Blue Steal Read online

  ‘No problem, Jenny.’ Hailey was quite pretty when she wasn’t terrified.

  ‘Righto! I’ll get my things packed up and then the desk can go.’ Jenny turned to leave.

  ‘Wait.’ A light of hope came into Hailey’s eyes. ‘You’re all done? You mean, everyone’s registered already?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But what about …’ Her eyes dropped to the screen and her fingers fluttered across the keyboard. ‘What about Janice Green? I have her booked in as a conference guest and she hasn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Hailey. I should have let you know earlier. I had an email from Janice this morning. Her mother’s had a stroke and she won’t be able to attend.’

  ‘That’s great!’ Hailey exclaimed.

  Selina caught Jenny’s frown and then somehow Jack’s eye. They exchanged a quick grin.

  ‘I mean, that’s terrible but …’ Hailey looked so relieved she was almost crying. This time, Selina knew she was going to love the next words out of Hailey’s mouth. ‘Ms Migliore, I have a room for you.’

  ‘Excellent, Hailey. I knew you’d be able to resolve the situation.’

  She reached into her handbag to fish out her purse. The sooner she got that room key the better.

  ‘Wait a minute. How can registration be over if Ms Migliore hasn’t registered yet?’ Jack, pointing out something she was hoping no one would notice.

  Selina froze. Hot or not, right now, she would have happily strangled the man at her side. Didn’t he have something better to do than hang around making trouble for her?

  ‘You’re attending the conference?’ asked Jenny, looking confused.

  What now? Cover. Cover like mad. ‘Yes. Maybe. I only heard about it last week and I was hoping to get in last-minute. I sent an email but I didn’t hear anything back. I turned up on the off-chance you could squeeze me in.’

  ‘You sent an email last week?’ Jenny still looked confused. ‘Oh, I bet it’s that damn university spam filter again. It diverts half my emails. Drives me almost crazy.’

  Thank you, Jenny!

  ‘Climatology or entomology?’ Jenny queried, her face all open warmth.

  Lord help her! She couldn’t fake it as either of those things for longer than ten seconds. ‘Neither. I’m actually …’ Bugs and heat waves, bugs and heat waves … ‘About to start post-grad work on butterflies … What they symbolise to, um … different cultures … And … what we’d lose if they vanished due to climate change.’

  Did that sound okay? Judging by the totally confounded look Jenny was giving her, maybe not. It was the best she could do under pressure.

  And then Jenny’s face cleared, and she was beaming at her. ‘An Arts student! We were hoping for interdisciplinary collaboration, but this is fantastic!’

  It was smiles all around. Until she got to Jack.

  She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Not one little bit. It was like he knew. Not just that she’d made up that convoluted fake research topic, but everything. The real reason she needed to stay at the Empire. The smile dropped from her lips.

  ‘Good on you for looking at the science first,’ Jenny continued, and Selina forced her gaze away from Jack’s. ‘I feel confident in saying this is a perfect way for you to start your studies. I have a few people in mind already to introduce you to.’

  ‘Great,’ she said. The less networking she did, the better.

  ‘Of course we can squeeze you in. Come with me and we’ll sort out your registration.’

  And then it hit her—she was going to have to pay. ‘I’ve forgotten, how much does the conference cost?’

  ‘You’re a student, aren’t you? Or soon to be? I can give you the concession price of six hundred and fifty dollars.’

  Ouch. She’d better find what she was looking for or this was going to be one expensive failure. ‘Great.’

  ‘Finish up here, then come on over.’

  Selina turned back to Hailey, ready to sort out registration. Jack gave her a final knowing smirk and slung his bag higher over his shoulder. ‘Nice meeting you, Jack,’ she said.

  That white lightning smile, devastating and dangerous. ‘See you round, bella.’

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, Selina had registered for her first ever academic conference.

  ‘And here’s your folder.’ Jenny passed a green ring-binder across the desk. ‘A session timetable, copies of the papers and a list of delegates are inside. Why don’t you take it and your suitcase up to your room, then come back down for a cocktail? Our pre-conference function is starting right about now.’

  How about she didn’t? How about she stayed in her room and planned how to find and steal a priceless antique necklace?

  ‘Sounds great. I’ll be down in five.’ Another bald-faced lie. She didn’t like having to deceive such a nice woman, but it couldn’t be helped.

  She started across the lobby to the lifts, releasing the breath it felt like she’d been holding since the moment she’d arrived. All up, she could think of better ways to start what was going to be a challenging couple of days. She had the room now, thank goodness, but she still had a lot of work in front of her. It’d be worth it though if it worked.

  This was it—her shot to make life better for her sister, and she’d do anything—anything—to make that happen. Even take a crazy chance that her grandmother knew what she was talking about for once. If she did, and everything went to plan, Selina would be walking out of here a million dollars richer and nobody the wiser Tuesday morning.

  She pulled up in a sudden stop when the corridor she’d seen Jack emerge from earlier came into view. It was long and wide, with wood panelling stretching up the bottom half of the walls and closed doors lining each side. Behind those doors were offices and storage areas, including the linen room. The room she had to get into. At the end was another door, leading outside, with an exquisite stained glass window above letting in the last of the evening light.

  None of it looked that special, but it had meaning to her. It was where her grandfather had taken his last breath, when Selina’s mother had still been a peanut in her nonna’s belly. And out of her current line of sight, towards the end of the corridor, she knew she’d find a staircase, the servant’s stairs, leading up to the first floor, where nonna had lived.

  She had intended to go straight up to her room. Deposit her suitcase, freshen up, maybe call home again, just to check everything was okay. Then turn her attention to the task at hand, check and re-check her strategy for flaws.

  But it called to her. This hotel called to her.

  Maybe she could do a little exploring first. It was too risky to start any serious work right now, but the more feel she had for the layout of the hotel, the more confident she’d be when the time for real action came.

  She looked behind her. Jenny was still at the desk, busy packing folders back into boxes, Hailey couldn’t see Selina from here, and there was no one else around. She smiled. Talk about paranoid. Why was she even checking? She wouldn’t be doing anything wrong by walking along this corridor.

  She entered quickly and quietly. One hand tugging her suitcase behind her, the other trailing along the panelled wall, she breathed in deeply, and got the must and incense of one-hundred years. Every place had its own smell, and unaccountably, this one smelled like home.

  It shouldn’t. She’d only been to the Empire once before. Thirteen years ago, needing to see the place that “should have been hers”, hiding her nerves under a show of early teen bravado, she’d bustled her way into the lobby. She’d convinced herself that once inside something would happen. Something magical. Something extraordinary. She’d stood, stared about her, waiting. Eventually the doorman had approached and asked if she’d needed assistance. She’d turned on her heel and walked straight out.

  So why the home sweet homes?

  Maybe because the Empire had always featured so prominently in Selina’s life. Her nonna had only worked at the hote
l for six months, but her entire life had been shaped by her time here. Selina had heard stories about this place and its inhabitants since she was in diapers. Not that most of them were true, as she’d found out last week, when her nonna had finally told her what really happened.

  As much as nonna knew, anyway.

  And there it was. The narrow staircase leading to the first floor, allocated to housing the help in the days when all maids lived-in. Picking up her suitcase, Selina started climbing.

  Like the stairs, the first-floor hall was dark, narrow and much less ornate than the rest of the hotel. As befitted its purpose. Walking past a stretch of closed doors, she wondered which room had been nonna’s. She tried to imagine her grandmother emerging from one in her maid uniform, still young and hopeful, ready for a day’s work.

  Selina knew she gave nonna a hard time sometimes, she was so fragile and forgetful, but she hadn’t had it easy. Alone at sixteen, a new migrant with limited English, she’d fallen in love and wound up pregnant. A good Catholic girl, from Sicily, no less—she’d probably had no idea about the facts of life. And she’d been very beautiful. Selina knew that, though there weren’t many traces of it left now. She’d seen the photo of nonna’s wedding day, a few months after she’d left here. A shot-gun marriage to a man who wasn’t the father of the baby in her belly.

  Andrew, Selina’s biological grandfather, had also lived in this hotel. The whole Holloway family had. Not down here, in these cramped, dingy quarters. Upstairs, in one of the glamorous penthouse suites. But then, the Holloways owned the hotel.

  She pulled up sharp, heart beating faster, when she saw a little wooden door, like the entrance to a gnome’s house, chest height, sitting flush in the wall. The dumb waiter, another piece of the puzzle. She reached, took hold of the knob and slid the door up.

  It was dark inside. A dark so absolute it seemed like more than just the absence of light. Selina couldn’t help leaning forward, trying to peer in, see down.

  This is where nonna had flung the ring. The ‘engagement’ ring Andrew Holloway had pressed into her hand, before running off into the night. Minutes later, nonna had heard a gunshot from below, and she’d known the ring could only bring trouble. So she’d consigned it to the bowels of the hotel, where it had lay hidden for fifty years. Until last week, when it was turned up in pre-demolition works. And here Selina was—

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be downstairs playing icebreakers?’

  Chapter 2

  Selina jumped at Jack’s words, jerking back from the shaft. Her head whipped around to face him, green-and-gold eyes huge in a newly pale face.

  It struck Jack in that instant that it was perfect Selina studied butterflies, because that’s what she reminded him of, all jewel tones and lush velvety textures. Bright and exotic – all the more in contrast with the dim, drab space around her.

  ‘You sure have a way of sneaking up on a girl,’ she said with a bravado he wasn’t convinced she was feeling.

  ‘Not my intention.’ He hadn’t meant to startle her. She’d been totally lost in her own world.

  Selina squared her shoulders and pasted a smile on her face. She also took a couple of steps back—more than the usual distance required between strangers—and placed her suitcase between them. Classic defensive body language, even if she didn’t realise she was doing it. ‘Jack, right? What are you doing up here?’

  Good question. One he could easily throw back at her.

  He’d been intending to grab a quick bite to eat. Dumplings maybe, given how close they were to Chinatown. When he’d reached the lobby he’d seen a flick of choc-caramel hair and a small red suitcase disappearing around the corner. He’d followed.

  He was a private investigator. Call it instinct.

  Who was he kidding?

  Selina Migliore was the bombshell of the century. Call it lust.

  ‘I saw you heading this way.’

  ‘You know stalking’s illegal, right?’ Sassy enough words, sassy enough tone, but the whites of her knuckles were showing as she gripped the handle of her suitcase.

  She wasn’t really worried he meant her harm, was she? Not savvy, self-assured Selina.

  ‘Not stalking,’ he said smoothly. ‘Just concerned for your welfare. After everything that happened earlier—the misallocated room, the late registration for the conference … I wanted to check it all worked out in the end.’

  Her gaze narrowed. ‘How sweet. You’ll be pleased to hear that everything is right on track. I won’t be taking you up on your generous offer to share accommodation.’ She made a show of glancing at the elegant gold watch on her wrist. A watch that looked a great deal more expensive than it was. Little details he always noticed. ‘But now, I should—’

  ‘I take it you’re here because of what happened last week?’ he interrupted. Maybe it was just libido, but he wasn’t quite ready to let her go yet. He wasn’t in the habit of second-guessing his instincts.

  Her body tensed, her eyes grew wary, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she grew a little paler. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.

  Well, well, well, what do we have here?

  Intrigued by her reaction, he clarified. ‘You were having a good look down that shaft because of the ring they found last week.’

  It took her a second to process. ‘Oh. Right. Yes. I remember something about that on the news. I didn’t really follow the story.’

  So what was she doing up here checking out the dumbwaiter?

  He’d watched Selina in action earlier. She’d been determined—pushy, one could even say—and articulate. At this moment, she wasn’t either of those things. She was scrambling.

  That was interesting. Like the fact that she was up here at all was interesting.

  He watched her, waiting. Sometimes all you needed was to give people enough rope …

  Not Selina. She pulled herself together, arms across her chest, gold medal smile back in place. ‘Emeralds, wasn’t it?’

  Cheeky. ‘Sapphires,’ he corrected, playing along. ‘An amazing find. Jewellery—a ring and a necklace— was stolen from the hotel safe fifty years ago, presumed long gone. The initial stages of demolition work start and the ring is found at the bottom of this old shaft.’

  ‘Amazing,’ she agreed.

  ‘You’re not familiar with the story? It’s fascinating—be a shame to miss the details.’

  She shrugged, non-committal and nonchalant, but she was watching him closely. Like he was watching her.

  ‘The necklace and the ring form an incredibly valuable set known as the Petrovsky sapphires. Smuggled by the Petrovskys out of Imperial Russia over a hundred years ago.’

  ‘Imperial Russia? How romantic.’ Delivered in a tone of insufferable boredom, with another glance at her watch to boot.

  ‘The Petrovskys settled in the UK,’ he continued, ‘and brought the set with them to Australia when they came to hear Dame Lewinsky’s final performance. La Traviata, I believe.’

  She made a face. ‘I hate opera.’

  ‘Surely that’s a betrayal of your Italian roots.’

  ‘What makes you so sure I’m Italian?’

  ‘Your name. Migliore.’ The dark hair and golden skin. The curves. Monica Belluci, eat your heart out. ‘In any case, nothing had been heard of the jewellery since, until the ring was discovered last week,’ he finished up, taking a step forward and peering into the depths of dumbwaiter shaft before stepping back and drawing down the wooden door. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Maybe the necklace is still here too, somewhere in this building.’

  He studied her face, but there was nothing to see.

  ‘Fascinating thought,’ she replied coolly, with a final glance at her watch. ‘I hate to be rude, but I have a phone call to make.’

  ‘And the conference cocktail party to attend, of course,’ he added. When he’d walked past the ballroom downstairs, the room was starting to fill and someone with a microphone was saying something about icebreakers. Selina should be ther
e, right? Given how hard she’d fought to stay in this hotel so she could network, she should be well into her second Singapore Sling by now.

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed lightly. ‘Ciao. Bello.’

  With that, she turned, headed back down the corridor, hips swaying in tailored black trousers, suitcase rolling along at her side. At the last moment, she looked over her shoulder, as if to check he was watching.

  Of course he was watching.

  ‘Emeralds, wasn’t it?’

  No.

  And Selina had known it.

  ***

  An hour later, full of dumplings, Jack dropped onto the small, shabby bed of his small, shabby room, and marvelled at how the mattress managed to be simultaneously too soft and full of hard lumps. And yet, once, the Empire had been the height of glamour—it must have been, to host the Petrovsky family. He’d only interacted with his clients once, via a conference call to the UK, but they hadn’t struck him as likely to accept second-rate anything.

  At one point in his life, he mused, he would have taken a room like this as a personal insult. Proof that someone had seen past the carefully constructed façade to the truth, and judged him as lacking. Unworthy.

  He liked to think he was past that now, but he didn’t have to enjoy the mould on the ceiling.

  Once again, his thoughts strayed back to Selina. Was she in a room just like this one, talking to whoever it was she had to call?

  Boyfriend? Husband?

  He grimaced. Girl like that, got to have someone.

  Not for the first time, his mind graced him with a replay of the first time he’d seen her. About to enter through the grand doors to the Empire, he’d felt a compulsion to turn, and there she’d been, walking towards him like some kind of exotic cat, all languid sensuality and erotic promise. Long waves of chocolate-caramel hair, gold-flecked green eyes, creamy gold skin and killer killer curves.

  Mesmerising. And damn distracting.

  He should forget about Selina. There was one reason and one reason only for his stay at the Empire, and it had nothing to do with gorgeous brunettes. He had some jewels to find.