My Fiancé Cheated in Our Hotel, and My Father Booked the Room novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Before Three

Marisol brings breakfast and a sweet story about a florist, and in the fourteenth-floor stairwell the night manager hands Ingrid his master key and tells her to be inside the suite before they arrive.

I wore the ring to breakfast.

I put it on at seven, in front of the mirror, and practiced the face that went with it.

At eight the penthouse doorbell rang, and I knew who it was before I opened the door.

Marisol was holding a paper bag and a cardboard tray of coffees, and she was already talking.

"Croissants, the almond kind you pretend you don't want, and I am so sorry about last night."

She came in and kissed my cheek and set everything on the kitchen island.

She kept her left hand in her coat pocket the whole time, because she was balancing the tray with the other.

"The vendor?" I said.

"The florist. Eleven hundred peonies and a delivery truck in the wrong borough. I fixed it, but I missed your fitting, and I hate myself."

"It's fine."

"It is not fine. I called the salon and rebooked Thursday. I'll hold your hand and your hem."

She took the lid off my coffee and handed it to me.

It was exactly how I take it, because she has known how I take it for eleven years.

I drank some and looked at her face.

It was open and tired and sorry.

I looked for the woman in the white robe, and I could not find her anywhere in it.

"Did Preston make it home last night?" she asked, tearing a croissant in half. "He said he was stuck on the Singapore thing."

"He was stuck," I said. "He texted."

My phone lit up on the counter between us.

Morning, beautiful. Wish I'd gotten you a better dinner. Big day, I'll see you at the 4:00 with Dad.

"That's him," I said.

Marisol leaned over and read it and smiled.

"God, he's sweet," she said. "You know that, right? You got the good one."

I smiled back at her.

It took everything I had, and it looked effortless, and I was proud of that and I hated it.

At two that afternoon I told my assistant I had a headache and went down to the fourteenth floor by the service elevator.

The stairwell door was heavy and painted gray.

The man waiting inside was leaning on the rail with his arms folded and a night manager's name tag on his rumpled suit.

I knew him a little.

Mateo Soto, who had run the night shift for eight months and who had once sent a tray of soup to a housekeeper with a fever without being asked.

He was tall, with tired dark eyes, and he did not seem surprised to see me.

"Miss Lindholm."

"You sent the text," I said.

"I sent a room number."

"How did you get my phone number?"

"It's on the emergency roster. Everyone's is." His voice was flat and a little dry. "I didn't hack anything. I just read the list."

I waited, and he did not add anything.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"People don't send that kind of message for nothing."

"Then I'd say you've met a lot of people." He pushed off the rail. "I came in four hours early on my day off. That's the whole cost to you."

I tried again, because I always try again.

"Why me? Why not my father, or the head of security?"

For a moment something moved in his face and was gone.

"Because the head of security answers to your father," he said. "And I wasn't sure what your father would do with it."

That was an odd thing to say about a man who ran a hotel with a clean record for forty years.

I filed it away for later.

"What do you know about 1408?" I asked.

"The camera in the hall records everything and nobody watches it. That's the arrangement." He took a key card from his inside pocket. "At 2:55 a hold comes up on that door. Today it will be the same."

"The same people."

"At three, yes."

He held the card out, and I did not take it right away.

"It's a night manager's master," he said. "It opens the door and the dressing room behind it. It stays out of the audit log if you use the service entrance."

"You're giving a stranger your master key."

"You're not a stranger. You own the building."

"My father owns it."

"Then I'm giving it to the other Lindholm."

I took the card.

It was warm from his pocket, and it weighed almost nothing.

"If you want proof," he said, "don't be in the hall at three. Be in the suite before they get there."

He turned and went down the stairs without another word.

I stood alone with the card in my hand.

It was 2:31, and I had half an hour to get into that suite.

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