Watching her try to hide her shivering, he stood and took off his suit jacket. “Here.” He draped it around her shoulders. “You’re about to shake yourself off that chair.” She started to protest, but he cut her off. “I insist.”
“Thank you. So what’s this business of yours that doesn’t allow you to settle down?”
Rob was taken aback by the question. Surely she knew who he was. Looking closely at her, he determined she truly didn’t know him. Used to being recognized instantly, Rob silently savored this anonymity.
“Uh,” he stumbled. “Just a businessman. Real estate and that kind of thing.” His answer was vague at best.
“You must do well, given your mode of transportation.”
“Company car.” He wasn’t sure why he was so intent on keeping up pretenses. For some strange reason, he liked the way this tired woman looked at him. She was talking to him as an equal, treating him as she would a new friend. Her eyes weren’t filled with dollar signs, trying to figure out how much he was really worth. Silently he laughed at himself. He had spent nearly a decade amassing more wealth than he could ever spend, earning and demanding the respect of his peers, yet here he was downplaying his successes so he could continue this simple, friendly conversation.
“How about you? What job keeps you tied to the middle of the country?”
She laughed. “Oh, I have a terribly exciting job. I’m a special education teacher.”
“It may not be what you consider exciting, but I can’t imagine anything more worthwhile.”
At his compliment, she gave him the most genuine smile he’d ever received. “I happen to agree with you. I love my kids and my job.”
“Are you with a private facility?”
“Oh, heck no,” she said with a grin. “Public education all the way. I teach at a high school.”
“I see now how you can afford such a fancy vacation,” he teased. “Making the big bucks as a public servant. School out for the summer?”
“Yep. And I had intended to party up in style. Truth be told, I’ll be paying this ill-fated adventure off my credit card for many years to come.”
“Ill-fated?” He then recalled that, for all intents and purposes, she was homeless for the night.
“You wouldn’t believe my last twenty-four hours.”
“Try me.”
“Where to begin? Due to mechanical problems, my first flight was re-routed to Houston and delayed long enough that I missed my original connecting flight in Florida. My scheduled seven hours of travel time turned into twenty-one.” She paused to take a sip of her drink.
“Ouch.”
“I broke my cell phone, my luggage is somewhere in Timbuktu, and the sporty little convertible I reserved weeks ago was downgraded to an ancient mini-van that your chauffeur left in a ditch a half a mile down the road. My sunny paradise has turned into hurricane hell and I have nowhere to stay tonight as this so-called luxury resort lost my reservation. Please bear in mind that’s just today’s run of bad luck and doesn’t include the fact that I’m alone in this damned lover’s paradise because I caught my fiancé cheating on me on Christmas Eve and my plane fare was nonrefundable.” She spoke with a lightheartedness he couldn’t understand given her horrible experiences.
“Wow.” He wasn’t sure how to respond and was shocked further when she simply laughed at his reply.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“So,” he looked at her calmly sitting in the hotel bar and wondered at her poise, “what’s your plan?”
“That’s actually what I was trying to work out when you came in. I thought I’d drink a little courage.” She lifted her drink to her lips again.
“Courage?”
“Well, I figure the liquor will serve two purposes. One, it will warm me up on the inside before I have to go back out into the freezing cold rain again. And two, hopefully it will get me drunk enough that it won’t bother me to sleep in my lousy rental car by the side of the road.”
“That’s your brilliant plan?”
“I don’t remember calling it brilliant. Simply a plan.” Her humor in the face of such a dreary and potentially dangerous night grated on his nerves. “I only have to make it through the next few hours and then I’ll call the car rental place to see about them towing me out of the ditch. After that, I’ll catch the next flight out of here. Guess that will teach me for trying to live like the rich and famous for a few days.”
Rob sat silently for several minutes brooding over the fact he was one of the rich and famous she was referring to and feeling incredibly guilty as he pictured the luxurious penthouse suite awaiting him. One of the perks of owning the hotel.
“You can’t sleep in your car.”
“I don’t think that guy out there,” she pointed toward Pierre at the front desk, “would like it if I sacked out on the couch in the foyer. This place doesn’t exactly strike me as the type that would cater to vagrancy.”
“You’ll stay with me.” The words came without thought, but Rob found himself immediately warming up to the idea of spending more time with this refreshingly pleasant woman.