Sleeping Beauty

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The bellman Claire Rolvag was looking for was standing next to the box with the keys of guests who parked in the hotel garage. She turned into the long, circular driveway, pulled around a cab, and parked her shiny new Lexus in front of him.

“Carlos?” she asked when he walked over to the driver’s window.

“That’s me.”

“I’m Claire. I’m filling in for Barbara Bridger, just for tonight.”

“She told me what you’d be driving,” Carlos said as he opened Claire’s door. Claire grabbed the book that lay on her passenger seat and got out.

“It’ll be over there,” he said, pointing to an area at the end of the driveway.

Claire thanked Carlos and handed him a folded bill, which he slipped into his pocket. He was driving the car to the spot he’d indicated when the doorman welcomed Claire to the Newbury, one of Seattle ’s finest hotels.

There was a convention in town and the Newbury was packed with laughing, chatting people. Claire shouldered through them until she stood in the center of the lobby. She scanned the crowd. He wasn’t there. A bell signaled the arrival of an elevator. Claire cast an anxious glance at her watch, then focused on the group of conventioneers that poured out. For a moment Claire did not see him. Then Miles Van Meter was standing in front of the bank of elevators. His sandy blond hair and blue eyes had been touched up in the color photograph on the back of the book jacket of Sleeping Beauty to hide his gray hairs, and he was a little shorter than Claire had imagined, but he was just as handsome in person as he was on television.

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