Page 18 of Second Chance Saloon

“Forehead kisses, pinky promises.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jackie

The distinct smell of the sunscreen wafted into Jackie’s nose. She massaged it into her arms, making sure she covered her shoulders. Her fingers stumbled over a raised patch of hot skin, right under her collarbone. She winced, lathering more sunscreen over the sunburned area. After spending the past month in Cancún, she should’ve gotten used to religiously re-applying the coconut emulsion. But old habits die hard, and having lived her twenties like there was no tomorrow, becoming a respectable thirty-two-year-old was much harder than it seemed.

Jackie sighed, pulling her wavy black hair into a ponytail. The satin hair tie had barely managed to gather the thick, shoulder-length strands. Some days she missed how long her hair used to be. It took up too much time and attention when she was traveling the world. She had chopped it off with rusty scissors while sitting cross-legged on the floor in a hostel in Belgium, when she was trying to run away from her last name and everything that came with it. It’d been short ever since.

Liar. You chopped it off because you didn’t want to look like her.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

“Come in!” Jackie walked out of her bathroom.

A young woman wearing the hotel staff’s teal uniform hesitated at the threshold.

“What is it, Rea?”

Rea chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry, Miss van Moetlier, I know it’s your day off, but we have a situation downstairs.”

Jackie raised her brows, crossing her arms over her chest. “What kind of situation?”

“The airport shuttle arrived with new guests,” Rea started. “There’s one guest who has been proving … difficult.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s booked in the honeymoon suite. Luis tried to check him in and, politely, asked about the Mrs. but that set him off.”

Jackie’s expression hardened. “Did he hurt anyone?”

Rea shook her head. “Nothing like that. He laughed into Luis’s face and plopped himself onto the couch in the lobby. Said he isn’t sleeping in the honeymoon suite.”

At that, Jackie snorted. Their honeymoon suite was the most spacious, with the best view from the balcony over the gardens and out onto the Caribbean Sea. No one would turn down a honeymoon suite. For all she cared that weird man could sleep in the cleaning cupboard instead. Although that would probably inconvenience her staff, so maybe not the best idea.

She massaged her left temple, trying to think. This wasn’t the most ridiculous thing that had happened in her five years of working at different van Moetlier hotels around the world. When she turned twenty-seven, her parents had sat her down and told her they had been “concerned” about the fact she had been living day to day, with no care or thought about consequences. They presented her with two options: either get a job or work for them. Jackie chose the latter, and her parents, who were never good with setting firm boundaries when it came to their only child, agreed she could hop between different hotels, depending on the needs of their business.

Surprisingly, Jackie discovered she enjoyed the work. It didn’t take long before she realized her parents were right, and as much as she grumbled about it at the beginning, she appreciated that they always looked out for her. Even after things had become strained in her early twenties.

That was how she had ended up being Mexican Jewel’s manager. Well, a temporary one.

“We’re fully booked, right?” she asked Rea.

“Booked up until after the New Year.”

Jackie grimaced. There was no alternative room they could put the disgruntled guest in. “I’ll come down and talk to him myself. Thank you for letting me know about it, Rea.”

Rea nodded. “Of course.”

Jackie’s smart white trainers slid on the freshly washed marble floor as she got out of the elevator. She caught herself, straightening her posture. “Gabriel, could you please put out the ‘wet floor’ sign?”

“Of course, sorry Miss van Moetlier.” Gabriel jogged to a cleaning trolley and pulled out a yellow plastic sign.

“It’s fine. I just don’t want any accidents with three weeks to go until Christmas.”

Gabriel gave her a mock salute and she bit back a smile. She tried to get the staff to use her first name instead of that “Miss van Moetlier” nonsense. Everyone hummed in acknowledgement whenever she brought it up but went back to their old ways at their next interaction. “It’s a sign of respect. Don’t take it as anything else,” Estrella—Rea’s mother—had told her when she had brought it up once, while visiting their equestrian facility just off the hotel grounds.

Luis was standing behind the reception desk, and his brown eyes flooded with alarm when he clocked Jackie’s presence.