Serious Moonlight(7)

In a luxury hotel lobby.

At night.

On the first shift of my first real job.

With my greatest humiliation standing outside the front door.

Once the shock of it all wore off a little, I realized that a secret part of me was happy to see him. Practically ecstatic. If I were an actual daring dame and not a wobbly wallflower, I might even have done what Aunt Mona suggested and attempt to talk with him. Apologize for running out on him. Explain that what we did was an anomaly for me. But as my shift ticked by, the longer I went without seeing him, the more I convinced myself that maybe he didn’t want an explanation.

If I were to write up a profile on Daniel now, it would look something like this: Suspect: Daniel Aoki

Age: 19

Occupation: Hotel van driver, graveyard shift Medical conditions: (1) Hearing-impaired. (2) Distractingly good-looking. (3) Excellent smile. (4) Good kisser. (5) Good hands. (6) Re-e-e-eally good hands.

Personality traits: Knows a million card tricks and enjoys performing for people. Cheerful. Gregarious. Maybe too gregarious, as he seems to have blabbed to a coworker about what we did.

Background: Need to investigate further.

Trying to banish thoughts of Daniel, I put on a cheerful face and embraced the work that began trickling in like the soothing sounds of the river-rock waterfall that covered the wall behind the registration desk. I helped a guest find the downstairs restrooms. Helped another with the Wi-Fi password. Rerouted a call for room service to the kitchen.

See. I really could do this. I am working! Like a real person! Daniel who? That was a month ago. Who cared that he worked here? Not me. Not even worth starting a case file.

It was all good. Until I checked out a businessman who had a red-eye flight and needed his car out of the hotel garage. That’s when I had to radio the Bats out front. Joseph answered, thank goodness, and the businessman lounged on a sofa in the lobby until his car was brought to the entrance. Then Daniel suddenly appeared, jogging past the gold elevators to inform the guest that his car was ready. The businessman wheeled out his carry-on, and the lobby was empty again.

Mostly. Daniel was heading toward the front desk.

I panicked, wishing I could duck down. But he’d already seen me.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine,” he said, flashing me that stupid-sexy smile that got me in trouble the first time around. The shock of seeing him had worn off, but my body was still overreacting. Pulse erratic. Thoughts fuzzy. Fingers tingling. I couldn’t tell if it was panic or attraction, but I sure as heck didn’t want him to see how much he affected me, so I bent behind the counter to straighten a stack of paper sleeves for room key cards and tried to sound casual.

“Guess the small-world cliché is an actual thing.”

“What’s that?” he said.

I stood up. “What’s what?”

“I didn’t hear you.” He tapped his right ear. “Deaf in this one. Sometimes I miss things.”

He’d failed to mention this when I’d met him in the diner, so now I wasn’t sure what to say.

But he was unfazed by my silence.

“Happened a couple of years ago, when I was young and stupid. Still stupid, actually,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “It’s weird how it messes with your depth perception. Sometimes I miss pieces of conversation, and other times I can pick out crazy-specific sounds over vast distances. Like, when you’re talking to guests up here? I can hear your voice across the lobby when the door opens.”

“Mine?”

He nodded. “Clear as a bell. Something about the pitch of it. You’re a dog whistle.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly, embarrassed.

Then it was quiet between us. Nothing but the waterfall tinkling.

“Okay,” he said. “Wow. Shit. This is weird, huh?”

“A little,” I admitted.

Should I apologize for running out on him? Should I try to explain? Bringing it up here, out in the lobby, where everything echoed, made me anxious. What if Melinda were monitoring our conversation back in her office? Was that a thing they did here?

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong were duetting over the hotel speakers about the pronunciation of potatoes and tomatoes. I tried to focus on their relationship problems and not mine and ignored Daniel. That was a little trick I did when I didn’t know what to say to people—I just pretended they weren’t there. I learned it by observing people in the city, a local phenomenon affectionately known as the Seattle Freeze. And it worked. When I froze people out, they usually got the hint and left.

Everyone but Daniel.

“So-o-o-o . . . ,” he drawled, one finger sliding across the counter to tap near the keyboard. “I didn’t know if you were aware, but you’ve got to make a note on the reservation that the guest took his car. It’s for insurance, or whatever, so he can’t sue us later and claim his car got jacked from our garage.”

“Oh. Okay. Thank you,” I said, trying not to look at his face as I opened a screen on the computer. Code for valet service. It was here somewhere in a drop-down menu . . . Freeze, freeze, freeze.

“That actually happened once,” Daniel said, propping his elbow on the counter as if he had all night. “Some doctor got her car stolen after she left the hotel. Joyriders crashed it in Ballard. Her insurance wouldn’t pay because she left her keys in the ignition, so she changed her story and said we left them in—that the car was stolen from our garage.” He mimicked an explosion with his fingers near the side of his head. He was a hand talker. Lots of gestures. Lots of movement in general. “Hotel owner had to go to court. It was on the news and everything.”