Page 17 of Room Service

I snorted at the ridiculousness of it. “Trent isn’t the kind of person who would just do whatever he was told. I’m pretty sure he left on his own because he wanted to. And there was no affair.” I grimaced. “I told him I liked him and he laughed in my face,” I admitted, my voice quietly shaking.

Laura’s eyes widened again. “Wow,” she breathed. “Fuck, that’s bad. Seeing him again can't be easy for you, can it?”

“It’s not. Not at all. What I want to do is avoid him, but that means never going to visit my mom, and she’s going to ask me why.”

The expression in her eyes was sympathetic. “She doesn’t know that you had a crush on him and got heartbroken?”

More like I still had a crush on him. And it broke my heart every day. Especially with him around and acting like an asshole. My silence pretty much told her everything.

“You wanna know what I’m dreading? Mason,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose.

I sent her a grateful look for changing the subject for my sake.

“Why?” I asked. Mason was the middle brother of the Thompson clan. He was a few years younger than me, not quite as young as Emily, but I’d never really talked to him before.

Laura shot me a part-incredulous, part-horrified look. “How could you even ask that! He comes around here a lot, you know? I’m dreading him getting back here because that guy always throws wild parties. Do you know how hard it is cleaning up after him? It’s a freaking nightmare for all us maids. I’m not the only one a little more than sick of it.”

I felt my face twist into disgust. “That bad is it?”

She nodded quickly. “You don’t get to see a lot of it because he never asks for dessert for any of his parties, just food sometimes, and there’ll always be plenty of alcohol.” She narrowed her eyes slyly at me. “Hey, why don’t we put our heads together and see what we can do about our problems with these Thompson boys, huh?”

“It’s not like we can touch them. They might as well be our bosses.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. I thought we could get away from it for a while and badmouth them behind their backs. You probably need it, and I know I do. We could make it into a girls’ night out.”

When she put it like that, I became interested. She was right; I had quite a few things to do with Trent that I would love to get out with someone I trusted. Emily and I were friends too, but even though she wasn’t close with her brother, it was awkward for me to talk to her about it. Laura’s plan sounded perfect.

“I guess we could set something like that up,” I said, then finished my mocha. “When do you think we should go?”

Laura was suddenly full of enthusiasm. She leaned forward, eyes wide open and practically sparkling as she opened her mouth to speak.

Only, she never got the chance to. She was interrupted when the door opened, and I looked up, my face going blank with shock when I saw the last person I would have expected to see.

Trent.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted, more out of surprise than really demanding to know.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks and arched a condescending eyebrow at me. Nobody with blond eyebrows should be able to look that condescending, I thought, just before he spoke and destroyed my day. Again.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? What are you doing at the hotel? Or are you still trying to follow me everywhere?”

I was too shocked for a moment to even respond. What was Trent doing in the staff area? It was the one place I’d thought I would never have to see him! I’d thought I’d be safe there. But then his words registered, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Not everything in my life is about you, you know,” I retorted. “I’m here because I work here now. My shift is about to start. I work in the kitchen.”

There was a minute show of surprise on his face, and I would have missed it if I wasn’t looking at him so intently. But I caught the slight twitch of his eyebrows and felt a little smug that he didn’t have an immediate response.

That didn’t last long though.

“What did you do?” he asked with a sneer. “Because you did something, right? Or did someone owe you a huge favor, and that’s how you landed a job here as a chef?”

I stared at him with my jaw dropped. With the way he was looking at me up and down, I had a good idea what he was thinking. As if I would ever stoop to something so low! In spite of the fact that seeing him in front of me was making my heart beat out of control, there was no way I was going to take shit from this guy after all the crap he’d already given me over the years.

“Excuse you, Trent,” I growled, scowling at him as I tilted my chin up. “But I got my job here because I worked my ass off, meaning I got it the old-fashioned way.”

He smirked, but I wasn’t quite done yet.

“I know you like to look down on me,” I continued, narrowing my eyes at his look, “but believe it or not, I managed to get to school and worked my ass off to get through. I got a scholarship and several jobs even to manage. We’re not all like some people who can buy their way through a university education. I finished school, applied for a job, and worked from the bottom of the hotel to get to where I’m at right now.”