Did Someone Order Room Service?: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance Novella (Do Not Disturb, Book 2)

Charlotte Phillips

A division of HarperCollins
Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

I live in Wiltshire, UK, where I squash writing in between looking after my family, who have been taught not to notice that I’m rubbish at housework. I love watching American TV shows in my pyjamas and I can’t live without coffee and cake.

For Barry, who is always there for me. With love and thanks.

Layla Jones wondered, not for the first time, if there could be such a thing as an entire-adult-life crisis instead of just a midlife one.

She reached the top of the stairs and turned to walk at speed down the hotel’s top floor corridor, heels sinking into the sumptuous ankle deep runner, phone clamped to her ear and eyes everywhere for the slightest sniff of another member of staff. Specifically anyone superior to her. Which actually amounted to quite a lot of people. Guest Services Agent was only a few steps above minion here at the Lavington Hotel. It had taken sixteen tries before her mother picked up the phone and she wasn’t about to hit disconnect after all that effort just because of a little thing like personal phone use during work time.

Unfortunately this wasn’t looking like a quick call since she apparently had to spell out the fact that what her so-called parent had done was unforgivable. She’d just have to dodge into a linen cupboard or something if push came to shove.

‘I lent you my savings because you wanted to set up a business,’ she said, and it sounded so laughable spoken out loud that she could scarcely believe she’d been so stupid. Her mother set up a business? In which universe would that be? ‘And instead you’ve blown the lot on travel plans and concert tickets.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic, darling.’ Behind her mother’s attempt at soothing she could hear an airport tannoy announcing some flight or other. ‘Chance of a lifetime this. Not just
any
concert tickets. This isn’t some flash-in-the-pan manufactured cutesy boy band, you know. We’re talking
Sweet
Victory
here. Their comeback tour and I’ve got backstage passes. Did you hear me? Backstage Passes!
I’m with the band
, darling. I never missed one of their shows back in the Eighties and I’m not going to start now.’

Layla gripped the phone briefly away from her ear as she processed this information, and thought for a moment that she really must call up hotel maintenance to get the top floor air-con checked because it was suddenly
boiling
in here. Her mother had never missed one of their shows, oh no, she’d spent half Layla’s childhood trailing around the world after them, wearing too much leather and hair mousse, while Layla outstayed her welcome with a progression of relatives.

Doors sped past, their glossy red number plates a blur. She didn’t have time for this. She had an hour or so at best to check the Kerry Suite was prepared to perfection before the last-minute guests moved in. After that she’d have to keep a permanent can-I-help-you smile on her face as she saw to their every whim when what she wanted to do was snarl at everyone within shouting distance. She made an enormous effort to lower her voice.

‘I was saving that money for a deposit on a flat,’ she said. Finally it had felt within her grasp that she might actually be able to put down some roots of her own. Steady job and her own place instead of the tiny rented studio with its grotty shared bathroom and her mother kipping on the sofa for a few months at a time when she wasn’t doing the festival season. ‘You told me it was just a start-up thing. You promised you’d pay me back in a week or two when your bank loan came through.’

‘And I
will
darling. Once the tour’s over I’ll be ready to get my teeth into that T-shirt business and you’ll get your money back quick smart. Just a few months that’s all.’

Layla mentally wrote off the cash. And when her mother turned up after this latest jaunt, just as she always did, murder might be on the cards.

‘How the hell did I get stuck with you as a parent?’ she wailed. ‘Why can’t you be like any
normal
mother? You should be teaching me how to make shortcrust pastry, handing down family recipes and lending
me
money to buy my first flat, not disappearing halfway round the world in a leather bustier and hair extensions.’

Her mother made a horrified noise.

‘Sounds like a bloody boring nightmare to me. What are you, living in the dark ages?’

‘No!’ Layla spat. ‘I’m living in the REAL WORLD!’

Temper completely lost now, she reached the end of the passageway and the door of the Kerry Suite with its red name plate. She flicked her pass card into the slot, threw open the door and stormed inside. The sitting room beyond was cool and quiet, October rain pattering softly against the high windows. The calm felt at odds with her scorching temper so she slammed the door hard enough to make the bottles in the mini-bar clink.

‘You know what?’ her mother’s voice was smooth and clear on the end of the line, tinged now with more than a hint of offended temper. ‘I’m not sure how the hell I got stuck with
you
.’

Layla paused, hand outstretched to reach the pad of light switches, her breath catching as her throat suddenly constricted.

‘What do you think is more important?’ her mother went on. ‘Getting to work on time? Counting the pennies? Or living life to the full, taking in every unpredictable turn, feeling
alive
? No one ever laid on their death bed, Layla, and wished they’d put in a few more hours at the day job. Life is passing you by, do you know that? You’ll get to old age, look back and realise you missed the whole bloody point.’ There was a pause followed by a mutter, which felt somehow even worse because it sounded like her mother was thinking out loud now instead of talking to her. ‘How can anyone so mind-numbingly dull share my gene pool? Sometimes I wonder why I ever bother coming back.’

Anger and hurt seemed to boil upwards from Layla’s toes to suffuse her whole body. Her pulse raced with it, her stomach churned with it and her lips pulled back from her teeth in a grimace of fury.

‘Alright then,’ she yelled, ‘if that’s the way you feel.’ Her voice rose steadily in pitch until it was so loud that it cracked in her throat and she snarled into the phone like some hideous fishwife. ‘Follow your saddo little groupie dream and DON’T BOTHER COMING BACK!’

She threw her arm back so far that her shoulder creaked and hurled the phone full-force across the semi-darkness of the room. There was a loud
BONK!
as it made contact with something on the other side of the couch and then it clattered to the floor beneath the flat screen TV.

‘Oi!’

Layla clapped both hands to her mouth in shock as a man got to his feet, hand rubbing his forehead and mussing his dark hair into haphazard spikes. Tall, broad-shoulders, chiselled jaw and lop sided grin, which actually was currently more of a grimace but which still gave the chocolate brown eyes a hint of wicked melt. Instantly recognisable, even without the usual pro tennis kit.

‘Let me guess,’ he said, his American drawl audible now that he wasn’t yelling. ‘Room service?’

She’d just clobbered the biggest crowd-pull in world tennis. And she’d be lucky to end this day without the sack.

****

The light flush that touched her peaches and cream complexion and the knit of a frown above the china blue eyes elevated her from pretty to seriously cute, and Matt Stanton walked around the sofa to get a better look at her. She was staring at him with ill-disguised disbelief, but really, he was used to star-struck. It was a good look in his opinion, it meant anything was possible.

She took a calming breath and smoothed a stray tendril of blonde hair back into place where it curled softly into her neck.

‘Guest Services,’ she corrected, her voice pleasant and professional. She held up a clipboard. Her coarse snarling of five minutes earlier still hung in the air between them. ‘My job is to make sure your stay runs as smoothly as possible.’

He stifled a laugh.

‘Not got off to the greatest of starts then,’ he said, rubbing his forehead.

She blushed again. He was beginning to enjoy the diversion. With the week of all-work-and-no-play that lay ahead of him it was an unexpected surprise. The phone had barely glanced off his head, but it would be
such
a shame to stop the show and point that out.

‘Or perhaps knocking out the guest is always part of the package?’ he said.

Worry flashed across her face as she made a panicky rush towards him.

‘I’m SO sorry about that,’ she said, stopping just shy of his personal space to stand on tiptoe and narrowing her eyes as she scrutinised his brow. He picked up a soft wave of her perfume, light and sweet, and his pulse jolted in response. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. I just had a row, you know,
so
frustrating when you’re not actually in the room with someone.’ She shook her head, shrugged and smiled as if he must know exactly what she was talking about. His eyes zeroed in on her full upper lip, devoid of lipgloss but still absolutely delectable. ‘Lost it for a second, just a split second.’ She gazed at his forehead. ‘It didn’t break the skin, I can get you an ice pack if you like?’

She looked at him quizzically and he held up a hand to stop the mad stream of consciousness apology. She clenched her hands together and looked up at him beseechingly.

‘Please don’t report it. I know you have every right, but I’ll get in so much trouble and I really…’ she shook her head and lowered her voice to a level that smacked of desperation. ‘…I really need this job.’

In terms of boredom, the day had just taken a very interesting upswing. In the storm of press attention, before he’d been smuggled out of the country by his team, getting any female company had been impossible. A month now, by his standards practically a
drought
. Soon he would be reduced to gnawing the table. And then providence, fate, whatever it was, had lobbed her into his path. He instantly decided he would have her, not a question of whether he
could
, more a question of
how
long
it would take him. A few hours maybe, if he played his cards right – that would be some kind of a record.

‘Well, I just don’t know,’ he said, leaning in to get a better look at her name badge. ‘My first stay in this particular hotel, hardly gives a good impression does it, Layla?’

Her face took on such a look of anguish that he couldn’t stand it.

‘Hey,’ he said, as she clutched her hands in her blonde hair. ‘I’m teasing. Chill out, of course I’m not going to report it. Anger, frustration, I can relate to that.’

He’d had his fair share of racquet throwing tantrums in the past, as his coach never tired of reminding him. Nothing wrong with a bit of fighting spirit and passion in his opinion. And as an added bonus, when it came to women there was a lot to be said for grabbing the upper hand when it presented itself.

He held up his hands.

‘It never happened.’

‘Omigod thank you SO much!’

She breathed out a massive audible sigh of relief and flung her arms around him. He breathed in the scent of her hair and took full advantage of the opportunity to slide a hand around her slender waist. The faint smell of her shampoo clung to her hair, something light with an edge of coconut that made him think of holidays.

‘You’re very welcome,’ he whispered.

Layla jumped and disengaged herself from him with a quick pace backwards. What the hell was she
doing
, hugging the guests? Professional distance, that was the mantra peddled in all the training sessions. Then again, there were extenuating circumstances. It wasn’t every day your mother spent your life savings on a stupid dream and you assaulted a celebrity with your mobile phone. Really, could she be expected to maintain professionalism under that kind of pressure? She felt his eyes on her as she straightened the dark skirt and jacket of her uniform and began to move around the room, plumping up velvet cushions and checking the mini-bar, each little task restoring an air of efficiency that would hopefully hide her fluster.

When she turned back to him he was leaning easily against the back of the sofa.

‘Everything seems to be in order,’ she said. ‘Now my job is to make sure your stay runs as smoothly as possible. Any arrangements you might need, transport, food requests, laundry services, any problems at all, you can let me know.’ She counted them off on her fingers. ‘Nothing is too much trouble.’

‘
Really
?’ he said, eyebrow cocked, holding her gaze a beat too long. There was a predatory smile on his lips and her stomach gave a slow and very deliberate cartwheel. He somehow managed to communicate an entire proposition in that one word.

He moved back to the sitting room area and sat down on one of the berry coloured velvet sofas, slinging arms along the back of it that were twined with muscle and the most powerful shoulders she’d ever seen.

‘Absolutely,’ she said, heat rising in her cheeks. ‘For the right guest at the right price, anything is doable. Room full of lilies? I’m your girl.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘When you barged in here unannounced I assumed you were a fan. I didn’t realise you were staff. I thought it was incredibly ironic, since I’ve been checked in here to stay away from them, that I’d ended up in the room with one.’

‘I’m not a fan,’ she said, then shrugged, ‘well I mean, I
am
, the whole world is a fan of yours really isn’t it? What I mean is, I’ve got my work hat on at the moment. Not my fan hat.’

Oh yes that sounded just bloody marvellous. Her cheeks burned as she caught the bemused expression on his face because he obviously thought she was saying that for effect, and in actual fact she’d blown her food shopping budget for a month on tickets to watch him play at Wimbledon the previous year. She was as smitten by him as the rest of the universe.

He was even hotter up close. Not that she’d thought that possible at the time. In all-white lawn tennis gear, with sweat tousling his dark hair and his lean muscular frame he’d been absolutely mesmerising.

And of course that had no bearing on the present. Dreaming about hot celebrities was one thing. Pure fantasy. The real world was a totally different ballgame. And unlike her mother Layla had no trouble keeping the two things separate.

‘I really must apologise that I wasn’t on hand for your arrival,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you quite yet.’

There had been a rushed meeting this morning to discuss and fine-tune the details of his last minute booking with them. It was standard practice when dealing with a guest as high profile as America’s tennis hero Matt Stanton. But when her shift had started this evening she’d been so busy getting out of earshot of the management and preoccupied with tracking down her mother that she’d come straight up to check the room the moment she arrived. As a result she’d missed any last minute schedule changes.