Page 17 of Love’s a Script (Hearts Collide #1)
Chapter Seventeen
Ruben had been on his laptop at the desk next to the TV credenza when Mary returned to the hotel room, announcing, “I’ve got wedding cake!”
“I’m guessing things went well with the search party,” he said as she showcased the stout cylinder covered in pale blue icing.
“Yes, they did,” she said. “You want some?”
He definitely did. It was the first appetizing food in a couple of days. They cleared the table and found an extra chair. They had forks but no plates, so they ate the lemon raspberry cake directly from the serving stand.
“It was complete luck,” she told him, relaying the story of her victory. Ruben listened, enjoying the relaxed talk until Mary paused to recall a detail and held her fork in her mouth. The tines left an impression on her plush bottom lip that Ruben watched slowly clear.
“What?” Mary asked, freezing. She swiped her hand across her mouth. “Do I have icing all over my face?”
“No, you’re good. You got it.” He cleared his throat. “So how do you know the bride and groom again?”
“They’re former clients.”
“Really?” He didn’t mean to sound so shocked, but it was one thing to conceptualize being matched and another to know real people were committing to each other based on a process he was currently going through.
“Yeah, I matched them eighteen months ago.”
“Wow,” he said. “Do you ever set people up in your personal life?”
“I’ve introduced friends who ended up seeing each other for a bit. But my sister is with her high school sweetheart, and my dad is…well, he’s dating.”
The slight edge in Mary’s tone made Ruben ask, “That a bad thing?”
“It’s not, it’s just…” She put her fork down. “My sister and I think he’s being catfished.”
“Why do you suspect that?”
“There are a few red flags and some inconsistencies, but we’re planning to hire a private investigator to make sure.”
Ruben nodded sympathetically, remembering a segment they’d almost included on the show months ago about the increasing sophistication of love scams in the era of artificial intelligence. “If you need a PI recommendation, I know a guy.”
“Thanks, but my sister is putting a list together. We should be all right.” They resumed with the cake in comfortable silence until Mary said, “Oh, before I forget, one of the bridesmaids is interested in you. She’s seen you around the hotel and finds you good-looking.”
Ruben laughed. “All right, um…”
“I can introduce you if you want. I know it’s not an ideal situation, but this wouldn’t be an official match. I don’t have any idea of compatibility, but she seems sweet. She could also turn out to be a complete nightmare.”
Ruben found the idea of a date during a weather emergency unappealing, but if he was going to be trapped in this hotel for more days, it would serve him not to spend so many of them with Mary.
“Okay, I’m down,” he said. “I’ll meet her.”
“Yeah?” Mary asked. “Because there’s no pressure. If you don’t want to?—”
“No, I’ll do it.”
* * *
Mary had expected some resistance from Ruben when it came to introducing him to the bridesmaid.
Hell, part of her was certain he’d say no outright.
The sliver of disappointment his decision roused scared her more than the lust before it.
It was a precursor for territorialism and jealousy, and she refused to go down that path.
She’d introduce Bethany and Ruben tomorrow morning after breakfast and then pray that they’d hit it off.
In the meantime, Mary needed to create space, so after she and Ruben had had their fill of cake, Mary made some excuse to leave the room.
She wandered through the hotel, finding entertainment in watching a several-person guitar jam session she came across in one corridor and then in a chess tournament underway in the lobby.
When she reunited with Ruben at the restaurant for a tasteless dinner of minestrone and crackers, Mary didn’t have to directly address him as the Arizona couple dominated the conversation with their appraisal of the different batteries they’d collected that day.
When the meal was over and Ruben said to Mary, “I’ll give you some privacy to get ready for bed,” she didn’t take the allotted time for granted.
She completed her routine in record time, burying herself under the covers and pretending to be asleep when she heard Ruben enter their room.
There wouldn’t be any chitchat between them tonight.
And after a morning spent pulling a bridal suite apart, it didn’t take long for Mary to drift off.
She slept peacefully, dreamlessly until a few hours after midnight when she was wrenched awake by a blaring alarm.
Another weather alert, she initially believed; however, it was all-consuming, filling the room evenly, and the noise was louder than anything her phone could emit.
“Mary,” Ruben called from his side of the room. He was standing, pulling a sweater over his head. “We’ve got to go.”
She jumped out of her bed, finding her boots to shove her bare feet into and grabbing her winter coat slung over the settee in the room.
The metronomic siren urged them to abandon everything else and heed its cry.
In the hallway, the source of the emergency wasn’t any clearer.
Guests stood in their pajamas, searching for answers from their neighbors who looked back, at a loss.
Mary and Ruben hustled toward the elevators, but Mary stopped them halfway.
“No, we should take the stairs,” she said, pulling on his arm so he’d follow her in the other direction.
They found the stairwell noisy, brimming with people making an exodus.
Seeing a few of them with their luggage made Mary wish she’d at least grabbed her phone and wallet.
She and Ruben merged onto the steps with everyone else.
In that cavernous gray shaft, voices clashed with the alarm, and it was chilly despite the bodies.
Their descent was slow-moving, and Mary tried not to think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other.
Since there was no way to know exactly what was going on, speculations spread through the queue. Gas leak was the popular theory.
Movement stalled for minutes at a time, and people would yell, “Move! Hurry up!”
Someone would then screech, “We’re all going to die!”
“Shut up!” was always the response.
Occasionally, Mary would look to her right at Ruben, who, she assumed, sensed her gaze and would look back. They’d say nothing, but it was fortifying in some way for her.
During one stagnancy, Mary and Ruben were waiting on a landing when protests from above made her turn in time to see a man barreling down, unconcerned for the order or safety of the other guests.
The man rushed in between her and Ruben, shoulder-checking Mary hard enough that if she hadn’t been holding the railing, she’d have fallen.
It must’ve been palpable panic and the pain in her side that drove her to grab on to the man’s arm and shout, “What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re all scared and trying to get out of here. Don’t be an asshole.”
The man turned to face Mary, only the man was actually a teen boy with full cheeks and acne spotting his forehead. He looked at her with bugged-out eyes, and her anger dissipated. “I’m so sorry,” she said, but the teen had already taken off farther down the staircase.
She slowly recognized the presence of others around her, who only spared her a glance, but she was mortified by her outsized reaction.
“You all right?” Ruben asked her. He had a tender hold on her elbow.
She nodded. “I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“Nah, you’re fine. It was a good life lesson for the kid,” he said. “The wording and tone might need to be reworked for a Sesame Street script, though.”
A tension eased in Mary’s chest as she met Ruben’s facetiousness with a reluctant smile.
At this point, the alarm had become ordinary, and the journey felt like it might never end.
Sure, the numbers on the walls marking the floors were decreasing, but still there were countless stairs and landings and growing uncertainty.
So when the alarm just stopped, it was realized in a wave.
Everyone stilled, looked around, then at once began asking the same questions.
Is it over? Can we go back to our rooms?
For some guests, the answer was yes, and they exited the stairwell using the door on the closest landing, but for others, like Mary and Ruben, they continued toward the lobby because the alarm had gone on for too long for their anxiety to be so easily allayed.
The lobby was almost as full as it had been on the first day of the blizzard, with the hotel manager on top of the front desk and megaphone in hand.
“We are deeply sorry for the confusion and panic,” the manager said. “There is no danger. An alarm was falsely tripped. Please return to your rooms. I repeat, you are safe. Return to your rooms.”
The gathered crowd loudly grumbled, but it was the best way things could’ve ended.
As they stood waiting for their turn on the elevator, Mary and Ruben spotted the Arizona couple as they marched to the stairwell door on the ground level.
Unlike everyone else, they wore weather-appropriate clothing and were equipped with headlamps and matching tactical backpacks.
Mary and Ruben simultaneously looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“They’re a fun, quirky duo,” she said.
“Oh, a perfect match,” he replied.
With the fog of fear and chaos now completely lifted, Mary realized she and Ruben were holding hands.
When it happened, she didn’t know. But their palms were flush, and their fingers intertwined.
Ruben must’ve realized it, then, too, because his firm grip grew lax.
And Mary slowly, without comment, withdrew her hand from his.