Gold Digger

Lottie

I hated waitressing. For a start, I’d had to leave Hayley with Ada, my crazy eighty-two-year-old neighbour. Ada didn’t mind; it wasn’t as though Hayley was difficult to look after – she went to bed at seven-thirty, so all Ada had to do was hang out in my flat and eat my food (which she did with gusto – I knew I’d have another trip to the Co-op in my near future, which better not be more than the fifteen pounds I had left for the rest of the month). Also, waitressing ate into my time in the evenings when I could study for the Open University psychology course I’d been doing part-time for the last two years, which required about sixteen hours a week. Luckily, I’d been able to sneak some of those hours into my time at Buckingham House (seriously, the man did not need a cleaner, his house was immaculate – as I’ve said before, posh people are weird) but I still had to do the bulk of the work late at night.

But even without all of that, I would still hate waitressing. The trick was to try and fade into the background. My outfit would hopefully help with that – white shirt and black skirt which screamed staff member ; low ponytail and minimal make-up. I was careful to fill people’s glasses without making eye contact. No smiling at the guests. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a complete disaster…

“Bloody hell, you seen the totty they’ve got serving tonight?”

Ah. Fading into the background wasn’t quite working as well as I’d hoped. I swallowed and moved to the next group, one of whom was the bloke who’d just described me as totty . His back was to me, so he obviously hadn’t realised I was there. I’d have loved to just slope off, but the whole group had empty glasses, and I was carrying a full bottle of champagne. It would have meant skirting around all of them without serving them to get to the rest of the room, which would look very obvious and weird. I swallowed and moved forward.

“Champagne?” I muttered the low question, eyes downcast, cheeks hopefully not too red.

A couple of throats cleared in embarrassment, likely having realised what I’d heard. A few muttered yes, and I started filling glasses. Unfortunately, you can’t pour champagne quickly, and with the number of glasses held out my way, I wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon.

“See what I mean?” muttered the same voice as before, and I flinched, almost missing the rim of the next glass. Clearly, he was not one of the embarrassed cohort.

“Nice,” hissed his friend in a voice I recognized, and my heart sank as I poured with an unsteady hand. I’d yet to actually see their faces as not only was I focused on their glasses, but they were all a lot taller than me.

“What’s nice, Blake?” I blinked at the female voice, and my eyes flicked up to see a blonde woman had joined the group. She was absolutely stunning. I don’t think I’d ever seen a woman as beautiful in real life. Her long black dress hugged her slender body, her hair swept to the side in a glossy bun.

“Nothing, Vics,” Blake said dismissively, and she cocked her head to the side as she stared at him, a frown marring her forehead. I cleared my throat.

“Champagne?” I asked her, and she transferred her familiar, crystal blue, piercing gaze to me.

“Hello,” she said, her unblinking eye contact a little disconcerting.

“Er… hi,” I said, surprised to be addressed directly. Nobody addressed the waitresses directly at these things, especially not the women.

“You are very pretty,” she told me, and I blinked again. There was a muffled snort of laughter in the group, which I ignored.

“Thanks?” I said, tilting my head to the side as I studied her. “So are you.”

“Yes,” she agreed simply.

“So bloody weird,” I heard muttered next to me, but the woman didn’t seem to notice as she maintained eye contact with me.

“Er… right, I’d better get going,” I said stupidly, lifting the champagne bottle and waving it slightly to indicate that I should be getting on with my actual job. The blonde woman just kept staring at me. Okaaaay. I moved away to the next group and went back to being invisible.

After a couple of hours, I was beginning to really despise my shoes. My ankle wasn’t broken, but it still ached. Four-inch heels were not doing it any good. I nearly told the catering manager where he could stick his job when he’d specified high heels, but then I’d looked at my electricity bill and thought better of it. The other issue was my wrist. Of course I had to fall on my dominant hand, the one I needed for pouring champagne. I glanced at the large ornate clock on the wall: only two more hours to go. Right, I could manage that. I’d dealt with way worse. I shook out my wrist, picked up a new full bottle of champagne, took a deep breath and then walked back out into the thick of it. The problem was that by this stage, the men were all well-oiled and a lot more disinhibited.

As I moved through the crowd, there were more blatant attempts now to stare down my blouse; even some of the men clearly accompanied by their wives were culprits. Then there was the standing way too close, smelling my hair (barf!), crowding me so I had to squeeze past them which created the opportunity for a good accidental boob graze. It was all very tedious, and I was beginning to feel a little punchy. So when I wobbled on my heels after I’d just escaped a particularly irritating group, and a large hand enclosed my upper arm to bring me to a stop, I reacted without thinking. Spinning around, I smashed the thankfully empty champagne bottle into the grabber.

“Lottie, it’s me,” the deep, familiar voice shot through me as the duke’s crystal blue eyes stared down at me. He dropped my arm and held both his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry,” his voice was surprisingly soft for someone who’d just been hit with a blunt object. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

My eyes were wide as I stared up at him. I took a small step back, and he frowned. I swallowed before trying to speak.

“Are you going to get me fired?” I asked.

“Lottie I?—”

“Please,” I said, cutting him off in my desperation. “Please don’t report me to the manager. I really need this job.”

“Okay, Lottie,” he said again in that soft tone. “Take a breath. Did you hear me? I apologised to you . I don’t usually…” he broke off, and his hand went to the back of his neck. “I’m not in the habit of accosting women like that, okay? It just looked like you might fall and… well, you may have past form, clumsiness-wise.” He was smiling a small smile now, and my mouth went completely dry. Cheese and crackers, this guy was almost too beautiful to be real. I cleared my throat and readjusted my grip on the champagne. I needed to get my shizzle together.

“Right, er… well, thanks, I guess.” I looked left and right and bit my lip. We seemed to have attracted a fair bit of attention. Shiitake mushrooms, I hoped Thomas the D-word hadn’t seen what happened. That would not bode well for my future employment. It was drilled into us how exclusive this place was, how the patrons were pretty much all celebrities or actual royalty, how discretion was absolutely essential and how the customer was always, always right. No exceptions. Never in all Thomas the D-word’s pep talks did he mention that it would be acceptable to smash customers, especially the practically royal ones, with champagne bottles. “I’d better get going.” I waved the bottle, forced a tight smile and started to step to the side. Unfortunately, my ankle was still not entirely happy with the heel situation, and I winced when I put weight on it, well aware I was still under that sharp blue gaze.

“You need to take the weight off that foot,” he said, moving to block my retreat. We were really starting to attract attention now.

“I’m fine,” I said through a fake smile, unable to keep the irritation from my voice.

“And you shouldn’t be wearing heels,” he said, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Even if you hadn’t hurt your ankle, you should never wear heels. You have enough trouble staying upright without adding stilts into the equation.”

“I’m not normally this clumsy,” I say without thinking. “It’s just being around you that—” Uh-oh. My eyes went wide as one of the duke’s eyebrows winged up, his small smile more of a smirk now.

“Oh really ,” he said in a low voice. “You’re only clumsy around me? Now that’s interesting.”

“Fugger off,” I muttered, and his smile widened.

“Fugger? I’m not familiar with fuggering. Is this something you indulge in?”

I felt my face heat. I really need to start swearing like an adult, but the alternatives I came up with for Hayley’s benefit were too ingrained now.

“Ah! There you are, old boy!” one of the grim blokes from earlier said, slapping the duke on the back and blocking him from my view. “Now, where were we on the Lexington deal? Has that land been commissioned for redevelopment yet? Government bastards still giving you gyp?” Now, this was a far more typical example of a customer here – happy to look down my blouse and cop a feel if they could get away with it, but beyond that, actual acknowledgement of my existence was rare. Unless they wanted a drink, of course.

“Giles,” the duke said through gritted teeth. “I’m just in the middle of something. Could you…?” I didn’t hear the rest as I melted back into the crowd as fast as my hobbling gait would let me.

I managed to avoid the duke for another hour, but he caught up with me at the most mortifying moment possible. It was close to midnight by then, and what with the free-flowing champagne, the disinhibition from before was verging on outright vulgarity.

“Get over there and bloody well do your job,” Thomas the D-word snapped at me, shoving another tray of drinks into my hands.

“I’d really rather not serve that group again,” I said through my teeth.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” he sneered. “Christ, you bloody twenty-something snowflakes. If you can’t handle the occasional wandering hand, then don’t bother coming in. Plenty of girls would put up with a lot more considering the tips you make here.”

It wasn’t worth arguing, so I squared my shoulders and limped my way over to the group in question – a table of only men, one of whom was Mr Buchanon (minus his wife), another was the disgusting Giles.

I’d seen the Buchanons together earlier in the evening, and they’d both ignored me, except when Mr B peered down my cleavage. Either Mrs Buchanon had got tired of her husband’s BS and gone home, or he’d sent her home so he could act like disgusting pond scum with impunity. His friends were all cut from the same cloth. I knew rich blokes like this. Off the leash for the rest of the night. Their next stop would be a strip club or a brothel.

“She’s back!” one of them shouted as I approached. I gave him a tight smile, willing myself to go back to being invisible. I was carrying a tray laden with drinks, and my wrist was screaming at me.

“Finished cleaning the toilets yet?” Mr Buchanon asked, and they all laughed. “Such a shame Virginia fired you. It was nice having a bit of eye candy around the house.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“You lucky sod,” Blake, Ollie’s brother-in-law slurred; he seemed to be by far the worse for wear of any of them, practically sliding out of his chair and having difficulty keeping his head up.

“Excuse me,” I muttered, trying to put the tray down on the table, but these bastards were not going to make it easy for me. There were empty glasses on the table and nowhere to put the tray. Nobody made any move to clear a space. They barely made room for me to get the table at all. I had to squeeze in between two of them who were sitting in their leather chairs like the kings of the universe they considered themselves.

“Looks like you should have been a bit more on it with clearing the table, darling,” one of them said with a smirk, still making no move to help. I flinched as a large hand clamped around the back of my leg behind my knee. When I frowned down at Giles and tried to jerk away, his grip tightened enough to cause bruises.

“Let me go,” I bit out. My wrist was really aching now, and the tray had started to wobble.

“Way-hay!” some of the men called as the drinks swayed precariously. “Careful, darling.” The hand slid up higher, and his grip tightened even more. That, combined with the smell of all the alcohol, made my stomach lurch, and I prayed I wouldn’t vomit.

I swallowed my pride. “Please,” I said, not above begging. “I can’t…” as his sweaty hand moved even higher, I jerked again. It was just exactly my luck the drink that fell was red wine and that it didn’t fall onto any of these jerks. No, it fell back towards me. I gasped as the contents of the huge glass soaked my white shirt. There were catcalls from the whole table now, all of whom were loving this. But just as my wrist was about to give out on me completely, the tray was whipped out of my hands and dumped on the table right on top of the empties, spilling most of the other drinks. There were shouts as the liquid ran out onto all of the men around the table.

At the same time, the hand on my leg was ripped away, and I stumbled back to see the duke towering over Giles, holding his wrist in an iron grip. Then, in a sudden movement, the duke pulled Giles out of his chair, pushed his arm behind him at an unnatural angle, and then shoved him face-first into the mess that was on the table. The duke held him there, almost casually, as Giles struggled to get free. The table fell silent. In fact, the whole bar fell silent.

“Apologise to the lady, Giles, you piece of shit.” The duke’s voice was eerily calm, not like he was about to break this poor guy’s arm or had him pinned with his face pressed against the wet table.