Sucker Punch (First Fangs Club #3) - Kristen Painter Page 0,22
She looked pretty decent in it too. Might have been better when she’d filled it out a little more, but at least now she didn’t have to suck in her stomach.
One more perk to being a middle-aged vampire. And with the way things were going, she’d take every perk she could get.
Chapter Eight
Hair in a clip and dressed in her Versace suit, her bathrobe, and a pair of flip-flops, she hopped in the elevator and pressed two for the pool level. Her phone was in the pocket of the bathrobe, and she’d told Charlie not to hesitate to call.
Donna was going to the pool to work off some stress, but if things blew up, she wanted to know. In fact, if she was needed for any reason, good or bad, she wanted to know. Burning off stress came in a distant second to anything that might move them closer to freeing Rico.
Just thinking about him in that cell made her stomach knot and her body tense. The physical reaction was so strong she worried that being so on edge might cause her to do something stupid during the raid. One wrong move, one mistake, and things could take a desperately bad turn.
If she was the reason for that, she’d never be able to live with herself. Just thinking about it was almost enough to make her weepy. She sniffed, surprised at how hard the new mood had hit her.
The doors opened, and the tang of chlorine greeted her. The smell took her back to some of her early memories of childhood, back when her dad had still been around. They’d had enough money to belong to the country club then, mostly because that’s where her father did a lot of business and it was a write-off.
But her mother had taken her and Cammie there to swim. The pool was a good babysitter, and her mother liked the appearance of going to the country club.
Bygones. And not worth thinking about anymore. It had been ages since the memory had crossed her mind anyway.
She stepped off the elevator, inhaling the warm, damp air that permeated the small lobby. To the left was the entrance to the exercise facilities. Straight ahead were men’s and women’s locker rooms, and to the right was a set of frosted glass doors with the word Pool on them in letters so large only two fit on each door.
She pulled one open and went in. It had to be ten degrees warmer in here than the penthouse. Considering it was about to snow outside, that was a good thing.
The floor-to-ceiling windows were steamed up, making the world outside seem farther away than usual. The lights of Manhattan, crisp and clear from the penthouse, were just blurry spots of brightness here.
Charlie had been on target when she’d said the pool had been designed with a resort feeling. While the main pool area was big enough for swimming laps, there was also a sort of lazy-river part that wound off it, disappearing into a jungle of tropical plants, palms, and rocky grottos with gentle waterfalls. She couldn’t see it all, but the river reconnected at the other end and seemed to be driven by jets, because it definitely had a current.
Soft spalike music accompanied by nature sounds, mostly birds chirping, or maybe they were frogs, played in the background. With the gurgling of the water, it was just the right level of white noise.
Soft lighting around the seating areas and in the pool itself gave the entire space a soft, underwater glow. The place was spectacular.
How was there no one else here? Once things calmed down, she could see herself spending a lot of time here. Whoever had designed this had obviously done so with the UV-sensitive paranormal in mind, because it felt like a tropical oasis.
Her kids would love this.
She took a towel from the stand, then walked around to the far side, where she found a chaise closer to the pool steps. She claimed it with her towel and phone, then toed off her flip-flops before going to test the water.
No point in taking off her robe until she knew if she was actually going in.
She swished her toes through the water and was pleasantly surprised at the temperature. Warm enough to be inviting but not a hot tub either. Props to whoever was in charge of that. No one wanted to get into a cold pool with flurries about to come down outside.