Mario puts his hands on either side of Lizbet’s face. “I’m going to kiss you now, but I think we should both be careful.”
Lizbet laughs. “I’m never falling in love again, don’t worry.”
“Okay, then,” he says and he leans in. The first kiss is just a brushing of lips, warm and soft. Then Mario pulls Lizbet close enough that their hips lock. He kisses her again, and his lips linger on hers but it’s still tentative, like he’s making a decision. With the third kiss, Mario’s lips part and their tongues touch and a second later, they’re kissing like a couple who are destined to fall in love despite their best intentions.
Eventually Mario leads Lizbet to his bed, which is pleasingly （and surprisingly） firm. He takes his time undressing her. His fingertips graze her nipples, back and forth, back and forth, until she moans into his mouth. He kisses her under her ear, sucking a little, then whispering, “You are so beautiful to me, Lizbet.” She soon realizes there is no comparison between Mario and JJ in bed. JJ made love like a bull in a china shop—all power and bluster, no finesse; he liked to get it done as noisily and raucously as possible. Mario tends to her; he makes her ache. She wants him inside her and just when she thinks she can’t wait another second—she’s a dish on the stove that’s going to burn—he makes the next move. They rock together on the firm bed and Lizbet squeezes her newly powerful thighs around him and he cries out. The surrender in his voice is something Lizbet knows she’ll replay in her head over and over again.
He rolls off her, breathless. She’s dazzled.
“Why do we have to be careful, again?” she says.
He laughs. “I was just wondering that myself.” He stares at the ceiling for a second, then he pushes himself up and kisses her. “I said that because I have only a one-season contract. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are no guarantees the hotel is going to make it.”
Lizbet pulls back like he’s run vinegar under her nose. “The hotel is going to make it.” She realizes she has no idea if this is true. Their occupancy, a month after opening, is right around 40 percent. Lizbet is too busy with the day-to-day operations to fret about this like she did at the beginning. Is the hotel losing money? Yes. But will Xavier pull the plug after only one year? Would he spend all that money just to abandon it? He said he was trying to impress two women, and one of them is Shelly Carpenter. Who is the second woman? Lizbet hasn’t wondered about this for a while. （She dearly hopes it’s not Alessandra.） “The hotel is going to be in business next year if I have anything to say about it. The hotel is going to be just fine.”
Mario kisses the tip of her nose in a way that feels patronizing, and suddenly Lizbet wants to swat him. “Okay, Heartbreaker,” he says. He pulls on his boxers and a T-shirt from Cisco Brewers. “Come to the kitchen with me, please. I’m feeding you.”
14. A Desk Thing
It’s the second Saturday of July and the hotel has three checkouts and four checkins. （Alessandra can’t believe the hotel isn’t busier. If she’d known it was going to be this dead, she would have worked at the White Elephant.）
One of the checkins is, thankfully, a man traveling solo named Dr. Romano; he has the chiseled good looks of a doctor on a soap opera. Dr. Romano is staying in a room, not a suite, and he’s wearing a black titanium wedding band, but Alessandra chooses to overlook these two unfortunate circumstances and slips him her number. He tilts his head at her upside-down name tag and says, “Thank you very much, Alessandra.”
Outstanding, she thinks. He’ll text her the second he gets to the room, she’s sure of it.
Edie, meanwhile, is trying to get the woman in room 110 a blowout at R. J. Miller. Forget it, they’re booked solid, Alessandra thinks; she hasn’t been able to squeeze anyone in there all summer. But then she overhears Lindsay at the salon granting a favor because it’s “Sweet Edie Robbins” calling. When Edie hangs up, Zeke wanders over to the desk and says, “How do you make room keys, anyway? Is it like magic or something?”
Edie takes a breath, no doubt to explain that it’s magnetic not magic, but Alessandra pipes up first. “It’s a desk thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Yeah, it’s a desk thing,” Edie says. She beams at Alessandra so earnestly that Alessandra cringes. Edie is desperate to bond, but no, sorry, Alessandra can’t let that happen.
A couple enter the hotel, loaded down with luggage and baby paraphernalia—a stroller, a car seat, a bulging diaper bag.