I took the stairs down because the elevator was for men in suits and I was no longer that man this morning.
The lobby was busy. Late breakfast. A small crowd at the concierge desk asking about a carriage tour. Two women in matching Lilly Pulitzer in front of the fireplace. The smell of bacon coming up from the restaurant in the back, which I clocked and ignored.
I was almost to the front door when Sasha called my name.
"Mr. Dane."
I stopped.
I turned. I made my face do the polite thing, because Sasha had not done a single thing wrong this morning and did not deserve the Tommy Dane who'd just been told he was a charity by a woman who'd saidI love youin the same paragraph.
"Sasha."
She tipped her chin down the hallway off the lobby. The one that ran past the bar to the private sitting rooms that hotels like this had for the kind of guest who didn't take meetings in the open.
"There's a gentleman waiting for you, sir."
I stood there a second.
I had a brief, vivid wish to be anywhere else.
"Sasha?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long has he been there?"
"About fifteen minutes."
"He give a name?"
"No, sir."
I let out a slow breath through my nose.
"Thank you."
She held my eye for a second.
"Mr. Dane."
"Yeah."
"Is your guest from last night okay? She seemed a little—" She picked her word with the care of a woman who'd worked the front desk of a place like The Palmetto Rose long enough to know which words to use and which not to. "Out of sorts, when she left."
I looked at Sasha.
I'd known her for thirty-six hours and she'd already pulled off a small dinner, a candlelit suite, a limo, and a quiet front-of-house exit. She'd done all of it without asking me a question I hadn't volunteered the answer to.
She was asking now.
I appreciated it.
"I hope I didn't fuck it up, Sasha."
Her face softened.
"I expect you didn't, sir. She didn't have the look of a woman who was finished with you."
