by Lynda Chance
His gaze slowly lifted back to hers. “Do you?” he asked in a voice that hinted she had no clue what he was thinking.
She ignored the hint and continued in a belligerent tone that had her questioning her sanity, “Yep. Your fragile little girlfriend wants me gone but was too scared to do it.”
“Just for the record, Courtney’s not my girlfriend, and she wasn’t afraid to get rid of you. The only reason you’re still employed at this hotel is because of me.” The displeasure in his tone turned to icy contempt. “And you’re either completely brave or completely stupid not to realize it.”
Son-of-a-bitch just call her stupid? “Oh, I’m not stupid. I just don’t need your job. I think eight years of my life’s been enough, you know?”
There was a momentary pause before he asked, “You’re saying you’ve been working here for eight years?”
“You should know that already, if you gave even half a shit about your employees.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, as if he had every right to her thoughts. “I want to know what’s got your panties in a twist. You used to be, shall we say, quite pleasant on the phone. But that went to hell in a heartbeat.”
She gave him a cool stare, unable to contain her sarcasm. “And that upset poor little you, right?”
A look came over his features that would have quelled a lesser woman, but her bravado was only faltered by a fraction. “Honey, I’m going to give you fair warning,” he bit out. “Tread lightly around me, capisce?”
She stiffened her spine until she felt as if a steel rod was imbedded in her vertebrae. “Or what?”
His eyes turned glacial and his mouth flattened as he hissed, “You want to find out?”
Asshole didn’t scare her. He didn’t. “The worst you can do is fire me.”
He bared his teeth as his features turned remote while he held her gaze captive. “That’d be letting you off too easy. And I promise you, nothing about this is going to be easy for you.”
Her heart began pounding but she defiantly lifted her chin. “You don’t scare me. Not your fucking corporation and not your gazillions. Do your worst,” she challenged.
Just as he took another step forward, the outer door was pulled open and the night clerk walked into the room. The male college student, a part-time employee of about twenty, took one look at her and then nervously glanced at Garrett Rule before looking back to her. “Yes?” she asked a tad too sharply.
“I’m sorry to interrupt. But Romero Calderon is on the line and is insisting on talking to you. I’m sorry, Maria, he doesn’t seem to understand time zones.”
“It’s not a problem.” She wiped her damp palm down the towel that covered her torso and took the cordless phone the clerk extended. Why was she even taking the call? She was only going to get fired anyway. But she knew why …the hotel was her life, damn it, and she loved it as if it were a living, breathing entity. Walking away from the two men, she lifted the phone to her ear while she powered up her tablet that lay on a wrought iron table, knowing she was about to need it. Pulling up the calendar, she inquired in flawless Spanish, “Good Evening, Mr. Calderon. How are you this evening, sir? Or should I say morning?”
While she listened to his plea about needing an additional block of rooms for his arrival the next month, she flipped through the reservations calendar. As he continued to plead his case, knowing of the hotel’s recent upheaval, she assured, “Oh, no, no, it’s no problem … I promise you, the refurbishment is almost complete, you’re truly going to love the place even more so now. I’ll get you the extra rooms even if it means allowing one of your guests the use of my own personal suite for the duration of your visit.”
As he thanked her and made a flirtatious rejoinder, Maria couldn’t contain a mirthful laugh as she shook her head and rolled her eyes at the sweet old man’s jest. The old guy always brought his wife, if not his entire family. He was the epitome of a family man; he was at least seventy-five and she knew he’d been very happily married for at least half of those years. “Oh, really now?” she flirted harmlessly back. “I think maybe your wife would have something to say about that.”
As she keyed in the instructions and ended the call, she handed the phone back to Justin. “It’s all set, we’re good to go.”
“You haven’t forgotten about the Anderson bookings, have you? That’s an entire block of rooms taken while the Calderon party will be in attendance.”
She shook her head with a sad smile. Damn, she was going to miss the hotel. “I haven’t forgotten. The renovations on the third floor will be complete before the week is up, we’ll have rooms to spare.”
As Justin departed the room, she gathered her things and blatantly ignored Garrett Rule as she began to slip away, not caring to finish the conversation they’d started.
Unfortunately, she didn’t get a choice.
“You’re fluent in Spanish?” the hard voice asked.
She swung around to face him. “Does that shock you, Mr. Rule? My given name is Maria Sofia Isabella Alvarez and I was born and raised in Miami; I’ve lived here all my life. What did you expect? That English would be my only language?”
“I never really thought about it. If you have an accent at all, it’s only slight.”
“And only when I allow it,” she couldn’t contain the small boast. “I can turn it on and off at will.”
His gaze slid slowly down her body before lifting to her eyes again. “I’ll just bet you can.”
Sucking in a breath at his clear innuendo, she snapped, “Goodnight, Mr. Rule.” Giving him no time to respond, she slipped from the room.
****
Garrett tried to sleep that night, but the effort was mostly pointless. Maria Sofia Isabella Alvarez had fucked him up completely. It had been obvious at first sight that his fantasies weren’t going to dissolve into thin air. Oh, hell no, his goddamn cock was on full alert, condemning him to more cold showers and jacking-off if he couldn’t get his hands on her.
She’d looked even better than she’d sounded. Granted, his first sight of her had been a stupendous one; he’d seen her dripping wet, curves and all, even if it had been in a conservative one-piece swimsuit. But there’d been no mistaking the raging hard-on he’d gotten as he’d watched her swimming back and forth across the pool, her slim muscles powering through the water as if she were trying to exorcise something from her brain.
Him.
He’d felt it. He’d felt the tension between them even before she’d lifted herself from the water and stood on slender, weary legs that were subtly trembling from her punitive workout.
When she’d stood by the side of the pool, it had taken only seconds for him to recognize her allure as if it were a magnetic force field pulling him in; she was exactly what he’d pictured in his brain but only better, a combination of bold, sultry and sexy.
Her facial features were delicate, but stamped with such an iron determination that his cock had engorged at first sight, the clash of wills that was undoubtedly coming feeding his lust even more. Her dark hair hung in wet tendrils down her back and wisps of it escaped her ponytail to frame her face, giving it an exotic appeal.
Her eyebrows were high and delicately slanted, her brown eyes enhanced by long lashes, her lips full and red, her skin smooth with pale gold undertones. She was petite, her frame slender, her shoulders small. But her breasts … Christ, her breasts. To say she had full breasts was an understatement. She looked to be God’s gift to man; she had an hourglass figure accentuated by high, round breasts that had sent an instantaneous river of heat sliding down his spine.
He’d noticed all this about her in no more than a heartbeat … and then she’d glanced up at him … their gazes had connected, and he’d seen the volatile nature she possessed in the depths of her eyes. His hard-on had gone from raging to painful, a drop of pre-cum leaking onto his boxers.
Fuck.
He’d known down to his doomed soul that this shit would happen; he’d known she would lo
ok good. Hell, she looked even better than he’d imagined she would in his wildest, horniest dreams.
And that was how turned on he’d been before they’d started throwing insults back and forth. So, the little witch thought Courtney was his girlfriend? That was what had set her on the warpath? The idea of anything but a platonic, sibling-like relationship with Courtney was almost laughable—at least for him … but then he remembered the look on Nick’s face when they’d been arguing about her. It had been about a month ago, when Courtney had finished grad school. He and his brother had had a disagreement over where her place in the corporation would be; they’d both wanted her for their own divisions. It had somewhat surprised Garrett that his brother had had such definitive opinions about Courtney and her future, but at the time, he hadn’t put much thought into it.
Now, however, Maria’s accusations, although false, triggered something that Garrett had been missing, and the last puzzle piece fell into place. Nick’s feelings for Courtney weren’t platonic. Son-of-a-bitch. Garrett didn’t know how he’d missed it or how he even felt about it. It was the truth that Courtney was like a little sister to him, just like Erin, and if Nick ever hurt her … he’d have to answer to him.
But at this particular moment in time, all Garrett could really focus on was Maria and the quandary she presented. There was no question, he wanted to get her naked and horizontal as quickly as he could.
When she’d been snapping at him earlier, he’d been this close, this fucking close to saying ‘you’re fired’, and then picking her up and planting her legs around his waist and pushing her back against the tiled wall. It would have been ridiculously easy to pull her flimsy swimsuit aside and open his pants. He could have been inside her within five seconds flat. That’s what he’d wanted to do. That’s what he’d been about to do.
But then that guy had turned up and she’d taken that goddamn phone call that had screwed with his brain. Even if he hadn’t been fluent in Spanish, he still would have been able to tell how professional and accommodating she’d been, just by her tone. But he was fluent, because he’d minored in the language, and he’d understood every word of her end of the conversation. And not only had he experienced first hand the care with which she’d handled the paying guests, he’d also seen and heard how much the other employees relied on her.
The ramifications hit him all at once … he wasn’t going to be able to fire her; there was no way he could cut her loose. The general manager in charge was pure shit, and although Garrett hadn’t had the displeasure of meeting the man, Courtney had been adamant that the guy was on the short-list. So the hotel needed Maria, at the very least, for the duration of the transition. And that left Garrett in limbo, in a purgatory of indefinite blue-balls hell. He hadn’t anticipated that attaining his goal would be difficult in this particular way. He’d been assured the girl was a troublemaker, so he’d assumed he would just terminate her employment. Once that happened, he’d be able to get his hands on her.
Shit.
He was beginning to get a splitting headache.
Who knew that coming here would only make things go from bad to much, much worse?
****
So, the spoiled blonde woman wasn’t his girlfriend. Right. Maria didn’t believe that shit for a second … well, maybe for a couple of seconds last night when she’d been poleaxed at her first sight of Garrett Rule. Gorgeous didn’t even begin to describe the man. How tall was he exactly? There was no question that his height and the width of his shoulders were intimidating. And his face. She blew out a breath.
Hopefully, as bad as her morning was going, when he finally dragged his ass out of bed, he’d just fire her and get it over with. It truly would be so much easier. She had a job waiting for her whenever she wanted it at one of the larger, swankier, waterfront hotels down the road. Granted, she wouldn’t have on-site accommodations as she did with this job, but then, she wouldn’t be on call twenty-four hours a day, either.
But for right now, this was her hotel, or at least that’s the way she thought of it, and she was going to perform the same professional job she always had … right up until the moment he woke up and forced her to the pavement.
With that being said, she waded through the mess that was mid-construction on the west side of the third floor. Standing amidst five burly construction workers, wearing heels and an over-the-knee, pencil-slim skirt, she looked over the new sheetrock, checking out the substantial progress made since the morning before. Well, maybe things weren’t going so badly after all.
Juan, the supervisor in charge of the contract workers, stopped what he was doing when he saw her enter the suite and addressed her in Spanish. “You like what you see, Miss Maria?”
Maria smiled at him but ignored his sexual innuendo. He’d been harmlessly flirting with her ever since his crew had begun the project, and she knew he didn’t mean any offense or disrespect. She looked over the walls at the invisible seams. “Yeah, I do,” she answered back in Spanish. “Your crew does a great job. We’re lucky to have you.”
With dramatic flair, he put his hand over his heart. “What we do, we do for you.”
She burst into a laugh and shook her head. “Ah-huh. And the paychecks I hand out every week mean nothing, right?”
“You got me there, pretty,” he said with a smile before picking up his paint roller again.
She was about to wish him a good day when she noticed a half-empty box of cleaning spray. Strolling over, she glanced down, and for decorum’s sake, bent at the knees before picking up a single bottle, one of about half remaining in the box. “Where did these come from?” Standing up and swiveling the bottle in her fingers, she looked it over and then again at the box it had come in.
“They showed up a week ago or so. Why, what’s the problem?”
“Your crew has been using them?” she asked.
“Si.”
“Crap,” she mumbled as she reverted to English without conscious thought. “Don’t use any more of these bottles, okay?”
“Okay, but we’ll need new ones.”
“I’ll have some here by this afternoon.” With that, Maria spun on her heels, taking the spray bottle with her.
It didn’t take her three minutes to arrive at the office of the general manager, a man she had little respect for. She rapped on his door and when he looked up, she lifted the bottle, showing it to him as if in question.
“What?” the man rasped out impatiently.
Maria inwardly fumed. The guy stayed on his computer all day playing games, gambling, and messing with his social media accounts while she performed the job he was getting paid for. Poor Mr. Duncan would be rolling in his grave if he knew his beloved hotel was in such disrespectful hands. “Did you order these?” she asked.
“Yeah. So?”
Maria heard someone in the hallway behind her but she didn’t turn around to see which clerk had walked by. “See anything missing?” she asked, indicating the bottle, for the moment, concentrating only on the mission at hand.
“No,” he snapped, obviously impatient.
“M.S.D.S.” she replied succinctly, crossing her arms. “Mean anything to you?”
“On spray cleaner?” He rolled his eyes as if she had a screw loose. “Run along now, I’m busy.”
She took a deep breath and prayed for patience. “Mr. Treadway, I realize that you and I don’t get along all that well. But trust me, this isn’t a minor detail.” As she spoke, she attempted like hell to keep her tone neutral. “Every single bottle of this stuff, all the chemicals used in this hotel, have to have material safety data sheets on them. Not just on the box, but on each bottle.”
“On spray cleaner? Who gives a shit?” he snorted, looking back to his computer as if she were wasting his time.
“OSHA’s going to give a shit,” she answered decisively as she walked over to his desk and set the bottle beside his cell phone.
“OSHA?” he repeated, continuing to give his full attention to his computer scre
en, not even giving her the courtesy of pretending interest.
Knowing full well he knew exactly who OSHA was, she lost it and couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. Hell, she was going to get her pink slip today anyway, so why the fuck not? “Yeah, you know, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that large government entity that likes to protect workers by imposing large fines on corporations that don’t comply with their guidelines? Do you not care anything about this hotel or its employees?”
Taking her by surprise, his hand shot out and he gripped her wrist, his lips twisting into an unpleasant sneer. “Your attitude sucks. I know who the fuck OSHA is and I don’t give a shit about a couple of bottles of cleaner.”
Mounting fury lit her insides that he would dare touch her but she remained perfectly still as she gave him a withering stare. “If you don’t release me this very instant—”
The threat she was about to make was cut off as Garrett Rule stepped into the room. At the expression on his face, a fine buzzing began in her ears. The man appeared pissed. Upon further evaluation, the man looked beyond pissed. And somehow she knew, without him saying a word, that she wasn’t the person he was pissed at. At the same moment she made the realization, she began pulling on her wrist, and unfortunately for Mr. Treadway, he chose to tighten his hold.
Garrett came forward, and an air of danger filled the room around her, making her head spin. “Let her go.” The caustic words were spoken harshly, through gritted teeth.
Treadway released her wrist but made another crucial mistake. “Who the hell are you? Get the fuck out of my office.”
Maria quickly pulled her hand back, rubbing her wrist without conscious thought and met Garrett’s eyes, some indefinable communication passing between them. With a single glance, she realized exactly how beautiful he was. His eyes and hair were dark, his skin so swarthy that he looked as if he might have mixed ancestry. His features were refined, and at the moment, his lips were still curled with contempt.
