6. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
J oe pushed at Quentin’s shoulders as he muttered, “We’ve got an audience.”
Let them watch.
For a moment, Quentin resisted, but when Joe gave him a second, more emphatic shove, he gave in.
He didn’t care about giving anyone a show, but if Joe did…
He pressed one last kiss to Joe’s throat, the skin warm and sweet with the faded smell of cologne applied in the wee hours of the morning, and stepped back.
His foot caught in his discarded shirt, and he cursed under his breath as he stooped down to grab it.
“Sorry,” Joe mouthed apologetically as he pulled himself off the wall and straightened his shirt. “It won’t happen–”
He was cut off by a disdainful snort in reply. Quentin straightened up and turned to scowl at the middle-aged couple clutching their collective pearls in the hallway. The man angrily swiped his keycard over the lock and ushered his wife in through the door ahead of him.
“I’m going to write to head office tomorrow,” he warned them as he lingered on the threshold. “They’ll hear about what’s going on here.”
“I’m sure they’ll be shocked,” Quentin said dryly. “But at least they still have guests who they know have never had a good fuck in their beds.”
Blister spots of red flared on the man’s face as he stomped into his room and slammed the door behind him.
Quentin snorted. “Ass.”
“You’re not getting fucked either,” Joe said awkwardly. He stopped and cleared his throat as he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I mean…that was… I did kiss you, but I shouldn’t have. There’s the kids, and I can’t just—”
Quentin raised an eyebrow at him. “I admit I’ve never dated a parent before,” he said.
In fact, he’d actively winnowed them out of his dating pool.
He didn’t know why Joe was different, but luckily, he didn’t have to justify his life to anyone.
“But I do exist in society. I wasn’t expecting you to put a sock on the door and make them wait outside. ”
The idea might have crossed his mind, but he’d not expected it.
Joe narrowed his eyes at him. “We’re not dating.”
Quentin nodded. “I remember. You said not yet.”
“And what?” Joe asked. “You’re going to follow me back to Alaska and whisk me away from all this?”
“I think ‘follow’ is a strong word,” Quentin said. “I’ll be flying the plane.”
Joe tried not to smile, but it didn’t work. He just shook his head.
“This has been…”
“Don’t say nice.”
“Lovely?”
Quentin wrinkled his nose, but let it pass with a shrug. It was better than ‘nice’, at least.
“Don’t spoil it by making promises you can’t keep,” he said.
“I won’t,” Quentin said. He stepped forward, put his thumb under Joe’s chin, and tipped his head back just enough so he could steal a quick, sweet kiss from bite-flushed lips. “You’ll see.”
****
The next morning, Quentin wiped the sleep from the corner of his eye as he stood in the corner of the hotel’s breakfast area and tried to navigate the coffee machine’s digital menu.
It was out of oat milk.
He didn’t know why that was his problem when he wanted black coffee.
“I hate these things,” someone said from behind him. “They never work, and no matter what you order, it always tastes the same.”
Quentin jabbed the appropriate button with his thumb again. “As long as it has caffeine in it, I don’t care,” he said.
The machine was also out of soy. There was no reason that Quentin needed that information. He gave up with a grunt, hit the cancel button, and turned to go. The man behind him held up a hand to stop him.
That was a bold move with someone you knew had no coffee yet.
“I know you,” the man said.
Maybe today was ‘tell Quentin things that aren’t his problem’ day, Quentin thought sourly. He gave the man a cursory once-over from red cropped hair to crumpled Wolverine’s T-shirt.
“I don’t think so,” he said and took a pointed glance at his watch. “If there’s no coffee, I should–”
“No,” the man said. “I’m good with faces. Let me just–”
He narrowed his eyes and stared at Quentin. Then he made a triumphant noise and pointed at him.
“You have a cat!”
Quentin looked at the man’s finger and then back up at his face. If he tried, he could probably place him. There were a limited number of places where someone could have met Angus and Quentin together. It was either the vets or the daycare; Angus liked his outings expensive.
“No,” Quentin lied. “I don’t believe in them.”
The man looked bewildered. Quentin sidestepped him and, coffee-free and carry-on dragged behind him, headed toward reception. Last night’s clerk had been replaced by a bright-eyed, lanky man with a big smile.
“Good Morning, Mr…” he trailed off.
“Farnham,” Quentin said. He handed his card over. “Just checking out. Room 322. Ahh, my friend stayed here too. Joe Gardner. Blond man, handsome, three kids in tow?”
He knew the room number. Before he could quote it, the clerk pulled a quick, there and gone, ‘yeesh’ expression and tapped at his terminal. Quentin scowled on autopilot and opened his mouth to say something.
He wasn’t sure why. The only reason he recognized the expression was because it was the same one he’d have made a week ago.
…or early yesterday.
Head down as he worked, the clerk didn’t notice he was about to have a strip peeled off him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Hats off to him, man. My wife and I have a one-year-old. I’d not want to travel alone with him. Never mind three kids? Damn.”
False alarm. Quentin coughed to clear the sharpness from his throat and leaned on the counter.
“He’s a good dad,” he said. “So he’s already left?”
“Ye–” the receptionist caught himself mid-confirmation. He looked up with a mildly alarmed expression, fingers frozen above the keyboard. “I mean, sorry. I can’t tell you that information about another guest.”
He looked awkward. Quentin let him off the hook.
“Of course,” he said. “I just knew he had an early appointment, and thought maybe I’d catch him before I left. But I can catch up later.”
The clerk looked relieved and finished up on the computer. He hit enter, and the printer behind him clattered to life.
“I hope you had a good night,” the clerk said as he turned to grab the printout and extend it to Quentin. “Hope to see you again soon!”
Quentin gave a noncommittal nod as he took the paper. He gave it the customary once-over and paused as his eye caught on the charges to the room. His eyebrow rose as he saw the Twix from last night and two pots of Cookie Dough ice cream that had been charged after he’d left Joe.
His mouth quirked at the corner.
Cheeky little–
“Something wrong?” the clerk asked.
Quentin looked up at him for a second, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. Which would have surprised most people who knew him, but it was a tub of ice cream. He’d have probably tried the same when he’d been shorter. Quentin folded the bill with his thumb and tucked it into his pocket. “Everything is in order.”
The clerk relaxed with a bright, relieved smile. “Have a good day, sir!”
“Would have been better with coffee,” Quentin said as he grabbed the handle of his case. “But thanks.”
****
There were advantages to working in the family business.
Some days Quentin would just be hard-pressed to list them. Although he could probably start from the bottom of the list with ‘donning an executive’s hat to sit in on meetings with lawyers and lease consultants.’ It definitely wouldn’t break the top 100 on reasons not to go work for another airline.
He sat back in his chair and doodled idly on the corner of his notepad as he waited out the back and forth on how to split the gate lease they used here.
“We can offer you Friday for the same leasing period for next year,” the airport’s legal representative finally said. “It will be a later slot, but—”
“If that was on the table, Ms. Lowry, why play hardball over Monday?” the lawyer from the consultancy firm, a redhead who’d left his Wolverine’s jersey back at the hotel and introduced himself as Ben Rand, asked dryly.
He glanced at Quentin and smirked briefly.
“I’m sure we’d all rather get out of here and get some coffee. Speaking of which….”
Quentin looked up.
“Which slot?” he asked.
The question must have caught Lowry by surprise, because she looked almost comically shady for a second. She must have thought she’d moved her cups fast enough that they’d lost sight of the card.
“Oh, it would be…” she faux-checked the paperwork, running the tip of her pen down the page. “Probably the 8 pm flight?”
Quentin glanced at Rand and shook his head. That got him an annoyed raised eyebrow in response, but he was the representative of the client. So with an aggrieved sigh, the offer was tossed back like a too-small fish.
By the time they finished, no one was happy. That was probably a good sign.
Quentin finished his bottle of water on the way out and tossed it into a handy recycling bin on the way by.
“Can I ask why you added half an hour to that meeting?” Rand asked tartly as he fell in next to Quentin. He shrugged his jacket on as they walked. “Friday would have been an easy deal to close.”
“That’s the dumping ground slot,” Quentin told him. “Every delay, every gate change, every cancellation, that’s where the knock-on effect lands. At least half the flights get delayed, most of them significantly.”
Rand raised a gingery eyebrow curiously.
“What report did that come from?”
“A 2024 report on what flight crews complain about in the hotel bar,” Quentin told him. “Very informative.”
That made Rand snort laugh. He waited while Quentin keyed the code in to get them back into the main airport, and then casually put his hand in the small of Quentin’s back.
“Still in the mood for coffee?” he asked as he nodded toward a kiosk tucked in between a charging station and a souvenir stall. “Call it my apology for thinking we hung out at the same cat cafe instead of being a client of the firm.”