Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ruby
I stare at the desk clerk, the noise of the bustling hotel lobby fading behind me.
“Ma’am?” The clerk is a guy about my age, and I glare at the “ma’am.”
“Ruby is fine. Tell me the problem again?”
“We received your library’s purchase order for the room stay, but we don’t show a reservation in your name.” His tone is apologetic.
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t getting the purchase order guarantee the reservation?”
“It covers the cost, but you still have to reserve it directly to book the type of room you want and secure a credit card for incidentals.”
I know it’s hopeless before the words leave my mouth, but I have to try. “Can I get a room for the same rate? Or even a more expensive one and pay the difference?” I can throw myself on Sandy’s mercy when I get back.
He glances past me to the hive of activity. “We’re full due to the conference.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” I ask calmly, but inside, it is a wail.
He looks at me helplessly. “Try one of the online booking sites? I have to process these people behind you, but if you haven’t found something by then, I’ll see what we can do with some of our partner properties.”
There’s no point in arguing. This isn’t his fault.
I weave through the librarians milling in the lobby, looking for anywhere I can sit and figure this out. It’s packed, every seat taken by people who probably aren’t panicking about their hotel rooms.
Charlie texts right then.
All checked in. You here?
We’ve texted all week. I waited to see if he would suggest making the three-hour drive to Houston together. He didn’t.
Other than that, we’ve texted like normal. And since we spent the week just being us, I’m hoping it reminds him of what a lucky thing that is that we get to be. Oh, and plotting how to convince him to let us evolve into our best form.
No, not convince him. Help him accept its inevitability.
Anyway, the plan is in place. It’s as perfect as a plan can be. But I’m going to need to be able to stay at this conference to put it into play.
Here but problem with my room
What problem?
I don’t have one
Where are you?
Lobby
I’ll come find you
I’ll be the one looking like I want to burn down the hotel
I spend the next five minutes on a booking site, but this is a huge conference, and nothing is open in any of the hotels closest to the convention center. At least, none of the affordable ones.
I’m sitting on top of my suitcase and studying the street view of a hotel several miles away when Charlie appears.
“Hey,” he says.
I hold up my phone. “Does this look murdery?”
He takes it, careful that our fingers don’t touch.
“The Snug Bug Inn.” He taps a few times.
“Here’s a helpful review. ‘Have you ever seen the 1970s movies where the local prostitute is drugged up to her eyeballs and takes clients to the dingiest hotel you could imagine? I’ve done the hard work and found that motel for you.
’ It goes on for a while. Cigarette burns on the bed covers.
Dead worm on the floor.” He wrinkles his nose. “The word ‘stains’ comes up a lot.”
I close my eyes, my head thumping against the wall. “Great.”
“What’s going on with your room?”
I start to explain, but before the first word comes out of my mouth, I clamp it shut again as I realize how it’s going to sound: like one of the dog-eared pages in a romance book where two coworkers get stuck sharing a hotel room and the story turns into . . . well. Something else.
In other words, Ruby Ramos saying she has no hotel room while her handsome best friend and love interest does sounds exactly like the kind of scheme Ruby Ramos would concoct.
But I didn’t.
“Ruby?”
I open my eyes and stand up, holding out my arms for a hug. “Hi, Charlie.”
He gathers me in, and while I have probably hugged this man at least five hundred times, this is different. Neither of us is in a hurry to rush this one. He holds me, and I sigh and relax into him.
“Hi,” he says, and his chest rumbles against my cheek.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Same. Now explain why you’re sitting on your suitcase like a Depression era orphan.”
I don’t say anything for a couple of seconds, enjoying the hug before I step back. “I made a newbie mistake. I thought since the library was paying for the rooms, they were also handling the reservation, and I didn’t make one.”
“Oh, no. I should have double-checked the details with you.”
“Not your fault.”
“But I’ve come before. I know the process. It didn’t even occur to me to explain it to you.”
“I’m sure Sandy told me, and it didn’t register. Much like me.” I make a weak rimshot sound effect.
“I can’t even give you a pity laugh for that.”
I wave toward the front desk. “They’re sold out, and now I’m searching for open rooms I can afford.”
“The Snug Bug Inn might be cheap, but your funeral will be expensive. Come up to my room and we can look for more options.”
So far, Charlie doesn’t seem to have jumped to the conclusion that I’ve deliberately plotted for this to happen, but he’d be justified.
We take a crammed elevator up to the eighth floor.
I wouldn’t mind because it keeps me close to Charlie, which is my favorite spot wherever it occurs, and which I am still regretting not figuring out sooner.
Except it also keeps me brushing against the loud middle-aged man next to me if I breathe too deeply.
He seems to belong to a group of guys talking about the Rockets game tonight until they get off on the floor before us.
When we exit onto Charlie’s, he takes my suitcase and turns left. “This way. At least now we know why the hotels are so full.”
“I heard there are 4500 people at the conference.”
“Yeah, but also, the Rockets are playing the Spurs tonight.”
“Ohhhh.” It’s an ugly rivalry, likely to bring people three hours down I-10 from San Antonio, and this hotel is right between the arena and the conference center. “Great. There will be no last-minute downtown Houston room miracles.”
He stops in front of his room but instead of opening the door, he pulls out his phone. “How many hotel rooms are in Houston?” he asks it.
The phone answers, “The Houston area is home to approximately 800 hotels and 77,000 rooms.”
He cuts off the rest of the answer and slips his phone in his pocket to pull out his room key. “We got this.”
It only takes a few minutes on our laptops inside his small room to determine we don’t “got this,” but we keep at it for another twenty minutes or so before Charlie closes his.
He’s sitting with his back against the headboard of the sole queen bed, his legs stretched in front of him. “Unless you suddenly have oil heiress money or the library decides its entire operating budget can go to a hotel room for you this weekend, there are no realistic options.”
I’m at the desk/TV stand and I swivel in the office chair to face him. “Speaking of funerals, there’s a room at a hotel near Humble. Good reviews. Fits the budget. It’ll just be a twenty-mile drive.”
“Meaning an hour on the interstate each way.” He frowns. “Wait, what does that have to do with funerals?”
“It’s right next to the National Museum of Funeral History.”
He gives a small grunt.
“You want to go now, don’t you?” I guess.
“Yeah. But no to staying all the way out there. Just stay—”
“Don’t say it.” I already know where this is going. “Please don’t force me to be a movie cliché.”
“People love the one-bed trope.”
“I meant the evil mastermind cliché where you secretly believe I engineered this whole situation to force you to spend time with me.” The masterminding—non-evil—comes into play tomorrow.
He cocks his head. “Hadn’t considered that, but now I am.”
I glare at him.
“Just stay here,” he says.
“Still too clichéd.”
“You’re thinking The Proposal or Leap Year. That’s amateur time.” He laces his fingers behind his head. “Consider the one-bed trope in the hands of a true auteur.”
I study him, stretched out comfortably, teasing me into one of our favorite games, and wonder how my conscious brain was too dumb to realize that my subconscious brain wants this man with every fiber of my being, and twice as intensely when Charlie uses words like “auteur.”
“The one-bed trope is the one-bed trope in any hands,” I argue, so happy to be in this beloved, never-taking-it-for-granted-again rhythm. “Alfred Hitchcock. Not an amateur.”
His forehead furrows for a moment then smooths. “North by Northwest. Cary Grant has to hide in what’s-her-face’s sleeper car.”
“Eve Marie Saint, you uncultured hooligan.”
“Do many uncultured hooligans go to library conferences?” he muses.
“Just you.”
He points at me. “I will give you Hitchcock. But I’m thinking one bed trope in the hands of one Mr. John Hughes.”
“John Hughes . . . one bed.” Ferris Bueller? Sixteen Candles? My eyes snap to his. “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles.”
“Yeah. Nice and friendly. I’ll be John Candy and you be Steve Martin.”
I must have seen the movie at least five times growing up once my parents decided that I was finally old enough for my dad to put it on for the family at Thanksgiving. “Charlie, do you remember what happens when they wake up in the morning?”
“Yeah, they . . . oh. Right.”
It’s one of the funniest jokes in the film, but there are definitely wandering hands. Great punchline when it’s comedy geniuses, whole different situation when it’s me and Charlie.
He pulls out his phone, makes a call, and puts it on speaker.
“Is there a problem?” Joey asks instead of saying hello, and my eyes fly to Charlie’s.
“No, not yet,” Charlie says. “Out of curiosity, if Ruby had to choose between staying at a hotel by herself an hour away from a conference in Houston and driving in for the next three days or staying in a hotel room with me, what do you think she should do?”
“Stay with you,” Joey says.
“There’s only one bed,” I yell.
“Stay with Charlie,” Joey says.
“Even if I’m madly in love with him?” I yell again.
Charlie’s eyes widen, but Joey only says, “Did I stutter?”