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“Oh, I see.” So I was wrong earlier,I thought. There was a wild side to Royal Falls parties.
He held out a phone. “They send orders via text to this phone, along with their location, and you get what they want from the kitchen and deliver it to them. You can reach the south wing from here by going up the stairs and taking a left on the landing. Another staircase at the end of the second-floor hall will take you up to the third floor if necessary.”
“All right. I can do that.”
“Good,” he said, giving me a curt nod. “You can be discreet, can’t you?”
I smiled. “Of course.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Some—if not all—of the party guests upstairs were screwing their brains out, and they didn’t want anyone talking about it.
Charles returned my smile. “Good. Oh, and something else—the rooms aren’t numbered like some sort of hotel, but there is an easy way to tell where the people are. Each room has a different gold emblem on the door. One is a star, another is a crescent moon, and so on. When the guests put in their orders, they’ll mention which room they’re in using that emblem.”
Wow.He had a full-on private party setup in the south wing. That was cool, even if it was a little strange at the same time.
“Understood,” I replied.
“Thank you, Delaney. I knew I could trust you to help me out.” Charles smiled again and handed the phone to me. It started buzzing right away. “Oh, look at that. Your first order.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I read the message with a furrowed brow, hoping I wouldn’t let Charles down. If I did, I’d be letting my mom down as well.
Champagne and 2 glasses @ Crescent room on 2nd floor,the message said. No please or thanks. Just straight to the point.
I rushed to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle out of a champagne bucket, along with two glasses. Then I headed up to the second floor and turned left.
The first half of the south wing was a sprawling collection of intimate rooms with comfortable furniture and dark wood-paneled hidey-holes that seemed custom-designed for making out. Some young people, presumably RFA students, were filling those spots, making loud smacking noises as their lips and bodies crashed together.
I ignored them and headed farther down the hall, toward the private rooms. It was much quieter at this end of the house. Much darker too. The hall was lit only by small, flickering candles set in bronze sconces on the walls.
Squinting, I located the room with the crescent emblem and knocked on the door. A middle-aged man stuck his head out a moment later. He was shirtless and beaded with sweat, and he grinned when he spotted me. “Ah, our drinks. Thanks, darling.” He winked and tucked a twenty dollar bill in my pocket.
“Wow, thank you, sir,” I said, marveling at the size of the tip. Twenty might not seem like much, but if only ten people put in orders for the upstairs rooms tonight, and each gave me the same tip, I’d make enough to pay every cent of the electricity bill. All that without even counting the money I was already getting paid for waitressing tonight.
If I was lucky, I might walk out of here with over three hundred bucks.
Over the next hour, I received twenty more orders. Some for champagne and cocktails, some for romantic foods like chocolate-dipped strawberries, and others demanding full hot meals. Not everyone tipped me as well as the first guy, but by the time I’d dropped off the twentieth order at the Tulip room all the way up on the third floor, I’d made $225 in tips. Also, the people I delivered the stuff to actually acknowledged my existence by smiling and thanking me every single time.
This was actually turning out to be a decent night after all.
Wiping another bead of sweat off my brow, I sank into a plush chair back in the make-out zone on the second floor while I waited for another order to come in. I figured I was allowed to relax between orders, because when I was filling one, I had to race up and down the stairs and hallways to get it done as fast as possible. Not an easy feat in such an enormous mansion.
About three minutes later, the phone buzzed again. Two French martinis, please.
They hadn’t specified their room in writing, but they’d left a flower emoji at the end of the message. That didn’t help me out much. Several of the third-floor rooms had floral emblems on them. So far I’d seen a tulip, an orchid, a carnation, and a poppy, all beautifully carved out of gold.
I shot back a quick text. Hi, sorry, which room is this? There are a few flower-themed ones so I’m not sure.
I waited thirty seconds, but no response came through. With a sigh, I got up and headed downstairs to get the martinis anyway. By the time they were finished, the person might’ve responded.
Five minutes later, there was still no reply to my message. I took the drinks tray up to the third floor and slowly trudged down the dim hall, frowning as I tried to use the process of elimination to figure out which room the martinis were wanted in. It couldn’t be the Tulip room, because they’d just ordered a whole bottle of wine only ten minutes ago, so I doubted they wanted any more drinks. That still left quite a lot of options, though.
I groaned as I realized I would have to knock on each door and possibly disturb and annoy the guests inside until I got the right room. Before I could start, however, I spotted two men standing near an accent table, heads close together like they were deep in conversation. I hurried toward them, hoping they were the ones who wanted the drinks.
As I drew closer, I realized they were arguing in hushed tones.
“You have no idea if that’s true or not. She could easily open her mouth,” the one on the left said.
“But you have no idea if she will, do you?” the other retorted. “You saw her earlier. She loves it. She won’t say anything.”
