Reclaiming His Bride (DiCarlo Brides book 3) (The DiCarlo Brides) (7 page)

Lana turned to the guest. “Marla will take good care of you. Now which room was it you were staying in?”

“Four-hundred and forty-two.” She looked mollified now.

“Okay, no problem. You enjoy your dessert.” Lana wanted to gnash her teeth at the room number. Why was it always the rooms in that part of the building? She returned to the front desk, lifting a brow at Blake, who still stood there.

“I already had Kristi make us a key to the room.” He held up the card and gestured to the elevator. “I called housekeeping and they’re bringing over a new lamp.”

Though she was unhappy he had inserted himself into the issue, Lana followed. When the elevator doors closed them in, Lana turned to Blake. “So, how is it you ended up speaking with the guest?”

“I was doing a last round of the building when I saw the woman cussing out Kristi. Kristi said you’d already been contacted, but I figured I’d see what was going on.”

At least Kristi hadn’t called him for help. Lana made a mental note not to jump to conclusions next time. “You didn’t think I was capable of handling it?”

They stepped onto the thick carpeting of the fourth floor and headed left. “On the contrary, I knew you’d do fine, but when I heard the plug was behind the headboard, I thought you might like help moving the bed. We only have one person in housekeeping at this time of night, and those beds are heavy.”

That was true enough, but though his explanation was good, and she knew she would have appreciated the thought from any of the other managers, Lana couldn’t quite put away the prickly feeling she got whenever he was near. The guilt about her secret wasn’t helping.

If only he hadn’t caught her at a vulnerable moment after the grand opening. The fresh memory of how great they were together, their amazing chemistry, the yearning she felt every day to return to that made it difficult to be around him. She forced herself to focus on the matter at hand. “Strange how it’s always this part of the building.”

“Isn’t it just?” he said, his mouth pulled in a grim line.

They walked into the room and found the lamp on and the light holding steady. The bed covers were turned back, but didn’t appear to have been slept in yet and clothes littered all of the furniture. “She had trouble settling on an outfit, apparently,” Lana murmured.

“Either that or she’s been here a few days and is just a slob.” His tone indicated this was his personal vote.

“None of our business as long as she leaves the room in good condition and pays her bill.” Lana tilted her head. “I wonder what the deal is with the lamp. It looks fine, now.”

Blake wiggled the cord, and pursed his lips when nothing happened. “I thought maybe she’d been moving around on the bed and the cord was just loose behind there and slipped in and out.”

“Unlikely. They usually just slip out, don’t they? Not back in again,” It would have made this all a whole lot easier though.

“Yeah.” Blake moved to the headboard. “You push the base to the left and I’ll pull it away from the wall.”

Lana flipped the comforter up, showing the base of the bed and saw lines in the carpeting. “Hold on. This bed has been moved recently.” She knelt and touched the lines. They were crisp, too crisp in this deep-pile carpeting to be more than a day or so old. “That’s really weird.”

“Maybe someone dropped something behind the bed.” Blake tugged on the headboard, shifting it away from the wall. Lana joined him, pushing on the bottom so it would angle the bed out enough to get to the outlet.

She jumped a little when there was a knock at the door.

“Housekeeping.”

Lana sucked in a breath to steady her nerves before she let the maid in. She wasn’t starting to buy into the story of the ghost, so why was she so jumpy? She glanced at Blake and decided to blame it on being too close to him. They swapped lamps and plugged in the new one. “Put a note on that for someone to check out the electrical, would you?” she asked before the maid left. When she moved the bed back, Lana studied the lines in the carpeting again. “There are three sets of lines there now. One set isn’t very deep, like it wasn’t there for long.”

Blake looked at it. “You’re right. Do you think someone’s been messing with our guest?”

“Someone’s definitely messing with
us
anyway. I keep hoping they’ll get bored and stop.” She walked around the bed and checked the other side.

“That’s not likely. If it
is
someone doing this on purpose, that is, and not a whole slew of coincidences fueled by crazy rumor.” Blake had never been a fan of the idea that someone was pretending to be the ghost. He preferred the theory that employees were just ascribing odd occurrences as being the ghost showing himself.

“I don’t believe in that many coincidences.” Lana shrugged. “I just wish I knew who was behind all of this. I mean, unless you want to believe Manuel really is doing it all,” she paused when Blake snorted in response. “What if they made the lamp blink on and off, and then switched it back, or whatever, while the guest was downstairs?”

“That would take some serious guts. And how would they manage it?”

“All of this takes some serious guts, don’t you think? Or a seriously twisted sense of humor. The question is what the person or people behind it think they’re accomplishing? Is it just a series of practical jokes because they’re bored? Is there something more to it?” She looked at Blake, wishing they were really on the same page in all of this. She missed the easy way they’d once spoken to each other, and the way she used to be able to get his insight without all of the hard feelings between them.

They entered the elevator and Blake looked at her. “I say it’s time we find out what security can tell us.”

Blake and Lana watched and waited as Joel checked the computer program that tracked keycards. “It looks like the keycards used to access the room were the ones for the guest, housekeeping and yours.” He looked up at them. “A master keycard for housekeeping was used about ten minutes before yours.”

That put her on alert. Who was in the room while the guest was complaining about the light? At least it explained why the lamp had been functioning perfectly when they arrived. The person responsible had already fixed the problem.

“Is there any way to tell which card it was, and who has it?” Blake asked.

Joel nodded and clicked a couple more times. “It’s number twenty-one. Which according to Vanessa’s spreadsheet, was issued to Graciela Munoz this morning. I’ve disabled it in the system so it won’t open any more doors.”

Blake looked at Lana, “I guess we go to housekeeping next. Most of them should be gone, but it’s possible Vanessa’s still there.”

“I guess so.” Lana preceded him out of the room and down the hall. She felt a little chill go up her spine as they passed by the hotel entrance, though whether that was because they were being watched, or just her imagination, she didn’t know. Things were quiet in the halls, which was expected since it was getting late. Lana had never found it creepy before but at the moment, she found herself on edge.

Housekeeping was on the second floor back behind a door guests rarely seemed to notice. Vanessa was at her desk, her brows lowered as she stared at the computer screen. She looked up at them in surprise and hit a few keys on her screen. “What’s going on?”

“Graciela Munoz, is she around still?” She had to be if she was in the room a few minutes previously, Lana figured, but maybe she played a trick on the guests before taking off for the day.

“Graciela? No, she went home hours ago. Almost everyone did.” Vanessa checked a paper. “She’ll be back again tomorrow.”

 “Could you check, if she still has key card twenty-one? Or was it turned in?” Blake asked.

Vanessa clicked through a few spreadsheets on her computer. “Yes, that’s the one assigned to her. We recoded them all just yesterday and I gave it to her this morning.” She unlocked a desk drawer and riffled through the numbered card. “She must have forgotten to turn it in this afternoon. What’s going on?”

Blake shook his head. “Her keycard was used to access a room on the fourth floor about half an hour ago. More of this ghost business.”

“I’m sure she went home.” Vanessa’s brow furrowed. “She turns her phone off at night, but will be back in the morning to work at eight. I can bring her to you when she gets here.”

Blake put out a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Lana and I will meet you after breakfast and we can talk to her together.” He turned to Lana. “I’ll meet you in the restaurant to discuss the situation?”

Lana wanted to tell him she didn’t think it was necessary, but nodded her agreement. He’d made it sound like a legitimate business meeting. How could she tell her boss no in front of an employee if she didn’t have a good excuse?

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Vanessa said. “I’m just going to double-check my math on these timecards and head home.” She stretched a little, as if to illustrate what a long day it had already been.

“You do have a big crew,” Lana said. She bid Vanessa goodnight and allowed Blake to usher her into the hall, his hand at the small of her back. His touch made her skin feel hot—a spot which seemed to radiate throughout her system.

“I’ll have Joel check the cameras before he leaves for the day,” Blake said. “See if we can find Graciela on any of them. Or if there’s any other footage indicating who might be responsible. That hall does have cameras.”

“I should have thought of that.” Lana blamed her constant exhaustion and the fuzziness in her head on the baby, even though her distraction had more to do with Blake’s touch than anything else.

“Seven-thirty?” he asked.

“Seven-thirty, what?” She couldn’t follow his train of thought, her own was already on another track.

“In the restaurant for breakfast. Unless you’d rather eat in my room.” His voice dropped to the deep sweet warmth of the molasses he liked to pour on his pancakes.

 “The restaurant will be just fine,” she answered a little too quickly. Lana shivered a little, remembering the last time he’d used that exact tone on her.

“It’ll be easier to have a private conversation in my suite,” he said.

“Yeah, but the conversation is more likely to stay on target if we meet in the restaurant.” Goosebumps—the good kind—slid into her scalp when his hand slipped up her back to touch her neck.

“Afraid to be alone with me?”

“Chemistry isn’t everything, Blake.” She shifted out of his reach when they came to the elevators. “I’ll go up for the night, now. Thanks for offering to have Joel check the cameras.”

“See you in the morning, honey.” He slid both hands into the pockets of his pants and sauntered away.

Lana touched her chest with one hand and felt her heart galloping inside her. She really needed to get this under control; there was still ten months until her contract ended at this hotel and she fulfilled the terms of the will. She just had to hold him at arm’s length until then.

Easier said than done.

Sage was always an early riser, so Lana called her first thing the next morning and invited her to breakfast. “Joel is probably already finishing up his search of the video from last night. You should come in and eat with us. I know you have a treatment this morning.” And it would keep her from being alone with Blake—which was her real objective.

Sage worked almost every day for at least a little while and preferred to be at the spa for the employee meeting even on her days off. “Sounds like fun. And I haven’t eaten yet.”

When the two women walked in and found Blake at the table, he shot Lana a knowing look, but she ignored it.

“Look who’s going to join us before her meeting,” she said by way of explanation, though she was pretty sure Blake had already picked up on exactly what Sage was doing there.

Sage’s lips twitched. She always seemed to know what was going on with the others, to some extent—she never pried into the other’s lives, but didn’t appear surprised when things happened either. Lana was starting to think Harrison was right about her abilities. “Thanks for letting me come. I hate eating alone, don’t you? And Joel’s already been here for a couple of hours.” She slid into the seat next to Blake’s, leaving the other side of the table for Lana.