“How long does that take?”
“It’s a little faster than a total turn. But on average thirty minutes or so for a standard guest room, which is what all of yours are today.” As Hallie talked, she was busy counting out linens and supplies and adding them to the cart. “But it also depends on the state of the room. Some guests are complete and utter slobs and it takes longer.” She held up the box of disposable gloves. “Get used to these things,” she said dryly.
Arabella smiled weakly.
Once Hallie judged the cart ready, they were off.
For the next four hours, Arabella reached and stretched and squatted and crawled around, all for the purpose of leaving each room Fortune-Hotel perfect. Linens were changed. Every surface—from bathroom toilets to wall switch plates—was left polished and sanitized.
By the time they took their lunch break, Arabella felt like she’d been training for a marathon. “I never knew cleaning could be so hard,” she moaned after collapsing onto one of the molded plastic chairs at the round table Hallie commandeered. “I’ve never wanted a foot massage as badly as I do right now.” She had to content herself with curling and uncurling her toes inside her tennis shoes. For one, they were in a cafeteria so removing them was probably in poor taste. For another, if she took off her shoes, she wasn’t entirely certain she’d be capable of putting them on again. “How long have you been doing this?”
Hallie set a glossy magazine on the table, followed by a can of soda. “Six years.” She popped the top of the soda and unwrapped her sandwich. “I was working at a resort in Austin before I came here.”
“What made you want to come to Rambling Rose?”
“What else?” Hallie looked wry. “A guy, naturally. Of course, two months after I’d already signed an apartment lease here in Rambling Rose, the creep gives me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech and heads off to Chicago with an old girlfriend.”
“That stinks.”
Hallie shrugged. “What’re you going to do?” She winked. “Stink happens.”
Arabella groaned humorously. “Terrible.”
“Blame all the toilets I’ve cleaned in the last six years. I just hope things start picking up around this place.”
“What do you mean?”
Hallie shrugged again. “The owners put on a good front, but the vacancy rate’s still pretty high, even for Rambling Rose.” She chewed her sandwich and flipped open her magazine. “What about you? What brought you to town?”
I think you should know that...
...there may be an “us.”
“Family,” Arabella said instead. “Three of my brothers had already moved here.” She wasn’t hiding the fact that she bore the Fortune name, but since Sybil hadn’t introduced them using their full names, it just hadn’t come up yet.
Hallie’s dark eyes danced. “Any of ’em available?”
Arabella chuckled. “Only the two still living in Buffalo.”
“Bummer. I haven’t had a decent date in three months.” Hallie nodded toward Arabella’s barely-touched salad. “You’re gonna get even skinnier if you keep bringing rabbit food like that and then don’t even eat it. We’re back on in ten minutes.”
Arabella was starving, but the energy that it took to lift a fork seemed immense. “How many more rooms will we have?”
“Seven. We should have gotten six done this morning, but—”
“—I’m too slow,” Arabella finished. She’d never thought it was that complicated to clean mirrors but she’d ended up leaving fingerprints that necessitated re-cleaning more often than not. And she was supposed to be ready to go out on her own without Hallie’s help the following day.
“Get yourself a pair of these.” Hallie held up the earbuds that were presently hanging loose around her neck. “You’ll work faster when there’s music going. Don’t ask me why, but it always works.”
“It better. Or I’ll be lucky if I’m not fired on my second day.”
“You’re in the trainee program,” Hallie said dryly. “Once you’re in the trainee program, you don’t get fired.”
“I’m only in the trainee program because they didn’t know where else to put me. Is that something you wanted to do?”
Hallie shook her head. “Being a floor supervisor is enough for me.” She was responsible for inspecting all the cleaned rooms before releasing them again to the front desk for use with another guest. “I’m not interested in getting into management. Too many reports to fill out. It’s more fun sticking to room cleaning.”
Arabella made a face. “I don’t know about that.”
“I even met a couple of celebrities in Austin who stayed at the resort.” Hallie flipped her magazine around to show Arabella an image of a ridiculously handsome man with dark eyes and short dark hair. “This guy? Grayson?” She air-quoted the name. “He used to be big in rodeo. Now his Grayson Gear clothes are everywhere. I have a pair of his jeans. Do wonders for my butt. Anyway, he stayed at our resort a couple of times when I first started working there. All the gossip magazines said he was a real player, but I thought he was super nice. And he tipped great.”
Arabella held her tongue. Hallie didn’t realize that Grayson was one of “those Fortunes” any more than she knew Arabella shared the name, too. Adam and Kane had met him several years ago at that wedding in Paseo that her father was still complaining about. She knew Grayson had two identical brothers, but that was the extent of it. She hadn’t met any of them herself. “Who else famous have you
