate, and what is Mr. Lang’s first name?”
“Roark Lang,” Leo says with a twinkle in his eye. “Would you like some coffee?”
“I would kill for some. Figuratively, of course.”
“There will be no slaying for payment of coffee at Cloud Rift. We did away with that in the Middle Ages.” He laughs. And then stares off into space before giving me a crisp nod and heading into the butler’s pantry.
I follow him because there’s no reason he should be making me a cup of coffee. I’m not the laird or lady of the manor. “Show me where it is, and I can fetch it myself later. I have a feeling I’m going to be half coffee by the time the day’s over.”
He stares at me and, after a long pause, nods. “Let me show you where things are in the pantry.” He leads me into a small room off the dining room. Tall oak cabinets line onewall. There’s a top-of-the-line La Marzocca espresso machine on a marble counter. All I can think of is how much effort it must take to keep from staining the marble. He puts his hand on it and turns. “I don’t need to give you a rundown on this, do I?”
“I think I can handle it.” I ask a few quick questions before Leo leaves to go into what must be the kitchen.
I’ve got my coffee almost finished when I hear my phone vibrating on the table in the dining room. I let it go. Working with this machine is my barista dream. I swirl a cream leaf design into the top of my cup and head back to the table and my phone.
Including Leo and the men at dinner last night, the chefs bring the number of people I’ve met here to five, and I didn’t truly meet the chefs, but the one thing I have noticed is the absence of phones. Sure, Kieren had a computer at the table when we arrived, but neither of them had phones. And mine is vibrating beside my plate.
Pivoting back to the dining room, my eyes bulge. The empty place setting isn’t empty anymore. And the gargantuan shirtless man sitting there is holding my phone. “Who is Jeff?” he growls.
There’s a sharp pain in my sinuses, and I clench my eyes closed. I’m more than lightheaded.
