Page 3 of Caught Up In You (Indigo Royal Resort)
“Just one moment, Mr. Parkhurst.” She typed away at her machine, furrowing her brow as she continued to click one thing after another. Letting out a heavy sigh, she looked back up at him with a worried expression. “Um, there seems to be something wrong with your reservation, Mr. Parkhurst.”
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I'm not sure,” she started, “but I’m new! So I probably did something wrong. Let me get Mr. Quinlan.”
She scampered off through the little door adjacent to her behind the desk before Cullen could tell her otherwise. He couldn’t help but laugh at the poor girl, who really seemed to have no idea who he was and was overly flustered with things not following the smooth process she was expected to oversee. While not everyone was able to tell who he was right off the bat, they usually figured it out after looking at him for a moment or two. It was kind of nice that Julie here was clueless.
“Cullen!” Vaughn Quinlan’s booming voice came from the office as the tall silver-haired man stepped out to greet him. “How was the flight?”
Cullen greeted Vaughn with a big hug. When they pulled back, he laughed as he answered him. “Vaughn, it’s good to see you. And I think you mean flights. I flew commercial. Not recommended from northern England.”
“Oh, man, that’s harsh! But don’t worry, we’ve got everything ready. Leona has been working hard to make sure everything on your list is taken care of. And La Isla Bonita should be ready for you any moment.”
“It’s ready now,” a sweet, melodic voice said from behind him.
That voice. Her voice.
It was a voice he heard in his dreams, on the pitch, pretty much anywhere he went, almost as if it haunted him. He loved the sound, how gentle and dreamlike it was. He loved how his name sounded in that voice. And he loved that regardless of how sweet and luscious the body that belonged to that voice was, underneath was a brazen, cheeky little girl.
He turned around and took her in. She stood there before him in linen pants and a matching tee, embroidered with the resort logo. The pants were loose and billowy on her, but the tee was fitted nicely and hugged her breasts like the threads were trying to cop a feel. Cullen was suddenly very jealous of the T-shirt. He swallowed hard trying to gain his composure. He had a persona to play in order to keep her at arm's length. It’d taken him ten years to fully build this up and he wasn’t going to let a brief moment of weakness ruin everything.
“Menina…”
That word.
That one little word sent chills down Leona’s spine and made her blood boil at the same time. She hated that word. Hated the sound of it, hated its meaning, hated how it made her feel. Yet that man insisted on calling her that every time he saw her.
“It’s Leona,” she calmly reminded him. She felt anything but calm looking at him right now, but she was not going to let that be seen. “Lee-O-na.”
“Menina,” he repeated. Okay, now he was just trying to piss her off. Bastard…
Trying to ignore the condescension dripping in his tone, she put on her best customer service smile. “La Isla Bonita is all ready for you, Mr. Cruz, so as soon as you finish up with Vaughn, you can head straight
there. I will get one of the bellhops to deliver your bags.”
She turned to walk away, to find a bellhop and do exactly what she said she would, while also trying to make an escape from the tense moment, but his words stopped her in her tracks.
“You’ve attended to the list I sent then, Menina? Made sure that everything is done, down to the letter?”
“Yes, Mr. Cruz. I have personally arranged the furniture to your specifications, made sure that the proper toiletries, both items and brands, are stocked in the bathroom and that your favorite high thread count sheets are on the bed. And before you ask—yes, the sheets are Liverpool red,” she answered, taking in a deep breath. “I have also made sure that the snacks you requested are laid out on the coffee table.”
“Good. If anything is wrong, I’ll know who to reprimand then,” he replied, his British accent making the word “reprimand” sound much sexier than it should.
In fact, the whole idea of him “reprimanding” her made her tingle in places she didn’t want to admit to. Despite all her anger and loathing toward the man, there was something incredibly provocative about his arrogance. Arrogance that exuded off every last inch of his six-foot-three frame. Leona steadied herself, drinking him in and fighting back a smartass response to his comment. The man might be an Adonis, standing almost a foot taller than her, with muscles so well defined you’d think he was carved from clay, but he didn’t intimidate her. She didn’t scare that easily.
“If for some reason there is a problem, you can just call the front desk and they’ll page me…sir,” she responded, adding in that last word with all the snark she had in her.
“And if I want to contact you directly?” He looked her dead in the eye, stepping closer to her, as if issuing a challenge.
“Simply call the front desk and they will page me,” she repeated. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment. I will stop by La Isla Bonita later this evening to make sure that everything is up to your standards.”
Spinning back around, she swiftly made the exit she had been trying to make earlier when he started his inquisition. She could hear Vaughn telling Cruz that he needn’t worry about a thing, that she was the best there was and had just been over to the bungalow to make sure that everything was perfect. Vaughn also reminded him that, per his request, she was the only staff member who had the access code to his suite other than the head of maintenance—and he and his brothers whose personal codes overrode everything, just in case of emergency—and she would be the only one who entered the space. That had been one of his top “requests” every year—that Leona be the only staff member to tend to his room. Even after she was promoted to Head of Housekeeping, he insisted no one else on the staff would do. It was infuriating, not because she felt that cleaning was below her, but because it made her days that much longer. It was one thing to fill in for a housekeeper here and there when someone called in sick, but to have it added on for three full weeks to her already long list of responsibilities, most of which she couldn’t delegate to anyone else, was a headache. The Villas weren’t exactly small and then adding all the extras that Cruz demanded made it all that much more tedious.
She pulled her office door closed harder than she meant to, at least consciously, but managed to catch it in time before it slammed shut. The nerve of that man talking to her like she’s a child, and in front of her boss. Vaughn knew that there was no love lost between her and Cruz. She’d made it perfectly well-known how she felt every year when his agent sent down that damn list. But it still pissed her off that Cruz didn’t have enough respect in that well-toned body of his to at least pretend in front of him.
Not bothering to even walk to her desk, she simply slumped down on the leather couch that sat directly across from her desk. Even with her eyes closed all she could see was his rock-hard body standing there in that tight T-shirt and track pants. His sculpted chest caused his shirt to be taut across his pecs and only ever so slightly looser over his just-as-well-defined abs. There were enough pictures of him shirtless on the internet that even if the tee he was wearing had left something to the imagination, she wouldn’t have had to work hard to conjure up what was under there. Both his arms were covered with full sleeves of tattoos, his left arm done up solely in intricate geometric designs while his right arm was covered in all sorts of miscellaneous images that had special meaning to him, including his mother’s name across the bottom of his forearm. His clothing might have been hiding it today, but she also knew that on his right thigh was a beautifully detailed tiger and that just above his heart were three little stars, one for each of the championships he’d won. Add in his chocolate-brown hair and soulful, golden-brown eyes and the man was simply a masterpiece.
She fought off thoughts about wanting to trace those geometric designs with her tongue, and about wanting to see if anything new had been added to his skin since the last photo she’d seen of him on the internet. He was an arrogant, patronizing asshole, and she shouldn’t be giving him any more time or space in her head than any other guest. But she knew after that encounter that she needed some real distraction, not just time alone in her office with nothing but her thoughts. So she grabbed the Ziploc baggie of M&Ms on her desk and set off to find her best friend.
