Читать книгу So Tough To Tame - Victoria Dahl - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

CHARLIE STARED DOWN her hangover in the mirror. Unless Rayleen had installed fluorescent bulbs in the bathroom, her face was a damn unattractive color this morning. She looked closer, scowling down her own bad mood and daring her stomach to rebel.

It’d been years since she had a hangover. A few unwise nights during her first year in Las Vegas had taught her about pacing.

But the hangover hardly mattered. She dreaded going to work anyway. No point wasting good health on it. It would be a bad day with or without a shifty stomach and a headache. At least she’d had fun flirting with Walker last night.

Resigned to her miserable day, she forced herself to drink a full glass of water, then showered and shaved her legs and put on enough makeup to hide the green before slouching to her car. She already had antacids in the glove compartment. This wasn’t the first stomachache the Meridian Resort had given her. She was prepared.

She’d thought this job was her saving grace. She’d thought Dawn was swooping in to save her like an old friend riding in on a white horse. Now Charlie was tied to the railroad tracks and trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

Then again, it wasn’t really something that had happened. She’d done it to herself. Not deliberately, just...stupidly. And she’d always thought she was so smart. She’d spent a blissful twenty-nine years believing she wasn’t an idiot, and then she’d been arrested for criminal conspiracy. Lesson learned.

The drive to Teton Village was over in a flash, fifteen minutes accelerated to mere seconds by her dread. The scattered resorts and gigantic lodges were beautiful. There were miles of exquisite architecture and landscaping designed to look perfect amid the snowdrifts and icicles. But to her, the whole village looked like so much trash washed up on the shore of these mountains. She wove her way through the maze and headed toward the Meridian Resort halfway up the hill.

Three weeks ago, she’d been grinning through this whole drive, so thrilled and excited to have an opportunity. Any opportunity.

Clenching her jaw, she waited for the gate to the employee parking garage to open, staring straight ahead so she wouldn’t glare at the tiny camera lens to her left. Her stomach turned. She ignored it and pulled into her numbered spot. Another little camera lens watched as she got out of her car and headed toward the utilitarian steel door set in the cement wall. On the guest level, the cement walls were painted a homey beige, and the fire doors were paneled with wood. But the employee floor had all the appeal of a prison. Appropriate.

She took the stairs up one level and headed for the basement offices of the security department.

Dawn’s office was two floors up, with a lovely view and high ceilings, but Charlie wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Dawn sitting on one of the metal chairs outside Charlie’s door.

Dawn leaned back in her chair with a smile. “This is quite the walk of shame, Charlotte.”

“What are you talking about?” Charlie asked with a sigh. She unlocked her door, aware that she was an idiot to bother with locking it in the first place. Dawn had keys to everything, after all, and she used them.

“You haven’t been in your apartment since yesterday. Already out making new friends, I guess.”

Charlie hid her grimace of frustration before rounding her small desk. “What I do when I’m off the clock is none of your business.”

“As long as you’re not sleeping with other employees of the resort, you mean. Or anyone in management.” Her tone was always sweet, always helpful, which only made her words so much creepier.

“I’m not.”

“With your history, we can never be too careful, can we?”

Charlie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, just so she wouldn’t have to look at that cute cherubic face. “I already explained about the facilities manager. Twice. And your husband—”

“Oh, I’m not worried about my husband, Charlotte. He likes nice girls. Like me. He wouldn’t risk everything he’s built just for a few moments of sordid...What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Pleasure?” Charlie muttered, thinking Dawn must be a real treat in bed, with her stiff neck and her inability to even say something dirty, much less do it.

“No,” she snapped. “Depravity. Or plain old sluttiness.”

“You should try it sometime. You might like it.”

Her face wasn’t looking so cherubic anymore. Her perfectly rouged cheeks went red. “I pushed for you for this job in spite of your reputation. Nobody else wanted you. You should remember that.”

As if she could forget. As if she’d still be sitting here for any other reason. “Why?” she asked.

“Because if you don’t remind yourself of that, you’re going to—”

“No, I mean, why did you want to hire me?”

Dawn drew in a breath and smoothed down her blond bob. Her smile reappeared. “Because we’re friends. And I’m not the kind of person who’d turn her back on a friend in need.”

She was insane. That was the only explanation for it. Dawn had lost her mind sometime after high school. Sure, she might have been a little uptight and judgmental, but she’d been normal. But this? This wasn’t normal.

“Nobody else would’ve hired you, Charlotte.”

“Yes, so you’ve reminded me.” It was true. She’d sent out dozens of résumés. With her education and experience, she should’ve been an automatic interview. She hadn’t received one phone call. Until Dawn.

“And nobody will ever hire you again if you leave here under bad circumstances.”

She knew that, too. She had to stick this out. Just for a little while. Just until the memory of what had happened in Tahoe began to fade from sight. If she could work here for a year or two, she could send out some quiet feelers. Maybe somewhere farther east.

“You need to make this work, Charlotte. And I’m happy to help you, but I expect a little more cooperation on your part. You’re being nasty today. I’m not sure what’s gotten into you....” She swept a hand down to indicate the sexy black pencil skirt Charlie had dared to wear. “But you need to watch your attitude.”

Charlie took a deep breath. She did need to watch it. Dawn was her boss whether Charlie liked it or not.

“And stop fraternizing with male management.”

“That drink with your husband was just a drink. He was reviewing the restaurant menu, and—”

“Of course it was just a drink,” Dawn snapped.

Charlie wanted to scream with frustration. She was at a complete loss here. What could she do but scream? She breathed deeply, trying to let the feeling go. Finally she opened the laptop on her desk. “I need to get to work.”

“You do. Is everything going to be ready?”

Charlie nodded. The resort’s grand opening was in three weeks. Charlie had been so determined to make a good impression that she was ahead of schedule, but she wouldn’t slack off now. For one thing, staying busy kept her mind off her desire to drop everything and race out the front doors.

“All right, I’ll be back to check on you later.”

“I know,” Charlie said under her breath. Dawn checked on her several times a day. And probably had several times a night, too, before Charlie had moved out of the resort apartment.

“I’ll leave your door open,” Dawn said breezily as she walked out on her five-hundred-dollar heels. Charlie couldn’t help being jealous of the gorgeous shoes. She was going to don heels as soon as she got home.

Her hangover was starting to fade, at least. Probably the rush of adrenaline from wanting to strangle Dawn. She grabbed herself a cup of coffee, poured in tons of cream and sugar and sat down with her simplest task: background checks of every employee that would be hired before opening day. She’d tweaked nearly every camera in the resort, though a few were still waiting to be installed, and there wasn’t much monitoring to be done at this point. But the background checks were piling higher every day.

The last thing any hotel manager needed was a maintenance man or bellboy with a history of theft or sexual assault. A high-end place like this was hypervigilant about reputation. Charlie was more concerned with actual safety, but luckily, those two concerns coincided.

She’d insisted on installing more cameras in the employee areas than had originally been planned. That had been commonplace at gambling resorts where management considered employee theft an important target, but Charlie had found that just as often those tapes could be used to weed out gross managers who harassed their female employees. There were few things more satisfying than showing incriminating video to some asshole who thought he could act with impunity because his employees were women who barely spoke English. The back rooms of hotels were called the heart of the place, and she liked to do her part to stick to the spirit of that term.

But for now, with the employee halls mostly empty, it was time for the mind-numbing task of background checks.

An hour later, her mind was sufficiently numbed. Her headache had vanished and the three cups of coffee had cleared the haze. Charlie set aside the two applicants whose checks had set off alarm bells. She’d press a little harder on those after lunch, but first she had a more personal investigation to pursue.

The surveillance room was a vivid cave of darkened lights and bright video feeds that would have devastated her sore head an hour before, but she was ready for it now. Eli, one of the security guards, was stationed in the room but he was working a crossword puzzle. If the resort were up and running, Charlie would’ve read him the riot act, but right now he was a bit superfluous.

“Hey, Eli. Why don’t you get out of here? Make the rounds of all the current construction areas just so they know you’re around.”

“Got it,” he said, giving her a quick nod of deference. Sometimes security guys could get shitty and macho about working for a young woman, but she’d managed to assemble a good team so far. She didn’t know how long that would last, though. Dawn’s disrespect would start filtering down. Charlie had to figure out what was going on with that woman and stop it before it spread.

Once Eli was gone, Charlie called up the video feed for the corridor that led to her studio on the first floor. Her place was near the elevators for easy access, so the camera was only a few yards from her door.

She fast-forwarded, flying through hours of video. When the tape showed 11:05 p.m., Dawn appeared in the hallway, and Charlie slowed the tape. She wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Dawn knock on her door, then knock again. She was surprised to see her try the doorknob, as if Charlie would leave her place unlocked, or, more importantly, that she’d be okay with her boss opening her door uninvited.

When the door didn’t budge, Dawn stared down at the knob for a long while. She glared at it, then turned to look directly up at the camera.

The skin on Charlie’s arms drew tight as goose bumps sprang to life.

On the video, Dawn frowned and then walked away. Charlie backed up the tape and paused it.

This wasn’t the kind of video they used at the local convenience store. This was crisp and digital. She could clearly see the tightness around Dawn’s eyes. The furtive line of her mouth.

Charlie stared her down.

People were always surprised that Charlie was in security, but these days it wasn’t about big, burly guys with concealed handguns. Well, it wasn’t only about them, though they certainly had their place in the ecosystem. These days it was more about prevention than enforcement. Charlie could read people. She could anticipate. She could pick up on interference that disturbed the flow of normal traffic. On small tells that revealed intentions.

She’d lost a little confidence in her own intuition after the setup in Tahoe, but it didn’t take much skill to read Dawn’s thoughts. That glance was irritation and arrogance, not with Charlie, but with the camera. She was clearly thinking, If only that stupid camera wasn’t there, I could use my master key to get inside.

What Charlie couldn’t see on Dawn’s face was why. Why? Yes, Charlie had met Dawn’s husband for drinks one evening, but if Dawn was going to be that paranoid about Charlie being a femme fatale, why had she recruited her for the job? It made no sense. None of it did.

They’d been close in high school, despite their different interests. Charlie had filled her time with volleyball and track and tutoring, and Dawn had been student council president and head of the honor society and in charge of half the student volunteer organizations. But they’d had something in common, she and Dawn and Sandra and a few other overachievers: none of them had been popular with boys. While other girls had been out drinking beer around bonfires with horny teenage cowboys, Dawn and Charlie and their group had usually been at school. They’d shared running jokes about saving themselves for marriage. They’d assured each other that those party girls were going nowhere fast. They’d shaken their heads at the bad judgment.

But they’d also secretly yearned. Charlie had, at least. She’d tutored those boys in the library after school. Sometimes she’d even gone to their houses to sit in their rooms with them. But she’d never been in danger of being led astray. She was just Charlie. One of the guys. Another runner on the track team. Taller than most of them and flatter-chested, too. They’d hung out with her. They’d asked if they could copy her homework. They’d shoved her on the shoulder when they joked. And then they’d sidled away to flirt with the fun girls.

So she’d claimed not to want anything to do with them and their restless hands and crude mouths, but boy, had she imagined!

Luckily, when she’d gotten to college, she’d found a new role. A new group of friends. She’d assumed Dawn had, too. But all Dawn seemed to have gotten was more uptight.

Charlie shook her head and unpaused the video. Shoulders tight, she scanned the remaining hours, but nothing else happened. Tears sprang to her eyes.

Her instincts had failed her in Tahoe, but she wasn’t going to let them fail her here. Dawn was jealous, that was all. Maybe Dawn’s husband had made a stupid comment about Charlie’s ass or something. Maybe Dawn had just expected Charlie to be the same harmless tomboy she’d known in high school. Whatever the reason, it was Dawn’s issue. Charlie wasn’t going to get sucked into it. Dawn had started spying on her, commenting on Charlie’s comings and goings, implying she was a man-stealing slut, so Charlie had moved out. End of story.

She wouldn’t be paranoid and scared. She wouldn’t turn into one of those people who was carried along by life, tumbled over and knocked around every time the current got too fast. Like her mother, who could never grab on to anything, could never find a handhold.

No. Charlie would work hard. She’d let the scandal in Tahoe die down. She’d pay off her legal bills. And then she’d find a job somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just not at the Meridian Resort.

But for today, just having her apartment at the Stud Farm was enough. She felt a little stronger. A little more herself. She’d hit rock bottom, but she was on her way back up now, and she’d be damned if she’d leave the best parts of herself behind.