Stay the Night

BLAKE“Excuse me, could I have one of those?” I asked. The flight attendant glanced down at the stack of newspapers in her arms, a surprised expression crossing her features before her pink lips curled into a flirtatious smile.“There’s a news channel on board, number fifty four.” She bent down lower than necessary, giving me a glimpse of the lacy black bra underneath her uniform. Her breasts brushed my bicep as she reached for the controller in my armrest. “Here, let me help you with that.”A couple of years ago, I would have leaned into it. I would have smiled back and taken her to a hotel room as soon as the plane touched down. Not anymore.Shifting a bit so my arm wasn’t in the way of her ample chest anymore, I smiled politely and nodded at the newspapers. “I prefer getting my news from the papers.”The flirtatious smile faltered before she straightened up. “Of course sir. The Times?”“One of each, please. Thank you.”She shuffled through the stack, then handed me three different

ASTON The lobby was quiet at this time of the morning. Slowly but surely, a small trickle of people were making their way from the bank of elevators to my left across the lobby to the breakfast area. I was proud to say our breakfast area was one of the best Palo Alto had to offer.The hotel basically sat on the beach and while having bacon and eggs—or an egg white omelet for the more health conscious—clients could enjoy the magnificent view. The sparkling blue ocean lay to one side and great city views to the other.I’d even had a hand in arranging the tables on the outside deck so everyone would have something pretty to look at while getting fueled up for the day ahead. I tried to make every guest feel special and welcomed, from the Silicon Valley business guys to the Stanford students needing some grease to cure their hangovers. Making sure their breakfast came with a view was only one way I tried to achieve my goal. When I got promoted to manager of this property, the California b

BLAKEJust my luck, I missed the last flight to California yesterday while I was going over some numbers with Dad, so I was stuck spending the night in Florida after all. At least our property here made a mean pancake.Tomorrow I would go back to healthy choices, but today I wanted my pancakes. I stretched out on the king-sized bed and reached for the phone to call room service before I’d even opened my eyes. A definite advantage to practically living in hotels was never having to worry about fixing your own breakfast.Once my food was ordered, I rolled out of bed and rubbed my eyes as I headed to the bathroom. I was useless before a shower in the mornings.This hotel property, one of the three we had in Florida, was the first hotel dad had owned. It was an older building than most of the rest, but it had been redone to fit in with the comfortable modernist feel of the chain as a whole. Dad’s vision was to create beautiful hotels with every luxury he could afford to put in them, while

ASTON“Please tell me you aren’t planning on working late again?” Tiffany came bounding into my office exactly one minute and thirty seconds after her shift ended. She had a ratty backpack over her shoulder and had already changed out of her uniform—a navy pencil skirt and white blouse—into a pair of cut-off jeans and a green tank that matched her eyes.I eyed the pile of papers lying next to my laptop. The hotel was looking for a new supplier for cleaning supplies and a couple of the couches in the lobby needed to be replaced. I had a ton of other stuff left to do, but none of it was urgent.My high profile client was checked in, we hadn’t heard another peep from the frat guys since I sent up the complimentary champagne, and there didn’t seem to be any other problems with the guests that needed my attention.“No, I don’t think I will. I’m beat.” Staying late was a way of life for me, but my feet were aching in my new stilettos, my eyes were burning from staring at my computer screen

BLAKECalifornia, sweet California. Although I didn’t get out to this property as often as I liked, it had always been one of my favorites. It was a small hotel, but it was popular and really did feel like a home—to me, anyway. Having thought about my talk with Dad on the plane, I still didn’t want to settle down in one place for good, but I wouldn’t mind spending a couple of weeks in California.The people, the vibe, the weather, the food. Everything was better here than it was in Florida. It helped that my family was far enough away, but not so far that I couldn’t get there if I needed to.Compared to some of our bigger hotels, the lobby here was downright cozy. It had the big windows and panes of glass for walls like most of our hotels did, but it seemed warmer because it was smaller.I made mental notes of things I noticed while walking in. Part of my job when I visited the properties was to report back on general impressions and things I thought we could improve in order to attra