“If you could just put it by the lift on your way out, my lady, I’ll take it with me when I finish here.”
Nodding, Delia pulled the edges of the cloth bag all the way up and tightened the drawstring, then she wrapped her arms around the enormous bundle and carried it out of the ironing room. But as she stepped through the doorway and turned in the corridor, she ran straight into something solid, something that shouldn’t have been there.
“Oh!” she cried, the force of the collision sending her stumbling backward, but thankfully, two strong hands grasped her arms before she could fall to the hard stone floor.
“Careful,” a deep male voice cautioned, and Delia’s good mood slipped a notch as she recognized who that voice belonged to.
“Calderon?” she cried in dismay. “Is that you?”
She lowered the bundle in her arms so that she could see, and when she looked into a now-familiar pair of green eyes, she groaned. “Can’t I ever get away from you? What on earth are you doing down here?”
“I might ask you the same question,” he replied. “Do you always bring your laundry down yourself?”
She blinked, taken aback. “My what?”
“Your laundry,” he repeated, nodding to the soft, pillowy bundle between their bodies. “Isn’t that yours?”
She burst out laughing. “Heavens, no! When my laundry needs doing, Molly brings it down, not me.”
“Who is Molly?”
“Molly Grimes. One of the hotel maids,” she added as he continued to look bewildered. “She’s doing it for me until I find a new maid of my own. Don’t worry,” she continued, making a face. “The hotel is charging me an outrageous sum for her services.”
He frowned, clearly not taking her teasing in the proper spirit, which didn’t surprise her in the least. “Stop complaining,” he muttered, his hands sliding away from her arms. “You get enough other things for free.”
“If you mean my suite, I pay for that now, too, remember? And I can only conclude you are glowering at me in such a disagreeable fashion because you’re still out of sorts about this morning. And why,” she went on before he could make any attempt to deny it, “are you skulking about in the hotel service corridors?”
“I was not skulking.”
“Were you spying on me? After all,” she went on before he could reply, “you think I’m some schemer forever attempting to trick you with my wiles. Just what,” she added, her ire growing as she thought of the accusations he’d laid at her door a few hours ago, “do you think I’m getting for free? Laundry service?”
Her words had been spoken half in jest, but when his gaze lowered speculatively to the bundle in her arms, she realized they were nothing less than the truth.
“Oh, my God, that’s exactly what you do think.” She shook her head, appreciating with mingled dismay and irritation just how low his opinion of her really was. “So that’s why you were hovering just outside the door in that clandestine manner. You thought you’d catch me out.”
“I hardly had time for such a thing. I had only just stepped out of the service lift,” he added, gesturing to the still-open elevator doors beside him, “when you appeared in the corridor and cannoned intome. But I admit, I am curious as to why you are bringing bundles of clothing down to the laundry. As you pointed out, it’s something your maid would usually do.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, do you ever stop thinking the worst of me?” Taking a step back, she bent down to set the duffel bag on the floor between them, then she loosened the drawstring and pulled the edges of the sack down to partially reveal what was inside. “Does this look like clothing to you?” she demanded, lifting the bundle as she straightened.
He blinked, staring at the enormous furry brown head now visible above the edge of the sack. “It’s a bear.”
If she weren’t so exasperated with him, she might have relished the stupefied look on his face. “Yes, exactly.” She held the enormous toy higher, shaking it in his face. “A bear.”
“What the devil are you doing, carting enormous stuffed animals around the hotel?”
Lowering the bear, she glared at him over the tips of its fuzzy ears. “It’s… a… present,” she explained, pausing between each word to illustrate just what an idiot he was being. “For… the… baby.”
“The baby?” he repeated. “Whose baby?”
“Lizzie’s baby, of course!”
This, sadly, did not enlighten him.
“Lizzie Welton,” she explained, giving a nod to the doorway behind her. “Lizzie works here in the laundry, and her husband, James, is a waiter in the restaurant. They just had a baby. I bought them a baby gift, and because Harrods made a muddle and delivered it to me by mistake rather than taking it to her, I brought it down to her myself.”
He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again, and if she weren’t so irritated by his asinine assumptions about her character, she might have found his inability to speak immensely gratifying.
“And if you’re going to run things around here,” she went on,fighting the impulse to take the bear and bash him over the head with it, “perhaps you ought to know the names of those who work here and make an effort to learn more about them, instead of wasting your time trying to catch me in the act of doing something naughty! That would be a better use of your time, wouldn’t you agree?”
