Room 44
Yes ma’am, he typed. Are you all right?
I need a favor, she replied.
A chuckle escaped him. A favor. Sure. After they’d gotten naked, gotten in bed, kissed, touched, licked and explored every square inch of each other. When he could still feel her calf in his back. When his hands still knew the exact shape of her breasts and the jut of her hip bone. When his mouth recalled her taste was somewhere between lemon and basil. When the memory of the feel of her hair spread all across his belly and the heat of her mouth on his cock could still make him stop short and close his eyes. After he slept in her arms. After he let her touch the things he harbored deep in his heart. After he soaped her back and washed her hair. After she put his cufflinks back in and he zipped her dress back up . . .
After all that, what the hell was he going to say—no?
He typed back, Anything . . .
Room 45
Meet me tomorrow morning, she typed. I don’t want the first time I see you to be at the office. I need to see you outside, walk over with you and . . . warm up, I guess.
Good idea.
Escalator in the Northeast Passage?
OK.
She put the phone down. Picked it up again and started to type, You are so my bitch, but then backspaced it out.
She went back to her book and had read only a couple paragraphs when her phone pinged:
Your bitch will be waiting.
She touched the words with her fingertip.
Room 46
“This was a good idea,” he said.
He was actually surprised how hard it was to look her in the eye without blushing his face off, while a dozen different emotions battled for supremacy in his head. If that head was going into the game, he definitely needed a warm-up.
She fell in step beside him, crisp and sleek in her trench coat. He wished she would take his arm or something. He wanted to touch, but of course that would defeat the entire purpose.
He looked her over with newfound appreciation. She was so wise about these things.
She looked back, an endearing wreath of sleepiness around her eyes, then she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and knocked her shoulder against his side. “Head in the game, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Room 47
“See, you’ve finally bought me a drink,” she said as they left Starbucks.
He rolled his eyes and held the door with his back, letting her go first.
They walked up Park Avenue, talked gently about ordinary things, found their footing and sorted themselves out. Arriving at the building together, neither had staked a claim, neither had the upper hand. They got the blushing out of the way, and later . . .
Room 48
. . . at his regular meeting, he was composed, almost smugly proud of his calm casualness and his ordinary “good morning” as she came in and went to her seat.
She smiled at him with not a degree more or less cordiality than usual, but as she sat down and brushed her hair off her shoulders, her bangles slid from elbow to wrist and back again. The short cascade of chimes made the memory of lovemaking flood his head and make a train wreck of his thoughts. He had to fake a phone call and leave the room, his game face in shambles.
Room 49
Her fingers were cold and her heartrate ever so slightly elevated, but otherwise she was fine. This was going well. A little surreal, but well. He seemed relaxed too, joking with the managers, sipping his coffee, tapping away on his phone. He got up suddenly and excused himself to take a call.
She smiled to herself. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor torrid affair could prevent the usual Monday morning drama.
And then her phone chimed an incoming text. It was him. Her initial pleasure turned to chagrin as she read, Take those damn bracelets off!
The heat of memory suffusing her face, she pulled her two silver bangles from her wrist and dropped them in her bag. Right next to the inside zip pocket where she kept one of his collar stays.
Room 50
He pinged her at the end of the day: I’m catching a 5:29 train. Walk out with me?
Packing up now, she replied. Meet you by the elevator.
Room 51
The elevator binged sedately and they glanced at each other.
“Shut up,” he mumbled.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought it.”
“You thought it louder.”
The doors purred open. He held them with one hand and ushered her in. As she passed, he lightly touched the small of her back.
The doors closed and the floor gave way beneath.
A beat of blushing silence.
“Want to go get a beer?” he said.
Holding his eyes, she reached in her purse, retrieved her bangles and slid them on her wrist. “I thought you’d never ask.”
About the Author
A former professional dancer and teacher, Suanne Laqueur went from choreographing music to choreographing words. Her work has been described as therapy fiction, emotionally intelligent romance and contemporary train wreck.
Laqueur’s novel An Exaltation of Larks was the Grand Prize winner in the 2017 Writer’s Digest Awards. Her debut novel The Man I Love won a gold medal in the 2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards and was named Best Debut in the Feathered Quill Book Awards. Her follow-up novel, Give Me Your Answer True, was also a gold medal winner at the 2016 RFBA.
Laqueur graduated from Alfred University with a double major in dance and theater. She taught at the Carol Bierman School of Ballet Arts in Croton-on-Hudson for ten years. An avid reader, cook and gardener, she started her blog EatsReadsThinks in 2010.
Suanne lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband and two children.
Visit her at suannelaqueurwrites.com
All feels welcome. And she always has coffee.
Also by Suanne Laqueur
THE FISH TALES
The Man I Love
Give Me Your Answer True
Here to Stay
The Ones That Got Away
VENERY
An Exaltation of Larks
A Charm of Finches
A Scarcity of Condors
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay
Tales from Cushman Row
SHORT STORIES
Love & Bravery
GIVEAWAY
Enter to win a signed copy of An Exaltation of Larks
All entrants receive a free ebook of The Man I Love
An Evening at the Hotel: An Affair in 51 Rooms Page 4
