Page 1 of Caught Up In You (Indigo Royal Resort)
Chapter One
Cullen Cruz was pissed.
Pissed about being on this trip. Pissed about sitting in this stupid airplane seat, even if it was first class. Pissed about how what was supposed to be his vacation had been turned into something other than relaxing.
But mostly he was pissed that after this vacation ended, he wasn’t returning to work. His days as a professional footballer seemed to be over. He knew he was “old” by any standard in any professional sport, but at thirty-eight he still felt like he had plenty to give the game. Apparently, every team in every league across the world seemed to disagree with him though.
Getting down to St. Thomas from Liverpool hadn’t been an easy trek these last couple of years. While he realized that he had the pick of anywhere in the world to go on holiday, there was something special about the Indigo Royal Resort that had kept him returning for the last ten years. His time down there was well worth the money he had to spend on a private flight.
Of course, he’d usually had a travel companion of some sort with him—whomever the flavor of the month had been in that moment, or if there wasn’t one, he’d find someone and talk her into joining him. Not that he ever heard any complaints from anyone about having to go to the Virgin Islands with a pro athlete via a private jet. This time, however, he was flying solo. There hadn’t been anyone for months—not that the media hadn’t attached him to all sorts of women, and even one dude a couple of months back—throughout all his contract drama. At one point, when it was clear he wasn’t getting a new contract from anyone, he considered grabbing the first groupie he could find, but then he thought better of it. He needed this time to be alone. To be angry.
“Would you like anything else, Mr. Cruz?” the sweet, blonde flight attendant asked him. She stood maybe five feet five, even in her heels, and she batted her eyelashes like it was her job.
Although, he thought to himself, it kinda is…
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, nodding to her.
“Well, you just let me know if that changes!” She walked away slowly, swinging her hips as much as she could in the narrow aisle of the commercial jet.
That was just one more thing he was pissed off about; his agent insisted that he fly commercial this time around. It would lead to “better opportunities to be seen,” according to the man he had trusted with his career for the last twenty-four years. Oliver Smart was exactly that—smart. And after more than two decades together, he’d never steered Cullen wrong. Which is why when Oliver told him that he had rearranged his trip to St. Thomas—not only pushing it out a couple of months but extending it as well—so that he could run a two-week skills clinic for local kids, he didn’t push back too much. He knew he needed all the good press he could get right about now.
“So, you are him?” the guy in the aisle seat to his right asked. Cullen simply nodded, turning to look out the window to his left, hoping the guy caught the hint. Unfortunately, he didn’t.
“Is what I saw on Facebook true? You’re really retiring?” he prodded.
The guy’s question felt like salt being rubbed in a fresh wound. Being cut from Liverpool FC had been a serious punch to the gut and to his ego. His contract still had a full year left on it, with an option for two more after that. When he was called in to see the team’s chairman and manager and informed that they thought it was time for him to “retire,” he had felt like someone pulled the rug out from under him. They assured him it wasn’t personal, nor was it about the financial obligations of his contract. After all, they would pay him out for it. Not that he was all that worried about money—he already had more of it than he knew what to do with. No, this was about making room on the team for the next generation of players, giving the young guys a chance to shine. They told him they were worried about him somehow getting injured to the point where he wouldn’t be able to enjoy retirement properly. Both men worked hard to sell him on the idea that this was a good thing, that he could have his money and enjoy the freedom of retirement too. But he could read between the lines and he heard them loud and clear—he was old and no longer worth the roster spot.
“Well, if you saw it on Facebook, it must be, right?” Cullen answered in a sarcastic tone. “We’ll see what happens after the off-season.”
“Cool, cool,” the guy responded. “By the way, you totally could have taken the guy in the pub.”
Cullen had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the comment. The news about being cut had hit him hard, and he could admit now that he hadn’t handled it the best that he could have. He’d worked hard to try and stay out of the media as much as possible, no matter how much the tabloids had goaded him with rumors and other made-up nonsense about his personal life. Still, he knew damn well that the news that the team and he were “amicably parting ways” as he “considered retirement” would be public information almost as soon as he left the chairman’s office, and that lying low to deal with his emotions would be the smart thing to do. However, smart was what Oliver was for, and in that moment the only thing he wanted was
a drink. Hours later he’d found himself at the local pub, with the bartender holding him back from delivering a returning blow to some jackass. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually hit the guy, or that the other guy had started it. Some damn paparazzi, not to mention a bunch of mobile phone cameras, had shots of him with his hands balled into fists and raring to go. Those photos were up on social media faster than Cullen could blink, and any chance he’d thought he might have to talk his way back onto the Liverpool pitch was gone.
After the pub incident, the media ran with the idea that Cullen had an anger management issue and went searching for any picture they could find of him scowling or angry. He’d never been much of a natural smiler, so it wasn’t a difficult task for them. It didn’t matter that no one—not him, not the other guy from the pub, not the team, not even Oliver on his behalf—had commented on either him not returning to the team come the start of the season or the non-brawl. The media did what they wanted.
He could hear Oliver’s voice as clearly as if he were in the chair next to him right now saying, “You need some good press right about now, Cruz, so I adjusted your trip down to the islands into more of a working holiday.”
So here he was, stuck on a commercial flight from New York to Miami, sitting next to this Chatty Cathy before catching yet another flight down to St Thomas. With layovers, it was taking almost two days to get down there, and Cullen was more than over it. It’s not that he thought himself better than the masses, or that he couldn’t be bothered with the fans—in fact he rather liked seeing the reactions on a kid’s face when they put two and two together, realizing who he was—but after multiple flights and hours of layovers, all in the same clothes he’d been wearing for days, he was plain and simple worn out.
“Some things just aren’t worth it,” he simply commented.
“Very true.”
Cullen nodded again and tried the window move one more time. Thankfully this time the guy took the hint and put his headphones back on. Only forty-five more minutes on this flight, followed by a three-hour layover and one more four-hour flight. Then he’d be at the Indigo Royal, and with any luck, he’d get to see her.
The Indigo Royal Resort’s newest hire in the housekeeping department seemed to zone in and out as Leona walked her through the process of how the whole system worked. The young girl, Gena, seemed a lot more interested in picking at her nail polish a few moments ago, until Leona scolded her, than she ever would in knowing the proper steps and procedures of cleaning a room when a room was occupied versus not.
“Questions so far?” Leona asked the girl.
Gena looked at her, shaking her head no despite the overwhelmed look in her eyes. “Not that I can think of.”
Leona remembered what it was like to be this girl. After all, she’d started working at the hotel when she was fifteen. Her mother had decided that if she didn’t get a job and learn some responsibility that she’d end up “in trouble”—her mother’s not-so-secret code for pregnant—and ruin her life. So she’d turned to the uncles of Leona’s best friend Drea Miller, who were the owner/operators of the resort, and begged them to give her a job.
"Don’t be afraid to speak up if you think of any. It’s a lot of information to take in all at once,” she said, trying her best to sound comforting.
The lady who had been the head of housekeeping back then, Beverly, had told her the same thing when she had taken Leona on a very similar tour of the grounds, explaining to her the difference between standard hotel rooms and suites in Barracuda Tower, the apartment style multi-room suites in the Black Velvet and the Purple Rain, and the four exclusive beachfront bungalows known as The Villas. The bungalows, individually known as La Isla Bonita, Borderline, Lucky Star, and Vogue, were designed by Drea’s late mother and aunt, who had passed away in a kitchen accident when the resort was being renovated more than twenty-five years earlier. Even though they weren’t fully built when the sisters passed, Drea’s uncles had made sure to name each one after a Madonna song from The Immaculate Collection, which had been the sisters’ favorite album.
“So, you understand the layout of the resort, right?” Leona asked. “Just past the pool are the three main guest buildings. Barracuda Tower, which has twelve floors, and just over three hundred basic hotel rooms and suites. Then just next to the tower are the Black Velvet and the Purple Rain, which only have multi-room suites. Past the guest rooms is The Casbah bar, which also hosts the night club on Friday nights. If you continue walking past the bar and down a little closer to the beach, you’ll eventually find The Villas before hitting a stand of trees that lead to the Big House and Drea’s cottage.”
“Got it,” Gena said.
“Today, we’re only going to look at the bungalows from afar. Guests who spend the insane amount of money that it costs to rent these for a week do so because they are looking for space and privacy, and as staff we make sure to respect that,” Leona continued on her tour. Gena wouldn’t be tasked with caring for those anytime soon, anyway. Unlike Leona, who would be spending plenty of time in La Isla Bonita in the coming weeks. Thinking of which, she’d better hurry this tour up and get Gena paired off with Carmella or someone for the rest of the training, so she could do one last check of La Isla Bonita to make sure that everything was all set.
Leading Gena back down toward her office, she took the opportunity to drive a few additional key points home. “We take exceptional pride in our rooms and toiletries that we provide for our guests. We include bath salts, toothbrush kit, loofah, and a hairbrush, on top of the standard vanity kit—shower cap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and shower gel—in all rooms. In the more premium suites, we also provide deodorant, personal wet wipes, floss, and a sewing kit. Make sure to restock every day, even if you know that all the guest did was take the item and toss it in their suitcase.”
“Do people really do that?” Gena asked.
