BABY

HELLO HANDSOME (PT.3)

He moved to the minibar and poured two drinks without asking what I liked, which told me everything I needed to know about his marriages. I wandered slowly through the room while he worked, fingertips grazing surfaces I had no interest in, giving him a view he thought was accidental.

“Whiskey?” he asked, offering a glass.

“I’m flexible,” I said, taking it.

He stepped closer when I sipped, watching my mouth over the rim. Predictable. We talked in softer voices now, the kind strangers used when pretending privacy had created intimacy. He asked if I always traveled alone. I asked if he always invited women upstairs this quickly. He said only the interesting ones. I said that sounded like a volume discount. He laughed, touched my waist lightly, then left his hand there half a second longer than courtesy required. I let him. For now.

Grant mistook permission for momentum the way men like him often did.

He stepped in close and kissed me with the polished confidence of someone accustomed to being welcomed. It wasn’t bad. Smooth, practiced, designed to impress itself. I kissed him back just enough to keep the evening moving where I wanted it.

When he broke away to refresh our drinks, I drifted toward the windows, city lights glittering below the rain-streaked glass. My hand slipped into my purse and closed around the small packet waiting there.

He returned carrying two whiskies, pleased with himself in that effortless way wealth often rehearsed. I accepted my glass and set it aside untouched.

As he leaned in again, attention fixed on my neck and shoulders, I tipped the powder into his drink with one quick movement and gave the amber liquid a lazy swirl.

Gone without a trace.

Perfect.

We settled onto the couch while the rain whispered against the windows. He talked too close to my ear about chemistry, timing, and how rare it was to meet someone like me. I smiled in the right places and nudged his glass back into his hand each time he forgot it.

The change arrived slowly.

His shoulders relaxed first. Then his words began to wander. Stories lost their endings. He repeated a compliment and never noticed. His eyes took longer to focus each time they found me.

“You alright?” I asked, all concern and silk.

“Long day,” he murmured, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Come here.”

I helped him toward the bed, steadying him like a thoughtful date seeing a man who’d had too much to drink. He dropped heavily onto the mattress, blinking up at me with sluggish admiration.

I eased him back against the pillows.

“Close your eyes for a minute,” I said softly.

He obeyed.

Moments later, sleep claimed him.

I stood over him a moment just to be sure.

His breathing had settled into the deep, heavy rhythm of real sleep. One arm flung across the bed, the other hanging uselessly off the side. Mouth slightly open. Whatever polish he’d carried all evening had dissolved into drool-adjacent vulnerability. Good. I got to work.

His wallet came first, lifted from the blazer draped over the chair. Thick with folded cash, black cards, and the smug security of a man unused to losing things. Next was the watch, expensive and heavy, unclasped carefully from his wrist. Cufflinks from the nightstand. A money clip near the lamp. An envelope of casino chips tucked in the dresser drawer like a secret no one had ever challenged.

Then I spotted the shoes. Italian leather, gleaming beside the bed like they paid taxes. I slipped them into a hotel laundry bag and tied it shut. If he woke up robbed, I wanted the walk to the phone barefoot. I left the ring where it was.

Missing money caused embarrassment. Missing wedding rings caused investigations. I preferred clean exits. I wiped down the glass, the drawer pulls, and anything else I’d touched, then looked back at the bed. Grant snored softly into luxury, poorer than he’d gone to sleep and luckier than he knew.

I checked the hallway first.

Empty.

Soft carpet, polite lighting, no witnesses except framed artwork chosen specifically to be forgotten. I stepped out, closed the suite door quietly behind me, and walked toward the elevators with the calm pace of a woman who belonged wherever she was standing.

The purse sat heavy on my shoulder. The laundry bag brushed my leg with each step, expensive leather knocking gently inside.

Music.

The elevator ride down gave me thirty seconds to rearrange my face. By the lobby level, concern had replaced satisfaction, urgency had softened the edges of my smile, and my breathing suggested sudden family tragedy.

Performance mattered.

The night clerk looked up as I crossed the marble floor.

“Everything alright, ma’am?”

I let my eyes widen just enough.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, voice tight with practiced panic. “My mother’s been taken to the hospital. I need to leave immediately. Can you check me out tonight?” Concern replaced routine at once.

“Of course. Right away.”

People moved fastest when they believed they were helping.

He worked quickly, fingers moving across the keyboard while offering practiced sympathy I had not earned. I thanked him with the same sincerity I used on most people: attractive enough to pass. When the receipt printed, I slipped a folded bill across the desk.

“For your help,” I said.

His eyes widened slightly when he saw the amount.

“That’s really not necessary, ma’am.”

“I know.”

Then I glanced toward the earlier clerk finishing paperwork near the back office, the one who’d warned me Grant tipped terribly. I asked for an envelope, scribbled For the honest one across the front, and tucked another generous bill inside.

“Please make sure she gets this.”

The night clerk smiled properly then, no script left in it.

“I will.”

Five minutes later I was in my car with the engine running, rain feathering across the windshield, stolen luxury resting beside me like a well-behaved pet. The hotel glowed behind me, bright and expensive and already becoming someone else’s problem. I pulled out my phone and dialed the number Simon had called from earlier. He answered on the second ring.

“I’m coming back for my lip gloss,” I said.

Then I hung up.

I didn’t wait to hear his response.

The tires hissed over wet pavement as I pulled away from the curb, city lights sliding across the windshield in long blurred streaks. Midnight roads always made reinvention look easy. Every green light felt like permission. Every red one felt temporary. Grant’s watch glinted from the passenger seat beside the laundry bag holding his shoes. My purse was heavier with cash and the kind of small victories that never lasted long enough.

I should have felt satisfied. Instead, all I could think about was the pause before Simon answered. As if he’d been awake. As if he’d been expecting me. Rain thickened as the skyline thinned behind me. Streetlights gave way to dark stretches of highway, then tree-lined roads slick with mist. Familiar roads now. Roads that led back to Blackthorn and the unfinished business waiting inside it. Fine.

I would go back to my original plan. Get close. Play nice. Figure out what the hell his problem was. No flirting for fun. No getting distracted by sharp cheekbones and weird manners. No letting him get under my skin because he folded money neatly and knew how to use a stovetop. I was going back to investigate. That was all. I tightened my grip on the wheel and smiled despite myself. Then I drove faster toward Blackthorn.

Fog gathered thicker the closer I got, swallowing the road in slow white mouths. By the time Blackthorn’s turnoff appeared, the world had narrowed to headlights, gravel, and instinct. The inn emerged from the mist all at once, porch light glowing warm against the dark like it had been waiting specifically for me. Annoying.

I killed the engine and sat there a beat, listening to it tick itself quiet. The house looked harmless again. Curtains drawn. Windows lit low. No movement. No sign of Simon. Just that same polished innocence that now felt more suspicious than menace ever could. I grabbed my purse, stepped out into the cold damp night, and started toward the porch. The front door was already open.

☆☆☆☆☆☆

Before he entered the room, Simon stood behind the hidden panel and watched her through the narrow hole in the wall, waiting for sleep to claim her. He had hoped she might give in to the restless energy she carried upstairs with her, hoped to watch that sharp mouth soften and hear what sounds she made when no one was meant to hear them. Instead, she paced, undressed, moved through the room with that same reckless confidence, then finally slipped beneath the sheets and surrendered only to exhaustion. He stayed there until her breathing changed, slow and deep, before unlocking the door and stepping inside.

There was a difference between pretending to sleep and surrendering to it. Connie fought rest at first, turning once beneath the sheets, one hand near the pillow as if even unconscious she expected trouble. Then the fight drained out of her in slow stages. Her breaths lengthened. Her shoulders softened. Her mouth parted slightly on the exhale.

Only then did Simon unlock Room Seven.

He slipped inside and closed the door behind him without sound. Moonlight leaked through the curtains in pale ribbons, enough to show him the room exactly as she had left it. Dress tossed over a chair. Heels kicked apart in separate corners. Purse hanging open. Charger twisted half out of the wall. Makeup scattered across the vanity like she had dressed in a hurry and trusted chaos to finish the job.

Disorder.

He felt it in his jaw immediately.

Not because it was messy.

Because it was wasteful.

She was too striking for waste. Too vivid, too quick, too alive to move through life this carelessly. Connie Applewood had sharp instincts and ugly habits. Potential and neglect in equal measure. She could be extraordinary if someone bothered to correct the little things.

He moved first to the purse.

Cash folded carelessly. Receipts crumpled. Lip gloss without a cap. A woman who valued usefulness more than presentation. Yet the purse itself was expensive leather, worn but real. Quality chosen once, then mistreated daily. Consistent.

He almost smiled.

Good taste buried beneath impatience.

He started with the shoes.

Set them side by side beneath the bed, toes aligned. Lifted the dress from the chair and hung it properly so the fabric would fall clean by morning. Zipped the purse. Flattened the bills and sorted them by denomination. Coiled the charger neatly and tucked it into the side pocket. Lined her cosmetics in a precise row. Toothbrush upright beside the sink. With each correction, the room felt quieter. More obedient. More worthy of her.

Something in him settled with it.

Most women mistook correction for criticism. They heard insult where care was being offered. They clung to bad habits simply because the habits were theirs. Wasteful pride.

Connie, though.

Connie had watched him hurt a man and looked interested.

That suggested possibilities.

Then he returned to the bed.

She lay on her side now, shirt riding slightly at the waist, hair spilled across the pillow and over one eye. Even sleeping she looked defiant, as if dreams themselves had to earn permission. He crouched beside her and slid the loose strands from her face with the backs of his fingers, slow enough to feel the warmth of her skin without waking her.

She twitched faintly.

A small shift of the hips. A soft breath through parted lips.

His eyes dropped.

The thin fabric of her shirt rose and fell with each breath, the shape of her n****e beneath it impossible to miss. He let his thumb move once, slowly, over the hardened peak through the cotton, rubbing it in a lazy circle before pausing.

Her body answered with another small movement.

Interesting.

Responsive. Even in sleep.

He withdrew his hand before appetite made him careless. Desire was useful only when disciplined. Men ruined good things by rushing toward them. Simon had never respected hunger without patience.

From the vanity, he picked up the lip gloss and turned it once between his fingers. Cheap shine. Cherry scent. Something she would notice missing.

Good.

He slipped it into his pocket.

By morning she would think she forgot it. By tomorrow night she would come back for it. Women always returned for unfinished things. Especially when the unfinished thing was themselves.

Simon stood at the door and looked over the room one last time.

Improved.

Then he looked at her.

She was not perfect.

Not yet.

But unlike the others, Connie looked like she might enjoy being remade.