Revelations: The Black Chalice (Revelations Series Book 1) Read online

  I sipped at my drink. It was sweet and delicious, and the little bit of champagne tingled at me, ironing out my bad mood.

  My dream last night had unsettled me. It hadn’t even been a bad dream. Just… unusual. The angel and the demon had been so vivid, so hyper-realistic. It had left a strange, wistful feeling inside of me.

  Urgh, what the hell was wrong with me? I groaned at myself out loud, and earned myself a raised eyebrow from Toby. Was I hormonal? Getting my period? I wasn’t usually this… maudlin. When Aunt Margot had gotten hold of me at thirteen years old, and I was released into her custody, she said I was the toughest little kitten she’d seen since herself. I’d taken it as a compliment.

  And that’s why I didn’t understand why Martin called me innocent. Sure, I definitely looked innocent.

  I picked up one of the shiny coasters on the bar and glanced at my reflection. It was probably my eyes that did it - they were wide and far too big, with warm-brown irises, and a thick fringe of lashes. Or my hair, which was long and thick, and a rich chocolate-brown.

  Despite being a little apprehensive about my appearance, I definitely liked my skin the best. It was smooth and very creamy and clear. I ran a finger along my cheekbone, silently appraising, then slid it down my neck, and, as usual, I cringed when I hit a scar on my neck.

  Innocent, indeed. I was lucky it was such a small scar. I was lucky.

  I took a deep breath, squashing the bad memories inside of me once more, and picked up my drink. It was meant to be cheering me up, not bringing me down. I took a big gulp, draining half, and glanced around for something to lift my mood.

  There was always something around here to cheer you up. You’d think that if you were around so much wealth and extravagance, you’d be jealous. But the opposite was usually true. To prove my point, my gaze found a couple at the far end of the pool—a man, dark-tanned and so wrinkly that his skin resembled the hide of an elephant. His female companion was at least thirty years younger, and she was being kept afloat by her enormous fake breasts. They both giggled as the man rested his head on one of them.

  I was glad I wasn’t either of them. Sure, my life had been a disaster so far, but I was happy now. My job was secure, my friends were amazing, I lived amongst wealth and extravagance, but I wasn’t ever going to be spoiled by it, because every day I saw that money didn’t make you happy.

  But I was happy. Usually, anyway. Why couldn’t I shake this weird feeling?

  I checked my phone – my fifteen minutes was up. I looked back down at my mimosa, lifted it, and chugged it. That should do the trick. I should be good until 5:00 a.m., when me, Clover and Dale could hit the staff bar.

  Clover was at the reception desk when I got back. She gave me a huge grin, but quickly stifled it and tried to look scolding. “Really, Eve? Fat-shaming?”

  I hung my head. “I know, I know. Martin already told me off for that. Out of all things about her I could have had a crack at, it was the easiest target.”

  Clover smiled and threw her dark-auburn hair back over her shoulder. “Yes, you could have had your pick of any one of Mrs. Crocker’s car-crash personality disorders. You’re so lucky she didn’t process it. You gotta pick something that slips through the comprehension, but just sticky enough that they’ll bring it back up later on and wonder… was she sassing me?”

  “I know. Martin is disappointed in me. I’m going to have to re-take that NLP course that he made me go on in September.”

  Clover put her pretty head to one side. “You know you’ve already got it in you. You just have to work a bit harder at it.”

  “I really don’t think I have anything in there, Clo.”

  “You do. You’re a big bundle of potential. You’ve got that look, a sort-of… innocence, an etherealness, it makes people think yelling at you would be the same as telling off an angel.”

  Clover’s words rang in my head, and instantly, I had a vision of that blond man in my dream, the angel. But he didn’t look innocent. He looked vibrant and passionate and overwhelmingly desirable. A wave of heat flushed through me.

  What was wrong with me? I must be coming down with something. Surreptitiously, I put my hand on my forehead to see if I was running a fever.

  Luckily, Clover kept talking. “You’ve got to find a way to make that work for you. You’ve got to exploit it, really work it. Pull it out, make it zing, put that flash in your personality that blinds the guests a little bit.”

  “Give them the old razzle-dazzle, huh?”

  “Exactly. We’ve all got our speciality. Dale is so sweet and has that adorable little-brother thing going on. Martin is the smoothest liar on this green earth, and he’s so slippery he makes a banana peel seem like velcro. And me, well…”

  “You’re lovely.”

  “Yes I am. But you can say it, Eve. I’m a flirt.”

  “Yes, but you’re an equal opportunity flirt. You flirt with both men and women.”

  “I only sleep with the men, though.”

  I let the silence linger for a moment and gave her my best side-eye while I tapped on my keyboard. I waited.

  It wasn’t long before she mumbled under her breath. “Okay, there was that backup dancer from Beyonce’s tour…”

  “And what about that Canadian soap star? Or even that French cabinet minister’s wife... ”

  “Oh Eve, you would have too, she was so hot.”

  I grinned. “See, you’re an equal opportunity flirt.”

  It wasn’t against the rules to sleep with the Revelations guests, as long as it caused zero drama. Clover absolutely loved this perk of employment, and with her Jessica Rabbit curves and her heavy come-hither gaze, she put both to good use to satisfy her voracious sexual appetite. She kept pretty quiet about it, still slightly uncomfortable about owning her sexuality as a woman.

  Her cheeks grew pink. “It’s bad enough that I want to jump ninety percent of the good-looking men that walk in here. I can’t be shagging all the hot women too.”

  “Well, you should.” Dale slipped around the side of the reception desk and joined us. “‘Cause honey, you know me and Eve ain’t interested.”

  I had never been curious about Dale’s sexual orientation. Upon meeting him, I knew immediately that he was gay. The same with Martin. Straight men scare the crap out of me, and I avoid them wherever possible.

  It’s not their fault, it’s mine.

  Dale had come out to me over a few early-morning cocktails in the staff bar after a tough shift. But he was still slightly uncomfortable with it. He’d indulged in a few trysts with guests since I’d been working with him. But he had nothing on Clover.

  Now that we’d worked together for a while, we all knew each other well, and there were no judgements. Both of them knew my story, and they were good enough friends to change the subject before I felt obliged to say something about the topic of sex myself.

  “So.” Dale rolled his chair over toward me and gave me a friendly bump. “Did you tell Clover about fat-shaming Mrs. Crocker?”

  “I assumed you did.”

  “No, Martin told me,” Clover said. “He was worried.” A slight shadow passed over her eternally-cheerful face. “It’s not like you to be so bitchy. And you know what would happen if one of the guests complained.”

  Everyone knew. The hospitality at Revelations was second-to-none, so if a guest complained about being insulted, you could expect to be fired immediately.

  At Revelations, it was the only thing that was unforgivable. As long as you were off-duty, you could bang a rock star and his entire entourage, you could get drunk with senators and dance naked in the pool with CEOs, you could accept all the crazy, extravagant tips they could throw at you, but if you said one thing to make them feel like they weren’t the most important, most cherished people in the world, well, you’d find yourself in the unemployment line pretty quick.

  “And I’m not even normally like that,” I mumbled to myself. “I don’t even insult people who aren’t our guests.�
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  “That’s why Martin was worried.”

  I frowned. “I think I’m just tired. I tossed and turned a bit last night.”

  Dale gave me a quick hug with one arm, while he kept typing with his other hand. “Your guard was down. Mrs. Crocker was being a grade-A bitch. Sometimes, someone slips past our guard.”

  “Uh huh,” Clover nodded, then looked up and smiled demurely at two gentlemen who crossed the lobby on the way to the squash court. One of them shot her a wink. As soon as they were gone, she turned back to me and grinned again. “Well, that woman probably deserved a smack on her rump, to be honest. I heard her yelling at her assistant as she was leaving. I’m so glad she’s the exception to the rule.”

  Clover was right. For the most part, our guests, although excessively rich, were well-mannered and polite. There were only a handful who would give you a hard time. And, like Martin consistently demonstrated, there was a way of handling them. It usually involved lying through your teeth, but it worked.

  I clicked away on my computer for a few minutes. One of the owners of the Grand Prix was due to check out any minute, so I’d have to be prepared. Even though it was just after midnight, the hotel operated exactly the same as it would in the daytime. Our clients didn’t really do time zones, and they buzzed in from all over the world at any time.

  And, like a lot of obscenely rich people, the guy that was due to check out was a total tightass. He would expect a detailed and itemized tax invoice, displaying everything he was charged for so he could write it off on expenses.

  I got to work, reconciling and itemizing everything he had been through. I had to change the formatting on one of our templates since he had worked through his entire mini-bar a few times over. Dale and Clover started an argument over whose turn it was to see if one of our oldest guests was still alive.

  “Can’t we send one of the maids?” Dale pouted. “She always grins at me like she’s going to eat me.”

  “She probably would,” Clover replied, “if she could move fast enough. You look delicious.” She poked him in the belly.

  “Please, Clo,” he begged. “She’s got all those stories, and I’ve heard all of them already. Many times.”

  I tuned them out. Eventually, Dale must have won, because Clover swung her hips around the reception desk and bounced off towards the elevators.

  “Ha,” Dale murmured as he brought up a list of the night’s check-ins to go through. “I actually like Mrs. Tover’s stories, but she’s got a doozy about when she hooked up with an Italian resistance leader just after the war. Clover’s going to love that one.”

  I turned and smiled fondly at him. “You bullied Clover into checking on Mrs. Tover so she could have fun and listen to a nice story?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “Of course!”

  “You’re such a sweetheart. You’re totally adorkable.”

  His face fell. “Please don’t call me that.”

  “It’s a compliment!”

  “It makes me sound like a simpleton.”

  “You are a simpleton,” I muttered under my breath, but I grinned while I did it so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

  We got back to work in companionable silence. I finished the invoice I was putting together for Mr. Grand Prix and pressed print, but nothing happened.

  “Goddammit,” I muttered, and gave the machine by my feet a little kick. It was temperamental and needed coaxing, just like every other printer on the planet. Dale and I had a theory: Based on the fact that it was often cheaper to buy a whole new printer rather than buy new ink cartridges, it was clear that printers were probably the quality of a Happy Meal toy. Despite having top-of-the-range tech at Revelations, our printer remained stubborn and recalcitrant.

  It looked like it was jammed. I sighed, got off my high stool, and bent down to open the little drawers and rummage around inside.

  “Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?” Dale sang out. He got up off his chair and turned to the filing cabinet behind him.

  I muttered an insult under my breath, trying to wrestle a shredded bit of invoice out of the printer’s grasp. I heard the front doors slide open, then heavy footsteps, becoming louder. The footsteps stopped in front of the reception desk.

  A guest had arrived. Whoever it was, they were either late or very early.

  Still wrestling with the paper, I twisted my head up to see if Dale would look after whoever had just shown up, but he was head-and-shoulders deep in the filing cabinet. Muttering, I pushed myself up from my hands and knees and quickly put a bright smile on my face, ready to give our guest the perfect Revelations welcome.

  I popped up from behind the reception desk like a genie, and the smile dropped off my face when I realized who it was.

  I knew him instantly.

  My mouth dropped open. So tall. Vast shoulders, bulging arms, and broad chest. All clad in a perfectly tailored, light-blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, muscular forearms. Tousled, shoulder-length, dark-blonde hair, stubble over a chiseled jaw. Ice-blue eyes with a laser focus.

  “You’re the angel!” I blurted. The words were out before I could stop myself.

  His eyes widened slightly in surprise.

  A rush of blood came to my cheeks immediately; I clapped a hand over my mouth, horrified. There was a long, long moment of silence.

  The gorgeous man frowned and cocked his head to the side ever so slightly. I’d surprised him. But instantly, he composed himself. One side of his beautiful mouth curled up in a smirk, and in a soft, deep, rumbling voice, he murmured, “Oh, no, honey. No. I’m not the angel.”

  Chapter Three

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled, my cheeks burning scarlet. “I don’t know why I said that. So, um… welcome to Revelations. Are you checking in?”

  The man tilted his head back, regarding me for a moment. I squirmed under his gaze. It felt like several hours went by before he finally spoke again. “Yes, I have a reservation.”

  “Under what name?” My hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t get the cursor of the mouse to stay still.

  “Sorensen. Alex Sorensen.”

  Every word that came out of his mouth rumbled straight through me like a mini-earthquake. I lifted my eyes from my computer screen to look at him.

  That was a mistake. He was staring at me as if I’d done something interesting, a slight smile on his face. And oh, that face! I knew it so well already. I’d studied every plane, every bit of stubble, every muscle that moved under his tan skin.

  But it was clearly obvious that he’d never seen me before in his life.

  I was in deep trouble here. First, the mess with Mrs. Crocker, and now this.

  I tore my eyes away from his gorgeous face and clicked a few buttons on the computer, trying to get the right screen up while my brain screamed curses at me.

  He was still staring at me; I could feel his icy-blue eyes boring into my soul. But I couldn’t seem to make my voice work. Or my body. My brain had obviously given up the moment he walked in. I kept my gaze fixed on my computer screen and tried to control my trembling. Every second that ticked by felt like an eternity.

  From several feet away, I heard the filing cabinet snap shut with a bang. I jumped slightly.

  Dale cleared his throat, and I sagged with relief. “Good evening, Mr. Sorensen,” he said. He moved in from my right and picked up the sign-in book that was in front of me. He deftly flicked through the pages until he came to the sheet with Alex’s name on it, placed it on the counter, and smiled warmly. “Welcome to Revelations. We’re so happy you could make it. I hope your journey here was pleasant.”

  “Thank you,” Alex Sorensen said smoothly. “It was very nice. I’ve always loved this part of the world.”

  “Yes, I love it too. We’re very blessed to work in such an amazing location. Will you be visiting the caves?”

  “Of course. The caves are a natural wonder. I can’t wait to explore them at length.”


  He had such a gorgeous voice, deep and full, but soft, like distant thunder. He had an accent, one I couldn’t place. His name was Scandinavian, but he sounded like he came from everywhere.

  I had the whole guest register memorized; it was standard to greet new guests by name as soon as they walked up to the counter for the first time. This beautiful, big Viking was getting the bog-standard Holiday Inn treatment from me.

  I knew the name he’d given. I’d seen it on the register. I knew it was spelled in the Scandinavian way—Aleksander Sorensen. I even knew what he did for a living—he was a bigwig arms dealer of some sort. We normally had a photo next to the name on the register so we could greet the guest personally, but some of the more private guests couldn’t be found on Google Images. We hadn’t had one of Mr. Sorensen. And never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that an arms dealer would look like him.

  The angel from my dreams. Or, not the angel, as he said.

  I risked a peek—he was talking to Dale, but he was still staring at me. My cheeks flushed hot again.

  Dale snapped the register shut and handed him his keycard. “As requested, we’ve reserved the Banksia bungalow for you; it’s right on the perimeter of the resort. Through those doors and follow the path outside. Your luggage will be waiting for you when you get there. I can escort you if you would like me to.”

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

  I finally managed to tear my gaze off my screen and keep it leveled on Alex Sorensen. My heart was thumping so loudly, I was sure he could hear it.

  “Enjoy your stay,” I said in a quavering voice.

  He flicked his eyes back to me, narrowed them slightly, and let his gaze roam around my body. They finally settled on my lips, which were still trembling.

  “Oh,” he said softly. “I intend to, Miss”—his eyes dropped to my nametag, and lingered for a second—“Evangeline.” He said my name in a low rumble, and I quivered. He turned, and without hesitation, he strode toward the glass doors that led to the bungalows outside.