Checked Into Him – Jace Wilder

“Don’t,” Lucas said. “I didn’t say anything.” “Your face is saying plenty.” “You have a—” Evan paused, visibly selecting from a range of diplomatic options. “—distinctive vocal quality.” “I sound like a drowning cat and we both know it.” “I was going to say ‘enthusiastic.’ But now that you mention it, there are similarities.” “Get out of my bathroom.” “It’s my bathroom. You’re a guest.” “Guests don’t unpack their suitcases.” Something shifted in Evan’s expression—the amusement softening into something warmer, something that acknowledged the weight of what Lucas had said without making it heavy.

He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms and looked at Lucas with wet hair and a towel around his waist and water still beading on his shoulders, and the look on his face was the look of a man seeing something he’d wanted for a long time and couldn’t believe he was allowed to have.

“No,” Evan said quietly. “They don’t.” He left the bathroom. Lucas stood on the bath mat dripping and thought: I could have this. Every morning. This exact thing. The thought didn’t make him want to run. That was new. Thursday: They argued about throw pillows. The suite had six throw pillows—neutral tones, high-quality fabric, arranged on the couch in a configuration that Evan had clearly calibrated. Lucas had been displacing them since day one, tossing them on the floor, stacking them at one end, using them as laptop supports.

Evan had been silently restoring them to their positions every morning, a Sisyphean battle of soft furnishing that neither of them had acknowledged until Thursday evening, when Lucas threw one across the room to make space for Evan’s legs in his lap and Evan watched it land on the armchair with an expression of physical pain. “The pillows have positions,” Evan said.

“The pillows are inanimate objects.” “Inanimate objects with optimal placement.” “You need help.” “I need pillows that stay where I put them.” “You need therapy and a hug. Possibly in that order.” Evan stared at him. Lucas stared back. The throw pillow sat on the armchair like a witness.

“Come here,” Lucas said, and pulled Evan down into his lap, replacing the pillow with something better—a man who resisted for approximately one second before settling against Lucas’s chest with a sigh that suggested he’d been waiting to be pulled down all along. They watched a documentary about hotel architecture. Evan provided commentary that was more interesting than the film.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. 1kitap1.com/en For everyone who ever unpacked a bag and decided to stay.

1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Title Page Copyright Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Thank You 1kitap1.com/en CHAPTER ONE EVAN The orchid was wrong. Not dramatically wrong—not wilted or broken or the kind of catastrophe that would send a guest to TripAdvisor with their knives out.

But Evan Cole could see from fifteen feet away that the arrangement on the lobby’s center table had been rotated approximately forty degrees from its optimal position, which meant the single cymbidium stem with the hairline bruise on its lower petal was now facing the entrance instead of the wall. He crossed the marble floor in six precise strides, adjusted the vase a quarter turn, and stepped back to confirm.

Better. “Mr. Cole?” The front desk supervisor, Priya, appeared at his elbow with a tablet. “The Whitfield party wants to extend through Sunday, but their suite is booked for a corporate check-in on Saturday afternoon.” “Move the corporate guest to 1804. Same tier, better view. Send the Whitfields a complimentary bottle of the Sancerre they ordered at dinner last night with a handwritten note—not printed, handwritten—telling them we’re delighted they’re enjoying their stay.

Use the cream cardstock, not the white.” Priya tapped her screen. “The cream is—” “Second drawer, left side of the concierge desk, behind the luggage tags.” She gave him a look that fell somewhere between impressed and mildly frightened, which Evan considered the appropriate reaction from his staff.

“On it.” He watched her go, then checked his watch. 7:14 a.m.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 1d0582b259e3f765
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,889,844 bytes (1.802 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 304
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 487.55 minutes
• Total Words: 97,510
• Total Characters: 583,454
• Average Words per Page: 320.76
• Average Characters per Page: 1919.26

Most Frequent Words

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