LITMIR.BIZ

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New Orleans, it likely wouldn’t have made a difference.

      He stepped back into the room and looked around. It wasn’t bad. Not too big. Not too small. The high ceilings helped, even though the ceiling fan did little more than stir the heat. The carved woodwork and cornices were original if painted over and chipped. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint, and he made out what looked like a water stain in one corner, but overall the structure looked solid. He ran his finger along the top of the dresser. It was also clean. A double wrought-iron bed, two matching nightstands and lamps, and the bench were the totality of the furnishings, although the room was large enough to accommodate a desk and a couple of chairs. He moved toward the bathroom and switched on the light. The blackand-white mosaic tile that might date back at least a century needed re-caulking, and the claw-foot tub could use some attention. The cloudy mirror needed to be replaced and the sink held iron stains. He switched the light back off. The entire hotel would need a complete renovation before it could even be considered as part of the Royal Emperor Suites empire.

      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?”

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