“A calling?” Chloe asks politely.

“All those women begging for God whenever Ryan touches them.”

I need divine intervention now.

Chloe’s eyes narrow. “I’ll ask you to treat Ryan and any other staff member like a regular person you’d meet at a resort.”

“Who says I’m not?”

Chloe catches my eye. I give her a slight headshake that says, I got this.

Eileen puts her hand on my chest again and stands on tiptoe, coming in for a hug. Something pushes against the waistband of my shorts, right at the base of my spine. I don’t have to look to see what it is.

“Room 422,” she whispers, planting a waxy kiss on my jawline, the sour alcohol breath making me wince.

As she pulls away, I reach back for the plastic hotel cardkey.

And lock eyes with Carrie, who is walking toward us with an enormous flower arrangement and a dropped jaw.

Oh, no.

“There you are, Ryan!” Jessie calls out, hidden by the flowers. “We need your help moving the flowers for the brunch!” She’s holding a similar batch of flowers and shoves them in my arms.

“You look like you need something fresher to hold, anyhow,” Carrie says, her eyes narrowing as she blinks furiously, expression neutral.

My hands fumble to get a good grip on the basket as I process what she just said. Wait. Is she… jealous?

Casting a scathing look at Eileen’s back, Carrie then turns to Chloe and says, “Was that Eileen van Donner? From O?”

“The one and only.”

“She’s the one who tried to hire Zeke to be her houseboy, right? Complete with a leash and everything.” Carrie’s eyes cut my way. “Is she recruiting again?” She looks at the hotel cardkey in my hand.

Then right into my eyes.

Red smudges on her cheeks indicate she’s blushing, an angry, involuntary response to emotion. Carrie’s chin juts up, her shoulders squared.

Jessie’s chattering away a mile a minute about hydrangeas while Carrie stares me down, her chest rising and falling with emotion. She walks closer to me. The flowers in my hands suddenly become a welcome barrier between me and her anger.

Chloe reaches for my hand and plucks Eileen’s hotel room cardkey out of it. “Poor Ryan,” Chloe says in a loud voice. “Never off the clock. The clients love him so much. Even when he told her firmly he has a girlfriend, she kept trying. Unbelievable.” Deftly, she takes the cardkey, walks over to a small stand with empty plastic bags for people who walk their dogs on the trails, and slips it in, tying a knot on the top.

“Trash goes in the trash can,” she mutters, tossing it in a receptacle.

Jessie watches everything with hawklike eyes, clearly trying to catch up. I pivot, putting the giant garden in my hands on the table, then scoop Carrie toward me, caging her. Every muscle in her body is tense. She’s trembling.

“You are the only fresh thing I want to hold, kitten,” I say, just loud enough for Jessie to hear, just soft enough to let my real emotions come through in my voice.

Carrie’s eyes dart all over the place, like marbles being dropped into a maze, as if she’s scattered and unsure. Then she stands on tiptoes, her hands resting on my shoulders, and she comes in for a sweet kiss.

That turns hot in seconds.

“I don’t like the idea of women turning you into a commodity,” she murmurs against my mouth. “Only I’m allowed to do that,” she adds.

Nick laughs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Chloe tug him away, Nick nuzzling her neck and whispering something that makes Chloe chuckle in a low, knowing sound.

“Um, hate to break up your little makeout session, but we have more flowers to move because the planners relocated the rehearsal dinner across the resort, and my mom is breathing into random paper bags while — ”

Carrie holds up a palm to Jessie as Angela walks up, grinning madly.

The gentle kiss against my lips, so chaste it makes me want the flip side of Carrie, the dirty, dirty sex kitten I am pretty sure she can be, nearly breaks me.

“C’mon! You two had all night together. How could you still want more?” Jessie whines.

“Look at him, Jess. How could Carrie pick flowers over that?” Angela’s joking, but not really.

“Yeah,” I murmur against her ear. “How could you?”

Carrie jolts, nervous laughter filling the sudden space between us, her hot breath tickling my collar bone.

“Um, we need to go. Something about a ribbon emergency,” she says, patting my chest like a teddy bear wearing a vest she just buttoned.

“Okay. Just don’t be gone for too long. Remember that nooner we scheduled?” Wink.

Angela starts to squirm.

Funny. As I walk away, I swear Carrie does, too.

The courtyard is full of people I don’t know. As I dodge around guests in lounge chairs and tables full of folks drinking coffee, I hear a familiar voice.

As in, I just spoke to him a minute ago.

“I take it this goes with the territory,” Nick says, surprising me from behind. It’s not really a question, but I answer him anyhow.

“Nick! Thought you and Chloe were, uh…” I was about to say, about to go off and have sex, but that’s probably not the best thing to say to Anterdec management.

He makes a sour face. “She just got a call from those idiot developers about the customer service phone tree. They want us to buy a European phone service that always hangs up on American cell phones and can only be programmed in French.”

We share a laugh.

He shakes his head and runs his hand through his hair. “And they want her to add some crazy virtual reality feature with scent-o-rama.”

I grimace. “I could see how that might get, um…”

“Messy?”

We share a sick kind of laugh. It’s the chuckle you hear all the time from employees at O, a strange sound of I can’t believe this is what I do for a living and Damn, I have the best job ever.

“You collect hotel cardkeys from clients like that wherever you go?”

“I can. Depends entirely on the client.”

“All jobs have their downsides,” Nick says with a boisterous chuckle. If I didn’t know how comfortable he is in his own skin, I’d think he was envious.

“I didn’t deal with any of this at my last job.”

“Yeah? What did you do?”