Roommate Romance

by Maggie Riley

  “Got it.” She started down the steps.

  “And be careful crossing the highway.”

  At the bottom of the steps, she stopped and looked back at me. “I will. Promise.”

  She took off running at a decent pace, and I tried not to look at her butt.

  I had a feeling I’d be fighting that battle all damn day.

  After We Fall is available now! Find it on Amazon here!

  Room Service by Poppy Dunne

  Keep reading for the first chapter of ROOM SERVICE by Poppy Dunne!

  Chapter 1

  What red-blooded woman doesn’t have a fantasy of opening her door to find a gorgeous man carrying a tray of food? Delicious, delicious food, served on a silver tray, with tousled sandy blond hair and snapping blue eyes?

  That’s the man I’m describing, not the tray. And the man’s delicious in his own way, too. And when he says in a deep, soft, bedroom voice,

  “Wow. You sure did order a lot.”

  That’s when the fantasy bubble bursts and I’m back in the here and now. The here is the Centennial Suites, a fabulous New York boutique hotel kitty-corner to Central Park. The now, 12:47 p.m. with my Bluetooth in my ear and a toothbrush in my hand, because I just realized that I forgot to clean my teeth like a sane, adult woman.

  And right now, the ever-so-delicious man is the nice room service guy who’s got my lunch all hot and waiting for me. I jam the toothbrush back in my mouth and hold open the door, letting him into the most elegant squalor my company can pay for.

  “Ank-oo,” I say, shooting past him and into the bathroom to spit the toothpaste out, rinse, and listen to my boss, Nigel, chatter at me all the way from Los Angeles.

  “Darling, darling, it’s not that I mind you taking up space in New York while you look for an act.” I think I can hear him popping a Xanax. “It’s that you’re in New York looking for an act unsuccessfully.” Then I hear him sipping his morning mojito.

  Nigel is the most wonderful British gay man in Los Angeles, and he is up against some stiff competition. He has a shaved head, an overbite, and big bug eyes. He’s essentially a French bulldog, only way less bitchy.

  “Alex, darling, tell me you tried our contacts over at United Artists,” he moans. Hopefully, the moan doesn’t mean he’s also getting his pre-lunch blow job.

  I head back into the main room, now minty fresh, and smile at the extremely hot room service guy as he lays out my tray on the table. He whips the lids off the plates, steam rising from the pasta primavera and the steamed vegetables. See, I can totally eat healthy. We’re not going to talk about the triple-decker chocolate cake right now. It’s just something I need. I shrug at the guy and mouth “sorry!” I hate being rude, and he flashes a gorgeous, breathtakingly white grin and waves it off as if to say no worries.

  Apparently I’m too taken up with Gorgeous Guy™ and his incredible smile, because Nigel starts barking into the phone. French bulldog all the way.

  “Darling! Darling! Where the fuck are you? I’m in demi-crisis mode!”

  “Here, Nigel.” I can’t help rolling my eyes as I open my laptop. “United Artists doesn’t have anyone who’s available on a month’s notice. All the big acts are booked right now.” He blusters into the phone as I walk to the window and gaze out at the New York streets. From up on the fifteenth floor, the people look like ants—clothes-wearing ants—and the cars and buildings look like toys. It’s every little girl’s dream to come to New York around Valentine’s Day, with the snowy avenues and the brightly lit skyscrapers against a cozy winter sky. It’s not really every little girl’s dream to still be in the shirt she slept in until the afternoon, with her usually-fashionable dark brown bob in a total frumpy mess, and wearing only one sock, but hey. I do what I can.

  “What about the Drunken Weasels?” He’s really desperate if he wants me to book a punk band that bites the heads off chickens as a highlight of their set.

  “Let me keep working on this, and I’ll call you in two hours. I gotta eat lunch.” My stomach chimes in, giving a healthy growl. Hush, my pet. Mistress shall see you fed. Nigel groans. “I’m sorry Nigel, I know that you—”

  “No, it’s not that. Larry just got under the desk.” He groans even louder, and I end the call in a heartbeat. Not something I want in my ear again.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say to the server as he finishes setting the table. “I didn’t think the call would last that long, and…wow, you’re kind of a wizard.” My mouth falls open. He even made the napkin into a little swan! Although the beak’s maybe a bit curved…

  “It’s an American bald eagle,” he says proudly, noticing my appreciation.

  “Nothing like some patriotism with your room service.” I take the check, sign it, and before I hand it back I take another peek at the man in front of me. Because he’s kind of a dream, and by that I mean the good kind. The wet kind. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a tan that stands out against his white button-up shirt. His muscled arms are hugged just right by the sleeves, and the black pants are beautifully tailored to his body. I mean, damn. He’s got to be an actor or a model, working this odd job until he gets his big bulge.

  Role. I meant role.

  “Is it too hot in here? You’re flushed,” he says, looking concerned. Quick, pretend to be fine and then jump out the window. Crap, except they don’t open this high up. We’re stuck with it.

  “I, uh, let me give you a tip.” I hand over the check and go for my purse, climbing over my still seriously rumpled bed to get it. Digging through receipts for dry cleaning and take out—all tax deductible, so I hope—I grab my wallet and rustle up a nice, crisp twenty. His (electric blue) eyes light up as I hand it over.

  “Thank you. It’s nice to be appreciated.” He laughs and tucks it into his pants pocket.

  “I’m appreciating you,” I agree, and then silently imagine punching myself in the face. My eyes flick to his name tag. “Ben. Thank you.”

  “To double check,” he says, reading off the receipt, “pasta primavera with cheese, steamed vegetables, side order of garlic bread, side order of chicken Florentine, which comes with its own side order of sautéed spinach.” He takes a breath and keeps going. “Orange juice, California chardonnay, chocolate cake, with a side of ice cream. Oh.” He checks one more time. “Special side order of rainbow sprinkles.”

  “What can I say? You gotta indulge every once in a while.” How the hell did I order so much food? Oh, right, because I am a ravenous beast that lives solely on room service and trying to book supreme talent acts to save my freaking job. A very specific, L.A.-centric beast. You can find us at Casa Del Mar on Sundays, trying to get into a ritzy party at Shutters on the Beach.

  “Stressful day at the office?” He nods at my now-discarded Bluetooth. “You seemed pretty on edge.”

  Well, he’s not wrong. One-socked, toothbrushed, frizzy-haired me is a basic template for “Late Twentysomething Woman in Meltdown Mode.” I work for the House of Jazz on Sunset Boulevard, home of legendary L.A. artists as they were rising. We’re the club where Jim Morrison and the Doors became legends. Because of us, the Kinks got to quit their day job. For decades, House of Jazz has been the beating heart of the rock scene.

  And because of YouTube and bubblegum pop and kids today and what not, that heart is about to go into cardiac arrest. The money’s gotten tight, and the bank’s gotten nosey. The only way to keep HOJ on the map and save the place from demolition—as well as my job, hey now—is to stage a big, explosive, can’t-miss event with the hottest band on the planet.

  Booking them is my job, and right now, I’m failing at it. Groaning, I plop down at the table. Well, if nothing else, I can eat. That I know how to do.

  “It’s complicated,” I sigh. Then, ever so softly, Ben comes over to my side. He reaches out for me, and my heart shoots into my throat and does a pleasant little wiggle. Gently, he places a hand on my shoulder…and pulls off a popsicle stick.

  “You, umm, seem to have—”

&n
bsp; “It was a Fudgesicle!” I say, mortified as he tosses it into the wastebasket. “I sent out for a box. I don’t leave the room—I think I live here now.”

  “That’s fine. I like to see a woman with a healthy appetite,” he says, winking. My innards all pool together in a little melted, well, pool. All right, dammit. Time to eat, and then time to kick ass. Nothing can stand in my way now. Nothing, and no one, and—

  My phone buzzes frantically, and when I see the caller ID, I freeze. It’s her. It’s the Big One. It’s the one they whisper about around campfires, praying that she doesn’t show up in a designer pantsuit with a freshly done, blood red manicure and ask why the campers aren’t married yet for god’s sake.

  Mom.

  There’s no use ignoring her. If I do, I’ll get another call. And then a text. And then the floodgates open, and hell really gets going. So I grit my teeth and answer the call. It’s like Ghostbusters, only way less feminist.

  “Alexandrina,” my mother coos, and from the sugar-sweet way this is gearing up I get the feeling it’s going to be a Bad Call. “Is now a good time?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I say, wondering if I can ‘accidentally’ flush my phone down the toilet. It tells you everything you need to know about my mother, and our family in general, that she named me after Queen Victoria—but used Queen Vic’s real first name, because it’s so much more exclusive.

  “You do remember it’s your brother’s wedding this weekend?” Something about the way she says this is skeeving me. She knows damn well I’m not going to forget Rollie’s wedding.

  “Yeah, and it’s super convenient. I get to go from one side of Central Park to the other.” I look back out the window, to the Courtyard Hotel, the most exclusive destination on the east side of New York. Mom tuts. She does that a lot.

  “You work so hard, sweetie. If only you could work more at landing a man.”

  Remember second-wave feminism? Yeah, apparently that didn’t happen to Veronica Harrington. She was getting her hair done at the time.

  “Well, you know what they say. Flying solo’s the way to go,” I grumble, taking a fork and digging into my pasta primavera. Ben’s packing up the delivery cart, and gives me a commiserating nod—apparently, he can tell a bummer of a phone call when he hears one side of it. Man, what a sweet guy. An insanely hot, sweet guy. Mom continues, thrilling me to no end.

  “Still, you know what they say in Japan. Women are like Christmas cake: on the shelf after twenty-four, and no one wants to buy it.”

  “They also speak Japanese in Japan, so maybe it’s a mistranslation. Maybe it’s “after twenty-four, everything tastes better.”” I’m getting that pleasant pain in my temple once more. “Mom, is there a reason you called?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. I just wanted to know if you’d be including a plus one. Rollie wanted to know if—”

  “If I’d landed a date yet?” I’m tempted to just hang up and smash my face into the chocolate cake over and over again. “Mom, you know that—”

  “Todd’s going to be there,” she interrupts.

  Five little words that detonate in my brain and blow out any helpful little synapses I had left. Todd. My Todd. The Todd That Was Mine. Will be at my brother’s wedding?

  “I thought Rollie said—”

  “That he wasn’t inviting Todd, yes, well—”

  “That he was going to kick Todd’s ass all over Madison Avenue after what he did.” My brother’s the only one in the family who sticks up for me. I mean, I thought he did. Todd had dumped me on our three-year anniversary, telling me that things between us hadn’t felt exciting in a long time, and that it was better to cut our losses and go our separate ways while we both still had plenty of ‘options’ open. Then he paid the check and breezed out of the restaurant while I wept into the crème brulee. Rollie can’t stand him, so why the hell—

  “Did you forget Todd is Katie’s cousin? She couldn’t not invite him,” Mom says pointedly. Damn. Katie is my brother’s fiancée, and an absolutely fantastic girl. Seriously, he could not have done better for himself. There’s just the pesky problem of who she shares genetic material with.

  I might as well send this ridiculously full tray down with Ben. There’s no way in hell I can eat a bite now. My stomach sinks, then does a dead man’s float somewhere near my spleen.

  “So Todd’ll be there, and you want to know if I have a plus one just out of the blue?” I say through my teeth. Mom twitters, like a bird who is terrible at keeping secrets.

  “I only worry about your feelings, sweetheart. After all, you’ll be at your younger brother’s wedding, staring thirty right in the face and still hopelessly single after that nasty breakup.” Thank you, Mom, for replaying the Old Maid Greatest Hits album on stereo. I offered to buy her the album again on vinyl, but that’s too hipster and socialist.

  She’s doing this to gloat, I realize. She always gave me crap about not being wily enough to bag Todd when I had the chance. According to my mother, men are only interested in letting their dicks lead them around, and a woman has to be canny in order to catch him and the resources he provides, because god forbid she try making her own money. I mean, only lesbians do that. A buzzing starts in my ears, and I square my jaw. No. She’s not doing this to me today, or this weekend. She’s not going to torture me. I won’t let her turn me into a crazier version of myself than I already am.

  There’s no way I’m walking into that wedding without someone’s hand in mine.

  But how the hell do I find a guy in this short amount of time? Hire a gigolo? That can get expensive and morally questionable. Kidnapping? I’d rather not be a federal case on Todd Beauman’s account. Pretend to be my own boyfriend? Great idea for a movie, lousy idea for real life. Who the hell—

  Ben nods at me as he heads out the door. Then a beautiful blond flash goes off in my eyes, and suddenly I know.

  “Actually, Mom, you can put me down for a plus one. I’m bringing my new boyfriend.” I breathe through my nose, preparing. “Ben.”

  He stops dead, hand on the doorknob, and looks back at me with a chiseled, questioning expression. I hear Mom’s shocked gasp through the phone.

  “Well. Angel, that’s fabulous news!” She sounds almost disappointed. Aw. Too bad, Mom. “We’ll put him down as your guest. Yes.”

  It is worth it to hear that astonished tone in her voice.

  “See you later, Mom,” I say, adopting a syrupy sweet tone all my own, and hang up on her. Ben’s standing in front of me now, hands in his pockets, one eyebrow cocked.

  “So.” He waits, and I flash him an I’m-desperate-but-cute smile.

  “Are you in the mood to make a little extra money this week?” I ask.

  Room Service is available now! Find it on Amazon here!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much to everyone who influenced the writing of Roommate Romance. I had so much fun writing this one, set in my favorite city in the universe. To my friends who push me to keep writing when I get stuck, my editors who are actual angels on Earth, my graphic designer who makes book cover magic, the bloggers who took the time to read and review, and to my readers who inspire me every day, thank you truly from the bottom of my heart. I hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing!