Maybe Penny would've been a better choice to service the villas, Audra fumed. At least she would have enjoyed dealing with the almighty prick who thought he was God. But then Penny might also get the full-time job that Audra wanted, which she couldn't allow. She'd better find out what he wanted. The sooner she dealt with him, the sooner she could knock off for the night.
Audra made her excuses and left the table.
"Have fun counting the inches!" Penny called after her.
TEN
Audra slowed her steps as she reached the front door of the villa. Reminding herself that every word would be recorded, she forced herself to put on her professional smile. Even if she was out of uniform, she'd be the consummate professional she needed to be. She swiped her ID and allowed the intercom to notify Jay that she was waiting outside.
The door opened and he stood in the doorway. "Fuck me!" He looked her up and down, wide-eyed.
Here we go again. "Mr Felix, I've already said no, thank you." She turned to go.
"No, wait!" He grabbed her hand.
Assault. She had an excuse to get him arrested. If she wanted to.
"Please." His brown eyes begged. "I'm sorry. I expected you to be in your shapeless uniform again, not –" He waved at her singlet top and shorts. "– this. You surprised me."
Audra wished she'd worn one of the laundry bags over her clothes. Then maybe he wouldn't be staring at her breasts. "Is there something you need, Mr Felix? Something that is within my job description to provide?"
He reddened. "It's my phone. It's not working."
She nodded and waited for him to step aside to let her in. She led the way to the kitchen, where the intercom phone was. "This one?"
"No. Mine." He waved his smartphone. "I can't get reception."
"That's because there isn't any. The year the resort was built, the phone tower came down in a cyclone. They replaced it, only for the next storm to knock it down again. It cost too much to replace, so no one ever did." Audra lifted the intercom receiver. "You can make outside calls with this. Just press zero for an outside line, then the number. It'll be added to your hotel bill when you leave."
"Okay." Jay took the receiver from her and frowned at his phone. He stabbed the buttons on the intercom and clamped the receiver between his shoulder and his ear. "It's not ringing." He handed it back to Audra, who held it to her ear. A recorded message told her to leave her name and number after the tone and someone named Jo would get back to her.
"Your friend's phone isn't switched on," Audra told him, wondering how much she'd have to explain.
"My sister. She made me promise to call her. I need to talk to her!" Audra recognised the panic in his eyes. It was the same look her brother got when the world overwhelmed him and he forgot to take his pills. Her heart twinged with something that might be sympathy. For Jay Felix? Never.
"Your sister. The one who was here today?"
He twisted his shirt between his hands. "Yes."
"The one who flew out today. And when you fly, they don't allow you to switch your mobile phone on?"
"Yes." It took a moment before her words sank in. "You mean I can't call her because she's flying?"
Audra kept her voice steady. "Yes."
Wrong answer. "So what am I supposed to do? I need to talk to her! She said...she said..." His panicked eyes darted around the room, not fixing on anything.
She said to call her before he did anything stupid. Too late. And she'd made it worse. Audra sighed. "She said to call if you got lonely, didn't she?"
He nodded, then sighed. "I fucked up. You don't even like me and she's going to kill me when she finds out what I said to you today. I'll keep calling her until she lands and switches her phone back on." He paled. "What if she's driving? Or she stays in a hotel where there isn't any mobile access? What if I can't get hold of her until tomorrow or later in the week? I need someone to talk to." He seized her hand again. "Don't go. Please."
For a long moment, Audra stared into brown eyes that could have been her brother's. Tad was the reason she could never leave her shaver in the bathroom, after the first time she'd had to clean up the blood he'd dripped everywhere from the shallow cuts on his arms. If this prick got seriously into self-harm, she'd have to clean up his mess, too.
Audra told herself that her motivations were entirely selfish, as she said, "All right. I'll stay for a bit. As long as you don't demand sex of any kind, don't try to treat me like a prostitute, and don't stare at my boobs the whole time."
He managed a watery smile. "I'll try. But your boobs...the...you have to promise you won't go to the press. Whatever I tell you, no one else will ever know, right?"
Unless they hear this recording. Audra pressed her lips together. "That's right, Mr Felix," she lied. "All hotel staff are covered by a non-disclosure agreement. I can't sell guests' secrets to the press or I'll lose my job." That part, at least, was true.
"Jay. You can call me Jay." He met her eyes and then glanced away. "Let me get you a drink. We only have these weird fruit beers left. None of the normal ones. What'll you have?"
Thanking the hotel's policymakers for forgetting to ban drinking on the job, she accepted a mango beer and settled in an armchair. Savouring the taste with her eyes closed, Audra asked, "So what would you like to talk about, Jay?"
ELEVEN
He hunched over in the armchair across from her, gripping his beer with both hands for what seemed like an eternity. "This is stupid. I don't know you. You don't like me, so there's no way you could want to help me. You're nothing like my sister. And as long as you're wearing a shirt that shows your tits, I'm going to stare at them."
Yes, this was stupid, but if it saved her from cleaning blood off the floor and worrying about her brother... "Fine," she relented. "If you feel more comfortable talking to my chest than my face, do it. Not knowing me didn't stop you from wanting to get naked with me this afternoon, and talking is nowhere near as personal as that. But if it helps..." She took a deep breath. "Hi. My name is Audra. I've been working here at the Romance Island Resort in housekeeping for a few months now. Since graduation. I'll probably work here until I get a job in something more related to my degree. I have two older brothers and one younger one who've been bringing their problems to me since they could talk, and I usually find some way to solve them, so they keep coming back to me. Sometimes I don't like them much, either, but I still help. And I may not be like your sister, the lady I met earlier today, but you remind me of my brother."
"Do I look like him?"
Audra laughed softly. Jay might be a prick, but he was a perfect physical specimen. "No. Tad's...well, he has more of a keg than a six-pack. And a beard. One of those bushy, hipster ones." Because he doesn't trust himself with a razor anymore, she thought sadly. "No, you're better looking than my brother. But Tad video calls me at least once a week. Whenever he gets lonely. Just like you're calling your sister."
He chewed his lip. "I don't get lonely that often. I don't call her every week. I'm a rock star. I'm usually surrounded by people." He stuck his chin out. "What're you? A shrink?"
"Hell, no. My degree's in atmospheric science. Meteorology and weather, mostly."
It was Jay's turn to laugh. "A weather girl. I'm going to tell a weather girl my problems and then you'll forecast fine weather and sunny skies for me? Why are you here, Audrey the weather girl?"
She gritted her teeth, but turned it into a smile. "Audra. My name's Audra. Not Audrey."
"You look like that classic movie chick called Audrey. The one with the dark hair and big eyes who smoked a long cigarette with her breakfast." Jay took a deep pull of his beer.
"You mean Audrey Hepburn?" Well, there were worse people to be compared to. Coming from him, it was quite a compliment. Especially alongside the weather girl joke. If she had a dollar for every time someone had said it, she wouldn't be doing this job, that's for sure. "Um, thank you. But my name really is Audra. And aren't you the one who's supposed to be talking? It's my job to listen."
Jay nodded, drained his drink and headed to the kitchen for more. When he offered Audra another, she shook her head and held up her barely touched beer. She didn't dare have more than one – not being able to afford much alcohol messed with her already low tolerance for the stuff.
He returned to the lounge but rejected his armchair for a sofa he could recline on instead – fortunately, wearing more than just his undies. "Do you know how Chaya started?"
Audra shook her head and sipped her drink. Damn, it was sweet, but good.
"I started getting a couple of live gigs in small bars on weeknights, just me and my guitar. It was all right, but not much money. In school, I was in a band with my sister and her best friend. That girl had...music in her head like magic, you know? She'd come in to practice and tell us to stop whatever we were doing to try something new she'd come up with last night. We'd whinge and complain, but we'd always give in because whatever it was would just be fucking awesome, better than anything we'd ever done before. And when the bars started looking for bigger bands than just some bloke with a guitar, I gave them one of our high school demo tracks by mistake. They fucking loved it – wanted to know if the rest of my band could come in and play. Except I didn't have a band. The girls were still at school and she was a year younger than my sister. So I waited, still playing small gigs and making a name for myself, until my band were all over eighteen and could play in pubs on a Friday and Saturday night. Sunday sessions. The bigger stuff.