Snorting, Ash waved a hand in acknowledgment before stealing his dog, putting Jake and his knit cap in the back of her shiny black Jeep. At least he was riding in style. Gravel crunched as they disappeared up the drive. Left alone in the silence of his manly domain of awesomeness, Graham considered his mighty log.
A snake. It should definitely be a snake.
* * *
A shower helped Zoey shed the worst of her muddled thoughts, as did a second cup of coffee. Stuffing her feet into her tennis shoes, she powered through the desire to crawl back onto the couch and sleep off the rest of her hangover. Texting Lana her plans to go hiking, Zoey grabbed her brand-new, airport-acquired Alaska messenger bag and tucked her glittery frog coin purse inside.
There was absolutely no way Zoey was spending her first full day in Alaska inside a hotel room.
When Zoey first realized she had saved enough to make this trip a reality, she hadn’t intended to spend her housing money on a couch in the swankiest resort in the state. An off-season visit had been far more in Zoey’s budget, but Lana kept pushing for her to come these two weeks, when Lana had already planned on being in Alaska. The Fourth of July was the height of the summer tourism season, and any alternate options within comfortable driving distance to Moose Springs had been booked months prior.
Since Moose Springs was the hub of all amazing adventure excursions a person could hope for when visiting Alaska, Zoey had been unable to resist her friend’s offer.
Staying in Anchorage was cheaper, but the lengthy drive and subsequent cost to travel to Moose Springs didn’t make the cheaper rooms worth it. Here in Moose Springs, Zoey wasn’t near the mountains. She was standing on one. Zoey wasn’t going to see the wildlife. Wildlife crisscrossed this town like an opening credit for the Discovery Channel, moose wandering across the roads, along the streets, poking their noses out from the tree lines everywhere.
A couch in a luxury suite might be where Zoey was staying, but she would have slept in a bear-proof dumpster to be here.
Zoey already knew her carefully planned budget would only go so far, but as she stepped out of the elevator and saw the closed entrance to one of the resort’s internationally touted five-diamond restaurants, curiosity got the best of her. A glass case built into the river rock wall displayed the menu. Pushing her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose, she stared at a piece of paper containing only a handful of dishes she even knew.
“Looks like I could afford the side salad.” Shaking her head in bemusement, she glanced lower down the page to the chef’s choice seven-course meal. The price listed pulled a loud and unplanned choking noise from her throat.
“Ma’am? May I help you find something?”
A maid with the wildest mass of curly honey-blond hair beamed at her from behind an enormous stack of towels in her arms, both woman and towels dangerously close to tumbling over.
The badge on her chest read “Hi, I’m Quinn, your Hospitality Specialist.”
“Oh…umm. I’m just…”
“If you’re hungry, there’s a great breakfast served in the—ooooh!” With a squeal, Quinn ducked and swerved, rebalancing the towels as they leaned even farther.
“Do you need help with those? I can carry some if you want.”
Quinn stared at her, eyes widening. Zoey found herself staring back, unaccustomed to seeing so much of another human being’s eyeballs.
“You?” She squeaked. “Help me?”
“Maybe?”
The leaning tower of towels was about to topple, so Zoey grabbed the ones at the top of the stack while Quinn the hospitality specialist still considered her options.
“Thank you.” Decision made, Quinn breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re dangerously close to being out of towels. I would have gotten in so much trouble for dropping these. They’re the special towels.”
“You have special towels?”
“Special guests require special towels. Erm, not that all our guests aren’t special. But you know…”
“What’s a hospitality specialist?” Zoey asked curiously.
“It’s their fancy way of saying I’m the maid for the high-profile guests.” Quinn made a playful face. “It’s still cleaning up people’s crap no matter how you spell it.” Already widened eyes widened even further, a deer in the headlights look if Zoey had ever seen one. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, hahahaha.”
Some laughs made everyone else want to join in too. This was not one of those laughs. This was a glance around the immediate vicinity, just a little too loud, awkward kind of laugh. Zoey was tempted to save Quinn from herself by clamping a hand over her mouth.
“I heard nothing,” Zoey promised, mimicking zipping her lip. “Where are we taking these?”
“Up to the top. Here, this way.”
Following Quinn down a series of hallways to a staff elevator, Zoey balanced her own towels as Quinn used a staff keycard for access. She hit the button for the penthouse suite.
“I didn’t bring you up here,” Quinn said, dropping her voice conspiratorially. “Hannah would kill me.”
“Hannah?”
“The hotel night manager. Technically, Mrs. Harris is the general manager, but everyone knows Hannah’s actually in charge. We’re all just waiting for Mrs. Harris to croak.” A naughty snicker escaped around the pillar of towels. “She might have already. Mrs. Harris spends all her time napping in her office with the door closed.”
Zoey opened her mouth to say something, but Quinn soldiered on cheerfully.
“The guest list is crazy. We’re usually full up during peak season, but there’s never been so many high-profile guests in the resort at the same time. And they all need something special.” Quinn glanced at her from behind cotton. “Not that we mind. Our jobs are to keep everyone happy.”
“There’s a silent ‘but’ in there,” Zoey said, squishing her towels to see what made them so special.
“But it’s nice when there’s only a handful of you know what’s in the hotel at once. They’re running me ragged.” Quinn made another face, her eyes crinkling in mischief. “At least the tips are good.”
Considering Zoey’s profession as a career waitress, she could appreciate a strong tipper. A few more of them and she might have made it here a couple of years sooner.
The elevator door opened to a private hallway entrance, the staff elevator doors hidden from view at the end of the hall, blending into the décor so no one would notice the elevator—or the people working there. When they stepped into the penthouse suite, Zoey’s jaw dropped. Between the massive stone fireplace and a kitchen bigger than her place back home, the suite was the perfect combination of cozy, rustic opulence and space, with window after window revealing an utterly spectacular view of the Chugach Mountains.