Meet Me at the Honeymoon Suite: HarperImpulse Contemporary Fiction. Charlotte Phillips

she supposed if you spent the majority of your life keeping customers happy from behind a bar, flirting was probably as natural to him as breathing.

      ‘Tempting though it is to just chat with you all day, I need to get back to it,’ she said. ‘I have to check in with the kitchen and make sure the honeymoon suite is all set before Sabrina makes her way up there.’

      It was the oddest detached sensation, talking about Luke’s wedding to someone else. As if their time together had happened to someone else. She glanced at the happy couple across the room, Luke looking like some kind of stereotypical rock god, a drink in one hand and his stick-thin model wife in the other.

       Think of them as just any other random couple, that was the way to do it. Think rationally, not emotionally. Remove any partiality and just get on with the job.

      She took a deep breath and turned to head for the lobby.

      Owen experienced an unexpected faint twist of disappointment as she walked away. He was old hat at conversations in bars – it was part of the job. The key being to listen and let your customer talk about themselves. He realised as he looked after her that for once he’d failed on that front - she knew more about him after ten minutes than he did about her. How had that happened? Bloody hell, was he so starved of interaction that wasn’t work-related that he’d blabbed his life story to the first person who asked?

      He liked her. She was funny. And she was also work-obsessed. Maybe that was it - God knew he could relate to that. Without any support from his family, setting up his business from scratch really had been a solitary hard graft. He glanced around the lounge at Luke’s social circle, of whom he knew perhaps ten. His parents hadn’t been invited. Ditto any friends he remembered from his childhood. The room was full of music industry wannabes, models and hangers-on. The kind of people he was happy to have as clientele in his bars. That didn’t mean he wanted to pass the time of day with them. The weekend suddenly yawned dully ahead of him.

      ‘Have a drink with me later,’ he called after Amy on impulse. ‘We can toast independent workaholism.’

      She turned to smile back at him.

      ‘I would. But I’ll most likely be working.’

       CHAPTER 3

      A half-hour discussion with the chef responsible for tomorrow’s wedding breakfast and Amy headed for the stairs confident that all was on track in the kitchen, and thinking through all the plans in place for tonight. This evening the wedding party would split into stag and hen groups. Sabrina and her girlfriends would spend the evening being pampered in the Lavington’s lavish spa. According to her predecessor’s notes, the groom had elected to organise his own stag night, off the premises, simply returning to the hotel at the end of the night. At least that was one thing less to worry about.

      More guests were due to arrive tomorrow for the ceremony. Between then and now, Amy would be able to grab the occasional break but otherwise she needed to be on call the entire time in case there were any problems. To make things easier she was staying on site herself this weekend, in one of the sparse rooms in the staff quarters. Watchword: basic. Not a fluffy white bathrobe or basket of complimentary toiletries in sight.

      Unlike the Lavington Hotel’s luxury honeymoon suite.

      The door was on the third floor at the end of a thickly-carpeted corridor with fluted glass wall lamps that gave the light a soft and smoky quality. No glaring fluorescent strip lights here. The perfect romantic ambience before you even got inside the suite. She pushed the keycard into its slot.