Page 23 of Room Service

“Tired?” she guessed, then let out a loud sigh. “Me too. No, I’m exhausted. Tired is just a small way to describe how I feel at the moment and I felt even worse when I heard the good news.”

I arched an eyebrow at her.

“What good news?” I asked.

She smiled brightly, her voice sounding fake when she brightly exclaimed. “Mason’s plane landed today! He’s also at the hotel, right at this very moment!”

“I didn’t hear that,” I said, frowning.

She sighed, plopping down across from me again, fake bright expression dropping. “That’s because he hasn’t started making demands or making a mess yet. I heard he came to the hotel and went right up to the office.”

She stopped and looked at me with a deep frown, but I didn’t need her to finish her sentence. He must have gone to where Trent was.

“Well,” I said, jumping off the couch, suddenly energetic. “Do you want to start cooking here or in the kitchens? I even bought extra ingredients, so we won’t have to use anything of the hotel’s.”

I headed over to the small staff room kitchen, and Laura followed behind me.

“I thought we’d be doing this at your place,” she admitted.

I sighed. “Yeah, but my quarters are a bit too small to cook in. I usually just eat all my meals here or go to my mom’s.”

“Over at the mansion?”

I nodded. “And I won’t be going back there for a while.”

Hopefully, there would be no more accidental run-ins with Trent in the hotel, and I could survive his trip without seeing his face one more time.

“So how are we doing this?” Laura asked as I set up the ingredients on the counter. “I cook some, but I don’t bake, so you’re going to have to teach me.”

“That’s fine. We’ll go together. I have this recipe that I love off the top of my head, so I’ll just give you directions, and you can help me. Is that okay?”

She grinned at me with growing excitement. “Definitely!”

We started, me calling out for Laura to measure ingredients and hand them over to me as I mixed the batter, then left it to her as I went around setting the oven to preheat, and preparing the tray that would go in. I went back to layer the cake, and between the two of us, the preparation was done in no time, and I was sliding it into the oven.

“That was surprisingly easy,” Laura said, watching the oven’s glass window.

“Baking is pretty easy when you get used to it, actually, so it’s no surprise. I’ve been doing it with my mom since I was a kid.”

She hummed. “I never really did much with my mom growing up. Except maybe argue.”

I frowned at her. “Do you guys not get along? Is that why you don’t tell me about your family?”

“No, I don’t talk about them because there’s nothing to talk about. I’m not as close to them as you are with yours, but we’re okay.”

I looked after the baking cake as she went around the kitchen, looking for a couple of long glasses, then finding where the wine bottles were stashed.

“What do you think would go best with this?” she asked.

It made sense she would ask me, as the chef and all, and I went over to see the selection. I picked a light red, a sweet wine that would just be perfectly coupled with the dessert. No one would mind seeing it missing as long as I replaced it, as was the silent rule with all the staff.

Once the cake was ready to be decorated, I had to be the one to do it. Laura just stood to the side and watched as I started to work my magic on the food; it wasn't so much about the taste of the cake, but all about the presentation. Something I prided myself on doing well. When I’d layered the cake with the filling we moved back over to the couch and sat down, cake and wine settled on the coffee table in front of us.

“Now, where were we?” Laura asked, looking at me as she took a sip from her glass.

I sighed. “We’re eating cake, not talking about Trent. The last thing I want to do is talk about him right now.”

She nodded in understanding. “You know you can talk to me anytime though, right? And Emily too.”