I can help you shake things up!
Rich people got plenty of ass-kissing. Some of them secretly enjoyed when you gave it to them straight—and not only with top-shelf liquor.
Leaving the main walkway that during the day carried droves of sunburned guests between the hotel’s main building and the private beach, she turned down a narrower path. Past the koi pond and a row of two-person loungers Jean never wanted to look at with a black light, then through the trees until a series of slate pavers ended at the porch of a modest two-thousand-dollar-a-night holiday cottage, tailor-made for those who wanted to enjoy the amenities of a big resort without sharing an elevator with ordinary mortals.
There were half a dozen of these “cottages” scattered around the grounds. Jean’s coworkers liked to speculate about celebrity guests registering under false names, but she doubted Dolphin Bay was pulling starlets and chart-topping musicians. The young and hot would be hiding out at an eco-resort in Brazil or Vietnam or someone’s private Swedish island. Dolphin Bay was a little too old school. This was a place your rich parents could hang. Ortheirparents. Paddleboarding was an option, but people mostly stuck with golf. And no one was going to shame you for ordering a daiquiri instead of some obscure artisanal alcohol tarted up with twelve plant essences and a culturally appropriative name, served by a twenty-three-year-old with a Rip Van Winkle beard.
The Dolphin Bay clientele tended to be well preserved andtastefully dressed but not exactly tantalizing, because another regrettable fact about money was that it did not automatically turn people sexy. In Jean’s experience, rich people often married hotness, first because they could, and second to give their offspring a fighting chance at having hair after thirty. Even then they tended to stick with a very specific “my other car is theMayflower” style of attractiveness. Young billionaires with gleaming abs might be thick on the ground in fiction, but in real life they mostly had the vaguely amphibious look of career politicians.
In other words, the odds of intrigue were not in her favor, even at this time of night.
Jean knocked on the door of Sunset Cottage. “Towel delivery!”
No one answered. There was a puddle on the outdoor table from the recent rain, and she couldn’t exactly leave clean towels on the ground, so Jean keyed the door open with her employee badge.
“I have your towels,” she said. “I’ll just leave them—oh.”
It turned out Jean was going to see a body this evening, only this one was very much not dead. She’d heard of guests who got their kicks from exposing themselves to staff, but it was clear this guy wasn’t turned on by Jean’s presence—and not just because she could see the relaxed state of his man parts. It was the yelp of panic that tipped her off. And then the flush that traveled up his chest like a lava flow in reverse as he tripped over his feet, bumbling for something that turned out to be a pair of glasses with heavy black frames.
Only when he had them on did he think to cover himself with both hands.
“Nice snake,” Jean said after a silence so thick you could have spread it on toast. Someone had to break the ice. Or maybe not ice since the temperature in the room wasn’t exactly frosty. More like warm—and getting hotter by the second.
He looked down at the place where his hands met. “Are you referring to my… sexual organ?”
“No, the other one.” She circled a hand to indicate the rear view. “Your ink.”
As comprehension dawned, he looked profoundly relieved. Go figure, Jean thought, adding that tidbit to her mental sketch of Naked Guest. A guy who doesn’t want to discuss his junk.
“I like the color,” she added.
He glanced over his shoulder, as if to remind himself what was tattooed on the smooth round cheek. “It’s a green snake.”
“Uh-huh.” Somewhere between chartreuse and olive, Jean would have called it, but not everyone cared about those distinctions.
“That’s the name, I mean.Opheodrys vernalis.Also known as the smooth green snake. Although some refer to them as grass snakes.” He paused, and Jean got the feeling he was wondering whether he’d said too much. She gave him her undivided attention, hoping he could see that she was fully engaged in the snake trivia. That seemed to be the encouragement he needed to venture one more fact. “Green is my favorite color.”
“I like it too.” She couldn’t help letting her eyes wander then, down the long legs and back up again, past the stomach (a classic one-pack that looked delectably squishable) to the hunched shoulders and shaggy dark hair. He looked like someone from a time before gyms were invented. Not big or chiseled but with nice lines. Turn him to stone and he could easily stand in an Italian grotto with a flute in his hand, dingdong on display. Except for the glasses and farmer tan. “I’d ask if you have any other tats, but you know.” Jean raised her chin in the direction of his nakedness.
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry.” His black brows drew together behind the Clark Kent frames, shoulders jerking as if he wanted to rub a hand over his face before he remembered why that wasn’t a good idea.
It was a remarkably handsome face. Had he not been standing there buck naked, Jean would have spent more time studying the contours of his cheekbones, the well-shaped lips and large, dark-lashed eyes. Without the beginnings of a beard to roughen his appearance, he would almost have been too perfect.
“Let me just—” He broke off, gaze bouncing around the room before he reached for something on the desk to his right, leaving one hand in place like a five-fingered fig leaf. Halfway there he decided to switch hands, briefly flashing Jean as a result, like an amateur magician who can’t figure out how to disappear his rabbit.
Panic turned his movements even jerkier. His outflung arm made contact with a glass of water, knocking it onto its side.
“Shoot,” he said, biting his lip in dismay as the contents dripped onto the floor.
A polite person would have excused herself to let him get dressed, but Jean had no such scruples. The more he blushed and twitched, the more comfortable she felt. She’d always had a thing for awkward people. Plus, she was curious about this gawky stranger with the butt tattoo and the beautiful face who seemed so ill at ease in his expensive cottage. What turnip truck had he fallen off?
Instead of leaving, she threw a towel at him, hurling it like a Frisbee. “Think fast,” she said, as it hit him in the chest.
Rather than using it to cover himself, he crouched and started sopping up the spill. Jean took the opportunity to get another look at the snake coiled across his hindquarters. It was good work: sharp lines, vivid color. She would have asked about the artist but didn’t want to fluster him even more, so she chucked another towel at his head.
“Put that on.”
More bumbling ensued. Even with her eyes averted, Jean had the impression a scarecrow in roller skates was trying to dress himself with one hand.
