Hotel queens, p.17
Hotel Queens, page 17
The curious eyes of Monique Carson, sex mistress, stared back at her. She was arranged artfully against the wall in a stylish executive suit. Her stockings were sheer, her cleavage deep. And her expression was as knowing as ever as it raked Amelia.
Amelia felt stripped naked under that gaze as she jabbed the button for the eighth floor.
Would silence be too much to hope for?
“We meet again, Lia Duxton.”
Apparently it was.
“Ms. Carson,” Amelia said stiffly. She willed the elevator to move faster.
“You took my advice then?” Monique sounded amused. “Let down those fortress walls?”
Amelia ignored her and glared up at the numbers. Now passing the fourth floor…
“Your lipstick, darling, is smeared like honey down a woman’s thighs. Someone’s been having fun, and in a maid’s outfit no less? A bit clichéd, and I’d know. Trust me, I’ve done them all. Is that your thing? Dress up?”
“It’s not a thing.” Amelia glared at the lumbering elevator impatiently. “There is no thing.”
“Oh, sweetie…” Monique leaned in to straighten Amelia’s collar. “There is definitely a thing. Still in denial? Shall we talk about your hair? Oh, that’s been tugged on by hands that badly want to do much more. Or have they done so already?”
“So imaginative,” Amelia said with a scowl.
Monique’s eyebrow shot up. “Why so gloomy, darling? You know,” she said confidentially, “you might want to reassess your bedroom technique if this is how you are after sex. It’s supposed to be fun.”
“It isn’t just fun though, is it?” Amelia turned to face her. “And, for the last time, I didn’t have sex with anyone! I’m on duty!”
Monique regarded her with surprise. “I…see. Are you one of those women who sees pleasure as weakness or vulnerability? Perhaps some guilty, regretful secret?”
Amelia ignored her.
“You know, my dear, I might have gilded the lily last time we met,” Monique said. “Boasting that all my clients float out of my room satisfied. Some don’t, I’m afraid.”
That got Amelia’s attention. She glanced at Monique in surprise.
“They don’t because they weren’t ready for the CEO fantasy experience. They weren’t prepared for the strong emotions. It’s a lot to process when you don’t know what it can be like, especially if you’ve led a more…sedate…life. All those overwhelming sensations kicking in? Some women crawl out of my room looking more thunderstruck than satisfied.”
That made sense. Strong, unexpected emotions could derail anyone. Another good reason to keep a firm lid on them.
“But do you know what’s interesting about those clients?”
“What?” Amelia asked in spite of herself.
“They all come back.”
Amelia blinked.
“Every single one. And the next time, they are ready. More than ready. Once they understand how their bodies will react and feel, they want more.”
Well, that won’t be me. Mistakes had been made with Kai. Certain…lapses. But she had no interest in re-creating those events. It had scared the life out of her knowing how close she’d come to losing everything. She shuddered at the thought. Amelia was incredibly lucky to have had a stay of execution.
The bell dinged, and the doors opened on the sixth floor. However, Monique made no move to exit.
“Your floor,” Amelia murmured.
Monique stepped forward and raised her milky white hand between the doors to keep them open, eyes never leaving Amelia’s. “Tell me something: Do you regret your lovely not-sex romp because it was bad? Or do you regret it because it was good?”
“Excuse me?” The audacity!
“If I’m right—that you enjoyed it even though you didn’t want to, that’s not regret. It’s opportunity. And if you’re smart, you’ll go back for more. Life’s too short. Trust me.” She strode out of the elevator without looking back.
Amelia stared at the closing metal doors, aghast to have been so easily read by a stranger. A sex-fantasies expert, at that.
Slumping, she admitted the worst to herself. Yes, she’d enjoyed those kisses. They’d set her on fire. Kai’s heated lips had burned. And Amelia had almost come apart over how Kai’s beautiful breast had felt under her fingers. She wasn’t made of stone.
And…being honest…she might crave a great deal more from Kai. But that wasn’t the point, no matter what Monique or Kai seemed to think.
Because one thing she knew for a fact: Kai Fisher was far too dangerous. She’d be Amelia’s undoing if Amelia let her—and that was completely unacceptable.
Chapter 13
Distractions
Kai poked at her Caesar salad with little interest. It was hard to concentrate on lunch when she remembered the alarm on Amelia’s face as she’d flown out of Kai’s room a few hours earlier.
What would have happened if Maria hadn’t interrupted them?
As soon as Kai had dressed, she’d sought out Maria, requesting her discretion, and asking there be no reports. The woman had seemed offended to even be asked.
“It is already handled, Ms. Fisher,” she’d replied. “Do not worry.”
Thank God. It was frustrating everything had ended the way it had, but Lia had been pretty clear about where this wasn’t going. Kai would respect those boundaries.
Milly coughed and side-eyed her.
Kai shifted her full focus to her lunch companion. “Milly Valentine, do I want to know what’s giving you that look? Have you met someone dashing who’s diverting your attention?”
Milly’s pale eyebrows lifted. “I was wondering the same about you, Ms. Fisher.”
“I wasn’t swinging from the rafters with anyone, before you ask,” Kai said dryly as she lifted a wine to her lips and eyed Milly over it.
“I wasn’t going to ask. I was more interested in knowing if you made up with our translator?”
Warmth heated Kai’s cheeks. She returned her glass to the table and rotated it slowly, watching it bunch up the linen tablecloth slightly. Lia’s warm hand fondling her bare breast flooded her mind. “No. I anticipate Ms. Hanson will be avoiding me for the rest of our stay. We had a disagreement about going forward.”
“What if we need her again?”
“I doubt we will. My breakfast meeting with Hamadani was…” Odd. Confusing. Fast. “Satisfactory. We’re signing the agreed terms tomorrow and then it’s off my plate and for Grand Millennium’s lawyers to worry about. I assume Mr. Stein will be doing cartwheels all over Twitter as soon as I tell him. Didn’t you get my email on all this?”
“Yes, but—”
“So you know I don’t expect any more Arabic this late in the game. And if we get more, we’ll find someone else.” Kai took a quick gulp of wine.
“Yes, Ms. Fisher.” Milly paused. “I remember her, by the way. I mean, it threw me off, her doing all those different jobs, but isn’t Ms. Hanson the same woman we saw checking in?”
Milly’s powers of observation could be mighty inconvenient at times. “Possibly.” Kai studied the tablecloth.
“Why is someone who can afford Louis Vuitton playing hotel concierge? And doing room service?” Milly became thoughtful. “Or maybe the bags were knock-offs?”
Louis Vuitton bags. Lia did have those, didn’t she? As well as that gorgeous Gallet watch. She was rich then? “Lia Hanson is a mystery. That’s all we know for certain.”
Milly merely nodded. Kai took in the tiredness around her eyes. Her assistant had been working long hours, ensuring their New York office was operating smoothly as well as running around after Kai here.
“I trust you will remember my advice at some point and have some time for yourself?” Kai said. “Maybe find someone fun to amuse yourself with? That’d be a good pick-me-up.”
“I will remember your advice,” Milly said lightly.
Laughing, Kai said, “And not take it. Nice dodge.”
Milly gave a long-suffering sigh. “Anyway, I meant to say, I bumped into Mr. Hamadani near the gaming room earlier.”
“Did he behave himself?” Kai would throttle him if she had to—even if it’d be damned inconvenient.
“He did. He didn’t apologize for what he said before, but he wouldn’t meet my eye, either.”
“Self-awareness from an asshole? I don’t think my heart can take the shock.”
Milly smiled.
“So he’d been in the gaming room?” Kai asked.
“Maybe?”
Hmm. Hamadani’s risk-averse profile didn’t fit a gambler, but then you never really knew anyone, did you? Like icy Lia Hanson, who kissed with so much heat she could start a wildfire.
“Mr. Hamadani asked for the signing location to be the Prohibition Bar at two tomorrow.”
“A bar? Of all the odd places to do business.”
“Maybe he wants to watch the big poker tournament going on next door afterwards?”
A half-a-billion-dollar deal was being signed off on and the man wanted one eye on gaming screens? Christ, Vegas made people a little crazy.
“Email and confirm.” Kai shook her head. “I’ll be glad when this is done. I don’t like this deal one bit.”
Milly gave her a surprised look.
“I know. Weird, isn’t it, since it’s the deal everyone wants.”
“Well, maybe just focus on the finish line.”
Now that was excellent advice.
Amelia fell on her bed, every muscle aching. Even after a long, long shower she was sure she could still smell cleaning chemicals from her day in Housekeeping. Her mind kept looping over Mrs. Espinosa deciding not to report her, the keynote speech that still lay half-written, and…Kai.
Kai Fisher. Her teasing lips had awakened things in Amelia she’d rather not dwell on.
Dangerous. Amelia couldn’t work out whether she was being played by Kai from one moment to the next. Thank God she’d finally put an end to whatever was going on between them.
Although it was late and she was exhausted, her brain refused to relax, so Amelia began flicking through work emails.
The man who had replaced Douglas as Head of Purchasing was not making a good first impression. He’d been besieging her inbox, seeking approval on every little thing. She shunted that mess over to Quinn to resolve, with a terse email.
Get it through his pea brain that he can’t email me every five minutes when he gets the jitters about whether to choose Cat 6 or 6a Ethernet cables. Either fix him or I’ll fire him.
New uniform designs for her hotels in Italy had landed. She gave them a thorough once-over and wrote back.
Lose the cleavage. Four open buttons sends a message that our staff will definitely not be delivering on. Otherwise, approved.
She clicked the next email. Marketing wanted to query the CMPs on her Spanish hotels. She tossed off a snide reply.
It’s called a Complete Meeting Package because it’s complete, Ms. González. No, we’re NOT lowering the price we advertise and then sneakily asking people to pay more for conference center access later. It wouldn’t be a complete price then, would it? Find another way to beat our rivals on CMPs that doesn’t involving lying about price.
Incompetence. If she knew Gabriella, that’d be the last she’d hear from her on that. Amelia’s word was final. That was definitely a benefit of being the boss.
For a moment, she stared at her ceiling and tried to imagine this not being her life.
How did everyone else do it? How did they go about their long, tiring jobs, often having children and so many bills…and then turn around and do it all again the next day? And how did they do it without having any locus of control—that knowledge you held the power of your own destiny, a knowledge that, studies showed, removed a lot of stress.
Amelia didn’t think she’d like it very much. As taxing as her career could be, at the end of the day, she got to call the shots. She had the control. Amelia was well aware of how lucky she was. Well, she had more than luck, didn’t she? She had entitlement, too. As annoying as her family was, they had given her an enviable start to life.
At the reminder of her family, she switched to her personal email. Something from her mother, reminding her about a distant cousin’s birthday party that coincided with Amelia being in the US. She had no intention of attending, because there, at the bottom, was why:
Just a reminder, Amelia, please don’t bring any special friends as your plus one. You know how your father is.
Every single invite included that reminder—as had been the case since she’d come out at nineteen—as if Amelia had forgotten from every other prior invitation. Did her mother truly think Amelia was that forgetful? It didn’t matter that Amelia hadn’t dated anyone seriously since Mariam. No, come birthdays to bar mitzvahs, don’t bring any special friends was practically in her mother’s email signature.
Amelia sighed and thought about what she wished she could reply but never would: Don’t worry, Mom, you’re quite safe from me sprinkling any big ole lesbian fairy dust all over your traditional family affairs.
For a brief, subversive moment, she had a wicked thought of bringing Kai Fisher along. Bright, clever, scheming Kai Fisher, who hated the Duxtons and would almost certainly argue circles around her parents. They wouldn’t know what hit them. Hilarious! But…no. As maddening as Kai could often be, inflicting Amelia’s judgmental family on her would be cruel.
She clicked the next email. It was a picture of an owl with someone’s hand lifting its feathers up to show surprisingly long legs.
I don’t see any knees, Auntie Lia! But I know that doesn’t mean it’s totally proven. Cos science!
Amelia beamed proudly, then dashed off a reply.
It’s excellent, darling, that you remember observation alone isn’t enough to answer a question scientifically. I have to agree, though, those are some very long legs! I promise we’ll Skype properly soon, Imogen. Love, Lia.
Next, an email from Joe. He was like a dog with a bone.
Have we sealed Mayfair Palace? Don’t forget we want to announce it soon.
As if she could forget. On that topic, things were getting stranger. It had dawned on Amelia, while up to one armpit in a hotel toilet, wielding a brush, that she had all the pieces of the puzzle. She just hadn’t put them together.
The mystery man Kai had planned to meet at the bar who hadn’t showed? She’d been lying in wait for him, hoping for a chance meeting. The man Kai had had a breakfast meeting with today for her deal? Only one person could sell Mayfair Palace. That meant Nedal al-Hamadani was in Vegas, too. He’d been under her nose the whole time!
As soon as her shift ended, she’d hurried down to the front desk and asked Graham to see whether a Nedal al-Hamadani was checked in. He’d given her the oddest look, muttered “popular guy,” then confirmed it.
Minutes later, she was at Nedal’s door, but received no answer to her knocks. Phoning his room a moment later had yielded the same result.
Was he out or hiding?
Her cell phone jangled to life, throwing Amelia back into the present—in bed, with everything aching. Quinn flashed on the screen.
Finally! She’d been waiting an hour for her assistant to wake and find Amelia’s text to call her ASAP.
“Quinn,” she said. “Good morning.”
“Hey, boss.” Quinn yawned. “I have news.”
“As do I. But you go first.”
“Right. We’ve found that woman you asked about. Full name Annabelle Janis Fisher, goes by Kaida, or Kai for short.”
Amelia sifted through her tired brain. “Never heard of her.”
“That’s because most people know her by her nickname. Ever heard of The Closer?”
Something pinged in the back of her head, a memory of Oliver ranting over a deal he’d lost to The Closer a few years back.
“She’s a VP of marketing who sometimes does deals for her hotel company—hence the nickname,” Quinn finished.
Wait… Amelia dredged up the rest of Oliver’s rant. “Doesn’t The Closer work for Grand Millennium?”
“Yep. She’s Stein’s deal maker…”
Quinn’s words faded out as Amelia digested what that meant. She’d kissed the deal maker at Grand Millennium. A company that spent all its spare time smearing Hotel Duxton. No wonder Kai Fisher knew so much about Duxton business that she could reel off all the lies against them. She was one of them. Hell, maybe she was the one spreading the sordid tales around Vegas in the first place.
I kissed her. Not just that. Amelia’s fingers tingled in reminder of what else she’d done.
“…known as a killer in hotel buying,” Quinn was saying. “She can read a room like no one else and absolutely fuck over her competition. Eat ’em for lunch.”
Based on what she’d seen, Amelia didn’t doubt it. “What else did you find out?” Her voice was tight.
“She was a lawyer…well, she’s still registered, but she’s not practicing. She left some prestigious Manhattan law firm—no one knows why—and reappeared months later at Stein’s side.” There came the soft pings of a phone being tapped. “On the personal side: age, forty-three. Never married, no kids. Rumors that she likes the ladies. But main gossip is on how hard to beat she is. When she sees what she wants, she gets it most of the time.”
That was definitely the woman she’d met. So…what had Kaida Fisher offered Nedal that was so good he’d betray Amelia? Or had the woman identified some weakness in Nedal and exploited it so he couldn’t say no? Was that it? After all, Kai was so very good at homing in on weaknesses.
