Chapter Six #2
Two housekeepers at the far end of the table whispered badly.
"That's her."
"The Hollister one?"
"Ex, I heard."
"Not yet."
"Why is she here?"
"Publicity stunt."
"Punishment."
Maren kept chewing.
Tasha sat across from her and dropped a yogurt on the table. "Ignore them or fight them. The middle thing makes you look guilty."
"I am too tired for either."
"Then eat faster."
Marisol entered with her clipboard. The whispering stopped in a way that proved she heard everything even when absent.
"Daws," she said. "Office."
Maren followed.
In the hallway, Marisol's pace was brisk enough to discourage questions. In the office, she closed the door.
"Guest in 916 called down."
Maren's heart sank. "The ring?"
"She says her ring was exactly where she left it."
"Then why-"
"She also says no one has cleaned that bathroom correctly all week until today."
Maren did not know what to do with the relief.
Marisol handed her a printed guest comment slip. It was short.
Room attendant respected personal items. Excellent attention to detail.
Maren read it twice.
"That goes in your employee file," Marisol said. "One compliment does not make a career."
"No."
"But it is paper."
Maren looked up.
Marisol's face was businesslike. Beneath it, something gentler stood at a distance and refused to embarrass them both by coming closer.
"Thank you," Maren said.
"Don't thank me for a guest having eyes."
A knock hit the door before Maren could answer.
Tasha opened it without waiting. "There's a man at the service desk asking for Maren."
Marisol's expression closed. "Name?"
"Hollister."
Maren felt the old reflex in her body again, only now alarm moved through her instead of heat.
Marisol looked at her. "You want me to say you're unavailable?"
For ten years, other people had decided when Pierce could reach her. Assistants. Drivers. Calendars. His hand at her back.
Maren folded the guest comment slip once and placed it in her tote beside Beatrice's file.
"No," she said. "I will say it myself."
The service desk was a narrow counter near the employee entrance, meant for deliveries, sign-offs, and arguments about missing uniforms. Pierce stood on the other side of it in a charcoal suit, holding a garment bag and looking violently out of place under a fluorescent light.
For one traitorous second, every woman in the corridor seemed to notice him.
Maren noticed too. That was the punishment of having loved a handsome man. The eyes did not become stupid all at once.
Pierce saw the uniform.
His face changed before he could stop it.
Not pity.
Worse.
Recognition that something he owned had been placed where he thought it did not belong.
"Maren," he said.
Behind her, Marisol's radio crackled. Tasha pretended to restock gloves within perfect hearing distance.
Maren stopped two feet from the counter. "Why are you here?"
Pierce lifted the garment bag. "I brought clothes from the apartment."
"Beatrice told your lawyer we would schedule retrieval."
"These are yours."
"Did you pack them?"
He hesitated.
"Did Sloane?"
"No."
"Your mother?"
His jaw tightened. "Staff."
Maren looked at the garment bag. It was from her own closet, monogrammed in silver. Once, such care would have made her soften. Now it looked like a package handled by too many hands.
"Leave it with counsel."
"For God's sake. I'm trying to help."
"No. You are trying to appear helpful in a staff corridor."
His eyes flicked toward Marisol and Tasha. "Can we speak privately?"
"No."
The word traveled. Maren felt it move through the corridor and settle into the ears of every person pretending not to listen.
Pierce lowered his voice. "You cannot work here."
"I already am."
"This is humiliating."
Maren looked down at her misspelled badge, then back at him.
"For whom?"
He had no answer that would survive witnesses.
Good.
His grip tightened on the garment bag. "Mother is willing to restore limited account access if you agree to pause the legal escalation and stop speaking to reporters."
There it was: help with a receipt attached.
Maren took out her phone, opened the notes app, and typed while speaking.
"Pierce Hollister came to my workplace on my first day and offered limited account access in exchange for pausing legal escalation and press contact."
Pierce went still. "Do not do that."
"Do what?"
"Turn every conversation into evidence."
Maren saved the note.
"Then stop giving me evidence."
Behind her, someone made a sound that might have been a cough and might have been Tasha trying not to laugh.
Pierce looked at Marisol. "This is a private marital matter."
Marisol leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. "Not in my service corridor."
Maren had the strange urge to cry. Not because she was hurt. Because for once, the room did not automatically belong to him.
Pierce looked back at her, and something in his face softened too late.
"You are tired," he said. "You don't have to do this."
"Yes," Maren said. "I do."
"Why?"
She thought of the alarm. The invalid code. Beatrice's yellow pad. The guest comment slip in her tote. The plain gold ring untouched in a dish. Her own name missing an S but attached to a file that would say she had done good work.
"Because this place gave me a record before my marriage did."
Pierce flinched.
Maren turned to Marisol. "I have rooms left."
"Four stayovers and a late checkout," Marisol said, as if no Hollister stood in her corridor.
"Then I should go."
Pierce set the garment bag on the counter. "Maren."
She did not turn around.
At the cart, Tasha handed her fresh gloves.
"Wednesday," Tasha said.
Maren looked at her.
"I said you'd maybe last till Wednesday." Tasha nodded toward the service desk. "Now I'm curious about Friday."
Maren took the gloves.
For the first time in days, the laugh that rose in her chest did not feel broken.
She pushed the cart toward the elevator, her feet aching, her badge wrong, her marriage behind her in a garment bag she had refused to touch.
When the service elevator doors opened, Callum Roane stepped out.
Maren knew him by reputation before she knew him by face.
The hotel group had sent a reform consultant, someone said to be cold, surgical, and fond of firing people who confused history with excuses.
He was tall, dark-haired, unsmiling, with his shirtsleeves rolled once at the wrist and a folder of operational reports under one arm.
His eyes moved from Maren's uniform to her cart to Pierce at the service desk.
He did not ask the obvious question.
He looked at Marisol.
"Why is a guest in the employee corridor?"
The corridor went very quiet.
Pierce turned.
For the first time since Maren had known him, someone in The Arden House looked at Pierce Hollister and saw not a donor, not an heir, not a husband, but a problem with access.