Oh, God, she wanted him to have meant it.
“Bellamy?” Shane’s dark gaze rested on her face. He’d stopped in the doorframe, eyes crinkling in what looked like concern.
She pasted on a too-bright smile and scrambled for her wits. “Sorry, I’m slow to wake up sometimes. You were saying?” She brushed an errant curl from her face and tucked it behind her ear, fully dressed except for the tiny slip of lace and string surreptitiously balled up in her fist. Shane’s eyes swept over her hand, and his jaw ticked under tight muscles.
“I just said to help yourself to whatever you need in the bathroom.” He gestured to the narrow door right outside the bedroom, but didn’t move otherwise.
Bellamy’s bare feet whispered over the floorboards as she rushed to escape. “Right. I won’t be long, and then we can head out.”
“Stop.”
Her feet ignored her brain’s command to go anyway, bringing her body to an abrupt halt at the foot of the bed and giving her no choice but to look at Shane.
“This is about what I said last night, isn’t it.” There wasn’t even a hint of a question in his voice, and his black-coffee eyes were on her, steady and unnervingly hot.
She took a breath. “Look, it’s really no big deal for me to stay at the resort. If you think I should. If you want me to, I mean.” Ugh! She really needed to work on quality control with her common sense.
Shane lifted a sable brow. “Truth?”
“Of course.” Bellamy fought back the waver in the words.
“I want you to stay.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You do?”
He nodded, stepping in. “Yeah. We have four days before I’ll be done with your transmission. I don’t know what’ll happen after that, but I do know that until then, I don’t want you to go.”
His honesty startled her. “I’d really like that.”
“Good. Stay the four days with me, and we’ll figure the rest out when your car is done.” Shane’s eyes sparkled under the sooty frame of his lashes. He dipped his head to place a kiss on her neck, the softness of his lips canceled out by the brush of stubble on his chin. “Just…don’t go.”
Bellamy steadied her hands and slipped them under Shane’s chin, lifting it to look him straight in the eye.
“Okay. I won’t go.”
“Okee dokee…darks over here, whites over…here.” Bellamy rooted through the suitcase she’d propped open on top of an oversized wash basin. “And racy underwear over here.” One corner of her mouth lifted as she reached into her purse for the scrap of lace and string that she might consider wearing again, just for the look it had put on Shane’s face.
She’d been eternally grateful to find a small Laundromat in the basement of the resort, and although she had a sneaking suspicion it was reserved for staff, her need for clean clothes outweighed her fear of getting busted using their facilities. Even in spite of the fact that she was checking out in a matter of hours.
Bellamy filled two of the four washing machines in the tiny basement room, feeding them with the requisite amount of quarters and laundry detergent she’d gotten at the resort’s gift shop. Once her clothes were doing the swishy-samba with the water and bubbles, she plunked herself into the only chair in the cramped space.
“No time like the present,” she said quietly, and popped open her laptop. Before her conscience or common sense could stop her, she pecked culinary schools in Philadelphia into the search engine and hit Enter.
“Two hundred forty-six thousand hits? Are you kidding me?” Her breath left her lungs in a burst of no-freaking-way as she scanned the list.
Well, at least she had options.
Forty-five minutes and two spin cycles later, she’d scribbled a page and a half’s worth of meticulous notes on a legal pad. Culling through the list was proving easier than she’d thought, and had yielded a handful of very viable options.
Provided she had the balls to follow through on applying.
A loud crash just outside the open doorframe brought her to full attention. Bellamy scrambled into the narrow service hallway, where she found a well-muscled, platinum-blonde brick wall of a man, wearing chef’s whites and cursing up a blue streak at the plates and serving tray littering the ground.
“Are you okay?” she asked, bending down to help collect the dishes. “Wow, it looks like you got lucky. I don’t think any of them broke.” Bellamy glanced at the scattering of kitchenware on the thin layer of carpet lining the hallway.
The stormy hazel glare she got in return made her regret opening her mouth. The guy flipped the tray over and filled it with startling efficiency, looking more at her than at the clean dishes he was stacking.
“Am I okay? Well, let’s see. I’ve been waiting for a produce shipment for over twenty-four hours, my boss, bless her dark little heart, expects the impossible, and don’t even get me started on the sorry excuse for wanna-be line cooks cowering in that kitchen. Apparently, it’s too much to expect that even one of them might be able to break down a chicken without destroying the fucking thing. Hell, at this point, I doubt that half of them can even wash dishes with much success.”
By the time his tirade was done, he’d righted the tray under his massive hands and stood up to rake his cold gaze over her. “I don’t suppose you’re any good at washing dishes and have a couple hours to kill? It would make you the bright spot of my shit morning.”
Bellamy narrowed her eyes at him. She didn’t care that she didn’t know this guy. No way was she going to let some hard-edged kitchen jockey bully her around.
“Of course I can wash dishes,” she shot back, thinking for only a split second before putting a hand on her hip and matching his attitude. “But I’m better at breaking down a chicken.”
Brick Wall’s dark eyebrows kicked up in the direction of his bottle-platinum hair, and Bellamy noticed that one of them had a stainless steel barbell pierced through it. Shit. She just had to go and get mouthy with a guy who looked like the human equivalent of a bulldozer, didn’t she?
“You can de-bone a chicken?” Brick Wall’s expression clearly suggested he thought she was full of crap. He frowned for added emphasis.
Bellamy stood as tall as possible without rising onto her tiptoes even though her heart had taken up permanent residence in her throat. “Yup.”
He gave her a frosty stare, and ohhhhkay, this had been a bad idea. She took a quiet half-step backwards. Maybe she could get back to her laundry and her Google search unscathed if she just shut her mouth and went now. Never mind that she really could break down a chicken, and use it to make twenty different dishes, to boot.
“Well, what’re you waiting for, Sunshine? Believe me when I tell you I don’t have all day.” He jerked his head down the hallway marked Staff Only, and Bellamy creased her brow in response.
“But I’m not…I don’t work here,” Bellamy stammered, willing her bravado back to the mother ship. She fastened him with an uneasy look. She couldn’t just go marching around in the resort’s kitchen, could she?
Brick Wall cracked a wicked smile. “Technically, I don’t either. Not yet, anyway. Look, I’m weeded up to my armpits, so really. If you wanna put your mayo where your mouth is, now’s the time. Otherwise, I’m a ghost.”