Welcome to the Cameo Hotel

by K. I. Lynn

  That got me going. I had to look away as tears filled my eyes.

  He straightened out, then moved to the spot next to me, his hand resting on my knee. “I know you’re depressed, but this isn’t helping anything.”

  “What else am I supposed to do? I have no money and one task. No interviews and no calls. This is all I have.”

  “Then I have an idea. Something that will get you out of here for a little every day.”

  “Hmm? What’s that?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you pick out furniture for the house?”

  My brow scrunched. “Isn’t that something we should do together? I was looking forward to shopping with you.”

  He nodded. “We can still do that, but we can make you the scouter and go together on the weekends. Money isn’t really an issue, but there are four bedrooms and nearly five living spaces.”

  My eyes went wide. “Oh my God. I totally forgot that we’d need to furnish that whole place.”

  He chuckled and nodded. “There are a lot of rooms. Look at the pictures online, figure out any paint colors you want to change. You can go get paint swatches you like.”

  “I think you’re just trying to keep me busy.”

  “Anything to keep you upbeat and positive,” he said, then took my hand in his, our fingers intertwining. “Look at what we have, not at what you lost.”

  He was right, and it wasn’t a bad idea, especially when shopping for so much. It wasn’t just furniture, but a whole house that was ours. I would live in it with the man I loved. Maybe for once it was okay to not do everything on my own. After all, we were a couple, a partnership.

  “One thing . . . that suitcase can’t be all of your stuff.”

  He chuckled. “No. It’s in storage, waiting for the house.”

  “So you have furniture?”

  He nodded. “My assistant in New York took photos of everything before they loaded it up. I’ll send them to you. I’m not attached to any of it. If you like it, we’ll keep it. If you don’t, it goes.”

  I gave him a small smile. It was a combination of the depression and the happiness that came with thinking about our home.

  “Are you going to want to take any of this furniture to the house?” he asked, patting the sofa.

  My gaze bounced around the items in the room. It was all secondhand stuff off Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. The bookshelf was cheap, the shelves bending from the weight of my books. There was a cover on the couch, and I couldn’t even remember what the print underneath was.

  The dining room set was a simple, rectangular table with four chairs. In the bedroom, the bed was a cheap mattress with a memory foam topper to make it somewhat comfortable and a cheap frame.

  The apartment was just a place to study and sleep. I didn’t do much else there.

  “Maybe a lamp or two, and that’s about it,” I said. “Oh, and the TV.” That had been my one splurge over the years, besides my laptop. I’d been one of those Black Friday stalkers a few years back.

  “Then you have a lot to shop for. Take lots of pictures and send me stuff you like and where you are.”

  I nodded and started making a mental list. “There’s so much . . .” Excitement coursed through me, and a genuine smile formed on my face. “Let’s make a list. Together.”

  “That sounds like a great idea.”

  I grabbed one of my leftover notebooks and a pen and had Gavin pull the house up. We ended up ordering food as we went through each room, talking about what pieces we needed.

  In the end, he pulled me out of it. Gavin was right. Looking to our future was so much better than wallowing in the past.

  Gavin

  Soothing Emma was second nature. I held her in my arms, her body shaking as tears streamed down her face. Losing her job hit hard. While she grieved, I stewed in a quiet anger. It was my actions, my affections that had created the situation that were the grounds of her termination.

  I had sacrificed her job to have her, and I would do it again.

  But that man . . . The hotel manager would be fired within a week. I was going to make sure of it. I wanted to rip his face off. Maybe slam the fat bastard into something. The anger that consumed me when I saw the man, saw how he treated her. A man I had not seen in months.

  My threat would not be empty, nor glossed over simply because I had the recording. My instructions were followed, but they weren’t followed by him, and I intended to carry out my word. He was not there to deliver it. While I commended Miguel, whom I considered the true manager of the hotel, for his decision, I still couldn’t let what Phillip did stand.

  We shopped for groceries on Saturday, stocking up for Emma being home all week. I refused to let her pay for anything. She didn’t have much money, and it was the least I could do.

  When we entered her building, her downstairs neighbor was standing her doorway. She was older, curlers in her hair, wearing what appeared to be a small circus tent. A little yippy dog sat at her feet. The woman had chastised me in the past, which only made me want to piss her off.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Carrow,” Emma said, plastering a fake smile on her face. She was always trying to be pleasant.

  “Harlot!” the crone yelled.

  My jaw ticked as I narrowed my eyes at her. The woman was insufferable.

  Emma stopped mid-step and turned back to her. “Excuse me?”

  “You have men going in and out of your apartment all the time,” she sneered.

  What? A chill ran through me at her words, settling in the pit of my stomach.

  “I think you need to get your eyes checked, Mrs. Carrow, because there is only one man.”

  I followed Emma the rest of the way up, but I couldn’t shake the darkness that flooded in. What I hated most was the doubt.

  “Ugh. I can’t believe her. She was calling me a whore!” Emma seethed as she dropped the bags onto the counter.

  “Don’t worry about her,” I said, though it was strained. I reached up and massaged my temples. Part of me wanted to ask her what the fuck the old woman was talking about. The other part reminded me that I trusted Emma.

  “Gavin?” Emma walked up to me and rubbed her hands up my arms to my chest. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  It was warm, soothing, but something stung. My eyes snapped open. “I just have a headache. I think I’m going to go lie down.”

  “Oh, okay.” She stood on her toes and cupped my face, pulling me down until her lips pressed against my forehead. “Feel better.”

  I nodded before heading to the bedroom, closing the door behind me. After pulling off my sweater and kicking off my shoes, I fell onto the bed.

  I was used to Emma’s crone of a downstairs neighbor, but her accusation . . . I knew it wasn’t true, but it still hit me wrong. I stretched my neck, trying to loosen the growing tension.

  I had told Emma I had a headache, but instead I stared up at the ceiling, questioning what she said. The woman was old, senile, but was there something to her words? Was there someone else Emma was seeing?

  “Stop being ridiculous,” I chastised myself.

  Emma had never given me any indication that she wasn’t as deliriously happy as I was, but still . . . doubts crept in. When my ex-wife had been cheating on me, we were barely speaking. That should have been my first indication something was wrong, but I let her make a fool out of me.

  Emma liked the attention, the gifts, but she never expected them. Levelheaded and grounded, she was everything my socialite ex-wife wasn’t. Emma was also independent—a trait I both loved and hated.

  I hated my reaction.

  I loved Emma. I was happy with her. The truth was, there was still a lot I didn’t know about her.

  Perhaps it was strange to say that I didn’t know her and I loved her in nearly the same thought, but there was always the doubt in the back of my mind.

  What if she was just like Katrina? When I met my ex-wife, she was similar to Emma—strong willed. I always had to remind myself of their diff
erence. Katrina always asked for me to buy her things, while Emma graciously accepted gifts with honest surprise. Never once did she ask for anything but my time.

  It was an unfair comparison, but it was what I had been left with when the divorce was finalized.

  The doubts, the darkness, ate at me. It was a distrust I didn’t want to have, a leftover from a scar so deep I never dealt with it. That alone was why I’d never dated after my divorce, the entire reason I was such an asshole to Emma in the beginning.

  One look from her, and I was hooked.

  “Of all the women in all the places . . .” I whispered with a small chuckle.

  Emma wasn’t Katrina. She was caring and kind and intelligent.

  When I felt I had a handle on my emotions, I stepped out of the bedroom.

  “What’s that smell?” I asked.

  Emma set her phone down and jumped up from the couch. “I made you cookies.”

  I blinked at her in surprise. How long was I in there? “You made me cookies?”

  I followed her into the dining room, and to the cookies that were cooling on a rack in the center of the table.

  “Yeah, I thought . . . I don’t know, that it might help you feel better?” she said, though it sounded more like a question. “Silly, I know, making cookies for a headache.”

  “My mom used to always bake me cookies when I was down or sick,” I revealed before I bit into one.

  The flavor burst on my tongue, a flash of memories, feelings, and family. Home—that was what the cookies represented. I hummed from the chocolate that was still melty goodness, then reached out to brush my fingers against her cheek. My Emma. She didn’t know the dichotomy that brewed inside me. The desire for all of her, while my past experience sowed doubt.

  I leaned down and pressed my lips against hers. “Thank you, baby.”

  She smiled up at me, her fingers slipping between mine. “You’re welcome.”

  The warmth was Emma, not the cold—something I needed to remember. More than once I let the anger gain control, and it was an emotion she didn’t deserve.

  We spent the rest of the day surfing Netflix with a plate of cookies between us, and then nothing between us at all.

  Emma’s deteriorating mood over the following week only served to flare the hatred I had for Phillip. By the end of the week, I had the president of Cameo International on the phone. My threats were not hollow things, and that pig of a manger was going to find that out first hand.

  “Gavin, how are you this fine morning?” Richard said as he answered.

  “Good. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain. I spent the weekend babysitting my granddaughter.” I could hear the happiness in his voice.

  “How is she?”

  “Absolutely adorable. I’ll shoot you over a photo later. She looks just like Everly, but with her father’s eyes.”

  “I can’t wait to see as soon as I get you off the phone.”

  He chuckled. “What can I do for you?”

  “You know how vindictive I can be?” I stared at my computer, at the calendar and my meetings list for the day.

  There was a chuckle on the other end. “Are you calling to complain about your stay?”

  A small laugh left me. “One person. The manager. I believe his name was Phillip.”

  “Phillip? Really? What happened?” he asked. He seemed concerned, but not unresponsive to the idea.

  Time to end a career. “Remember how I told you about my girlfriend, Emma?”

  “The reception supervisor.”

  “She was fired last week for her relationship with me,” I said. “And before you start in on your spiel about company policy and such, I’m not calling to ask for her job back.”

  “You want Phillip gone,” he said. “Why?”

  Because he deserved what was coming to him.

  “What he did was unacceptable. The things he said to her, about her, about me. He chased us to my room, Richard. He was wild, acting like he wanted to drag her out by her hair and throw her into the street,” I hissed. Blood pumped through my veins at an increased speed as my anger rose.

  “That is not how he should have handled the situation at all,” Richard said. “I don’t like that he’s representing our company that way.”

  “I was there for three months, and I never saw him.” I’d never even heard his name. “All of my complaining, never a word. Not exactly a manger’s response.”

  There was a humming sound on the other end. In the years I’d known Richard, I knew that meant he was mulling over the information I’d given him. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  “I thought Miguel was the manager,” I said, initiating part B of my plan. “He is a manager, but not the overall hotel manager. He and I spoke many times, and I was very impressed with him.” Miguel was also highly regarded by Emma.

  “But not impressed enough to stop being a nuisance,” Richard said with a chuckle.

  “All to keep up my pretense.”

  “All so you could have one of my employees.”

  “An employee I plan to keep.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll get some information on the hotel and Phillip, then remove him by the end of the weekend and have Miguel take over.”

  “You read my mind. Lunch next week?” I asked. “You can fill me in on how it went. I want all the details.”

  “Sounds good. Have your assistant set it up.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  There was a deep chuckle. “You’re a good man, Gavin, but I would never want to be on the receiving end of your anger.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Have a good day.”

  As I hung up, one part of my plan was done, and I pushed away from my desk for the second part. For my lunch break, I had set up an appointment for a very special reason.

  “Welcome back to Tiffany, Mr. Grayson. What can we help you with today?” Jeremy, the sales manager, asked as I stepped up to the counter.

  “I’m looking for an engagement ring,” I said.

  Maybe I was being rash, but I’d never felt so strongly about anything in my life. I wanted Emma to be mine forever. Months were all it took for her to open my heart up and completely consume it. Even with how my last marriage ended, I wanted Emma as my wife.

  A few days had passed, and I was feeling better. I was still curled up watching Netflix, but with my laptop in my lap as I researched furniture stores. I was making a list of stores to visit, looking at their reviews and quality as I narrowed it down. Gavin had said money wasn’t something to worry about, so I tried to curb my discount ways to look for the higher-end furniture that would suit our very expensive home.

  Just as I scratched a name off my list, noting beside it the lack of quality, my phone rang. It’d been silent for days, and when I looked at my phone, it wasn’t a number I recognized.

  I hit the green button to answer. “Hello?”

  “Hi, may I please speak with Emma?”

  “This is she.”

  “Hi, Emma, my name is Amy from the HR department of the Cates Corporation, and I’m calling about your resume.”

  I sat straight up, my hand frantically maneuvering the remote to pause the show. Inside I was freaking out because I knew they were calling for an interview.

  “Yes, hello, so good to hear from you.” I tried to sound casual and hide my excitement.

  “We wanted to see if we could set up a time for you to come in for an interview,” she said.

  “I am available whenever you are.”

  There was a pause. “Hmm . . . it looks like the hiring manager has an opening tomorrow at one.”

  I wasted no time in agreeing. “I’ll take it.”

  “Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that’s today.”

  “I’ll still take it if it’s available.” I glanced at the clock. It gave me just over an hour to get ready.

  “Hold on a moment, let me check with her.”

  While on hold, I stood up and ran to my room, shi
fting through my closet for something to wear. Unfortunately, my suits for Cameo really were the best interview attire I had.

  “Emma?” Amy’s voice came back on the line.

  “Here.”

  “She said that was fine. Do you know where we are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. When you get here, go up to the eighteenth floor. I’ll be waiting to take you to her.”

  “Thank you so much. I’ll see you soon.”

  “See you.”

  I hung up, was naked, and in the shower in less than thirty seconds. I didn’t even let the water warm up before I started scrubbing. Luckily my hair didn’t need to be washed, but it did need to be dried and styled. That alone would take thirty minutes.

  “Shit,” I hissed, suddenly regretting getting my hair wet.

  Too late to worry about it.

  An hour of drying and primping, and I was out of time. One last look, and I headed out.

  When I arrived at the building, I waited for the elevators, which were crowded with everyone coming back from their lunch breaks. I hoped I wouldn’t run into Gavin, so I kept a sharp eye out. When I got to the eighteenth floor, a short brunette was waiting in front of a reception desk with the Cates Corporation logo behind her. She smiled as I stepped forward.

  “Emma?”

  “Amy?”

  She nodded, then gestured back to the elevators. “We need to go up to twenty.”

  Another elevator ride, then through an ID-locked glass door and into what I could best describe as a cube farm. Row after row of cubes filled the space, the outer wall lined by individual offices. We stopped in front of one, and Amy knocked.

  “I have your one o’clock,” she said.

  “Thanks, Amy.”

  “Good luck,” Amy said before moving aside to let me in, then closing the door behind me.

  A beautiful blonde walked around her desk and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Julianne Landon.”

  I took her hand and smiled. “Pleased to meet you. Emma Addison.”

  “Are you nervous?” she asked as she sat down and motioned to the chair opposite her.

  I let out a small chuckle. “I’d be lying if I said no.”