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Belle rested her forehead against the cool glass of the door. The closed door. The locked door. The door that was currently standing between her and her hotel room. Why did this kind of thing always have to happen to her? There were six of them from the publishing house all here for the conference, but none of the rest of her colleagues had managed to lock themselves out on their hotel room balconies. She had only stepped outside for a minute to enjoy the breeze, since she was all ready for dinner with plenty of time to spare, and she had not thought anything of it when the door had swung shut behind her. It was only now, a few minutes later, when she was trying to get back in that she realised what she had inadvertently done.
She sighed and resisted the urge to start rhythmically bashing her head against the glass. She had left her clutch in the room, so she couldn’t even call Ariel to get her to come to the rescue. For a brief moment she had visions of dying from exposure on this balcony and only being found on Saturday when she failed to check out and the hotel’s management broke the door down to forcibly evict her, finding her frozen corpse clawing at the door.
Belle shook herself. Someone would realise that she was missing before that happened. There was no need to try and break the glass and probably injure herself in the process. She just had to stay calm.
At the same time, she really didn’t want to be the cause of mass panic and embarrassment for her colleagues when she did not appear at the Very Important Gala Dinner before the conference began in earnest the next day. She was going to have to get back inside somehow. Belle peered over the balcony, but she was on the twenty-third floor and getting down that way was really not going to be an option, so she looked from side to side at the balconies next to her. If she hitched her skirt up, she could climb over the railing that separated them. She had been a gymnast and a ballet dancer, and she was still supple. In the room to her left, the balcony door was wedged open a little to let a breeze into the room. She could sneak in, get back into the hotel and get the concierge to let her back into her room. Simple.
Now… To get to that room. Without being noticed. And hoping against hope that whoever was staying in that room would be amenable to her knocking on their outer door and begging to be let in.
Belle took a deep breath and kicked off her shoes, hitching her ankle length skirt up to her knees and awkwardly clambering over the railing, landing with a very ungainly thud on the other side. She looked around furtively to see if she had attracted any attention from anywhere, and seeing that all was well, she fished her stilettos through the railing and put them back on before getting to her feet and quietly moving towards the door.
The light gauze curtains were drawn across the window, the slight breeze teasing them out of the ajar door, but peering through the open sliver Belle could not see any signs of the room being occupied. She knocked timidly on the glass, and receiving no response, she decided to take her chances. Perhaps the room was not yet occupied and the housekeeping staff had left the door wedged in order to air the room for its next guest.
As soon as she had slipped inside the room, however, Belle saw that it was most definitely occupied, and her heart began to race painfully in her chest, because she knew exactly by whom it was occupied. There was a smart leather overnight bag sitting on the bed and a neat stack of paperwork on the desk.
And there were clothes draped over the chair. Clothes including a dark suit and purple swirling-patterned tie that she had seen earlier that day attiring her enigmatic colleague Mr Gold from the legal department.
Belle took a deep breath. Wherever Gold was, he obviously wasn’t here, something she should probably be glad of, and all she had to do was make her way across the room and open the door and get into the corridor. Now was not the time to be considering peeping in his bag to see what his pyjamas looked like. Nor was it the time to be wondering what he looked like without the suit and tie that he seemed to wear like armour. Finding herself unexpectedly in the hotel room of the man on whom she’d had more than a little crush since her first day in the office was not conducive to coherent thought and Belle was slightly cross with herself for being so easily distracted.
She was two steps towards the door when a noise startled her and she only just managed to stop herself squealing with surprise. The noise was Gold’s ringtone, horrifically loud in the quiet room, the phone buzzing along the nightstand.
She didn’t know why she leaned over to see who the caller was, nor why she was so dismayed to see the word Bae, but in the split second it took her to perform this action, she came to a realisation that made her stomach plummet.
Gold’s phone was here. Gold’s clothes were here.
That meant in all likelihood…
The bathroom door opened and for a moment, time stood still as the two occupants of the room, one legitimate and one trespassing, looked at each other, the tinny ringtone of the phone providing ironic background music.
Gold was indeed in the room.
He was also stark naked.
Belle was certain her eyes were not moving of their own accord as she took him in from top to toe and back again, and for a moment the man was completely frozen in place with a deer in the headlights look.
Then swift movement and voice returned. Gold’s hands flew to his crotch.
“Why are you here?” he asked frantically.
Belle replied with the first thought that came into her head: “Why are you naked?”
Gold raised incredulous eyebrows.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors!” he exclaimed. “Phone!”
“What?”
“Give me the damn phone!”
Belle grabbed the still-ringing phone off the nightstand, holding it out to him.
“It’s for you,” she blurted out, immediately cursing herself for making what was probably the most inane and obvious statement of the year, if not the century. Of course it was for him. It was his phone. In his hotel room.
Gold snatched the phone from her, turned on his heel and the bathroom door slammed shut behind him again, but not before Belle had received a glimpse of his bare arse. She blinked at the bathroom door.
It was a very nice arse, and really not one that she should be thinking about since its owner was currently on the phone to his girlfriend and she was standing in the middle of his hotel room, uninvited.
Safe in the knowledge that the situation couldn’t possibly get any worse but had been more mortifying for Gold than for her, Belle decided that the best thing to do would just be to leave and try to forget that it had ever happened.
Once in the safety of the corridor, she let out a wail of despair at the events that had just taken place, resting her forehead against the wall in a mirror of her position with her balcony door earlier.
“Belle?”
Ariel poked her head around the door of the room next to Gold’s, her hair in rollers and her brow furrowed.
“I thought I recognised the call of a colleague in distress,” she added. “What’s up?”
Belle shook her head.
“I’ll never be able to show my face in the legal department again,” she muttered.
Ariel raised an eyebrow and opened the door wider. “Come in. Tell me everything. Let me know if I need to stab Gold with a salad fork.”
Belle dragged herself away from the wall and made her way over to Ariel.
“If anyone’s going to be stabbed with a salad fork, it’s going to be me,” she said mournfully. “Oh Ariel, I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed in my life.”
Ariel patted the bed, indicating for her friend to sit down, and she continued to do her hair whilst Belle told her the whole tale, only occasionally pausing to burst into fits of laughter at Belle’s hopelessness.
“So that’s why I’m going to have to resign.” Belle sighed. “I’m never going to be able to look him in the eye again and I have to get through an entire conference with him. Ariel, what am I going to do?”
Ariel was still curled up giggling and Belle huffed. “You’re no help.”
“Oh come on, you’ll be fine,” Ariel said airily. “You know how they always tell you to imagine the person you’re talking to naked if you’re nervous. Well, at least you’ve got visual reference for next time.”
“Ariel!” Belle exclaimed. “That’s the opposite of helpful! This isn’t funny.”
“No, you’re right, it’s hilarious. But come on, spill!”
“Spill what? Apart from champagne down your front if you don’t quit it?”
Ariel rolled her eyes and bounced onto the bed beside her. “Gold in the raw! You’ve been fantasising about that package for months, honey. Does reality measure up to daydream?”
Belle buried her face in her hands.
“Ariel, he’s got a girlfriend. Don’t make this even worse…”
“So, the man’s taken, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look.”
“I didn’t look intentionally!”
Ariel just chuckled. “Ok, ok, I’ll be quiet. And I promise not to make any inappropriate comments tonight.”
Belle raised her eyebrows at this declaration.
“Well, not in his earshot at least,” the redhead amended, and Belle groaned. “Ok, it’s time for dinner. You scoot off and start schmoozing, unless you want to see me naked as well, but I think you’re traumatised enough for one evening.”
Belle nodded and left the room, making towards the elevator and the concierge desk and a key back into her own room. She was slightly waylaid in this plan when she saw Gold coming out of his own room. She froze in the corridor, wondering the best course of action. Should she try to escape? Pretend it never happened? What was the etiquette in these kind of situations? Nothing in the HR handbook had prepared her for this! It was a vast oversight and she would have to remedy it as soon as she got back to the office.
There was no point in hiding. He had seen her. He was coming down the corridor towards her and if this elevator didn’t hurry up, he was going to get in the same elevator as her.
Oh well. Best to bite the bullet.
“Mr Gold,” she said politely.
He gave a courteous nod. “Miss French.”
“I, erm, about earlier. I’m sorry for intruding on you like that. I was locked out of my hotel room and your balcony door was open next door to mine and…” she trailed off. “I’m sorry.”
To her surprise, Gold just gave a snort of laughter and the tiniest hint of a smile.
“Well, I like to think I know you enough to know that you weren’t there for nefarious purposes. It was a shock though.”
“I can imagine.”
“If it’s any consolation my son thought the whole thing was hilarious. He was wondering why I sounded so flustered on the phone.”
Belle quirked an eyebrow. “Your son?”
“Yes. He was the one calling.”
“But…” Belle bit her lip. She’d already embarrassed the man once, she didn’t want to admit that she’d looked at his phone and had seen the caller.
“Baden said I ought to congratulate you on being the first person to make me speechless,” Gold continued.
Baden. Bae. Oh. Oh.
The elevator arrived and they got in, and Belle was fairly sure that she was blushing harder now than she had been when the whole incident had occurred.
“Miss French, I think the best way of handling this affair would be to pretend it never happened, do you agree?”
Belle nodded dumbly.
“Excellent. Now, may I escort you in to dinner?”
Despite the furious blush, Belle smiled.
“That would be lovely, thank you, Mr Gold.”