The laughter this time was loud and prolonged, leaving Nils looking confused and the other guests in a much better frame of mind.
Mara returned and took the opportunity to push Kellen around the corner into the lobby. Sheri Jean had disappeared. The snake had disappeared. The bowl sat on the concierge desk. “Thank God for Sheri Jean,” Kellen said. “Where do you suppose she took that thing?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” In a low, furious voice, Mara said, “That fruit trick was deliberate!”
Brilliant deduction, Mara. “Why do you say that?”
“The doorman didn’t recognize the delivery car or driver. There was no card. The fruit was refrigerated, which would have made the snake lethargic until it warmed up and out it popped! Deliberate!”
“I didn’t know that. About the doorman.” Kellen still felt a little queasy. “Was it Russell? He knows everybody.”
“Yes, it was Russell!” Mara’s eyes sparked. “Someone has it in for you!”
“The whole setup was not very nice,” Kellen acknowledged.
“Not nice! It was awful. Are you having problems with a man?”
“No. Honestly, I don’t know who did that.” My dead husband.
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I understand it’s embarrassing to be the victim of harassment.” Mara glared at Nils Brooks’s back. “But listen. My girls and I are glad to help handle any man problems. You say the word.”
“Huh? No, it’s not him.” At once, Kellen realized she had incriminated herself. “I mean, he’s not likely. He’s a gentle nerd.” And Kellen was a big fat liar.
“Then who is it?” Mara wanted an answer, and she wanted it now.
Not my dead husband, that’s for sure! “Probably a disgruntled guest. We’ve had some winners over the past few months. Remember the weight lifter who decided he could drop the dumbbell bar and grope your boobs while you spotted him? When you banned him from the gym, he was going to sue for you damaging his marriage.”
“No one has sent me a snake!”
“It wasn’t poisonous.”
“Get real. Snake. Snake!” Mara flickered her tongue.
Kellen groped in her mind for another memory. “How about this golden oldie? Remember the first week I was here? Remember the drunk lady who didn’t chew her food, got a giant piece of steak stuck in her windpipe? I gave her the Heimlich maneuver, dislodged the steak into her boyfriend’s soup, and she slammed me against the wall for trying to steal her boy toy?”
Mara relaxed a little. She eyed the now-empty bowl. “That snake trick does seem like more of a female’s mean prank than a man’s, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Hmm. “Yes, it does.”
Mara looked over Kellen’s shoulder. “Your new security man wants to speak with you. Did you know Max is a Di Luca?”
“Annie told me, and yes, when he introduced himself, it was pretty obvious.”
“I looked him up. He’s one of the important Di Lucas—and he likes you.”
Kellen wanted to moan. She didn’t know which was worse, Mara thinking that Max was attracted to her and being wrong, or Mara thinking that Max was attracted to her and being right. Either way was uncomfortable. “That’s ridiculous. He just met me.”
“Instant attraction.” Mara rubbed her fingertips together. “The Di Lucas have a lot of money.”
“Then you go after him!”
“He doesn’t like me.”
Right now, I don’t much like you, either. “Use your wiles.”
Mara batted her eyelashes. “Wiles? Why, darling, I don’t have wiles. I’m sincere clear to the bone.”
Kellen snorted most unattractively.
Mara grinned, then sobered. “Remember—if you figure out who did that snake stunt, I’ll help you make them sorry. No one comes to my resort and gets away with that kind of stunt.” She skipped away toward the lounge, as sparkly and charming as ever, and just as irritating.
Maximilian Di Luca moved to take her place. He did not skip; his feet were so absurdly large, seeing him approach was akin to watching Godzilla crush Tokyo.
Kellen smiled, extended her hand. “We didn’t meet properly before. Mr. Di Luca, I’m glad you’re here.”
He took her hand, cupped it between both of his and looked into her face. “Call me Max.”
Those eyes. Not brown, as she had first thought, but golden and intense.
So intense he made her uneasy. She withdrew her hand from his grasp. “Max, then. You came very quickly.”
“I would do anything for Annie and Leo.” He had a nice voice, rumbly and warm. “When Annie said there was a crisis here, I grabbed that pilot, Chad Griffin, and had him fly me up. He was just mooching around Bella Terra, anyway.”
She shot Max a disgusted glance.
Without her saying a word, he caught her drift. “Yes, he’s annoying. Say the word, and I’ll send him away.”
“I already did. Now, will he do as he’s told?”
“Not unless he leaves quickly. Snow is predicted for tonight.”
“I suppose we should keep him here.” She walked across the lobby, toward the stairway to Annie’s office.
“Why?” Max answered his own question. “Because you’re suspicious of him. For murder? Or smuggling?” He followed, not too closely, and he moved quietly.
But she knew he was there. He had a presence, and she wanted to put her desk between them. She took the stairs. “Leo and Annie filled you in on all the details?”
“What there are of them. I suspect we’re looking at the tip of an iceberg.”
“I hate being on the Titanic,” she muttered.
“Full speed ahead,” he said, proving he had good hearing. “And no way to make a sharp turn away from the peril. You don’t mind if I play the Kate Winslet role, do you? I don’t even like to walk in the rain.”
She couldn’t help it. She turned and laughed at him. “You’re our new security man!”
He was two steps down, smiling faintly, looking fine in the suit, the white shirt, the blue tie. One didn’t see many suits in casual Washington State. “A good security man knows when to duck and run. I was a linebacker. I’m very good at running.”
“So…you’re fast?” She winced. That sounded faintly sexual.
He sobered, and suddenly he was no longer big and handsome, but rather sad and lonely. “Not always fast enough.”
The transformation made her vaguely uneasy. Not only Carson Lennex wore a mask. Everyone at the resort wore a mask of some kind, and trying to peel them away to see the face underneath was more dangerous than she could have imagined.
As soon as they entered the office, he went to the window. “Such a view. I don’t know how Annie gets any work done.”
“It is amazing, isn’t it?” Kellen seated herself and looked at him across the room, silhouetted against a pale blue winter sky and a murky sun that skipped behind the dark gray clouds. Of all the people in the resort, Max Di Luca was the only one she fully trusted. He wasn’t the Librarian, he wasn’t a smuggler, he was the man Annie and Leo had sent to help her. But where to start, what to say about security? How to explain, to warn, without betraying the information Nils Brooks had given her? For she didn’t know how Max would react, whether he would use those big feet to stomp all over Nils Brooks’s plan. He might say, and rightly, that his concern wasn’t solving a crime, but protecting the resort. At last, she began, “Max…”
He faced her. “Kellen.”
“If you would shut the door, we need to talk.”
“Indeed we do.” He moved toward the door.
Kellen wondered if she’d made a mistake.
Her phone chirped. “Hold on,” she said.
Russell texted.
The sheriff is here.