"Did someone in your family hurt you?"
A bubble of laughter rose in her throat. Naomi hastily swallowed it back. "No. Really, it was an accident."
Mostly in that she hadn"t been quick enough to get out of the way. The bar had been smoky, the music loud, and it had taken one jacka.s.s, two of his buddies, and a beer bottle to put her down.
They"d all ended up in jail. She"d ended up in Timeless.
Same thing.
Gemma patted her hand. "All right. We"ll put something on it so it doesn"t scar. Come along."
As if on cue, the doors slid open, and anything Naomi wanted to say, intended to say, died on her tongue.
Jacuzzis. Smaller, more personal tubs. Beautifully embroidered silk screens that provided privacy without losing the social atmosphere, and rooms set at intervals around the whole of the main foyer all combined to create a vast floor that seemed both welcoming and exotic at once. Plants spilled out of every available nook, softening the inherent austerity of porcelain and more slate tile.
Metal and st.u.r.dy wood had been placed in precise, clean lines of seating, screens, furnishings, and troughs filled with some kind of steaming, green water. All of it looked like implements of elegant torture.
Lavender tickled her nose again, but mixed with steamy currents of fragrances she couldn"t place. A sharper aroma pierced through everything else, something that smelled like tea but burned like whiskey in her lungs.
Naomi drew up short, knowing her brows were knitting together and unable to wrench them apart. "Wow" was the safest thing she could manage through the sudden, violent swearing in her head.
Gemma"s smile was a beam of pride and satisfaction. "I"m so glad you like it. I love this floor." She approached a ma.s.sive white desk, rows and rows of shelves laid out behind it. Each held a series of folded pastel lavender and pale green towels, thick and fluffy.
Reluctantly Naomi followed.
Behind the desk, an older woman with shoulder-length gray hair gathered a collection of towels from one shelf. "Mrs. Clarke, good morning," she said crisply. "Miss Ishikawa, I hope you slept well."
Too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of beautification locked in a single room, Naomi could only nod vaguely.
Did they keep a running tab on everybody? Pa.s.s out pamphlets of each guest to the staff? She felt suddenly, wildly trapped. An ant caught under a magnifying gla.s.s.
She rubbed at the back of her head. Deliberately dragged her fingers over the lump that still ached there until pain knocked back against her skull.
Pain helped.
"Agatha, how are you?" Gemma"s greeting sounded like a mother, like a caring employer, but she moved like a general. Every motion practiced, every gesture crisp, she extracted a lavender robe from the collection of fabric and shook it out.
"Very well," Agatha replied. "The day guests will be arriving within the hour."
"Excellent. Dear, put this on." Before she could refuse, Naomi found herself ushered toward a small room near the desk, the door shut firmly behind her. "And take all undergarments off," Gemma added through the panel.
f.u.c.k. This was it. Naomi glanced wildly around the small changing room as if another exit might be hiding in a hamper. The schedule had started with a manicure and a pedicure.
Nails. Polish. Buffing.
She"d done it just a few days ago, doing it again was redundant, but harmless enough. She had to meet the guests somehow.
When she stepped outside again, Naomi wordlessly pa.s.sed her athletic clothes to the waiting Agatha. The woman put them in a locker and handed her a key, ticked something off on her clipboard, and gestured over her shoulder. "If you wait one moment, I"ll escort you-"
Naomi hooked the key to the robe belt. "I"ve got it."
If she waited around for an escort, she"d wander right into the elevator and forget to come back.
Naomi followed the attendant"s gesture, rounded the edge of the desk, and hoped to h.e.l.l the knee-length robe stayed belted securely. She was pretty sure the knot would hold, but she didn"t usually make it a habit to go around in public with just a thick bit of terry cloth between her naked body and the rest of the world.
Modesty wasn"t one of her character traits. The problem was the G.o.dd.a.m.ned setting.
Soft music filtered from discreetly hidden speakers, the air smelled fresh, with just a hint of soothing lavender. The heated, dark green slate tile warmed her bare feet as she padded through the wide, almost empty room. Only a few cheerful staff members moved around what Naomi figured were stations, readying supplies and talking softly among themselves.
Naomi scrutinized them all, but none of them looked to be big enough, cagey enough, to be the witch who"d ambushed her. No handlebar mustaches. No scars.
She could only be so lucky.
She skirted the edge of a shallow pool tiled in vivid shades of blue and green, and narrowed her eyes at a porcelain tub filled with steaming water. The source of the sharpest fragrance emanated from whatever it was that turned the hot water green.
She found Gemma waiting by a chair that looked as if its only purpose was to lure unwitting guests to pliant, vulnerable sleep. Naomi"s frown didn"t ease. "What am I smelling?"
"St. John"s wort," the woman replied easily. "When poured over the skin, it soothes anxiety and burns. Taken in a tea, it"ll ease cramping. Sit, there"s a love."
Despite the flow of explanations, Naomi rubbed the back of her neck, frown deepening. "Mrs. Clarke-"
"Gemma, dear," she corrected sweetly. "Have a seat. This won"t take long."
Naomi ran her palms down the plush material of the robe. Her fingers set the locker key swinging, and she frowned down at her bare shins.
She had great legs. She just preferred to show them off in a skintight miniskirt in the middle of a dance club than here.
"Come on, I don"t bite."
But here she was. Plan, she reminded herself, and sat. She met Gemma"s rich dark eyes as the woman cupped her chin with a strong hand and tipped her head up to the light.
Sympathy flickered there.
Naomi"s fingers curled into the robe. "You know, it"s really fine."
"It"s already forming scar tissue, is what it is." Gemma clucked her tongue as she withdrew a small, unmarked jar from somewhere behind Naomi"s head. "You really should have gotten this clipped."
She really should have done a lot of things. Duck ranked among the first. Her mouth tightened. "Look, I don"t need-"
"Close your eyes." Ignoring her completely, Gemma slathered something cold and wet onto the dense ridge of crusted scab. As the fumes. .h.i.t her eyes, Naomi flinched and squeezed them shut.
She smelled peppermint. Something thicker, almost denser in flavor. Lavender, of course. She"d been smelling lavender since she got off the d.a.m.ned front elevator.
The small, imperceptible ache at her nose eased into languid, fluid warmth.
Surprise tilted her head. With her eyes screwed shut, she lifted searching fingers to her nose and found it damp. Her fingertips immediately tingled. "What is this?"
Warm hands enfolded hers. "Don"t touch it," Gemma warned. "It"s got a bit of numbing to it, which is why the vapors will knock your socks off at first. Give me a good solid ten count and you should be good to go."
"Numbing? Will my face go dead?"
"Not unless you use the whole pot and then some. And for heaven"s sake, don"t ever drink it. My son did that once, on a dare."
Naomi swallowed a laugh. "How"d he do?"
"It took months for him to smell peppermint again without turning green." She heard the sound of gla.s.s and metal, punctuated by the click of Gemma"s shoes on the tile. "All right, take a look around."
First one eye, cracked slightly in muted apprehension. When it didn"t sizzle out of her eye socket, Naomi opened the other and focused on Gemma"s round, smiling face hovering over hers.
She shifted. Wrinkled her nose, her forehead.
Not even a twinge.
Now if she could get more of that stuff for the back of her head, she"d be great.
"Well?"
Naomi grinned, oddly relieved. "Perfect."
"Wonderful!" Gemma clapped her hands with infectiously cheerful exuberance. "Sit back, my dear, you"ll have Lacey today for your nail care. She"s amazing, a true gem."
Already half out of the plush chair, Naomi let the woman guide her back into the depths of the smothering cushions, her heart sinking with her body. "Great, I can"t wait."
Four hours later, her false enthusiasm flagged completely.
Her nails were trimmed, shaped, polished, and buffed to a sparkling shine. She"d drawn the line at pink polish. Her face had been scrubbed, peeled, abraded, slathered in some sort of vegetable concoction, scrubbed again.
Her body was shiny and pink from the rough, skin-shedding process the matron of torture had called a body scrub, and if she smelled honey ever again, she was going to throw up. Spending thirty minutes drenched in it was enough for a lifetime.
It was all she could do to smile through the anxiety battering at her exposed skin. If it seemed more like baring her teeth than happiness, no one told her.
Throughout the process, Naomi noted a small handful of residential guests and a steady flow of one-day visitors. There was a man who had introduced himself as Michael Rook, long sticklike legs slightly bandied beneath his robe. Greta Hollister, a sweetly shy blond who didn"t say much, and the redheaded British pop star the others called Jordana.
She didn"t factor in the steady stream of day guests whose faces and names started to run together after the first hour.
As she soaked her stripped, burning legs in a shallow, heated pool, Naomi watched them come and go. They trooped in as singles or pairs, some in groups of three. The men and women mingled, each wearing robes like hers. For more personal services or privacy, they were escorted into separate private rooms.
The cynical part of her brain speculated on what other kind of personal services Timeless offered on the side.
The staff worked like multiple limbs from the same brain. No guest was allowed to wander unnoticed, each person effortlessly pa.s.sed from station to station, specialist to specialist. It was so graceful, so una.s.suming that Naomi recognized the slightly sh.e.l.l-shocked look most of the guests wore.
Maybe they called it relaxing. Naomi called it checking out.
It took effort not to sneer.
"So, you"re the heiress we"ve been hearing so much about." Water splashed up around Naomi"s thighs as Jordana plunked herself on the heated tile beside her and slid her perfectly toned, stripped pink legs into the water.
Naomi arranged her features into a smile. "Naomi." She didn"t offer a hand.
Neither did the redhead with the absolutely magnificent display of cleavage between the lapels of her mint green robe. She smiled easily enough, arranging her robe to reveal the maximum amount of leg possible. "This place is something else, isn"t it?"
h.e.l.l wasn"t the word Naomi should offer. "That it is," she said instead. Mild enough. "Do you come here a lot?"
"No, it"s my first time." She tipped her head toward Naomi, dropping her voice. "Although between you and me? If it puts me in Phin Clarke"s circle, I"ll be here every chance I get."
It took even more effort not to laugh out loud. Naomi wasn"t going to claim that she knew him any better than the pop tart sizing him up, but something told Naomi that he wouldn"t touch the redheaded barracuda with a harpoon.
She ignored the slow, lazy curl in her belly, the awareness of something hot and entirely unwelcome at the mention of his name. Phin wasn"t her business.
Except in the suspected-accessory-to-harboring-a-fugitive sort of way.
Right.
"I mean," Jordana was saying, straightening her perfect legs and raising just the tips of her fire-engine red toenails out of the rippling, heated surface. "Really, I mean, have you seen him? Oh. My. G.o.d. The man has, like, shoulders you wouldn"t believe."
"Wouldn"t I?" Naomi murmured. Her gaze drifted past the singer toward the steady stream of people, of conversation. Snippets a.s.saulted her from every direction.
Stocks. Travel plans. Family. Feed channels and the future. So normal.
a.s.suming normal meant the kinds of plans that involved private jets and personally funded tuition at universities that didn"t accept applications from people like her.
Her jaw shifted.
"And really, it was so terrible." Jordana sighed sadly. It jerked Naomi"s attention back to her, to the gossipy glint in her hazel eyes.
"Oh?" What had she missed?
Clearly pleased to have a coconspirator, Jordana scooted her amply rounded a.s.s across the tile. "Didn"t you hear?" she demanded gleefully. "After the accident, Phinny ordered every maintenance tech to show up and get to the bottom of the mess. It was, like, three in the morning."
Had he slept at all?
Naomi forced herself to remember that she didn"t care. "Did they find the problem?"
Jordana frowned, puzzlement shaping the cosmetically enhanced angle of her eyes. "Problem?"
"With the door?"
"Oh!" Her expression cleared. "Who knows? You"ll have to ask them."
"Oh, of course." The urge to grab the shallow redhead by the scruff of her neck and plunge her face-first into the shallow water made Naomi"s fingers flex with greed.
Spoiled, selfish little- "And then I heard that after she got out of the clinic, Alexandra Applegate left at dawn."
-fly on the G.o.dd.a.m.n wall. Naomi straightened. "What?"
"Alexandra Applegate. Don"t you know who that- Oh." The singer nodded, as if reaching some conclusion. "You"re not from here, right?"
"Right," Naomi murmured, but her mind was spinning. Alexandra Applegate. h.e.l.l. Of course that was who the old woman was.