Tori Carrington - Obsession

Then again, that wasn’t part of his job, questioning his clients’ motives. It was how to get them what they wanted. And this particular client wanted Hotel Josephine.

The black, rotary phone on the nightstand rang. Drew stared at it, then crossed to pick up the receiver, idly wondering when the last time was that he’d seen such an old phone.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Morrison.” He recognized Josie’s sexily husky voice. “I just wanted to let you know that our hotel offers a full menu and room service should you be interested.”

Drew sat down on the bed, listening as the bedsprings squeaked. “That’s nice to know. I might just take you up on that.”

“Room service, then?”

He shrugged out of his jacket, hung it on one of the iron posts of the footboard, then began rolling up his sleeves. “Do you offer service downstairs?”

“Yes. In the courtyard.”

“Then that’s where I’ll take my meal.” After all, there was no time like the present to begin convincing the lovely Miss Villefranche that her life would be much easier without the hotel…and along the way perhaps entice her into sharing his bed while he was there.

“I NEED YOU TO RUN to André’s and get an order of crevettes and filet de truite amandine,” Josie said to Philippe as she swept through the swinging door into the kitchen.

The cook-slash-waiter-slash-busboy-slash-assistant manager sighed and began to undo the ties of his apron. “Couldn’t talk him into only the gumbo and a salad?”

She took a twenty out of the amount Morrison had given her for the week’s stay and handed it to her only staff member on duty at the moment. At any other time it took five to ten people to run the establishment. “Unfortunately, no.”

She’d hired Philippe three months ago when Samuel, the hotel’s assistant manager for the past fifty years, had died suddenly from a heart attack. Philippe had been a godsend at a time when Josie had been ill equipped to handle the loss of two very important people in her life so close together.

“Who’s going to eat all this gumbo?”

Josie didn’t provide an answer because Philippe didn’t need one. The two of them would be eating the large pot of the New Orleans staple, with Philippe taking some of it home with him to his mother, although he was thirty and should have long since moved out on his own.

“Fine.” He began moving toward the door that would take him through the back where their only guest wouldn’t see him. “He is a looker, that one, isn’t he?”

Josie frowned at him. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Hadn’t noticed, my narrow behind. He could charm the paint off the walls, that one could.” He crossed his arms in an exaggerated way.

“I don’t think he’s your type.”

“Of course, he’s my type. He’s male, isn’t he?”

Josie smiled. “Yes, but I don’t think he’s gay.”

Philippe sighed. “Pity. Why does it seem like all the good ones want women?”

Josie shook her head as the door slapped closed behind his retreating back. She readied a sparkling glass along with a pitcher of water, put a basket of day-old bread into the microwave to warm it and therefore make it seem fresher, then went back out into the courtyard to serve Mr. Morrison.

“Ah, thank you,” he said as she filled his glass. “Tell me, is it always this hot down here?”

It was a question Josie was asked often by tourists. While most seemed irritated with the thick heat, Morrison seemed merely to be asking a question. “It will cool down some soon,” she said, glad he hadn’t commented on the emptiness of the eating area.

“It doesn’t even get this hot in the summer where I’m from,” he said.

Josie removed the other three sets of silverware and wineglasses from the table. “Where’s that?”

“ Kansas City.”

She didn’t say anything as she moved to a cabinet near the kitchen door and put down the extra place settings. She’d never been outside the city. Had never had any cause to go anywhere else. While she’d heard somewhere down the line that her mother had ended up in Chicago, the northern city on Lake Michigan couldn’t have seemed farther away from Josie had it been across the ocean.

“Excuse me,” Morrison said, looking to catch her attention.

Josie turned toward him.

“What’s that music?”

She’d switched on the tape system after she’d called his room, and he’d said he’d be coming down for his meal. “Zydeco.”

He repeated the word. “Thanks.”

Josie went back into the kitchen and leaned against the prep table. Long minutes later she was still standing in the same spot, breathing deeply, her hand resting against her collarbone. As much as she tried to ignore it, she was attracted to Drew Morrison with an intensity that surprised her. His hair was the rich color of an antique copper pot, the short cut failing to disguise that the strands were thick and wavy. The kind of hair a woman could thrust her fingers into and hold on to as she braced herself for a violent orgasm. He’d come downstairs without his jacket, his crisp white shirtsleeves rolled up, and she saw that his forearms were muscular, his wrists solid. She’d caught herself staring at his hands as he’d picked up his water glass, noticing that his fingers were long and nicely tapered. The type of hands that would feel good against her bare skin.

It had been a long time since she’d been this aware of her sexuality and the fundamental need for human touch. Since before her grandmother had died, to be certain. She’d been so busy trying to keep up the hotel, she hadn’t had time to look closely at the guests, talk to them. The brief contact she’d had so far with her current guest had made her register the deep blue of his eyes, the way they creased at the corners when he listened to her, and the fullness of his mouth-a mouth that would undoubtedly know what to do with a woman who needed to be kissed.

Is that what it was? she wondered. Had it been so long since she’d indulged herself sexually that her body was responding to the first good-looking man who crossed her path?

No. It was more than that. The instant the stranger had crossed the threshold of Hotel Josephine, an undeniable awareness had traveled over her skin like a lover’s touch. It wasn’t just that she was in the market for any man. She was drawn to Drew Morrison.

Something sounded outside the screen door. A rattle of a garbage can, maybe. A rat? A cat? There’d been a black cat around the Josephine for as long as she could remember, but this last one had stuck around the longest. She and her granme had named her Jezebel. Probably it was the old cat looking for her evening meal.

“Jez?”

She moved toward the back of the kitchen and stared out into the narrow alleyway. There was the sound again. Josie pressed her hand against the wood of the screen door, the hinges giving a low squeak as she peeked out toward where the hotel cans were lined up against the back wall.

Jezebel would have shown herself by now if it had been her.

“Shoo!” she said loudly, kicking the bottom of the can closest to her.

Nothing. No scurrying of a rodent or a hungry feline.

She stepped completely outside, the door slapping shut behind her. Picking up a stick, she poked at the next garbage can, then made her way down to the one after that. She’d reached the fourth one when a shadow leaped out behind the last can, running in the opposite direction.

Josie put a hand to her chest, as if to contain her rapidly beating heart. Jesus.

Philippe appeared from the direction the man had run.

“Damn homeless,” he muttered. He handed her the bag of food from André’s, then looked at her closer. “Are you all right?”

Josie swallowed hard, then managed a nod. “Um, yes. He just startled me is all. I thought he was a cat.”

“An awfully big cat. More like a rat.” He righted the empty can the man had overturned in his hurry to make haste. “You’d think he’d have figured out that we don’t have anything to pick from here.”

Josie led the way back inside the kitchen, vaguely wondering if she’d ever again have anything left to pick from.

Philippe washed his hands at the sink while she rearranged the food on a hotel plate.

“Do you want me to take it out to him?” he asked with a suggestive grin.

Josie shook her head. “No. I’ll take care of him.”

As she placed a sprig of parsley next to the trout, she ignored the many ways she’d been fantasizing taking care of Drew Morrison.

LATELY, NIGHT WAS the worst time for Josie. It was when she most profoundly recognized the reality that there was nothing she could do to help what was going on with the hotel. When long, quiet hours stretched out before her devoid of hope.

It was when the ghosts came out to play.

The muted night amplified the panting sound of the ceiling fan turning lazily above her. She looked up from the papers spread before her on the front desk to gaze out onto Bourbon Street. The stream of tourists’ faces was occasionally interrupted by familiar faces from the neighborhood, some laughing, others drawn in thoughtful conversation. Some faces that were a lot more familiar up until recently, because they’d frequented the Josephine with their paying guests towed behind them.

She heard the creak of the stairs.

To conserve energy, she’d turned the dimmer on the lights down to low, the small banker’s lamp on the desk illuminating the papers before her.

There was only one guest, so she didn’t have to look up to know that Drew Morrison was coming downstairs, probably to add his face to the others flowing past her door.

Josie concentrated harder on her work.

“Evening,” Drew said quietly, his voice closer than she was prepared for as she made a note in the margin of one of the ledgers.