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Shelby

By the time she finished cleaning her forty-five rooms for the day, she was exhausted. Her only saving grace was that the boutique hotel industry catered to smaller hotels with fewer rooms. She had heard some of the other maids talking about having to clean more than one floor in other hotel chains in the area. They said that they had to clean more than one hundred rooms a day and Shelby wondered how that was even possible.

The staff at the hotel was small since they had only just opened last year. There were only ten maids on staff, and she was having a hard time fitting in with them. They were mostly French, except for the four English women on staff. She was hoping to get to know them since there wouldn’t be a language barrier, but she was having no such luck. It seemed that no one wanted to be besties with the new American girl and that made having Declan and Tanner staying at the hotel for the next month seem so appealing to her. Yeah—that was a total fucking lie. They were both hot as sin and that made spending time with both of the American businessmen staying on her floor very appealing to her.

Shelby stowed her cart in the cleaning room and made sure that everything was in its place. They each had their own carts and that was just the way she liked it. That way, when she showed up to work again in two days, she’d be ready to roll out. Well, as long as the other women didn’t screw with her cart again. She couldn’t prove it, but she was sure that had already happened a few times in the months that she had worked there. Shelby thought about complaining to Claude, but she knew that would get her nowhere, and then, she’d be labeled as the nark and that wasn’t what she wanted.

She walked past Claude’s office to find his door partially opened and Shelby thought about going in there to ask about the concierge job again, not that he’d give her a straight answer. She poked her head into his office to find Lou on top of his desk, spread eagle, as Claude sat between her legs eating her pussy. Shelby quickly pulled her head back out of his office and started for the employee break room to clock out for the day.

“So much for Lou taking the day off,” she mumbled to herself. Shelby was pissed at herself for giving up her day off, which she was so looking forward to, so that Lou could come into work to fuck their boss. If she was being completely honest, she was a little miffed at herself for thinking that Claude was gay. She had him pegged all wrong, but now, her eyes were wide open.

Tomorrow, she’d take her day off and enjoy Paris with Declan and Tanner. The next day, when she reported to work, she was going to march into Claude’s office and tell him that she knew what he was doing with Lou and that she’d never cover for him again. Sure, maybe she was all talk, but she had the whole angry scene planned out in her head—not that she’d actually follow through with it.

It was one of the things that Shelby hated most about herself—she had a problem telling people no or being mean to them. And marching into Claude’s office to tell him off would definitely fall into that second category. Her mama always told her that she was way too nice for her own good and who knows—maybe she was right. When Shelby was just a kid, she never really understood what her mother meant by someone being too nice, but living in Paris, she was slowly catching on. She had always been that way, really. In elementary school, kids walked all over her. During the great brown lunch bag trade, she usually found herself giving up her mama’s coveted pimento cheese sandwich for a plain old peanut butter and jelly that one of the other kid’s mamas made. All they had to do was ask her to trade and she found herself handing over her sandwich for one of theirs. She was too nice for her own good and that didn’t change in high school either.

Shelby liked this boy—David Taylor and she waited for two years for him to ask her to Homecoming. Her junior year, she gave up hoping for that to happen and when Jonathan Eskers asked her to the dance, she reluctantly agreed. Wasn’t it just her rotten luck that the next day, David found her at her locker and finally asked her to the Homecoming dance? Of course, she did the right thing and told him that she had already accepted Jonathan’s invitation, completely blowing her chance with the only boy that she had ever had a crush on. It was the only thing she had regretted about high school. All in all, she considered that pretty good since most of the girls in her graduating class had ended up pregnant by the time they walked across the stage to get their diploma at the end of the year. Still, she always wondered what happened to Dave Taylor, even though it had been ten years since they had graduated.

Right now, all Shelby wanted was a hot bath and some food. She had worked out a system of ordering her food as she soaked in the tub and then, by the time she finished, her food was delivered to her room. Having room service as one of the perks of the job, was probably the only reason why she didn’t up and quit after every shift. It honestly was her favorite part of living in the hotel and being in Paris. The pastries that were delivered to her room every morning were to die for and she wasn’t sure she’d ever find the words to quit as long as she was shoving those into her mouth.

Shelby soaked in the tub for about thirty minutes before calling room service to place her order, adding hot water every ten minutes or so. It felt luxurious and helped her to forget how many guest toilets she had to scrub or how many disgusting stains she had to clean out of linens.

When her fingers and toes were completely shriveled, she climbed out of the tub, wrapped her long, dark hair into a towel, and pulled on the fluffy, white bathrobe, loosely closing it around her body with the tie, just as someone knocked on her door.

“Coming,” she said, hoping that she had once again perfectly timed getting out of the bath with her dinner arriving. Shelby pulled the door open to find her friend, Henry, standing by the cart of food that she had ordered. He was French but spoke impeccable English since his mother was an American and he spent half of his childhood in the states. He was one of the only employees in the hotel who actually spoke to her.

“Hello, Henry,” she said.

“Good evening, Shelby. I heard that you got roped into taking Lou’s shift today,” he said. Gossip around that place was amazing. It moved faster and spread further than a wildfire on the prairie.

Visions of Lou spread out on Claude’s desk played through her mind as she nodded her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Lou called off sick today, but I have a feeling that she’s going to make a full recovery.”

Henry chuckled. “Yeah—I’m guessing you know about her and Claude,” Henry said.

“Yes,” Shelby admitted. “I just found out about them today—the hard way.”

“Hard way?” Henry asked.

“Yep—I walked in on them in Claude’s office.” She left out the visual show and tell of explaining just what she had walked in on them doing, but from the smile on Henry’s face, he knew.

“You would think that Claude would learn to shut his office door when he’s entertaining employees in there, but the man just can’t seem to figure that out. I’m guessing he likes to get caught or even have people watching him.”

“That’s better than what I thought about him. I thought that he was gay but finding him with Lou today proved me wrong,” Shelby said.

Henry dramatically clutched his heart. “I’m appalled you counted him as one of us. For all gay men everywhere, you take that back.”

Shelby giggled, “Wait—did you just say that he entertains employees in his office? As in, more than one?”

“Yep—sometimes at the same time. Why do you think he runs through his maids so fast? He has sex with them, they threaten to tell, trying to get ahead in the company, and he fires them. It’s why he hires women from other countries. Just be careful not to fall for his charms,” Henry warned.

“That won’t be a problem because I find nothing about that man charming,” she admitted.

She pulled the cart into the room from the hallway and looked around for her purse. “Wait right there while I get you a tip,” she said.

“We both know that I won’t take it. You do this every night, Shelby. I don’t want a tip from you. Besides, you leave me extra towels and toiletries in my room when you clean it—that’s tip enough.” His room was one of the ones on her floor and she liked to leave Henry little “extras” when she had them. If he wasn’t gay, he’d be just her type. She loved the way she could joke around with Henry, and he did the same back. She just wanted to find a guy to make her laugh and forget about her troubles for a while—was that too much to ask? Apparently, the answer to that question was a resounding, yes.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night, same time, same dining cart,” he teased.

“Um, no,” she said, suddenly remembering her visit into the city with the hotel’s two newest, hunky guests. “I’m going into the city tomorrow.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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