Free Left on St. Truth-Be-Well by Amy Lane Page A

out and they exchanged numbers quickly, and Carson turned to go. Then he whirled around and glared at Dale as the smart of a quick smack on the bottom stung him.
    “What the hell was that for?”
    Dale smiled cockily. “God, what wasn’t it for? Now shoo!”
    Carson tried his usual snarky grin back, but when he felt his face heat, he knew what came out was a little bit shy. He turned and sauntered away and pretended his breath didn’t come short just imagining the night ahead.
    He shook off the feeling as soon as he rounded the corner, and started a serious investigation of the hotel. He still had his key card, and, taking a calculated risk and counting on enough disrepair for it not be canceled yet, he rounded the short end of the L and used it to get into the stairwell so he could wander the corridors and look for the phalanx of nearly invisible workers who usually frequented a hotel. Sherri had started out as a hotel maid, but she’d been smart: she’d worked her way up to a concierge’s position before she’d broken up with him and moved to LA with her new husband to manage a Hyatt. She’d told him a good hotel probably needed one staff member to every two guests—if you counted cooks, bellboys, concierges, maintenance, cooks, waiters, busboys, the people at the gift store—a lot of people worked there, and if they were good at their jobs, you hardly saw them. They were invisible.
    He figured that in a shitty hotel like this one, there still had to be at least one staff member to every six or seven people, right? If every room was like his, the place would be as resoundingly empty as…
    Empty as…
    Well, hell. Every footfall rang hollowly on the thin carpet between the rooms, and he fought the temptation to shout “Halloo!” down the corridor to see if it echoed. Jesus, if this was one person for every ten people, there might not be ten people in the entire place. Carson turned, took a right and then a left, and that’s when he finally heard something.
    A familiar something.
    A broom-closet something, if he’d ever gone into a broom closet with a person with tits.
    “Oh! Oh! Oh my God! Jonathan, you’re a god!”
    Carson probably would have passed right by the room, because hey, he’d handled that shit before and he wasn’t impressed, but he had an idea.
    Renting the rooms out by the hour, huh?
    Very carefully, he tried the handle and realized that, just like at the room he’d run from screaming, it was broken. The door swung in, and he grimaced at the sight of a very large, very saggy businessman lunging between the thighs of a very, erm, perky young thing with way too much makeup. Even as Carson grimaced, the young thing caught his eyes and held up her hand, five fingers splayed.
    Carson got the idea. Five more minutes. Awesome. He nodded like he was part of the whole shebang and backed up, closing the door softly as he did. Then he slid down the wall, parked his ass on the floor, and waited. If Perky Young Thing and Saggy Old Ass had five minutes, it wouldn’t be long.
    Three minutes. Saggy Old Ass was still pumping away, if the bedspring action was anything to judge, and the maid cart rounded the corner, followed by Manny the Maid—or someone just like him.
    God, he was short.
    Seriously. Carson was five seven, maybe, and this guy was shorter by two inches, at the least. He was short, but his shoulders were massively wide, and his swarthy face was broad, pock-scarred, and ugly.
    Carson’s best friend in school had suffered horrible acne, so Carson wasn’t usually quick to judge there, but it wasn’t just the skin. It was the narrowed, hate-filled eyes and the lips curled up in a sneer. The guy was young, but he obviously hated pretty much everything that moved, and Carson wasn’t all that excited about him either.
    So when he stood up and smiled at the guy, he wasn’t sure what it looked like.
    It didn’t matter.
    Unfriendly eyes dragged up and down his body, and whatever the maid saw, he