“Yes, but he’s not staying here,” Rene answered quietly. “He lives in Asheville already, so he said there was… there was no point in him paying for a room.”
A stone settled in my stomach. There wasn’t a kinky bone in my body, but I didn’t live under a rock. Hell, given that the only companionship I’d allowed myself since losing Blair had been my own right hand and my—
Well, the point was, I knew enough to catch the way the clerk had pronounced the word “Daddy,” and it didnotsound like he meant the boy’s actual father.
Which meant Rene was taken.
That should have settled something inside me, calmed down the persistent sense of overprotectiveness I’d had from the moment he’d stepped out of his wreck of a car, but instead, hearing it felt like I’d just lost something precious.
Again.
An ugly sound tried to erupt from my throat, but I bit it back, determined to get a fucking grip. The boy was a stranger. This wasn’t my business.
No, wait, it was.
It wasliterallymy business—a place of business that I owned—and also my business because I’d been the cause of Rene’s distress.
Fuck his “Daddy.” The man wasn’t even here.Iwas going to take care of this for him tonight.
I took a breath as the two boys murmured quietly to each other. It seemed doubtful that they even remembered I was there. Rene looked too upset to notice anything at all, and the clerk—who, for all that I still hated seeing his hands on Rene, did seem to be a good friend to him—was one hundred percent focused on helping him.
I wanted nothing more than to charge in andtakecharge, and if it had been my Blair in distress, I would have, but for all that my social skills had atrophied over the last five years, I did still possess a few.
I cleared my throat.
Rene hunched in on himself even further, but he didn’t turn around.
“I’ll be with you in just a second,” the clerk said, flashing me a distracted smile before turning his attention back to Rene and lowering his voice. “You should definitely call your Daddy,” he said to Rene with a decisive nod. “Daddies take care of things. It’s what they do. And even if you weren’t originally comfortable staying with him at his place here in Asheville—”
“He didn’t offer,” Rene whispered.
The clerk frowned. “Well, but he’s your Daddy?”
“I don’t… um, we’ve just… I hope he’ll want to be? We’ve only talked online so far. And I don’t actually know his number?”
“I’ll look it up for you,” the clerk said, bouncing away with a grin. “Even if he’s not a guest, if he’s registered to attend any of our events this weekend, he’ll be in the system.” He tapped away at the keyboard for a moment. “What’s his name, Rene?”
I frowned. That definitely sounded like a violation of the privacy policy that the hotel must have in place, and was grounds to fire the clerk immediately… which should have been the first thing through my head, and wasn’t.
Although, Christ. I had no right to feel so possessive of this boy, thisstranger.
Or to want to growl again when he answered—
“It’s Daryl? Um, Daryl Mathers.” Rene inched toward the desk. “But I don’t want to bother him. He’s not expecting to see me until tomorrow.”
The clerk made a rude sound, then winked. “If he’s Daddy material, of course he’ll want to help. Okay, got it!”
Rene’s cheeks turned pink after the clerk rattled it off. “Um, actually, my phone is dead.”
“Use mine,” I blurted, physically unable to stay out of the boy’s business for even a second longer.
The clerk’s eyes jerked up to meet mine and Rene startled, whirling around to face me with wide, summer-blue eyes that were… damn. They were heart-stopping.
“Um, what?” he whispered, the pink that flooded his cheeks again reminding me that I’d just blatantly admitted to eavesdropping on a conversation that had distressed him. Not that it could be helped, given the public venue, but basic courtesy should have had me pretending not to have followed along.
That wasn’t going to happen, though.
“Use my phone,” I repeated, unlocking it and holding it out to him. “Whatever you need, beautiful.”
