Chapter 3
THREE
Hart
T he door to the suite slammed behind me as I rolled my small suitcase down the hallway toward the elevator, taking it to the first floor and stopping by the front desk to hand back the key.
“Thank you, Mr. Weston,” the front-desk clerk said, taking the thin piece of plastic I had slid toward her. “Checking out, I see.”
The personal greeting was always noticed and appreciated whenever I stayed at a Cole and Spade Hotel. My face was known at these establishments since we’d built Charred into a majority of their lobbies.
“I am.”
“How was your stay?”
I tapped my finger on the counter. “Too short.”
“Well, hopefully, we’ll see you back soon. Can I get you a bellhop to assist with your luggage?” She lifted the receiver of her phone .
“That won’t be needed. Thank you.”
“Does the valet know you’re leaving? I’ll call and get your car?—”
“Already taken care of.”
She set the phone back down and nodded. “Have a wonderful day, Mr. Weston, and thank you for staying with us.”
I thanked her and walked out of the lobby, where my car was waiting out front. I handed the valet the bills that I’d tucked into my palm, and while he put my suitcase into the small trunk, I got into the driver’s seat.
I hadn’t even reached for my seat belt, the door not even closed, when I smelled her.
The fruity jasmine.
The scent wasn’t strong, like she was sitting in the car with me, but strong enough that my eyes closed and the hottest breath exhaled through my nose.
Immediately, my brain went back to last night.
When she’d stripped off her clothes and revealed her body. When she sat on my fucking face on the chair in the living room. When I held her against the wall in the bedroom. When I tasted her again in the shower. When I’d positioned her on the dresser, using the second condom before I had more delivered.
An evening of fucking.
That was all it had been.
So, why had there been disappointment when I woke up this morning and reached for her and she wasn’t there? And when I had seen that she hadn’t left a note? And why was I aching for her now?
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Weston?”
My eyes opened. The valet was standing outside the driver’s door, holding it like he wanted to close it for me.
“No,” I replied .
He shut my door, and my hand went to the gearshift, my foot on the clutch, my gaze pointed at the driveway ahead.
But I didn’t move.
At least not forward.
What I did instead was reach for the button to roll down the passenger window and got the valet’s attention as he stood a few feet away.
“When did you start your shift this morning?”
“At six, sir.”
“Did you see a woman come out here? I don’t know if it was around that time—earlier or later. She was wearing an emerald-green dress, long black jacket, sky-high heels. Black hair.” My jaw tightened. “She’s gorgeous.”
“A woman who meets that description did come down.”
My chest tightened. “And I’m assuming she was picked up?”
“Yes, sir. By a rideshare.”
I nodded and rolled the window back up, shifting into first to pull out of the entrance and onto the road. I wondered why she had preferred to take a rideshare rather than waiting for me to wake up and take her to her car at the restaurant.
An answer I was sure I’d never get.
I wasn’t even a mile past the hotel when Brady Spade’s name came across the screen of my dashboard. He was one of the owners of the hotel chain, a longtime business partner, and one of my best friends.
I connected the call. “Brady, what’s good, my man?”
“Just checking to see how your stay was in our Laguna Beach location. You know, since I’m Mr. Customer Fucking Service.”
I laughed. “You’re hardly that, my friend.”
The Cole and Spade Hotel brand was made up of seven equal partners. Three Spade brothers, their cousin, and three Cole siblings. Out of all of them, Brady and Rhett Cole certainly took the crown for the grumpiest.
“And we both know that’s not why you’re calling. Is everything all right?”
“Everything is great. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be back in LA in a few weeks. It’s been a while since my family, the Coles, and your family have all been out. Let’s put something together and hit up the town.”
Most of the partners, when building or renovating a new hotel, ended up living on location until the construction was finished. My buddy had been all over the world with brief stints in LA between build-outs. And since he’d gotten married, I had seen him even less.
“Send me the dates,” I told him, turning at the light. “Maybe Beck will have a home game that night. We can start the evening in our suite and go out from there.”
“I like the way you think.”
My phone beeped, the dashboard showing Walker’s name on the screen. There was no doubt in my mind why he was reaching out this early.
“Fuck me,” I groaned. “I’ve got Walker calling on the other line, and I’m sure he’s about to ream my ass out.”
“Is it over a woman?”
I chuckled. “Isn’t it always?”
“Single and reckless—things I don’t miss.” He laughed. “I’ll text you the dates, brother.”
I said goodbye and clicked over. “Walker?—”
“How did it go last night?”
“Jesus,” I sighed. “How about a good morning ? Or, Hart, are you on your way back to LA ? Or, Did you get in safely ?—”
“Whether you’re still in Laguna or on your way back doesn’t concern me in the slightest. Stay there all week if that suits you. I want to know about Horned, which is why I sent you there in the first place and why I’m calling this early.”
I turned down the volume to the speakers. “Did something crawl up your ass this morning?”
“The second I opened my eyes and lifted my phone off my nightstand, there was another glowing review for Horned on my fucking screen, saying how delectably ingenious of a restaurant it is. That’s one. Two, I have a tiny fucking window to talk to you before I’m headed into meetings all day, and then I’ll be in the kitchen for the unforeseeable future. And three, if you think I get off on calling you this early, I don’t. I’m tired, I’m overworked, and I want shit to get done the way I want it done. Since I can’t clone myself, I have to rely on the four of you. So, patience is not something I possess at the moment, Hart.”
Walker in the kitchen was like a surgeon in the operating room. A space where he was fully focused and didn’t want any interruptions. He was also the inventor of every dish that was served in our large collection of restaurants. Without him, we wouldn’t have a product or a billion-dollar empire. But that wasn’t where his attitude came from. That was because the man never slept.
“You have exactly six minutes to give me every detail,” he continued.
I glanced at the time on my dash. It was 7:54.
I slowed at the light and exhaled. “It’s not going to take me six minutes. It’s not even going to take two minutes.”
“I don’t like the sound of this, Hart …”
“What I’m going to say next, you’re going to like even less.” Fuck . Listening to him lose his shit wasn’t how I wanted to start this day. But I knew it was coming—and I supposed, in some way, I deserved it. “I didn’t eat dinner at Horned. I left after my second old-fashioned.”
“Explain yourself. ”
It would be easier to tell him I hadn’t felt good and gone back to the hotel to crash. But I didn’t lie, and I especially wouldn’t lie to my brother.
I shifted into third, the engine revving at the same time I said, “I met a woman.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
I waited until it felt right, and when that moment never came, I replied, “I’m not.”
“You’re telling me you went to Laguna Beach for the night, booked a hotel so you wouldn’t have to drive home, went to a restaurant I’d assigned you to eat at—not as a personal assignment, but as a work one—and you aborted the mission. For a fucking woman.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Hart …” His tone was sharp and unforgiving. “I asked you for one thing, and you chose pussy.”
“It wasn’t just pussy. It was the best pussy I’ve ever had in my life.” I rubbed my hand around the leather of the steering wheel, like it was the skin of Sadie’s navel, and I smiled. “I’ll head back to Laguna sometime in the next week and have dinner at Horned.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll send Eden. At least I know she won’t find some random dude and go home with him instead of completing the task.”
“Walker, that’s a little extreme.”
“Call it anything you want, but I’m not giving up our placement as the best steak house in Laguna to some fucking no-name chef and a backer with a large bankroll. We’ve worked far too hard to get to where we are.”
“We’re not losing anything, don’t worry.” I huffed out some air as I slowed for the light, knowing I needed to change the mood. “For what it’s worth, she was gorgeous. I’m talking the most gorgeous ever. ”
“Do you think that helps your defense?” He waited. “It’s not like she’s going to become your wife or, shit, even your girlfriend. Knowing you, you didn’t even get her number.”
“Says the dude who’s forever single …”
“Because if I’m not in a goddamn meeting, I’m in the kitchen. How the hell am I supposed to find a woman when I’m married to a fucking gas range?”
I laughed. “Just don’t stick it in that gas range, please.”
“Asshole.”
I came to a stop at the red light. “I want you to know, the only reason I didn’t get this one’s number is because she’d left this morning while I was still asleep.”
“You’re telling me, if you’d been awake, you would have asked for her number?”
Those images that had come into my head earlier, the ones that recapped last night, reappeared. “Maybe.” I bit my lip, remembering another interesting twist to the evening, and I reached into my pocket, pulling out her red lace panties, and held them to my nose. Goddamn, that scent. If she was in this car, I’d pull over right here and eat that pussy. “But if I could be guaranteed a repeat of last night, fuck yes.”
“I’m sure you can find her. There’s this thing called Google, you know.”
“I never got her last name.”
He laughed. “Of course you didn’t.” He continued, “Do you regret that?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t know, Hart, I think it does. In all the years and all the women you’ve slept with, I’ve never heard you talk about getting one of their numbers.”
I tucked the panties back into my pocket as the light turned green and shifted into first. “There’s no way I can get it, so there’s no point in even talking about it.”
“Just like I thought, you regret it.”
“First you come at me about not eating dinner, and now you’re making me feel like shit that I didn’t get her fucking number.” I shook my head. “If you were in front of me, I’d flip you off.”
“And since I’m not?”
“I’m going to hang up on you … dickhead.”