Page 19 of Here With You

He whipped his wallet out of his back pocket and took out a twenty. Margot needed to value herself more. He would have given her a hundred. “Done.”

“And an extra fifteen minutes on my lunch break. It’s hard to get it all in in thirty.”

He didn’t know what she was getting in, but he knew many women like Margot, and he could guess. “Deal. Now, where do we start?”

She winked and puckered her lips. “The bedroom, of course.” She swiped up a ring of keys. “We had a few early checkouts, and we need to ensure they vacated before cleaning the rooms. Follow me.”

She led him down the hallway and stopped in front of a room called the Aloha Suite.

“There are suites here?”

She shrugged and laughed. “It ain’t the Ritz, but it’s better than Motel 6.”

He imagined she’d only been to one of those, so he didn’t know what she was using for a reference, but he went with it.

She knocked and waited and then opened the door with her master key. Ollie walked patiently by Miles’s side, being the good boy that he was.

“I check the rooms first because if there’s something left behind, I want first dibs if it doesn’t get claimed because this is the most expensive room in the place, and they probably have the best stuff. I don’t see them calling me for their lost shit.” She walked through the empty room and opened drawers before tossing the sheets back. “Just last week, someone left a La Perla teddy. I’ve got twenty pounds to lose before I fit into it, but it gives me something to look forward to.”

“You want some woman’s used lingerie?” He couldn’t imagine. Then again, he didn’t know what La Perla was. He knew the word teddy because, in his memory, Emmaline had some sexy ones. She had a red lace number that always made him grateful she was his.

“Once it’s washed, it’s like new, and since I found it between the sheets, it’s got to be get-lucky lace, right?”

“You and I should talk about setting your standards a little higher.”

Her eyes got buggy and scary looking. “Higher than La Perla? Are you nuts? I looked that scrap of material up, and it cost four hundred and ninety dollars.”

He had to give Margot credit. She knew her lingerie. If he’d found it, he would have tossed it in the bucket without a second thought.

She opened the closet and sighed. “Not a thing left behind.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Probably not. I googled the guest checking in today, and she looks like a grandma.”

“What’s wrong with grandmas?”

She rolled her eyes twice before she stared at him. “Flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Who wants that?”

Once again, she made a valid point. His mother had worn nothing but flannel pj’s and those fuzzy socks with the rubber soles, so she didn’t slip.

“How many things do you have dibs on in those boxes?”

She looked at the ceiling and counted her fingers. She went through her digits at least three times.

“Thirty-three if you count the white cotton bun huggers left by Clint Eastwood.”

“Clint Eastwood was here? I thought The Kessler has only been open for a few weeks.”

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall heavily with a sigh. “Okay, it probably wasn’t him because he stayed in a regular room, but the man looked like him, and I snuck his photo.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and scrolled through her pics. “See?” She pointed to a speck on the photo. From a distance, he could pass for Clint.

“I could sell his tighty whiteys on eBay for a pretty penny.”

“You can’t steal underwear and sell them on eBay.”

“Oh, I forgot you were the boss.” She let out a not-so-feminine growl. “Now I need to figure out a new side gig.”

Lord help them. “How about you focus on your job, and we look into incentives?” He thought of a dozen ways that would work for Margot. All she had to do was stop touching the guests, and he’d give her a bonus.

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