Brodie

“Mary, please slow down. I can’t understand you. Take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.” My hotel’s long-time housekeeper was getting close to hyperventilating right in my office.

“Mr. Brodie.” Her hair was pulled back into the severe knot that all the maids seemed to wear, and her top lip was quivering. “Mr. Brodie, I saw something in the penthouse suite. It was…terrible.” The tears started.

Christ, what had she seen? A dead body?

But I shouldn’t joke about something like that. People committed suicide in hotels all the time.

“Mary, sweetie, let’s sit down over here.” I put an arm around shoulder and led her to one of the club chairs in my office. I sat opposite her.

“Oh, Mr. Brodie. I don’t know if I can say it.” She picked at the edges of her uniform’s apron.

If she didn’t spit it out soon, I’d just go up to the penthouse and see what the frig was going on. I stood to go.

She blurted out, “Mr. Joel and Miss Pam were in there. Together. Doing…” She waved her hand around. Apparently, she thought her hand wave was the universal sign for fucking, but no matter. I got the picture. Loud and clear.

I put my hands on Mary’s shoulders. “Thank you for telling me. I really appreciate it. Now, why don’t you relax here until you feel better? I’ll have Trudy bring you some water.”

I’m gonna kill him.

I flew out of my office and down the hall. Before I barged in and launched into my tirade, I laughed at the sign on his office door.

Joel Fox, General Manager

General manager my ass. The dickhead wouldn’t have a job if not for me.

“Joel, you in there?” I rapped my knuckles on the door.

There was of rustling from the other side. “Brodie, c’mon in, man.”

Yeah, he sounded all cool and shit. Wait till I got ahold of him.

I flew in and slammed the door. Joel was adjusting his necktie. His shirt was wrinkled, and he’d missed a belt loop. Jesus, he couldn’t even hide the evidence. Might as well have been walking around with his dick hanging out.

“Dude, were you in the penthouse suite again? No, don’t answer that. Because I know you were.” I paced the room. “And you’re fucking Pam? Are you kidding me?”

His head whipped around. “What’s wrong with Pam?”

“That’s not the point! You shouldn’t fuck anyone at work, especially not on the premises, and especially not in the freaking penthouse suite.”

He had nothing to say.

“And you gave Mary from housekeeping a freaking heart attack. You know how straight-laced she is. She’s probably a goddamn virgin.” I quit pacing and whipped back around toward Joel.

He was trying not to laugh. I hated when he did that.

“Look, asshole, it’s not funny. If the Dickhead Twins found out, I could be in a heap of trouble.”

Joel shrugged in a lame attempt toward support. “They won’t know. Don’t worry about it.” He had the nerve to lean back in his chair with his hands behind his head. Not a care in the world.

I put my hands on his desk and got in his face. “Next time you have the urge to screw Pam or anyone else from work, go to another fucking hotel!”

“But Brodie—”

I missed whatever he said after that, because I was out the door and halfway down the hall. My admin, Trudy, caught up to me.

“What’s up T?”

“Phone call,” she said in her usual efficient way. I couldn’t live without her. She’d been my dad’s admin for years, and now she was mine. Like a second mother.

“Who is it?”

“Steve and Hardy, calling from Minneapolis.” She raised an eyebrow. Damn, she knew me well.

The Dickhead Twins.

How could so much be so shitty, so early in the day?

“Want me to tell them you’re out?” she asked.

It was tempting…

“Nah. I gotta take it. Thanks.” I returned to my office, glad to see Mary had recovered and gone. One of her snotty tissues had fallen to the middle of the floor. The expensively carpeted floor. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t ask Trudy to pick it up. So I did.

I pressed the speaker on my desk phone to speak to the W and E of HWE, LLC—Harcourt, Wooten, and Evershire, the partnership we’d formed to run the hotel after my dad had royally screwed over their dads. I was working to make amends and pay them back, but they still treated me like I was the criminal every chance they got.

“Gentlemen,” I said with as much fake cheer as I could muster.

“Hey, Brodie,” they said unison.

I cleared my throat. I hated this part. “Hey, good to hear from you. Say, you guys give any thought to the San Francisco expansion I brought up a couple weeks ago?”

“What was the deal with that?” one of them asked. Yeah, like they didn’t remember. I’d only been bringing it up with them for the last six months.

“Hardy—” That was Hardy, wasn’t it? They sounded so much alike. “I gave you numbers last week on what I think we could do with a property in San Francisco. The place is a convention and vacation heaven. It’s always jam packed with people.”

“Oh right,” one of them said as if he’d forgotten.

Phony bastards. I clicked and unclicked the clasp on my gold Rolex, something I did when irritated.

“Yeah, well, Steve and I have decided against that,” Hardy said.

Had someone just poured molten lead into my stomach? Because that’s how I felt.

Stay calm.

“Geez, guys, I’m really disappointed to hear that.”

“Good idea, but impossible to execute on. There are more hotel rooms than ever in Frisco. We can’t risk a property with a low or even average occupancy rate.”

Narrow-minded assholes. Wouldn’t know an opportunity if it bit them in the ass. And no one says Frisco.

I kept my voice friendly. It wasn’t easy. “Hey, if it’s okay with you two, I’d like to discuss this more. I feel like it’s a great opportunity, and I know how we all hate to leave money on the table.” I wasn’t ready to let go, not by a longshot.

“Ya know, Brodie, your best opportunity is to keep your head down in New York City with Hotel Vertigo. Your numbers are getting better every month.”

Condescending prick. That’s why I called them the Dickhead Twins.

“They’re getting better, because I know how to run a successful fucking hotel,” I barked. Oops.

“Hey now, let’s not get bitchy. We just told ya you’re doing great. Keep it up.”

“Well, I gotta run,” Steve said.

“Yeah, me too. Bye!”

Thank god they were in another state. Kept me from strangling the assholes.

* * *

My shitty mood must have been clear to anyone who saw me that day. The hotel staff gave me wide berth as I stormed around the back office halls. The accountant even pushed her door shut as I walked by. It wasn’t the first time.

But when I emerged into the lobby—the breathtakingly beautiful lobby of the hotel my father opened when I was just a kid—I was all calm and composure.

I surveyed the room. All was under control. Just how I liked it. The bellmen were smiling and helping guests with their luggage, the concierge was scoring some last minute theater tickets for some delighted guests, and reception was checking people in at record speed. Even the gardener was trimming and watering so discretely that no one noticed him.

This is how you run a fucking hotel.

The head of housekeeping spotted me and approached with quick steps. Like my admin, Trudy, she’d been with the hotel for years, going back to my father’s days.

“Mr. Harcourt, would you like to inspect a couple rooms now?” she asked.

Inspecting rooms was part of my daily ritual. I always checked out a couple random rooms to make sure the housekeeping staff were on top of it. Nothing puts a hotel out of business faster than dirty rooms. Once news like that hit the social media sites, word would spread like wildfire.

You know those hidden camera news stories where hotel maids wiped out used bathroom glasses with a dirty towel and set them back out for the next guest?

Over. My. Dead. Body.

“Yes, Jones. I’m ready for inspection. Let’s start with the penthouse suite.”

Her face dropped all semblance of color. For a moment, I thought she might faint. “Um, well, um, Mr. Harcourt, the penthouse isn’t ready just yet.”

Of course it wasn’t ready. Joel, the general manager, had just fucked Pam, the HR manager, there. Jones would have heard it from the freaked-out maid.

“Well, we both know that only the bed needs changing since no one—theoretically—spent the night there. What’s the hold up?”

“Mary doesn’t want to go back in there. So I need one of the other girls to clean it.” She hesitated. “Or you know, I could clean it,” she said quickly.

Good girl.

“You know I always say that everyone in management—myself included—is expected to be ready to jump in, no matter what the task. That’s what keeps this hotel great,” I said.

While I was tormenting poor Jones, I was able to keep an eye on everything else going on in the lobby. Not least of which was a hot-as-shit girl behind the reception desk. Sonya something or other. And damn if she wasn’t giving me the eye. Last time she’d done that, I’d gotten the blowie of a lifetime. Right next to the copy machine in the office behind the front desk.

I didn’t care who knew.

I’d tuned out whatever Jones was blathering on about. I gave her a nice pat on the back. “Thank you, Jones. I’ll be checking out those rooms later.” I headed for the front desk.

“But sir,” Jones called after me, “there’s one more thing—”

There was always one more thing with her. Such a time-suck.

With my gaze glued to Sonya and her great tits, I waved over my shoulder. “Jones, we’ll finish this later.”

I finally heard her heels clicking away on the marble floor.

I waited until Sonya finished with the guest she was helping.

“Hi, Sonya, how are you this morning?”

The other person behind reception, a sprightly gay guy named Scott, minded his own business. Bless his heart.

Her face lit up. She was even more gorgeous when she smiled.

“Mr. Harcourt, hi.” She blushed.

My dick twitched. Something about a bashful babe who could suck cock just killed me.

I said nothing further. I didn’t need to. I walked to the end of the long reception desk and used my key card for the door to the back office. Just like last time, she met me there by the copy machine. We closed the door.

My morning was beginning to improve.