Page 57 of Winter With You

* * *

‘Would you believe me if I said this wasn’t my first time smuggling a dog into a room?’ the bell hop, Eric, asked.

‘Shh,’ Gabriella said as they surreptitiously walked along the corridor towards their suite, Mr Darcy inside the golden trolley covered by sheets and corralled by two large suitcases. She smiled at two other guests who were passing by.

‘The last time the guest gave me one hundred dollars,’ he continued loudly.

‘If you shut your mouth right now I’ll give you two hundred,’ Gabriella said. Then she whispered, ‘Phoebe, pull that sheet over Mr Darcy a bit better.’ There weren’t hordes of people coming out of their rooms at this time of night but the one person she was really worried about was Cheyenne. Cheyenne gave the air of rule-follower, toeing the company line and absolute snitcher. Oh, would you look at that, a chance to score points and give your advertising budget to another author.

And then, as those thoughts went through Gabriella’s mind, the door to Room 613 opened up and there was Cheyenne standing in the corridor like a prison warden, checking her watch as though there was a curfew. There probably had been but Gabriella still hadn’t checked her emails…

‘Where have you been?’ Cheyenne asked, accusing. ‘You didn’t answer my calls, messages or emails.’ Facts.

Gabriella spun around and faced Eric. ‘So, thank you, Eric, for your suggestions of places to see while we’re in NYC. You can carry on with your work now.’

She willed Eric to get her drift and just continue pushing the ‘luggage’ away but he seemed to be staying static and he was staring right at Cheyenne like she might be his boss.

‘Don’t keep the luggage waiting, Eric,’ Gabriella said and she gave the trolley a jolt with her foot. It seemed to be enough, thankfully, for Eric to get the gist.

‘Gabriella,’ Cheyenne said. ‘Did you hear what I said? You can’t go missing and then go completely incommunicado. We have to go through the itinerary for tomorrow at the library event and⁠—’

‘It’s very late now, Cheyenne,’ Gabriella said, yawning.

‘I’m so tired,’ Phoebe added. ‘We walked such a long way trying to find perfect locations for photo opportunities with the book.’ She yawned too then.

‘Did you?’ Cheyenne asked, visibly lifted by this information.

Phoebe nodded. ‘We can tell you all about them in the morning. After sleep.’ She looked to Gabriella. ‘I really need to go to bed. I’ve set an alarm for 5 a.m. to look at GCSE Biology.’

‘Yes,’ Gabriella said quickly. ‘Yes, you do need to rest, it’s very late now.’ She got the key card for the suite out of her bag.

‘You know you really shouldn’t be wandering around the city without someone knowing where you are,’ Cheyenne said. ‘Someone could jump out and⁠—’

‘We don’t need to talk about crime stats now,’ Gabriella said, cushioning Phoebe’s ears with her hands.

‘I was going to say someone could jump out and take unsolicited photos,’ Cheyenne said, frowning.

‘OK, well, they didn’t.’ She had no idea if she had been papped eating eggs and bacon with Luca but right now her fucks tolerance was even less than zero. Gabriella quickly zapped the card at the door and it clicked to allow entry. She steered Phoebe towards the open door. ‘Goodnight!’

Scooting in after Phoebe, she closed the door after the both of them and breathed. Then she put her ear to the panel and listened.

‘Eric won’t do anything with Mr Darcy would he? Like call the dog pound,’ Phoebe said.

‘Shh!’ Gabriella said. Could she hear Cheyenne’s retreat? Were the hotel doors etc. soundproofed? She couldn’t hear anything. But, counting to ten usually solved most things, right? She counted quickly and then she carefully opened the door, checked to see if Cheyenne had definitely left the corridor and raced in the direction Eric had gone in.

Within a few minutes, Mr Darcy was being doggy-handled into Phoebe’s bedroom and, without any invitation required, he had jumped up onto Phoebe’s king-sized bed and claimed it as his own.

‘Phoebe,’ Gabriella began, watching from the doorway as her niece began snuggling the dog under the covers and rubbing his ears. ‘Remember that… you shouldn’t…’ She stopped herself from talking, the words she’d been about to say sounding eerily similar to something her mother might have said to Lulu. She didn’t want to say anything even halfway close to the kind of things that had always spilled from her mother’s lips. Don’t touch it. Don’t say that. Don’t do that.

‘What?’ Phoebe asked, Mr Darcy licking her face, drool dropping onto the bright white sheets.

Gabriella shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ She smiled. ‘Goodnight, Phoebe. Goodnight, Mr Darcy.’

Mr Darcy barked.

* * *

Phoebe loves the dog, Ella-Bella. You know that, don’t you? And when people love things they find it very hard to let them go even when they know they have to. You know that too, don’t you?