by Natalie Ann
“Cameras?” she asked.
Nikki grinned at her. “Look around. They are everywhere.”
She looked up and noticed little black globes all over the place in the reception area that was massive to begin with. Now that she thought of it they were all over each floor. What an idiot she was to not realize that.
“I suppose it makes sense to have that much here.”
“Anyway, Tiffany worked last night so she knows what is going on and will fill you in, I’m sure. I’m out of here now. Have a good night.”
Kayla watched Nikki leave, then went out to the desk to take her place with Tiffany walking in behind her. There was a steady flow of people to the desk, the phones ringing and so on. It would be this way until close to ten. At least the check-ins would stop around nine. Unless someone came in on the last ferry and then went to get food first and straggled in later.
It was close to ten when her cell phone went off. Once she got a break she pulled it out to see a text from Hunter asking her to come up to his place on her break. She wanted to say no but decided that maybe she’d give him a chance to explain himself.
She replied back she’d text him when she was getting ready to leave, but it could be as late as midnight. She usually went when there was a lull, any time after eleven.
At eleven thirty Tiffany told her to go, so she grabbed her lunch from the fridge in the back knowing she’d have to eat it upstairs in his penthouse or it’d look funny if she ate when she came back. Kayla made her way to the elevator, then over to the private one when she got on the tenth floor.
She was getting ready to text him that she had no way of getting on his elevator when it opened in front of her and he was standing there smiling at her. All her anger and disappointment vanished like the homelessness nightmares she had when she woke up in bed.
The minute the doors closed on her, he pulled her into his arms and crushed his mouth to hers. She should have been outraged but instead clung on like an acrophobic at the top of the Sears Tower.
When the elevator dinged and the doors opened, he stepped back smiling at her. She was too dazed to do anything and finally shook herself out of it. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you told me in the car a few days ago that you wished you could get a better kiss out of me, that there wasn’t enough room to turn the way you wanted.”
She did remember saying that now. “That was two days ago,” she said.
“And because you haven’t talked to me since then you’ve changed your mind? Could have fooled me with the way your nails were leaving marks in my neck just now.”
She felt a flush fill her face. “I didn’t change my mind. I guess...”
“You were annoyed I didn’t contact you?” he asked.
“Not annoyed. More confused.”
“And wondering if I was using you?”
“Sort of. I still don’t know what you see in me,” she said.
“I see more in you than you obviously do in yourself. You’re honest, sweet, sincere.”
“There are a lot of women out there like that,” she argued.
“And you aren’t afraid to tell me what you think,” he said, laughing.
That flush she had before was now a tiny fire traveling to her belly. “It’s the only way to be, I’ve learned.”
“Come on in and I’ll show you around. I’m sure you heard what happened on Sunday night and yesterday I was pretty busy dealing with the outcome.”
“I did when I got here. I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“That it was your day off and you had to deal with it.”
He laughed. “I rarely get a day off. Anyway, living room, open to kitchen and dining.”
Kayla was looking around, knowing her jaw was going to have to be picked up off the floor. This place was massive. Dark hardwood floors just spanning it. Large floor-to-ceiling windows across the back giving her a beautiful view of the water in every direction.
“This is a lot of space,” she said.
“Four bedrooms, four bathrooms too. I’ve got an office and an exercise room. By the way, you’re the first employee that is going to get the full tour.”
“I should feel honored, but I’m kind of nervous over that.” Then she remembered the comment about cameras. “Your security would have seen me come up here.”
“They wouldn’t say anything, but either way, I turned the cameras off before you got to the tenth floor, then flipped them back on when we got up here. No one would have seen you get off the elevator.”
“Won’t they know they were turned off?”
“They would have if they were looking, but I’ve done it before and they are used to it. They won’t think anything of it.”
Which meant he’d brought other women here. Of course he had. She’d be stupid to think he never had and she wasn’t a stupid person. Just because he said he didn’t have time to date didn’t mean he didn’t have a woman now and again.
She wasn’t going to be a fling though and had to make sure he knew that.
But how did she when she didn’t want him to think she was falling for the whole happy ever after of the island or wanting his name either?
This was getting more complicated than she thought it would.
“If you say so. How did you know I was here already?”
He picked up a remote and turned the TV on that covered half his wall. There were all sorts of views of the hotel for him to see. “I dialed into the elevator waiting for you.”
“You can do that in your office too, right?” She’d thought it was funny he had a large flat screen on the wall of his office by the sitting area. She didn’t think he was someone to watch TV while he worked.
“Of course.” He took her lunch bag out of her hand and set it on the island in the kitchen. “Down this hall are the rooms.” He opened a few doors to show her and then got to the end. “My room.”
She glanced in but wasn’t going to take a step. She wasn’t the type to come up here and have a quickie before she went back to work. “Nice and large. Beautiful view. So from the water you can see this level?”
He ushered her back to the kitchen. “My great-great-grandfather built this hotel with four floors. Well, the main level doesn’t count as a floor. So it was five levels back then. Just a nice rectangular building. My great-grandfather added the other seven floors. My grandfather put one wing on with the restaurant, my father, the other with the reception hall.”
“So it was one hundred and eighty rooms and the wings on each side of nine floors added another hundred and eighty?” she asked, not realizing that it was doubled in size then.
“Yes. The tenth floor was always going to be all offices and the eleventh was always going to house family. There is more untapped space up here, but for now it’s plenty big enough. We stayed here a few days during the week and then went back to Boston where we lived when I was a kid.”
“Are you the first to live here full time?”
“I am. The rest of the family used it for getaways or vacation. But this is my place now. My sister, Hailey, stays here at times if she wants. Plenty of space.”
“That’s nice. Do you mind if I eat while we talk?”
“Go ahead. I should have had something for you. I didn’t think of it.”
“No worries. You probably ate hours ago. I’m sure you are tired and want to get to bed.” Thoughts of him naked in that large bed were filling her head and making it hard for her to get the bread of her sandwich past her throat.
“I don’t sleep much. Don’t worry about it.”
“So it seems every generation adds to the hotel. Are you going to?”
“Not like that. It’s big enough. As you know, the ballroom is on one wing, the restaurant on the other with the patio and outside bar.”
The main level had a gym, indoor pool, and gift shop too. The whole retreat was massive. “So what do you want to do?”
“I want to do more with amenities, starting
with a spa. When my parents come back in a few weeks that is the first thing we are meeting on. Figuring out where to put it, but we’ve got the room, just might have to reconfigure things and add on a bit to the back.”
“So you’d do massages there?”
“Massages, facials, pedicures, etc. Things like that. People come here to get away and I think most would love to know they could go downstairs to be pampered on top of it.”
“I think you’re right.” Not that she’d ever been pampered a day in her life or had a massage. “If you do that I might get my first massage on a day off.”
He moved closer and put his hands on her shoulders and started to knead them and she thought she was going to melt into the floor. “Anyone ever do this to you?”
Her head fell forward as he squeezed tighter, his lips going to the curve of her shoulder. “No,” she said.
“Well then, it’s something for me to look forward to doing to you.”
Oh man, she was toast. “I might look forward to it myself one day.”
He laughed and stepped back. “One day? Are you going to make me work for it?”
Embarrassment filled her face this time. “Not like that. I’m not a tease.”
“I get it. You don’t want me to think you sleep around. That you are using me to get somewhere. You aren’t, are you?”
She started to cough on her sandwich. He walked over and got her a bottle of water and put it in front of her. She opened it and took a big swig. “No. You approached me. Not the other way around.”
“You’re right. I did. I’m going to keep approaching you unless you tell me to back off. Do you want me to?”
“No.”
11
Rainy Day Fund
It was exactly what Hunter wanted to hear.
He knew Kayla was skittish around him. About them. But he was trying to get her to relax.
He was going to have his work cut out for him but was willing to put the effort in. He was a Bond and when a Bond wanted something most times he got it through hard work and determination.
And Hunter wanted Kayla Rivers. He didn’t think it had anything to do with the love at first sight thing either. But he knew for damn sure it was lust at first sight.
“Good to know,” he said. “So our next step? What do you want it to be?”
He figured it might be in his best interest to hear her thoughts rather than just taking the lead completely. Though she’d told him about her childhood and now he had to wonder what she would want. He had a feeling she was the least high-maintenance person he’d met.
“Not sure. I guess we might have a logistics problem.”
“We’ll have to work around the hours. It can be done.”
“It can be,” she said. “Just not often. I work nights, you are getting ready to go to work when I’m heading to bed.”
“You have the weekends off,” he pointed out to her.
“And as you’ve said, you rarely get a day off. So even though I’m off weekends that is probably when you are the busiest.”
“Yes and no. My father pretty much worked Monday through Friday going home on the weekends to be with family. He wasn’t much with socializing and walking around the hotel. My grandfather did that more. I’m like him.”
“So your grandparents lived on the island? Do you think that’s why your father didn’t want to?”
Interesting that she put that together. “I think so. He went to school here on the island and I think he hated it, but my grandfather was building the place up. When my father married, he bought a house in Boston. When we were younger we lived here until we started school, then we moved there.”
He didn’t regret it even though he would have been perfectly content to have his schooling on the island like a lot of his cousins and others on the island did.
“Why not Plymouth? That’s a shorter ferry ride and then you wouldn’t have to drive to the end of the island from Romeo?”
“It is. But Boston is a bigger city feel even though it’s actually smaller in size than Plymouth.”
“How big is Boston square feet wise? Do you know? I always think of a massive city when I think of it.”
“It’s just under ninety square miles. Amore Island is around sixty-five square miles. Plymouth is more than double the island.”
“I had no idea,” she said. “I guess I think of the traffic and congestion with a city rather than the physical size of it.”
“It’s just a different feel than what is offered. Boston is more prominent than Plymouth and that is what my father wanted. I’ve got a ton of relations in Plymouth though.”
He had family everywhere in Massachusetts if he thought of it. Some on the Cape, some more inland. No one was that far away unless they were across the US. There were plenty of them too.
“Family is important to you, isn’t it?”
“It is. I’m sorry it’s not for you.”
She looked up from the cookie she was snacking on. He’d wanted to comment on her bagged lunch but didn’t. He found it rather endearing when he normally just walked to the restaurant kitchen to get something or came up here to warm food up. A bagged lunch...he hadn’t had one since elementary school.
“It’s not that it’s not important to me. I just don’t have a family. If I did, I’m sure it’d be important. I don’t realize what I’m missing because I never had it.”
Which made it even worse in his eyes. “You were never close to anyone in your foster families?”
“No other kids, no. But the last house I was in, those parents were great. They were younger, not old enough to be my actual parents, but they needed the money so they decided to take some kids in. I was the oldest they’d had and I turned eighteen before school was out. Normally we are sent on our own at eighteen and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was in tears and asked if I could stay until I graduated and then asked if it’d be okay to stay for a few months, that I had applications out for a full-time job and I just didn’t want to be homeless.”
Those thoughts had never crossed his mind once in his life. He’d never thought of what happened to foster kids when they turned eighteen; he’d never been exposed to any.
“Did they let you stay?”
“They did. I stayed with them for six months after. I slept in the basement in a spare room and offered to pay them rent but they wouldn’t let me. They wanted me to be able to get on my feet. I hated living there like that and hoped they didn’t think I was taking advantage of it. I’d buy my own food and do some things for them in the house. Buy groceries or give them gas cards. Things like that.”
“That’s nice.” And just proved what he originally thought of her. She wasn’t taking anything for granted. “So you did move out when you were still eighteen?”
“I did. A few months before my nineteenth birthday. I had enough money to get a car so I didn’t have to ride the bus back and forth to work. It was a beat-up car worse than the one I’ve got. Then I answered an ad for a roommate. I’ve had roommates more often than not. I’ll never forget the day I left though, Melissa, my foster mom, pulled me aside and gave me a little gift. It was this silver star on a chain. She told me to never stop wishing or having dreams.”
The necklace she was playing with when it seemed she was nervous. He remembered it had a star on it. “You’ll have your own place someday,” he said, his eyes softening.
“I’m sure. Not sure when it will be, but it won’t be on this island,” she said with a grin. “Way too expensive, but I like where I live. Hopefully I can stay there for a while and build up some more money.”
“I get the feeling you have more than you want anyone to know.”
She tilted her head. “I do. That rainy day fund and all. I don’t ever want to not have a roof over my head. I make sure it can’t happen again. I don’t care where I work as long as I’m working, but I’d prefer to have a job I enjoy.”
He wanted to ask about her word “again” but didn’t want to emb
arrass her. “A career,” he reminded her. “That is what you told me you wanted.”
“It is. I feel like I’ve got that here.”
“And you don’t want to lose that opportunity,” he guessed.
“No. And that brings us back to the next step. I’d like to take it somewhat—slowly—but considering our schedules that’s how it would be anyway. Don’t you agree?”
“Most likely. If that is how you want it.”
“It is. I don’t want to be talked about. I don’t want people to label me and I don’t want to get on your bad side. Your family runs this island and the short time I’ve been here I like it and would love to stay.”
Hunter pulled her into his arms and held her, his hand going up and down her back. “You can’t or won’t be able to get on my bad side. If you decided you don’t want to pursue this relationship or we have something for a period of time and you want to end it, it won’t reflect poorly on you.”
“I’ve already said I do want to continue or pursue it, but it does make me feel better knowing that you understand where I’m coming from too.”
“I do,” he said, lifting her chin up and kissing her on the lips. He wanted to continue to hold her, to kiss her, to talk to her. But she had to get back to work and he should get some sleep himself.
“That’s good,” she said. “And I’ve ten minutes left and should at least make my way back down so I’m not late.”
“You’ve got it in with your boss if you’re late.”
He laughed, she didn’t. “No special treatment. I thought we said we didn’t want anyone to know about this.”
He didn’t, but he didn’t want her to think he was embarrassed either. This might get trickier than he thought it would. “It’s just best if it’s quiet for now. I don’t make a habit of having my private life on display.”
“I don’t have much of a life but what I do have I keep private too. So that means no special treatment. And now I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Do I get a kiss before you leave?”