to be blatant suspicion, was the sheriff.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” ChiChi said, taking Regan by the arm and dragging her to the front of the room. All the parents stared. “We were just telling the sheriff here about the deer-napping of our beloved Randolph.”
The sheriff was a short man with skinny arms, skinny legs, and a spare tire under his belt. He gave Regan a bear-with-me smile, which was difficult to see under his mustache, followed by a meaningful wink. At least the local law enforcement wasn’t acting ridiculous about some stupid statue. A statue that Regan still hadn’t returned.
Pricilla hugged her. “We were telling him how you—”
“—being our marketing and social media expert—” Lucinda added.
“—could keep the general public notified of the status of Randolph’s case,” ChiChi went on. “You see, the sheriff here just agreed to make this his top priority. They’re going to arrest whoever committed this sinful act.”
“Arrest?” Regan choked out.
“My manners.” ChiChi shook her head. “Sheriff Bryant, this is Regan, Regan Martin.”
“You can’t be serious,” Regan said, pumping his hand.
Sheriff Bryant’s grip tightened and his eyes narrowed. “As a bullet. Now, Ms. Martin, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about the disappearance of our town mascot, would you?”
Regan looked to Pricilla and opened her mouth, waiting for her friend to shove a truffle in before she said something stupid. Too bad for Regan, Pricilla seemed short on truffles at the moment. And Regan was about to be short on quarters.
Regan’s no-nonsense shoes squeaked as she shuffled across the marble floor, walking as fast as she could without appearing to be in a rush. Head down, she darted through the vast lobby, edging past the reception desk, hoping not to be caught by one of her superiors while sneaking through the Guests Only entrance.
The lobby, usually calm at this hour, was clamoring with an overabundance of confused guests and designer luggage. Regan stepped around a Louis Vuitton pet purse that growled and almost collided with its owner, who was currently expressing her frustration at the lone girl manning the registration desk.
Rounding the corner, she pushed open a door—the dividing line between chocolate roses and breakfast in bed, and scrubbing tubs and sheet service.
“There you are,” an authorial voice snapped from behind.
She stopped, straddling the threshold. Crap. Caught.
“Sabrina,” Regan started, embarrassed that she was caught walking in late...again. It was only her third day at her new job. “I want to apologize for being late.”
She had tried to return that stupid reindeer, only to be cornered by the Mrs. Clauses, force-fed a two-thousand-calorie breakfast, given an earful about the yoga pants posse and their secret meeting for world domination, and then sent on her merry way—Randolph still safely hidden in her trunk. Not that she could tell her boss that. So she fibbed.
“My daughter forgot her homework on the, uh, counter and we, uh...” She slowly turned around, but instead of finding her boss, Sabrina, with her shrink-wrapped uniform and perky attitude, Regan found Jordan, looking ever so amused. “What are you doing here?”
“You mean here, at the employee entrance, where you should be walking out of and not into?” Jordan said, her hands dramatically circling before zeroing in on her. “Where I’m not is at my desk searching the Internet for chastity belts since Mr. Sex with Wheels snuck into Ava’s room last night. Which they make, by the way—chastity belts. I’ll save the link for when Holly reaches fifteen. Although they look like they would encourage sex, not prevent it.”
“And Mr. Sex with Wheels still retains the appropriate equipment to be a threat?”
“That was my next search, but I got called here before I could finish reading the instructions. Apparently, Marc had to go to Vegas. Something about Sabrina, a bachelorette party, an undercover cop, and bail.”
When ChiChi offered Regan the job, she’d failed to mention that the hotel was owned by another one of her overprotective grandsons. Water cooler gossip was that Marco had bought the Napa Grand three years ago and turned a dilapidated hotel into the most exclusive luxury resort and members-only club in the Napa Valley.
Not that Regan had run into the middle DeLuca. Okay, she had successfully avoided him a total of eleven times in three days. So she was happy to hear he was gone. Would buy that events coordinator a round if she managed to keep him busy in Vegas for the rest of the week. Because all this sneaking around was exhausting.
“I get paid to make Gabe’s