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Had all her struggles brought her here only to lose again?
“No witches, just smart women and a bunch of seriously needy men. I want you to think about this, Chelle. Do you enjoy doing laundry? Because unless you know how to train a man, you’d be doing a whole lot of it. How well can you cook?” Van was a pretty good cook, and Hale had been in her cabin one afternoon and noticed the washer was full of towels. He’d moved them to the dryer.
Her ex-husband wouldn’t have touched laundry to save his life. Despite the fact that they both worked, he needed to relax when he got home, so she’d done all the housework. She’d also run most of the errands, kept the books, made all the plans.
Van and Hale didn’t seem to mind being given tasks to do.
She got the feeling the three of them could fall into a nice routine if they let themselves. Maybe that was the key. Showing Van how good it could be.
“Eww, I don’t do those things. Our uniforms are handled by the laundry here, and I pay to have my personal clothes done. I did not get into hotel management so I could cook,” Chelle admitted. “Of course I also thought I would be in Paris by now, but they want you to speak French. How weird is that?”
Yes, Chelle was lucky to be at the lodge. “Did she give you a name?”
Chelle looked down at her manicured nails. “No. I didn’t ask for one. She said she knew them and that they used to work here. She was pretty cute. I mean she was like probably thirty-five or so, but the old girl kept it tight.”
She was not going to punch Chelle. She was sure somewhere in the new hire manual there was a no punching witnesses rule. “Did she say how she knew them?”
“I guessed it was how most women know most men. Like I thought she was a girlfriend or something. I don’t know. It was busy that day, and if I had an ex looking for me, I would want someone to help them out.”
“Haven’t had a lot of bad exes, have you?”
She shrugged. “You never know when they could make a lot of money. I don’t want to turn down a good chance.”
“So you didn’t ask for her name and you didn’t ask why she wanted to find two men who used to work here?”
“Like I said, it was busy. And people talk about those two guys all the time. Apparently they were very popular.”
Nope. She shouldn’t go there. She should stick to the task. “Popular?”
Chelle’s lips turned up in a grin. “Very. Like down in the valley popular, if you know what I mean.”
She was pretty sure she knew what the younger woman meant. She definitely knew it wasn’t her business and yet… “So they had a lot of girlfriends?”
“From what I’ve heard girlfriends wouldn’t be the term. They were straight up players,” Chelle replied. “They were getting notches on those bedposts. But I never met them, so I didn’t get to try them out. Marnie from accounting told me they were heavenly. Like really good in bed, but they were very one night and move on.”
Players? For a second a question whispered in her brain. Were they playing her?
She caught it. This was the whisper in her head that constantly told her she wasn’t good enough and everything was going to fail.
She accepted that it would always be there, but she didn’t have to listen.
She answered it. No. They weren’t playing her, and Chelle had heard some stories that had been through the gossip mill. Her guys were sincere and had given her no indication they didn’t truly enjoy spending time with her.
So she let that worry go because it was not required.
“I’m sure they’re nice men. I need you to describe this woman to me.”
“Okay, but why don’t you get a screenshot from the security cameras?” Chelle pointed behind Elisa. “They’re everywhere, and they don’t like dump the footage for a year or so. It’s all digital. Very top of the line stuff.”
That was good. An actual face would make things so much easier. She didn’t have one from the woman’s foray into Bliss. If she could get a shot from here, she could take it to Pilar and make both IDs.
If she didn’t…
That was a worry for later. “All right. I can go down to security. I’ve got a date. I need a rough time.”
“Around check-in, which is why it was so busy,” Chelle explained. “Between 2:30 and 3:30. There’s a camera that faces the front desk. Security will know which one to check. And you know now that I think about it, I don’t think she was alone. Or like she was just really friendly because after she walked away, I saw her talking to some guy in the lobby. I think he was a guest. Is a guest. Kind of cute. I didn’t check him in, but I did overhear him talking to one of the bartenders about the fact that he’s super rich.”
