Initiating Amy Read online

  As she approached the chef’s office, Amy saw Eve standing beside Carmen. This surprised her. She didn’t expect to see Eve at the Broadstone.

  Amy’s intention was to just walk on by. She was losing interest in her quest and seeing so many other people at work around the hotel, she thought it best that she should go back to her own work. Head down, Amy tried to pass the office window unnoticed. However, just as she passed, Eve raised her head and saw her. Eve waved at her, motioning for her to come into the office. Discovered, Amy thought it the polite thing to do. She stopped, reversed her steps and stood in the office doorway. Eve turned to face her while Carmen remained seated at her desk.

  “Hey, what are you two up to?” Amy asked.

  “We’re going over the menu for the Lover’s Ball,” Eve said. “What brings you through the kitchen?”

  Amy thought better of revealing the true reason for her wandering. “I just needed to get out of the office, stretch my legs a bit.”

  “Nice to see you back here for a change,” said Carmen.

  “I usually stick to the front of the house. You guys are always so busy back here, I try to stay out of your way.”

  “I get it. I don’t usually find myself in your part of the hotel very much either. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever been to the executive offices.”

  As she said this Carmen pushed her chair back and stood beside Eve. Amy noticed her footwear for the first time, wooden clogs. The clogs threw Amy off for a moment.

  Gathering herself, she said, “That’s an interesting choice of footwear.”

  Carmen looked down at her feet then back to Amy. “Most of us in the kitchen wear these. It’s actually a safety thing. If by accident we were to spill a pot of boiling water on our feet, we can easily slip out of them.” To illustrate her point, Carmen slipped her right foot in and out of her clog. She continued, “These I got in Holland.” She sounded proud of her footwear. “Mostly the rest of the line staff wear the cheap plastic knock-offs. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I like the real thing.”

  “Yeah,” Amy said, a nervous chuckle escaping her. “The real thing. The real deal.”

  “The real deal,” repeated Eve.

  An awkward silence sat between the three before Eve said, “Anyway.” She was pointing at the menus strewn across Carmen’s desk, indicating that they needed to get back to work. Amy picked up on the hint.

  “Yes, of course. I’ve got to get back. I’m sure Alison’s looking for me by now.” Amy backed out of the office.

  “Come by and visit any time,” shouted Carmen as Amy left.

  Amy went back the way she came, past the restaurant line, past the steward’s office, past Ricardo and his whirling, grinding dishwasher, back behind the ballroom where all the chinaware was stored. As she pushed through the door that lead onto the front of the hotel, her anxiety peaked. As much as she tried to deny it, the clogs didn’t lie.

  Mimicking Carmen’s voice, softly yet with much animation, Amy muttered “I don’t think I’ve ever been to the executive offices.” Amy fumed a bit more. As she burst out of the elevator doors she muttered, “Liar.”

  Amy stopped abruptly, standing outside the doors to the executive offices, pacing back and forth, speaking quietly to herself. “I can’t do that. I can’t hold it against her. She doesn’t even know I’m in the picture.” She paced a little longer in silence. “Let’s see how this plays out.”

  Calmly, Amy walked across the floor of the outer office, past the scene of the crime. Every time she came into the offices now, she pictured Carmen and her pink sweater over Lance’s knee. Would she ever be able to come to work again without that thought popping into her mind?

  She headed for her desk when she heard Alison’s voice call her name. Damn, she thought, I knew I was gone for too long. She pasted a smile on her face and went over to Alison’s office. She stopped short just outside the doorway, taken aback, not expecting to see Lance sitting in the chair opposite her boss. The whole Carmen thing was still in the back of her mind. She didn’t need to see him while she was still trying to process it. Yet here he was. Damn him. Nowhere in sight when I want to see him, there when I don’t. She thought it best to shake the Carmen thing off. It didn’t matter, it was in the past. Amy was with him now, she needed to convince herself of it and move forward. She was his, it was decided. If Carmen was still in the picture, well, she would deal with that later. But for now, right now, he was right in front of her. Damn, he was right in front of her.

  Alison saw her as she stepped slowly forward, Amy froze in the doorway.

  “Amy, you know Lance.” Alison was talking to her, but all Amy could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears. The thumping was loud. She tried to quiet it, focusing on Alison and her moving lips, not looking at Lance. Funny, she went in search of him and now that she found him, she couldn’t look at him. How could such a man have such an effect on her so quickly?

  “Amy?”

  Alison was looking at her with a puzzled look on her face. Alison was waiting for a reply to a question Amy didn’t hear. Amy looked at Lance for the first time. He looked serious, somber. This threw her off a little, but it also helped clear her head. Obviously he wasn’t thinking of her the way she was thinking of him at this moment. She realized her delay in replying was dragging on far too long. She knew she needed to speak.

  “Yes Alison, sorry,” she managed to get out. “Sorry, I was lost in thought. Spreadsheets, work in my head. What was that?”

  “Lance was thinking of installing new cameras in the offices here. He thinks there’s too many blind spots. I told him we had enough, but he thinks we need more.” Alison paused and looked at Amy with a concerned expression. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sure, why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. You look a little pale.”

  The comment made Amy flush a little. “I’m fine. I’m always pale.” For once she was glad at how quickly she flushed, it might put some color back in her cheeks.

  Alison continued, “Anyway, Lance thinks we need more cameras. I’m not convinced that we do. They’re pretty expensive. Before I spend that kind of money, I would like you to work with Lance on this project.”

  The words made Amy flush even more. “Me? You want me to work with Lance.”

  “Yes. I want you to go with Lance and take a look at the cameras we have in place right now. See if the ones we have in place give us enough coverage, or whether we need more.”

  As she spoke, Alison picked up her pen and dropped her eyes to look at a piece of paper on her desk. This usually meant that the conversation was over, and she had other things to do. Normally Amy took this cue and left the office, but this time, she did not, she could not. She tried to, but her feet remained rooted to the floor. Lance got out of the chair and stood behind it. He was looking at Amy, smiling, seemingly waiting for her to move. Still she did not.

  Alison noticed that Amy was still standing in the doorway and looked to her quizzically. “Is there something else Amy?”

  “No, no, good, great.” She looked at Lance and smiled. “Great. Cameras. Let’s go look at cameras.”

  “Great,” repeated Alison. “Lance”—she turned to look at him—“stay a moment. Amy, thanks, I really appreciate you helping out with this.”

  “No, for sure,” Amy breathed, relieved she was now able to leave. Even more relieved that she found the strength to do so. “For sure.”

  Amy rushed back to her desk and dropped into her chair. She inhaled and exhaled a few times, trying to calm her breathing. She swiveled around to face her desk. Reaching for her purse, she pulled out a small hand-held mirror and her lipstick. As she applied another coat. Amy was glad for the extra time to gather herself.

  “Good morning.” The sound of his voice was warm and soft, she loved hearing it.

  “Good morning,” she replied, not looking up and slipping the mirror and lipstick back into her purse, hoping he didn’t see and trying t
o act nonchalant. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t do that, she never could. She didn’t even know what nonchalant meant exactly. She looked up to see Lance standing beside her desk, smiling. In her panic moments ago she never really looked at him fully, but now she did. She was gathered, collected and ready to speak to him, to see him. She saw his handsome face, his broad shoulders, how tall he was.

  She reveled in this for a few seconds, not quite able to truly believe that she was with him, nor how she gave herself over to him last night. She had never done that before so soon after meeting a man. Not to mention how she let him take her, hands bound, bent over a stool in the kitchen. And what it did to her, how hard she came, that never happened before either. It was a wonder. He was a marvel to her.

  The thought of it excited her all over again. She had to speak, if only to stop the urge to jump up and throw her arms around him, to smother him in kisses. She wanted to. She didn’t care if he wanted her to. But they were at work, and it would be highly inappropriate. Instead she stood. As she rose from her chair, she took a step closer to him. She wanted to smell him. Inappropriate or not, she was doing it.

  “How are you?” she cooed, breathing him in.

  “I’m good.” He smiled. Such a lovely smile. “How about you? Are you okay?”

  At the sound of the last word, ‘okay’ her knees literally grew week. She reached back and placed a hand on the side of her desk. She didn’t need to, really, but it was reassuring.

  “Okay,” she breathed. “I’m okay. More than okay really.” She had to stop using that word. The mere sound of it made her warm. She pushed herself up straight with the help of the hand she placed on her desk, but still she only came up to his chin. “I’m good.”

  The two stood like this for a few moments before he reached an arm out and placed his hand on her cheek. She leaned her face into it, feeling its warmth. The office be damned, she wanted to feel his hand on her face.

  “Are you free in half an hour?”

  “Yes. I can make it in half an hour. All this can wait.” She waved a hand over her cluttered desk, thinking about all of the things that couldn’t wait but had to now.

  “Great.” He was already turning to leave. “Hopefully we can get this done rather quickly, then we can both move on to other things.”

  Amy watched him cross the office floor, heading for the glass doors.

  “Yes, other things.” Amy smiled.

  “As long as that’s okay with you?” Lance said these words as he went through the glass doors, not waiting for an answer.

  “Okay with me,” Amy said to herself, feeling the need to sit down this very moment.

  Amy didn’t know what other things really meant. It probably meant nothing, just that they would both go back to their own work. But still, other things could be so much more. She hoped it was so much more, but then she thought better of this and felt a little silly. Still, as she slid back into her desk chair, she was so distracted—she had trouble deciding how to kill the next half hour.

  Amy stood outside the Security office, nervous and excited at the same time. She pushed the button just to the left and waited. She looked up at the camera above the door, remembering to smile. Just as she smiled, the door in front of her buzzed. She pushed it open and stepped into an antechamber, confronted by another door. The door behind her slammed closed. As it did, the one in front of her buzzed. She pushed on it and it opened. Lance was standing on the other side, waiting for her.

  “It’s like Fort Knox in here,” she said.

  “We keep a lot of confidential stuff here,” he replied, moving deeper into the Security Office. Amy followed him.

  Lance stood in front of another door, entering a six-digit code on a keypad on his right. This door buzzed, and Lance pulled on the door knob, opening it. He held the door open for Amy to go through.

  The lighting in the room was dim. Along the far wall to her left were six monitors, all of which showed various areas of the hotel. Lance followed her into the room, the door slamming shut behind him. For a split second, she realized she was standing alone with Lance in a dimly lit room. Her stomach tingled.

  “There’s no one here to watch the cameras?”

  “Usually there is, but I gave the guy the afternoon off.” Lance stepped closer behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck.

  “Why did you do that?” The butterflies in her stomach fluttered a little more.

  “There’s not a whole lot of room in here. Three of us would make it too crowded.”

  “Three’s a crowd,” Amy said, then immediately regretted saying such an infantile thing.

  Lance chuckled. “Yes, so it does.”

  She was off the hook, the jovial way he reacted. She relaxed a bit. She sat down in a chair in front of all the monitors. “Only six cameras? We definitely need more if that’s all we have.”

  “No,” he replied, “thirty-six.”

  “I see,” she said, feeling a little foolish.

  He leaned in to flip a toggle on the counter in front of her, leaning into her in the process. She smelled his cologne. She closed her eyes to experience it better.

  She opened her eyes to see that he was toggling through the various cameras around the hotel, images of different locations popping up on the screen in front of her.

  “We monitor all thirty-six from here, watching them on rotation on the six monitors. We don’t have to see all of them at one time, everything is recorded.”

  As he continued to toggle through the cameras, the image of the executive offices showed on one of the monitors. Although from a slightly higher angle, Amy saw her work space.

  “Everything is recorded?” she asked.

  “Everything.”

  “So if I want to see my office, I could see it?”

  “Of course.” Lance toggled back to the executive offices and put it on the main screen in front of them. Amy could see all of her coworkers working in the office. The date and time was digitally noted on the bottom right.

  “And if I wanted to see if anything happened overnight, you would have that on tape?”

  “Yes,” Lance said casually. “We store the recording for six months.” He began to toggle through images again, the corridors, the front door, the lobby.

  Amy wasn’t sure if she should ask what she was about to ask. It was cheeky and forward, neither of which were in her character. What the hell, she went for it. “Are you able to show me the overnight footage of our offices from, oh, I don’t know, let’s say last Thursday night, maybe?”

  Lance removed his hand from the toggle but kept looking down at the image of the lobby on display.

  “Probably.” He paused. “Last Thursday?”

  “Last Thursday.” Amy’s butterflies were swarming in her belly. She was excited and nervous. She had never played this sort of game before, and it excited her. This was new territory. Her skin tingled, she was so excited.

  Lance moved over to a storage shelf where several video tapes were kept. He drew his finger across the spine of a few cases before stopping on one.

  “Last Thursday, executive offices, after hours.”

  Amy couldn’t believe that he was calling her bluff. Maybe she was wrong playing this kind of game with a man like Lance. All of her bravado slowly slipped away. She was beginning to regret starting this game, she was quickly losing control of it.

  Lance pulled the video from the shelf and moved back to Amy. “Last Thursday.” He held up the cassette, showing it to her.

  All Amy could do was sit and watch the game unfold in front of her. She quickly began to realize that Lance was far better at this than she was. Lance went to the door and locked it. Amy held her breath as he came back to stand beside her. She wasn’t sure where this was going, why he had to lock the door, but she was oddly excited to see what would come next.

  Lance reached across her, leaning in close to her, inserting the video tape into the player. She instinctively pulled back a little as he reached in, but
there was nowhere for her to go. He held his body close to hers as he made a show of putting the tape into the player.

  He stood straight, looking down at her, stating in a demonstrative tone. “Last Thursday night.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply. Lance pushed a button on the console and the main monitor went dark for a very brief moment before the image of the executive offices, in full color, came on the screen. Amy held her breath as she looked at Lance. Was he really going through with this? Lance kept his eyes on her, not speaking, only nodding his head towards the monitor, motioning for her to look at it.

  Amy obeyed. She looked at the monitor. The date and time were shown on the bottom right-hand side. It was Thursday, that Thursday, just after eight in the evening. At first, there was nothing on the screen but her dark office. She tensed as she caught a glimpse of herself move through the left edge of the screen. She was walking with her head down, reading the papers in her hands. She swallowed hard, remembering that moment, finding it odd seeing herself on the screen. She also knew what was coming next and wanted to avoid seeing it.

  “Okay, I get it. You can turn it off now.”