yet. Staring dumbly at the doorknob, which remained stiff and unmoving in her hand, she jammed the key in once more. “Stupid old locks!”
It didn’t help. The room key would not open the door. “Great, oh, just great,” she muttered, tired and wanting nothing more than to kick off her too-tight shoes and fall into the king-size bed on the other side of the stubborn door.
Wearily making her way down the hall toward the elevator, Ruthie paused to pick up a white courtesy phone residing on a small telephone table. Hoping she wouldn’t have to explain to Chuck the intricacies of locks and keys, she nearly cheered when someone else answered in the lobby.
“Tina? Why does Chuck have you working the desk?”
“Smoke break,” the other woman said. Ruthie heard a distinct popping sound and knew Tina was cracking bubble gum, probably thick, pink, and shiny. “I’m off at two, so he took a last ten.”
Ruthie quickly explained her problem, and asked Tina to send the late-night bellman up to her room with a passkey.
“Well, I dunno,” Tina said doubtfully. The gum snapped again. “We’re not supposed to without the manager’s okay.”
Ruthie clenched her teeth as a sinus and champagne headache pounded in her brain. She sniffed and counted to five. “Tina, you know my voice. You know me. Look in the logs and you’ll see I am registered in room four-twelve. And if you ever want to come into my kitchen during your breaks and try to beg me for sweets again you’d better send the bellman up with the key.”
At the mention of food, Tina perked right up. “You betcha. It’ll cost some key lime pie.” She paused. “But, hey, tomorrow’s Monday, your night off!”
“Thankfully, yes,” Ruthie replied, glad she wouldn’t have to spend tomorrow afternoon and evening in the hotel kitchen, pretending everything was peachy keen. “Even we chefs get an occasional day off. Come by later in the week.”
A bellman was at Ruthie’s door five minutes after she hung up the phone. He was new and didn’t know her, thank goodness. He didn’t ask why she was locked out of her room, wearing her ugly dress, with bobby pins sticking out of her hair and a pair of emerald-green pumps dangling from the tips of her fingers.
After he unlocked the door, she murmured her thanks, entered the room, and tossed her shoes into a corner. “Sleep,” she said with a sigh, eyeing the king-size bed which made the one in her small apartment look like a twin.
Tugging at the zipper on the back of her hated dress, Ruthie carelessly pulled it off and dropped it to the floor. She gave it a kick, then actually walked across it toward her suitcase. As she walked, she caught sight of herself in the floor-length mirror on the door of the bathroom.
“Not bad, Sinclair. Coulda made some man pretty happy tonight,” she said with a sigh as she studied herself.
Celeste had wonderful taste in lingerie. Her bridesmaid gift to Ruthie—an ivory-colored silk camisole and tap pants set, with matching thigh-high stockings and a lacy little bra that pushed up more than it held in—did wonderful things for Ruthie’s curvy figure. “Not that anyone will ever see it.”
Too tired to dig through her suitcase for her plain old Winnie-the-Pooh nightshirt, Ruthie fell onto the bed. Reaching for the bedside table, she flicked off the light and sighed as the room descended into blackness. Her sigh trailed off as she realized something was wrong.
The room was spinning.
She hadn’t gone to bed in a spinning room since college. To be precise, since the night in junior year when one of her roommates had told Ruthie she was sick of seeing her drink sissy white wine spritzers and challenged her to match her, shot for shot, with some cheap Mexican tequila.
Ruthie didn’t like to lose. So she’d drunk the other girl right under the table. Literally. That night had resulted in a spinning room. Then, when told she’d been the one who’d swallowed the worm, the night had also resulted in Ruthie’s one and only experience sleeping on a bathroom floor.
Tonight she was not toilet-hugging intoxicated. She was just pleasantly woozy. Remembering a trick she’d once heard about, Ruthie stuck one leg out from under the covers, liking the way the silky stocking slid against the starched fabric of the linens, almost a light caress.
“Pathetic. Now I’m even liking the sheets touching me!”
Wiggling toward the edge of the bed so she could place her foot on the floor, she willed the room to remain still. Badly needing sleep, she ignored the childhood whisper cautioning against letting a solitary leg dangle where monsters underneath the bed could grab it.
The trick helped with the spinniness. But nothing was making the sinus headache go away. It throbbed every time she shifted on the unfamiliar pillow.
“Aspirin,” she muttered. Gingerly sliding out of the bed, she staggered to the bathroom. Unwilling to let vicious shards of light pierce her brain, she felt around in the dark, trying to find the aspirin she always carried in her makeup bag. First her fingers found a brand-new box of condoms. She sighed as she remembered stopping at a convenience store near the hotel on her way to the reception. Fully decked out in her atrocious wedding regalia, shopping for prophylactics, she must have made quite a picture for the teenage clerk, who’d winked as she’d paid him.
Finding the bottle of aspirin, Ruthie flipped a couple of pills into her hand. Popping two in her mouth, she turned on the faucet. Her head screamed as she bent to drink straight from the tap. “Maybe one more,” she whispered as she straightened. Not able to bend over again, she ignored the fact that it would taste chalky and bitter, popped another pill in her mouth and swallowed it dry.
She was halfway back to the bed, still woozy, headachy and nearly blind in the darkness of the room, when she realized the pill hadn’t tasted chalky and bitter. Horrified, she turned, ignoring the stab of pain in her skull, and dashed back into the bathroom. She flipped on the light, shuddered at its intensity, and grabbed the still-open bottle on the counter.
“Cold medication,” she said. She blinked rapidly to try to clear her eyes enough to read the label. “May cause drowsiness. Alcohol may enhance this effect.” Capping the bottle, she tucked it back in her bag, next to the bottle of aspirin, then looked at her reflection in the mirror. “You could give Frankenstein’s bride a run for her money,” she told herself, noting the wild hair, and the dark smudges of makeup under her eyes. “And now you’ve gone and drugged yourself but good.”
Stupid. Stupid, Sinclair.
But not lethal. She was going to be having a much deeper, and longer, night’s sleep than she expected, it seemed. Flipping off the light, she went back into the bedroom, pausing to set the clock on the bedside table. She hadn’t bothered earlier, knowing she hadn’t slept past nine in years and the board meeting wasn’t until eleven. Now, however, it seemed wise to take the precaution!
Reclining on the bed, she was out before she even thought to stick her foot back on the floor.
ROBERT FOUND HIMSELF back in the bar after he left Ruthie at the entrance to the hotel restaurant. He didn’t need another drink, heaven knew, but he needed something else: time. Time to figure out how to handle the Monica situation.
“Honesty. Tonight. Get it out in the open so she can get whatever fit she’s gonna throw off her chest before tomorrow morning’s board meeting,” he told himself as he took one last sip of his champagne. Somehow, after leaving Ruthie in the kitchen, he didn’t have the heart to return to vodka tonics.
The waiter gave him a confused look as he heard him mumbling to himself, but smiled in appreciation when he saw the big tip Robert left on the table. “Honesty’s the best policy,” the waiter said with a grin. “Honesty…and generosity!”
Leaving the bar, Robert pulled Monica’s key from his pocket and headed to the elevator. He glanced at the room number on the tab. “Four-twelve.” He entered the elevator and punched the fourth-floor button. “Okay, Monica, show time.”
When