4. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Q uentin exhaled.
“OK, you’re an idiot,” he said once he could be reasonable again. “You should have led with that. It would have saved us both time.”
Considering the fact he was letting her off the hook for the botched booking, the woman behind the reception desk didn’t look like she appreciated his understanding. She pursed her lips and put the phone she was holding back down onto the cradle.
“You know,” she said. “I don’t actually have to help you find other accommodation for the night. Did you know that?”
“I did know that,” Quentin said. “Because you haven’t.”
The receptionist went to say something, stopped, and pursed harder as she realized she didn’t have a rebuttal to that. She sniffed and typed something noisily on her keyboard.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said snippily. “The hotel is overbooked, and since you are late to check in–”
Quentin gave her a dubious look and checked his watch. “It’s 3.10.”
She glanced up. “Check-in starts at 11 am,” she said. “We’ve already assigned all our rooms and the overflow rooms in our sister hotels. Unless you want to accept the room I did find you–”
“It’s three hours away.”
She gave him a wide-eyed ‘my hands are tied’ shrug.
“Then I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do,” she sing-songed. “Sorry.”
Quentin snorted as he grabbed the handle of his carry-on in one hand. “Pick a battle, Beth,” he told her. “You can’t be an idiot and a liar.”
She had returned her attention to her computer. “Watch me,” she muttered under her breath as she did whatever it was she needed to void the booking.
Fair enough.
Quentin left her to it as he stalked back toward the entrance to the lobby.
The wheels of his suitcase rattled and bumped across the smooth tiled floor.
His phone rang as he pushed one of the big, gray-smoked doors open, holding it with one foot as he swung the case over the threshold.
He pulled it out of his pocket and swiped accept.
“Did you get it worked out?” Fred asked. Quentin could hear a shower running in the background and soothing music.
“Not exactly.”
“Ugh,” Fred said. “What happened? Did being curt and unpleasant not get you your way? That never happens?”
Quentin took the phone away from his ear and glared at it.
“Are you giving me a dirty look?” Fred asked. His voice was tinny with distance, but the amusement was still loud enough to hear. “It feels like you are.”
Quentin didn’t see any reason to dignify that with an answer. He brought the phone back to his ear.
“I was civil for just as long as they were sensible,” he said. “I’m going to need to go find somewhere else to stay for the night.”
That got him a snort from Fred, but it wasn’t entirely devoid of sympathy. Flight crews getting screwed over on overnight accommodation was nothing new.
“I would offer to let you crash with me,” Fred said. “But you couldn’t control yourself, and I don’t want to complicate our friendship.”
“We’re co-workers.”
“I’m your best friend.”
Quentin made an unenthusiastic noise in response to that. He didn’t like the idea, but he wasn’t sure he could convincingly argue against it either.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have other friends; they were just…grounded. They woke up in the same cities they’d gone to sleep in, their schedules weren’t at the mercy of structural stressors and air traffic controllers, and they thought his job was cool.
Sometimes it was easier to be around other people who knew what it was like to be in a line in McDonald's, trying to remember what country you were in.
“But you aren’t my type.”
“Really?” Fred said. “What if I got a bad haircut and borrowed my sister’s kid?”
That caught Quentin off guard. He flushed. That wasn’t like him.
“That’s not…the man just needed a bit of help,” Quentin said defensively as he started across the pavement toward the valet stand. “Anyone would have done the same thing.”
Fred snorted. “Anyone who wants to bag a DILF.”
That was uncalled for.
OK, so it probably wouldn’t take Quentin long to come up with a few ideas about how Joe could express his gratitude. If he wanted to. That hadn’t been why he’d gone out to help. He’d just…Joe had looked at the end of his rope.
And Quentin didn’t want Joe to feel like that.
Simple as that.
“I didn’t even get his socials,” Quentin pointed out. He moved the phone away from his face as he mouthed ‘taxi?’ to the valet. Then he turned his attention back to Fred. “I’m probably never going to see him again.”
“Or you’ll see him on the plane,” Fred said. If he had felt Quentin’s glare through the phone lines, Quentin could sense the eye roll that went with that statement. “How else do you think he’s going to get home?”
Fair point.
Quentin hung up on Fred anyhow as the valet waved over a sleek, blue sedan.
****
It turned out there was room at the Inn.
Not one of the better-known chains, but as long as they could stretch to a bed for the night and some sort of coffee in the morning, Quentin didn’t care. He got his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out the fare, padded with a finder’s fee.
“Thanks,” he said as he handed it over.
The driver traded it for a business card. “If you need a ride in the morning,” he explained. “I start early.”
He drove off. Quentin tucked the card into his wallet before it went back into his pocket. Then he headed into the lobby of the hotel.
“Quentin Farnham,” he identified himself to the clerk on reception. He pulled up the hastily made reservation on his phone and showed it to her. “I’ve got a room for the night.”
The woman reached for his phone with a quick eyebrow lift at him to check it was OK.
Quentin let her take it, and while she cross-checked with her system, he turned away to glance around the lobby.
It was, essentially, the same as the last one.
It was carpeted instead of tiled, and the off-white walls were accented with a different color, but they were only cosmetic differences.
Same signs, same coffee flasks set out, and the same snacks in the pantry…
“Hey!” the clerk suddenly snapped. “What have you got in your pocket?!”
The interruption of his reverie made Quentin jump. His first, slightly indignant, assumption was that she was talking to him. As he shifted his attention back to her, ready to ask ‘What’s your problem?’ he realized that she was looking in the same direction he had been. Toward the pantry.
His attention, however, had been on the snacks. The clerk was more interested in the suddenly shifty kid caught in front of the rack of candy, hands in her pockets and shoulders hunched up to her ears.
“I don’t—” the kid mumbled nervously.
Quentin didn’t really hang out with a lot of kids.
His step-sister was roughly the same age as him, and neither of them, despite his stepdad’s increasingly pointed comments about the ‘family business’ at Thanksgiving, had committed reproduction.
So it was only when she fought through the panic enough to glower defiantly that he recognized her.
Jessie. The sticky one.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jessie blurted out the denial.
“Oh yeah?” the clerk said. She jabbed a finger toward the corner. “How about I check the camera, then we’ll both know.”
Quentin cleared his throat. “Or,” he said as he fished his wallet out to get his credit card. He pushed the black rectangle of plastic over the smudged Formica surface with one finger. “You can just charge it to my room.”
Both the receptionist and Jessie squinted at him suspiciously.
“I know her dad,” he defended his interjection.
The receptionist weighed him up a second longer and then looked over at Jessie for confirmation. That took a second. That stung. Quentin thought he’d been particularly dashing.
The penny finally dropped. “The pilot!” Jessie said. “You got the hots for my stepdad.”
…Huh.
That bit of information took a moment to choke down. It was, Quentin told himself firmly, a good thing he’d not had any ulterior motives. Right?
“It’s been a long day,” he told the receptionist. “How about you just let me cover it?”
She pursed her lips. “We have a no-tolerance policy,” she said. “Corporate has directed us to pursue any incidence of shoplifting.”
“She’s ten.”
“Eleven!”
“And maybe she was going to pay. She just put it in her pocket so her hands would be free to grab some sodas.”
“And ice cream!” Jessie chimed in.
“Don’t push it,” Quentin told her.
She put her hands behind her back and scuffed the toe of her sneaker over the tiles. “Maybe just water.”
The receptionist looked between them and then threw up her hands.
“Whatever,” she said. “I have better things to do. The Twix is on you, Mr. Farnham.”
She swiped the card.
“Check out is at nine,” she rhymed off with the absent ease of habit as she pushed his phone and card back. “Breakfast is in the restaurant from six am.”
She pointed to the caged-off breakfast nook, waffle makers at rest as they waited for morning.
“Thanks,” Quentin said as he tucked his belongings back into his jacket. He turned to look at Jessie as he juggled a few options for how to politely disengage.
“So…”
“I was actually sent down to get some water,” she admitted diffidently.
Quentin scrubbed his hand through his hair and sighed. He nodded to the two chillers at the side of the pantry.
“Go on then,” he said. “Last thing I need is dehydrated passengers.”
The receptionist snorted at him.
****
“Don’t tell Joe?” Jessie asked through half a stick of a Twix and her pockets full of Ice Spring Water.
The numbers on the panel ticked up from one toward six. Quentin watched them absently as he leaned his hips back against the sharp-edged metal rail at the back of the elevator. He crossed his arms.
“I’m pretty sure I should,” he said.
“You can have half my Twix?” Jessie offered. She held the bribe out to him. Quentin gave it a dubious look. The chocolate had sticky, little girl fingerprints melted into it.