by Tabatha Kiss
Paige smiles as she hops out of her chair to greet her. “Evey!” They both throw their arms around each other. “It’s so good to see you!” She pulls back with a gasp at Evey’s protruding stomach. “Are you pregnant again?!”
I blink twice as I look down. From a front view, I couldn’t even tell she was expecting. But from the side, I’m genuinely concerned about her ability to remain upright. If she were any larger, she would surely tip over.
Well done, Vincent.
Evey rolls her eyes as she gives her belly a rub. “What can I say?” she says. “That man loves knocking me up.”
“When are you due?”
“August, I think?”
“You’re so big already! It’s not twins, is it?”
“You shut your mouth!”
I laugh quietly, enjoying the banter as I sip my beer.
“Well, congratulations!” Paige says. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Paige sits down in her chair with a gesture at me. “Evey, this is Oliver. Oliver, this is Evey. She owns the bar.”
Evey looks at me, her adorable smile filling her cheeks. “My brother tells me you’re the new boss.”
I nod, extending my hand out of habit. “That’s me,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She takes my hand, gives it a light shake, and… doesn’t let it go.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Oliver,” she says.
“Likewise. You’ve got quite the line of family businesses around here.”
“We’ve fully monopolized this corner of the street, yes.”
I quietly glance at Paige with my hand still clenched within Evey’s claw. She simply chuckles, offering me no assistance. This must just be Evey being… Evey.
Finally, she releases me. “You know, you’re cuter than Graham,” she says with a wink. “You can tell him I said that.”
“Oh, I will,” I say, enjoying the ego stroke.
She taps her fist twice on the table. “You two holler at me if you need anything at all,” she says. “I’ll make Tommy do it.”
Paige laughs as she raises her glass. “We will.”
Evey offers both of us one more warm smile before she waddles away to talk up the group at the next table down.
“Wow,” Paige whispers as she looks away from Evey. “Another baby.”
“How many do they have?” I ask, more than a little curious about the bakery man and his adorable wife.
“Two,” she answers. “Vincent’s sister has two as well, last I heard, so that’s quite a few tiny fingers and toes to keep track of.”
I note the cringe in her tone. “Do you think you’ll ever...?”
“Have kids?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“No,” she says with a laugh, defiant. “No.”
“No?” I ask.
“God, no. Parenting is... not for me, I’ll just put it that way.” She sips from her glass. “You?”
“No,” I answer.
“No?”
“I’m not much of a family man, I’ll just put it that way.”
“I figure,” she takes another drink, “if I were meant to be a mom, then I would have felt the urge by now. But I haven’t. I look at my life, my job, how I spend my time, and I’m happy. No need to over-complicate it.”
I raise my glass to her. “Agreed.”
“Also, I was in the delivery room with Jen for about ten minutes and, let me tell you,” she visibly shudders, “not the way I’d choose to spend a weekend.”
I chuckle as a memory resurfaces. “I was there for a delivery once.”
“When?”
“I was about twenty, I think,” I say, thinking back. “A couple came to the Plaza for a baby moon that went... differently than they expected. She gave birth in the hallway on the twelfth floor.”
Her jaw drops. “She couldn’t get to the hospital?”
“There was no time. Once it started, it just happened.”
“Did you deliver it yourself?”
“Me? No.” I laugh. “No. I was on the sidelines fetching towels and water. Fiona delivered it.”
Paige snorts. “Oh, of course she did.”
“You think you’ve seen everything until you see a billionairess in a ten-thousand dollar ballroom gown drop to her knees and say, ‘bitch, you gotta push’ to a total stranger. Then, you realize that life will never stop surprising you.”
Paige covers her mouth as she laughs even harder. “That is insane,” she says between breaths.
“It really was.”
“As if I couldn’t love her more.”
I nod in agreement. “Fiona’s something else.”
“Fiona 2022!”
We clink our glasses.
“Fiona 2022,” I repeat as we both take a drink.
“So, you’ve seen some shit working at the Plaza, huh?” she says.
I exhale hard. “Yes, I have.”
“You’ve worked there forever, right?” she asks. “Even longer than Graham?”
I nod. It’s no secret that the Botsford boys are put to work at the hotel from a young age. I somehow landed on the same path.
“I started as a dishwasher in the restaurant when I was fifteen and just worked my way up.”
“When did you decide you wanted to be the Liaison?”
I think back, my tongue loosening up. “One night, something happened to one of the servers in the restaurant. Not sure what, but the cook pulled me aside and told me to run an order out to a table. I remember he pointed his thick finger in my face and said that if I screwed it up, it’d cost me my job, which I thought was very strange considering the order was just a single slice of cheesecake.”
“Well, to be fair, our cheesecake is very good,” she jokes.
I chuckle. “You’re not wrong.”
“So, who was at the table?” she asks, curious.
“I walked out there with this plate of cheesecake and the entire time I wondered, why was this so important? I finally get there, and there were three men sitting at the table.” I count on my fingers. “The first was Kingston, the building manager at the time. The second, his dad, Beau Botsford.”
“The CEO at the time,” she says, impressed.
“And the third man… was Jackson Cobb.”
Paige squints. “Sounds... vaguely familiar.”
“Jackson Cobb was the Company Liaison,” I say. “As I approached the table, I remember hearing him talking about Seattle. New York. London. Tokyo. He’d been everywhere. He knew this company. He knew everything. And I knew, even back then, that I wanted to be that guy.” I tap the table between us. “I wanted a seat at that table.”
“And you got it.”
“Eventually,” I say. “Anyway, I delivered that very important cheesecake, bowed out, and left to go finish my very unimportant shift at the sinks.”
Paige gazes at me across the table. “So, how did that dishwashing kid grab Kingston’s attention?”
“Oh, that’s a much longer story.”
She nudges the pitcher. “Well, we’ve still got plenty of hooch,” she says. “And there’s still a few hours before my bedtime, so…”
I take a deep breath, feeling utterly defenseless against those shiny, blue-rimmed glasses. “All right,” I say, clearing my throat. “A little while after that fated dinner, I was at the hotel, deep in the archives of sub-level 2, with a stolen pillow from a housekeeping cart.”
Paige furrows her brow. “What were you doing there?”
“Sleeping.”
“Why were you sleeping in the archives?”
I pause, but my tongue still feels loose. “It was better than sleeping at home,” I answer. “Safer, I mean.”
She says nothing as she studies my face.
“My foster mother wasn’t exactly the milk and cookies type,” I explain.
“Foster mother?” she asks. “So, you’re an...”
“An orphan.” I nod. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do. It’s not something I advertise.”
She hesitates for a moment. “Have you ever met your birth parents?” she asks slowly.
“No,” I answer. “I have no idea where I came from. No one does. They found me wrapped in a blanket outside the fire department at three days old.”
Her jaw drops. “You were a safe haven baby?”
I nod. “I bounced around from family-to-family for years. Never really settled anywhere. Once I was old enough to get a job, I took the first one I could get just to get out of the house for as long as possible.” I breathe a laugh. “One I could occasionally swipe food from, too. You’d be surprised how many rich people never finish their steaks.”
Paige nods, silently hanging on every word.
“Anyway, I was down in the archives one night. Half-asleep. I didn’t hear the door open.”
“Kingston?”
“He was working late and came down to grab a file or something. He saw me sprawled out on the floor with a few of the previous night’s dinner rolls, which were usually disposed of, but...” I shrug. “I thought I was done for. Fired for sure. Possibly arrested for stealing, trespassing, whatever else he wanted to do me in for...”
I purposefully pause for too long, making Paige’s eyes grow wider with anticipation.
“And?” she finally asks. “What did he do?”
“He took me upstairs to the kitchen and had them make me a cheeseburger with a basket of fries and a chocolate milkshake,” I answer.
She smiles. “That sounds like Kingston.”
“He asked me what I was doing down there,” I continue. “So, I told him. I told him everything, the whole truth, and I hoped for the best. I figured, worst-case scenario, I was back on the street, but at least I had a full belly to walk home on. Instead, he gave me a room.”
“A room?” she repeats in surprise.
“Second floor,” I say. “Right next to the elevators where guests don’t like to be.”
Paige’s eyes shift slightly. “Room 201,” she says.
“It still feels like home to me,” I say with a nod. “Kingston said I could stay for as long as I needed to. I told him I could never afford that, but he just nodded and said that’s fine. I could work it off. The next morning, Fiona showed up with a box of clothes.”
Again, Paige smiles. “Now, that sounds like Fiona.”
“After that, Kingston would stay late sometimes to teach me how to do things around the hotel. General maintenance. Repairs. Eventually, I got out of the kitchen. I joined the maintenance staff, then the housekeepers, and then the front desk. Kingston was behind me the whole way. He never gave up on me.” I pause, my entire adult life flashing before my eyes. “I got my own apartment after a few years, but I kept track of everything Kingston covered for me in that hotel room. All of it. Room fees, meals, every little bottle of water and soda from the minibar. Water and soda because Kingston took all the good stuff with him that first night and wouldn’t let them restock it. I was fifteen.” I pause as Paige chuckles. “A few years ago, I wrote him a check. Every penny. I handed it to him, I shook his hand, and I thanked him for everything he’d done for me. But he never cashed it. Just told me to save it for something special.”
Paige says nothing. She just stares at me for the longest time, never blinking.
I clear my throat. “So, how about you?” I ask as I tap the condensation built up on my bar napkin. “What’s your sob story?”
“My sob story?” she asks.
“Just you and your mom, right?”
“Oh, uh…” She exhales slowly. “Yeah. It’s just us. My dad left when I was a little kid. It was my first memory, actually.”
“That’s rough,” I say.
“No, that’s coarse.” She looks down at her drink. “Rough is finding a letter he wrote to your mother telling her he left because of you.”
I bite down. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s no one’s fault. Some people just... weren’t meant to be parents. You know?”
“I know,” I say. “I really know.”
She nods. “So, I work. I travel. I read romance novels. I hang out with my mom whenever I’m in town, and... that’s about it for me.” She breathes a short laugh. “So much for seizing the day, huh?”
I study her expression in the dark corner. She does the same, her mouth gently parted. I shift forward, drawn to her through the shadows with my gaze locked on her lips.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, leaning back as my conscience winning out. “I promised I wouldn’t do this.”
Paige nods. Her mouth closes. Her eyes touch mine again, so soft and bright despite everything.
Then, she closes the gap between us and kisses me.
I close my eyes, taken by surprise. It’s a single, simple kiss that begs repeating, but I don’t risk getting it wrong.
Paige pulls away, her cheeks several shades darker than before. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why did you?” I ask.
She inhales sharply with her eyes still locked on mine, but she doesn’t answer the question. I’m not sure I want her to. I just want us to linger here together for a little longer, but we can’t do that if either of us says a word.
Finally, she sits back. Her throat clears as she glances around for spying eyes. But these are strangers here.
Paige slides a bar napkin toward her and fetches a pen from her handbag. Her brow furrows with one last ache of resistance before she scribbles something down and pushes the napkin in my direction.
No one has to know.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“No,” she answers.
We laugh.
“But…” Her voice falls.
“But what?”
Her chest rises and falls with a deep breath. “Carpe diem,” she says.
My heart skips, pumping blood in all directions, as I pull her in and kiss her back.
Chapter 25
Paige
We burst through the door of room 201.
Oliver fumbles with the DO NOT DISTURB sign, quickly chucking it onto the outer knob and slamming the door before crushing his mouth on mine again.
The cab ride was far too long.
The walk through the lobby was endless.
The elevator ride was annoying sluggish despite only going two floors.
I grip his jacket, desperately clinging to him as we kiss harder and faster.
“Paige,” he whispers my name.
“Yeah?” I ask.
He cups my rear. “If you have any requests,” he says, smirking, “make them now.”
I smile at the memory.
The challenge. The lifeline.
One last chance to change the outcome of this.
“Just make me come,” I answer, our history repeating.
His arms curl even tighter around me and he lifts me up, my feet dangling a few inches off the floor. I nearly gasp, my breath stolen by the sudden movement and the electrifying urge beneath his touch.
“Do you still have a… what’s it called?” he murmurs as he walks us across the suite. “IED?”
“IUD?”
“Yes! That.”
“Yes,” I answer, already breathless. “I do.”
He pulls my sweater over my head and kisses me harder, obviously very pleased by my response.
“But not like… the same one,” I blurt.
He nods as he rests his hands on my waist. “Okay.”
“The last one expired, and I considered not getting another one because I wasn’t really using it, but then I remembered how I don’t get periods very often anymore with it in, so—”
“Guys don’t need that much detail,” he says. “Yes is fine.”
“You’re right. Sorry. I’m just—”
“It’s okay.”
“—nervous—”
“Shh.”
He crushes his mouth on
mine, rightfully shutting me up.
I slide the buttons of his shirt free one-by-one. I loosen his belt. We unzip ourselves. We kick off our shoes. Our lips barely part for more than a moment as we undress one another, driven wild by the tension coursing through us.
Oliver lifts me up again. I wrap my arms and legs around him, nearly naked in nothing but my bra and panties.
He lies me down on the bed, forcefully pinning my hands above my head. I admire his toned chest above me, my eyes straying downward to the dark tuft of hair poking out from his open, sagging pants and the sizeable bulge just begging to be freed.
Our bodies touch. Warm sparks skip down my limbs and I throb even harder. I burn even hotter. Passion charges through me as we kiss again and again. All second thoughts melt away.
All I need is him, him, him.
I slip my hands free to touch his hard body.
Wait. Stop.
He shudders as I graze his pecs and abs.
He’s my boss.
I push his pants down over his perfect ass.
He’s...
His cock falls free, hard and swollen. I stroke him in my palm and taste his gruff moans as he crushes his lips on mine.
Fuck it.
I push my panties down. He parts my legs. He reaches around me, expertly unhooking my bra and tossing it away. We angle our bodies together, flesh touching flesh. My heat blends with his. I give myself over to pure, animal instinct as his crown slides between my slit.
Oliver stops. “Wait.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He holds himself up on his hands. “Do I...” he says, breathing hard. “Should I...”
I clench. I ache. “What?”
“Be gentle?”
“Gentle?”
“With you,” he says with serious eyes. “Do you need me to go slow?”
My heart flutters, unexpectedly. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m ready and... ready.”
He chuckles. “Good. Sorry. I just don’t—”
“It’s okay,” I say.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Shh.”
I kiss him, stopping him from saying something else so goddamn romantic.
If he does, I’ll over-think this.
If I over-think this, then it’ll just make my heart race even harder than it already is.