Hotel Indigo Read online

  Then he asks me when I’m coming home. Hiatus is hiatus, but shit’s on fire at GameStorming. He’s rolling out this new module called Einstein, and has significant changes to his personal life that he grumbles about but that I know he secretly loves. My brother is like other men I know: hard on the outside, soft on the inside. He’ll let me get away with poking him, but those jabs only go so far.

  I tell him yeah, yeah. I’ll book a flight.

  Then I do.

  Because the flight comes out of GameStorming’s coffers, it’s first-class and scheduled for only two days later. The price must’ve been exorbitant, but what does Caspian care? He could use wads of hundred dollar bills for toilet paper, given his twenty-plus billion.

  I pack my bags and say goodbye to Mom. I even call Anna, and she goads me into telling her my whole vacation story. I start crying again. I figure she’ll buck me up, but Anna doesn’t even try. She asks when I’m leaving and what flight I’m on, and I figure she’ll follow that up by suggesting that she meet me at the airport to cheer me up there before I return to the fray. But she says nothing of the sort. Just wishes me well, and we make a vague vow to meet again soon.

  I hang up, wondering if I’ll ever come back and see Anna. I suppose I will. Mom shows no desire to move again, and even seems happy in her miserable sort of way.

  I head to the airport early. I want to allow for security, but the line is short. So I’m at the gate with plenty of time, looking out the window and feeling an odd strain of nostalgia. Vacation — both pleasurable, at the Indigo, and not-as-pleasurable, with my mother — is over. And now the real world is waiting.

  I pick up a magazine and start to read it.

  Then some asshole starts paging on the loudspeaker, breaking my concentration.

  I try to read.

  And the loudspeaker repeats.

  But it’s not a loudspeaker, I realize as I look up. It’s the driver of one of those motorized carts used to ferry old people around the airport. The kind that beeps, annoying everyone.

  The guy behind is repeating something, but my brain hasn’t registered what it is. I only hear “—afraid of?”

  The guy on the cart is looking right at me. I lower my magazine and realize that half the people at my gate are looking at me, and the other half are looking at the guy driving the motorized cart.

  “Well?” says the guy on the cart.

  Again I look around, but the man is clearly talking to someone very near me.

  Or, impossibly, right at me.

  I touch my chest and say in a near whisper, “Are you … are you talking to me?”

  An old woman near the cart says to the man, in a cranky old-lady voice, “Tell her again.”

  “Lucy White,” the bullhorn says, now sounding exasperated. “For the third time now: If you can get over a fear of heights enough to fly in a plane, what else could you possibly stop being afraid of?”

  I look around. Everyone is staring at me. But whereas this strikes me as strange, it’s apparently not odd for anyone else. They all seem like they’re watching a show, vaguely smiling at either me or the man with the bullhorn.

  He lowers the bullhorn, and I realize it’s Carlos from Hotel Indigo — who, apparently, moonlights as a transportation guy at the airport.

  “Carlos?” I’ve barely spoken to the guy, but he’s sure looking like he knows me.

  Carlos shrugs. “Doesn’t seem fair, does it? The way you had to face your fears, but nobody else had to.”

  Then I hear the strangest thing, from one gate over.

  It’s a deep, bass-rumbling sort of voice. Like a big engine starting. And after a warbling sort of noise, I realize it’s a man. Singing “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers.

  It’s awful. At first, I don’t even recognize the song, but after one long, hideously falsetto note bleeds into the next, I realize that has to be what I’m hearing. It’s mortifying to hear — especially with everyone staring at me as if I’m making those cat-killing noises, when in fact I only want to board my stupid plane.

  I’m about to say something to Carlos — or anyone who might listen — when the now-standing crowd parts and I see Marco, arms spread wide, singing about oh my darling, and how he’s hungered for my touch. And the lonely tides? Shit, I don’t know about the tides, because his voice keeps breaking as he reaches for the high notes.

  I haven’t seen Marco in over a week. I’ve spent that time being furious or sad. I want to act accordingly as he marches toward me — stare him down and tell him that nothing is forgiven.

  But it all falls apart when he gets to the part in the song where he reaches for his nonexistent upper register, telling me how he nee-ee-eeds my love, and it’s all I can do to stay upright because I’m laughing so hard.

  He’s belting it out. Horribly. Threatening to set off security alarms and shatter glass, make dogs howl and old people murder their hearing aids.

  Everyone starts to clap, watching us, as Marco kneels in front of me for the big finish.

  I look away, embarrassed, until Carlos gets back on his cart and leaves. Then the crowd loses interest and I find myself able to face him, but still very confused.

  “Wanted to see me off in style?” I say, knowing I should still be angry, but finding myself unable to stop smiling. It was a dumb stunt. But God help me, it’s won my heart.

  “Maybe.”

  “I didn’t know Carlos worked at the airport.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Miss White.”

  “You could probably get arrested and get him in trouble, you know,” I say. Then, lower, and faux critical: “You’re not supposed to be past security without a ticket!”

  Marco hands me something. I recognize it, because I stopped at a United Airlines kiosk to print the same thing for myself.

  It’s a boarding pass. For my flight.

  For a long time, I can’t speak. I just stare at the paper, dumbstruck.

  Finally, I say, “This was just a week-long thing.”

  I look up at Marco. He’s shaking his head, a little frown on his face. “Then you’d better break the news to your friend Anna, because I led her to believe otherwise.”

  I look back down at the boarding pass. I can’t even imagine how much this cost at the last minute. More than Marco could sensibly afford, for sure.

  “She called you,” I say, recalling how interested Anna was in my flight time and number.

  Marco nods. “It was almost enough.”

  Almost enough?

  I look down again. He’s in first class. In the seat right beside mine.

  “How did you afford this?” I ask.

  “Anna didn’t know your seat number,” Marco tells me. “But your mother did.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  MARCO

  “MARCO,” SAYS MY BOSS. “YOU have a client.”

  I sigh, then cross the patio, feeling the breeze and the warm California sun. My client is on the massage table, face down, her face in the donut. She’s already covered in oil, her sexy skin shining. This place is reputable, but sometimes clients take things too far. Like this one. The last time I massaged her out here on the private deck of Yoga Bear San Francisco, she took my dick out of my pants and sucked me off. Then I had to do other stuff to her, all in the name of business.

  “Marco,” my boss repeats. “Get the fuck over here and massage my ass.”

  I do as I’m told, because she’s the boss. And because she’s also the client. And I do it because I love her. Because she changed my life, and my fate.

  I literally do what she says. I walk over and massage her bare ass with both of my hands. She’s totally naked — a perk enjoyed only by the boss, who doubles as my co-owner in this particular wellness franchise. I’m naked, too. Because it’s nice to be naked out here, and because these massages are usually quid pro quo, and it pays to be ready.

  “That’s not a massage,” Lucy says, picking her head up out of the donut and looking back at my clumsy wor
k.

  “I’m rusty. I haven’t given a proper massage in months.” I part her ass cheeks and slip my finger into her pussy from behind.

  Lucy jumps. “Hey! Keep it professional, Mister.”

  “I’m not a masseur. I own this place. You get what you get when you insist on special treatment.”

  “You don’t own it. You co-own it.”

  I give her a well-reasoned response: “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  “Keep it above the waist.”

  I give her a little sarcastic half-salute and say, “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  I move up to her shoulders. I’m entranced by Lucy’s body, but since she’s on her stomach and I can’t see my favorite parts, my gaze strays to the city view. It really is spectacular up here. Maybe even more than we could afford, but Evelyn was insistent. Lucy didn’t like the idea of accepting money from her mother for a down payment on our studio any more than she’d liked me accepting money for the plane ticket that got me here, but I’ve figured Evelyn out.

  Lucy sees her as controlling, but I know she’s guarded. She comes off as a bitch to Lucy, and the woman is great at laying on the guilt. But because I see through her, she speaks to me like a human. And thanks to Lucy’s father, Evelyn quite literally has more money than she knows what to do with. She wanted to help. Of course she pries at Lucy with guilt over the money, but she does that with everything, anyway. And I think they both understand, finally, what their relationship is.

  Not good.

  Not bad.

  But it is what it is, and that’s okay.

  “Harder,” Lucy tells me.

  “Dirty talk. I like it.”

  “Harder on my shoulders,” Lucy clarifies.

  “Kinky, too,” I add.

  Lucy groans. Then she turns over, and it’s like I’ve struck the jackpot. I love looking at my fiancée’s body. The only problem is the situation it causes on the rare occasions she wants a real massage and nothing else.

  My cock is rock stiff, and conveniently right above her face.

  Lucy looks up at it and says, “What will Anna think when she comes to visit her newest location and sees what you’re doing to sully Yoga Bear’s good name?”

  “The yoga classes are still professional.”

  “And the personnel,” Lucy adds.

  “Yes. Their jobs are so boring.”

  I keep hoping Lucy will bend up and take care of my stiff situation, but she lays back and closes her eyes. Then she reaches to the side table and puts on her sunglasses.

  “Hunter called me.”

  I look down at her. This makes me pause. But Lucy smiles, fucking with me.

  “He knows he can’t have me. I don’t want him anyway.”

  Lucy only says the minimum. She’s a tease, always making me jealous. But still, we haven’t heard from Hunter in a while. Not since Inferno. Not since he returned to San Francisco, and certainly not since Lucy resigned at GameStorming — which didn’t, as Caspian fretted, fall apart without her to help steer it.

  “Relax, Tiger,” Lucy says. “I think he just wants a massage.”

  “No happy endings.”

  “Hey. Hunter’s a pro. He only has sex with women he isn’t paying.”

  I consider. Hunter’s top-level public persona is glossy, but his just-below-the-surface image is awful. Orbiting in Caspian’s old circles — or at least its gossip — we hear stories of bad-boy mayhem all the time. He throws these big parties, and the prettiest women always leave sore.

  “Hmm.”

  She pulls her sunglasses down and looks at me.

  “Don’t be like that,” she says, noting my frown, matching it with an over-the-top one of her own. “Come on. Sing for me like you used to.”

  “No, thanks.”

  She takes my cock in her hand and starts to stroke. “Please?” she says.

  I lean down and I kiss her.

  And I tell her to try and convince me, and then we’ll see.

  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  I’ve teased you for several books with Hunter Altman, the billionaire music producer with a secret from his past.

  You’ve heard about Angela — the source of Hunter’s deepest regrets — but not who she is or what went wrong between them.

  Learn the truth in Almost Wrong, available now.

  >> GET YOUR COPY OF ALMOST WRONG HERE <<<br />
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  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  Aubrey Parker

  SHIT YOU SHOULD KNOW

  It’s funny how these things start.

  The truth of the matter is, Lucy White wasn’t even supposed to exist.

  If you read my author’s note in the back of Gagged (the book immediately before this one, but as with most of my books, Gagged and Hotel Indigo can easily be read as standalones), you might know that the publicly released version of Gagged was the second version I wrote. The first was more like dark erotica, and Caspian White was more like a porny boogeyman than a bona-fide hero. The story deserved more life, so I gave it to you, my precious and adored readers, by writing the second version — which, I must say, is among my favorite things I’ve written.

  Let me see if I can do this next part without spoiling Gagged for those of you who haven’t read it. (I’m sure I can.)

  In my first version of Gagged, there were really only three characters — maybe literally only three characters if I’m remembering right. There was Caspian; there was Aurora; there was Jasmine. Caspian spent the whole book making both girls do dirty shit. They both loved it, of course. The book was hot, but it wasn’t a romance. And the reason was, in part, because Caspian was a supremely unlikable asshole.

  Now, you may feel, if you read the second and final version of Gagged, that Caspian remained an asshole. I’d kind of agree, to a point. I’ve written Caspian into several of my books now, and let’s face it: the guy, redeemed or not, is a total cock. He’s also ridiculously fun to write. (The assholes always are.)

  But you may also feel like most readers: that Caspian, while tortured into becoming the man he became, was just another human being deep down inside. He had a heart; it was just clotted with oil. And really, I think pretty much everyone is that way — but then again, I’m a romantic.

  Anyway. If you came to like or at least understand Caspian, there was one primary reason: because when I re-wrote Gagged, I was sure to give him a foil instead of just a love interest. And that foil, of course, was his sister Lucy.

  That’s how Lucy White started: as an afterthought of a character whose sole purpose was to star in scenes opposite her caustic brother. Caspian was rough and angry with the other two female leads, but interactions with Lucy would naturally be very different. I created Lucy to show a softer side of Caspian. I wanted readers to know that as bad as Caspian was, he still treated his sister with love and respect.

  Now, as these things happen, Lucy’s one-dimensional incarnation didn’t stay one-dimensional for long. This, again, was Caspian’s fault. Caspian had an extreme personality, so Lucy had to be an extraordinary woman to find the good in him — which, without question, she did. She had to be tough if she was to challenge him. She had to be smart if she was to work beside him, running the company while he was away. She had to be funny if she was to deflect all of Caspian’s aggression harmlessly away, and she had to be likable if Aurora was — despite Caspian’s personality — to be able to like her.

  Lucy was like a gemstone. Gems are forged by pressure and heat. They’re made beautiful because they’
re oppressed by powerful forces. And that’s how Lucy was by the book’s end: she’d served her purpose as a worthy foil to Caspian, but she’d also proven her worth in a trial by fire. And she’d proven herself amazing.

  I had to know what happened next for Lucy.

  Originally, I thought Lucy might hook up with Hunter Altman — a music producer who you saw in this book, but who also appears in Gagged. I was wrong; Hunter’s story comes next in Almost Wrong, releasing about a month after Indigo hits the stores.

  Turns out, Lucy’s true beloved came from a totally unexpected place … a place that came readily to me once I began asking the right questions.

  What did Lucy want?

  She wanted the best for those she loved.

  Where did Lucy go, after her father died?

  She went home, obviously, to my central town of Inferno Falls.

  And most of all: What did Lucy deserve more than anyone else?

  The answer to that one was obvious. More than anything — and more than anyone else — Lucy deserved a break.

  The story of Hotel Indigo unspooled from there. It seemed obvious that Lucy needed not just a break, but a pampered break, like at a resort spa. And it seemed similarly obvious that Lucy, with her selfless nature, would only take one if things became dire. So they became dire, and forced her into serenity … with the problem of a man that was Marco.

  And that right there set up Lucy’s central conflict: