by Amy Garvey
Gus only vaguely heard Rhys’s words—Josie had turned to look at him, and staring into her eyes all he could think of was the question he wanted to ask her.
It came out in a rush without any warning or lead-up. “Will you go to the Monsters’ Ball with me?”
He felt rather than saw Olivia and Rhys, eyes wide, backing off, but that was all right. Josie had blinked in surprise at his offer, her bright blue eyes startled for a moment, but then she smiled.
A real smile, a warm, pleased smile aimed at him like a sunbeam, and he knew what her answer was going to be before she even opened her mouth. He was already singing inside, turning cartwheels, kicking up his heels like a six-year-old with all of Santa’s booty laid out before him.
It didn’t make her answer any less satisfying to hear out loud, though. “Yes,” she said, and reached out to touch his hand. “Yes, I really would.”
Chapter 13
“R hys, this package came for you,” Roseanne said as Rhys passed through the lobby from the kitchen on the afternoon of the Monsters’ Ball.
The lobby looked smashing, he thought. For amateur decorators, Olivia and Josie had done a bang-up job. Pots of dry ice had been hidden behind the ferns and wafted up a spooky, smoky ambience. The lights had been dimmed, and an entire day spent carving pumpkins of all sizes had resulted in a veritable army of jack-o’-lanterns, their unearthly grins glowing already. Old gilt picture frames had been hauled up from the basement to present eerily lettered signs pointing the way up to the ballroom and into the bar. The final touches were spiders, bones, bundles of dried herbs, and spell books—all the ingredients used in true voodoo.
Not half bad for weeks of effort, he thought, and crossed the space to take the oblong package from Roseanne.
“My costume,” he said when he’d read the return address. “I was getting a bit worried when it didn’t arrive yesterday.”
“What is it?” Roseanne asked, craning her neck to peek at the label as if it might reveal the nature of the box’s contents.
“Never you mind,” Rhys said with a smirk. He hadn’t even told Olivia what he planned to wear, and he was looking forward to the moment when he would walk into the ballroom and surprise her.
“It’s a big box.” Roseanne trailed a finger over it in curiosity, and Rhys snatched it out of reach.
“Hands off, you.” He laughed, but as he turned toward the elevator he couldn’t help wondering why it was so big. Packing materials, most likely. It was a rental—but then again it was only fabric. Odd.
“Rhys!” Olivia caught him as he pushed the button for the lift, slightly out of breath, roses in her cheeks. She was still wearing the jeans and warm brown sweater she’d put on first thing this morning, and her hair was doing its usual crazy thing, escaping the loose knot she’d made in a cloud of tendrils around her face. “The food looks wonderful. You outdid yourself. What’s that?”
“You’ll see,” he said, pulling the box out of her reach, as well. “Rusty and the others still hard at work in the kitchen then?”
“Everything looks pretty much good to go.” She leaned against him when they stepped into the lift. “It looks delicious, I can tell you that. Of course, I’m so starved I would probably eat a piece of cardboard. Without salt, even. I forgot to have lunch.”
“Can’t have you wasting away to nothing,” he said and kissed the top of her head. She smelled wonderful, as usual, like the pear-scented shampoo she used and something sweeter, richer, a particular Olivia scent that was purely her. He breathed deep as she leaned into him, riding beside him silently as the car climbed to the ninth floor.
“You’re going…to your room?” she said as the doors opened.
Home. She’d almost said home, he knew it.
And why shouldn’t she think of it that way? He’d been at Callender House for nearly a month, and in all that time he’d rarely left the building unless it was with her. He was running the restaurant, for God’s sake, even if it was just temporarily.
Of course, he slept in her bed more often than his own downstairs. And that comfortable habit had created a kind of intimacy he knew Olivia adored.
Bloody hell. Who was he kidding? He adored it, too.
For something he’d believed would be a careless affair, it was beginning to feel a bit like a marriage—in the best possible way. He knew what kind of toothpaste Olivia used, and which underwear she considered everyday rather than special occasion. He’d learned that she liked a cup of tea before bed, and that she would rather watch old Bette Davis movies than anything from the current decade. The syrupy advertisements for greeting cards and children’s charities made her sniffle from time to time, and she could tell stories about nearly every corner of the hotel.
That hardly said careless affair, did it?
She was watching his face, waiting for him to answer. He put his foot in front of the lift door to stop it from closing, and leaned over to give her a kiss. He let it linger, tasting the wistfulness on her lips, the banked heat just inside.
“I told you my costume was meant to be a surprise, yeah?” he said.
“Ah, yes, the famous costume.” She narrowed her eyes at him, but she smiled just the same and pushed the button for the tenth floor. “I’ll see you at the party, then?”
“Eight o’clock sharp, love, in the lobby.” He stepped back and let the door begin to close just as she called, “How will I know you?”
He grinned. “Oh, you’ll know, Liv. You’ll know.”
The doors slid closed on her rolling her eyes, and he turned down the hall to his room, whistling. Yelena tottered toward him from the end of the corridor, her usual heels wobbling beneath her.
“Ah, Rhys, my love”—this was pronounced luff—“there you are. You haven’t taken me to lunch in two weeks, you know. A girl gets heartbroken so easily…” She batted her eyes at him, shaded in a spectacular purple today, and adjusted the fit of her turban with one careful hand.
“I’m making lunch most days now, you know,” he said, leaning down to give her proffered cheek the expected kiss. In an effort to change the subject, and hopefully prevent her from inviting herself into his room, which she had done a few too many times for comfort, he said, “Aren’t you coming to the costume ball?”
“But of course,” she said with an airy lift of her shoulders. “Is not time to dress yet, of course.”
“Can I ask about your costume?” He gave her a friendly wink, and she answered with something remarkably close to a giggle for a woman her age.
“Is a surprise.” She wobbled off, trailing perfume, with a wave. “But is not a zombie.”
Not yet, he thought with an uncharitable chuckle. Still, Yelena was a surprisingly adept chess player and was not so secretly addicted to action flicks. He’d watched a double bill of Bruce Willis films with her just a week ago, before he’d taken over at the Coach and Four.
Imagine her not wanting to ask him to step in, he thought. Another surprise, courtesy of Olivia Callender. The woman was determined to squash his white knight act. But he’d been the obvious solution, with Josef deciding to retire on the dime, and he’d convinced her he was itching to get into the kitchen anyway. Outside of the occasional meal for Olivia, he hadn’t had a chance to cook for far too long, and he was grateful for the chance to experiment, especially with the Fork in the Road finale coming up.
“It’s only temporary, obviously,” Olivia had said, all seriousness and more than a bit embarrassed. “You don’t really have to do more than supervise dinner, to tell the truth. I think Rusty can handle breakfast and lunch on his own.”
“That’s three meals, love,” he’d scoffed. “Boy’s going to need a break once in a while, yeah? Or he’ll go stark raving mad.”
“But it’s not your problem,” she’d begun, worry shadowing those big brown eyes. He’d silenced her with a firm kiss and the murmured words, “I don’t do anything I don’t want to, love. No worries there.”
Of course, that wasn’t e
xactly true, he mused as he unlocked the door to his room and stepped inside. It smelled a bit mustier than usual, but he spent so little time in it, he wasn’t surprised.
He hadn’t wanted to spend the better part of a week painting woodwork. He wouldn’t have chosen to carve faces into pumpkins for a whole bloody afternoon, given his way.
But he had done those things, hadn’t he, and happily, too. Because they mattered to Olivia. Because doing them made her happy, and took a bit of the load off her narrow shoulders. Because she never asked, never assumed, even when it would have been easy to do both.
And because, in all honesty, he couldn’t think of anywhere he wanted to be but here at Callender House.
For now, he told himself with a frown, tossing the brown carton on the bed and reaching into his jeans pocket for the utility knife he always carried. Just for now.
And right now he desperately needed to shower off the long day of kitchen prep for the party’s array of appetizers and entrées, call downstairs to make sure everything was under control, and then get into his costume.
His cell phone shrilled from his pocket, and without thinking he flipped it open and pushed the button. “’lo?”
“Rhys, lovey, it’s Mum!”
He stifled a groan and sank onto the bed. His mother. Crikey, she was the last person he wanted to talk to today. Most days, actually.
“Rhys, are you there? ’elloooo?”
“I’m here, Janet,” he grumbled. “How are you?”
“Well, wondering how you are, love,” she said with an audible sniff. “You haven’t called Gram or me in weeks, and now you’re on break from that show on telly. I know, because I called the producers.”
Oh, bloody hell. He dropped onto his back, the phone still held to his ear, and stared at the ceiling. Huh. If he’d shagged Olivia here more often, he might have noticed the lightning-shaped crack in the plaster.
“Rhys?”
Had her voice always been so shrill? he wondered idly. He’d be the last to know, of course. He’d blocked out so much of his life with her, it was hard to remember the color of her eyes.
“I’m here,” he said. “Just a bit busy at the moment.”
“Where is here, Rhys?” She coughed, a rattling bark, and he pictured her blowing one of her perfect smoke rings in the sitting room of her latest flat. “You never tell me when you’re off to the next place, you know. If it weren’t for your mobile phone I sometimes think I’d never be able to track you down.”
“I’m in New York for the moment,” he said dutifully, his gaze wandering around the room as he spoke. Before he checked out, he’d have to remember to tell Olivia about the clatter that radiator made, too. “But I’m heading back to L.A. in two days for the finale of the Fork in the Road competition. Or did the producers tell you that much already?”
It was all too believable that she’d rung them, more was the pity. The woman had no sense of boundaries, especially now that he wasn’t just an obligation, but a successful chef, and one appearing on telly.
“Well, they did mention it,” she confided in a raspy whisper. “And everyone here believes you’re a shoe-in for the win, love. Imagine all that money! What do you think you’ll do with it?”
There it was, the locus of nearly every one of their conversations these days. How much money he made—and how much he might see his way clear to spending on her. It never failed. At least she was consistent.
“I’ve no clue.” He didn’t bother to disguise the edge in his tone. Janet didn’t deserve the courtesy. “And I have to ring off now. I’ve got an engagement tonight.” He shut the phone without a second thought and threw it down on the mattress as he sat up, the box beside him a much more tempting task than thinking about his mother.
Olivia was going to squeal when she saw his costume, he thought with a grin, slicing open one end of the box. She’d decided nearly from the start to dress as a medieval princess, which hadn’t surprised him in the least. Despite his inclination to rent a tux, go as Bond and be done with it, he’d ordered a Galahad costume to surprise her. It was perfect—the fair princess and her knight, even if his behavior certainly didn’t qualify him for comparison to Galahad’s purity.
She would love it, and that was worth dressing up in a tunic and leggings. It was just for one evening, anyway. One very special evening, before he left for L.A., a day that had begun to loom in his mind the way a dark shadow might.
Not that it was going to change, he told himself with a shake of his head. He was in the running for two hundred grand American, and a nice bit of prestige. That was nothing to sneeze at.
Even if it would have been lovely to bring Olivia with him.
“Stop it, man,” he warned himself and opened the flap of the box. But when he reached inside to take a look, he came away with his hands full of brown fur.
“No,” he said aloud, snatching the thing out of the box and holding it up to the mirror. “Oh bloody hell, no.”
The costume shop had delivered a gorilla suit.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Olivia whispered to Josie shortly after eight. They were standing just outside the doors to the ballroom, and guests in costumes of all kinds had begun to file in fifteen minutes ago.
“So far so good.” Josie touched her hair cautiously. “As long as my wig stays on, I’ll be happy.”
She and Gus had decided to dress as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Josie’s wealth of hair had been piled under a short brunette wig, complete with finger waves. Gus had found a beige tweed suit in a shop downtown, and Josie had even convinced him that his Yankees cap wasn’t exactly appropriate for the evening. She’d parted his hair in the middle and applied a generous dollop of gel to keep it in place.
“You both look great,” Olivia told her. “And Gus actually looks happy.”
“Gus is…happy, yeah,” Josie said with a little smirk. “It’s good for my ego, I’ll tell you that.”
The Monsters’ Ball was doing wonders for Olivia’s ego, although she didn’t have to tell anyone that. Even as late as this morning she’d been worried that the whole thing would fall apart, that no one would show up, that the decorations would fall down or catch fire or something equally disastrous. But so far everything was perfect.
Or it would be when Rhys finally showed up.
And tonight was…well, a little like the prom, wasn’t it? Their big dress-up date, even if the dressing up didn’t mean an evening gown and tuxedo. And it was most likely going to be their last date, too. Two days from now Rhys would board a plane for L.A.—and neither one of them had said a word about what would happen after that.
She scanned the wide staircase that led up from the lobby, looking for him. He’d said she would recognize him, but as the crowd grew, so did the variety of costumes. Napoleon and Josephine had walked by earlier, followed by a pirate, a Greek goddess, a football player, Marilyn Monroe, an army of zombies who had clearly taken the theme to heart, a bloody bride, and President Nixon.
No Rhys, though.
But the ballroom looked fabulous—the lights were low, groups of tables covered in black cloths and adorned with flickering gourds were set off in the corners, with the bar at one end. Angel had rigged a canopy above the bar, and more dried herbs, bones, gourds, and spiders hung from the tattered muslin. It was all fairly creepy, if you asked her, which meant it was just right.
“Are you Olivia Callender?” a man dressed as a prisoner, complete with ball and chain, asked. He was holding a notebook and a pencil.
“Yes?” she said, confused. Josie lifted an eyebrow and wandered away to find Gus. “I mean, yes, I am. And you are?”
“Rich Petrillo, with the Village Voice.” He held out a press ID and shook her hand. “I got a press release and thought I would write up the event for the paper.”
“Oh!” Publicity. There was one goal down. She flushed with pleasure and led him off to one side of the hallway to talk, scooping up her voluminous purple satin skirts with one ha
nd. “Well, fire away. I’ll be glad to tell you all about it.”
He’d brought along a photographer who was already out in the crowd taking pictures. “Are you planning more events like this? And how do your guests feel about it?”
“Oh, we’re definitely going to hold a few more events,” Olivia said carefully. She wasn’t sure exactly what they would be yet, but that would come in time. “And our guests are all invited to the ball, free of charge. We thought it would be a nice perk for out-of-towners, and so far everyone seems pretty happy about it. At least our guests don’t have to worry about getting home afterward.”
“True.” The reporter winked at her. “Are other changes in store for Callender House, too?”
“Some, yes,” Olivia told him, distracted by the person in the gorilla costume who had walked up beside her. “We have a lot of ideas about how to upgrade service and make some changes without losing the traditions Callender House is proud of…. Can I help you?” she said to the gorilla, who had moved even closer as the corridor grew more crowded.
“It’s me.”
The voice was muffled through the heavy gorilla mask, but there was a distinct hint of the British to it. Her eyes widened. “Rhys?”
It was impossible for the gorilla’s face to change expression, but Olivia was somehow certain it looked more sour than it had a minute ago. “Yeah, it’s me.”
She couldn’t help it—she clapped a hand to her mouth to prevent a shriek of laugher. “You’re a…gorilla.”
“Well, I wasn’t meant to be, was I? I was meant to be Galahad, to match your outfit there. Very fetching, by the way. You look brilliant.” He shrugged beneath the heavy brown fur, and Olivia bit back a grin.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the reporter, who had watched their exchange with interest. “This is a friend of mine, Rhys Spencer. Rhys, meet Rich Petrillo from the Village Voice.”
“A pleasure,” Rhys grunted. “I’m going to check in on the kitchen staff, yeah? Make sure they’ve got the food coming out in the right order.” He stalked off, a very unhappy gorilla, and Olivia choked back another giggle.
