CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
CLARA JUNE
I waketo the smell of fresh coffee and french toast, and rub my eyes to spot just that, sitting atop a courtesy cart in the center of our room. Dean, wearing the hotel bathrobe which looks child size on his large frame, sits on the edge of the bed and strokes his hand down my naked back.
“C’mon baby, sit up. Let’s get some coffee andfood in you before our boy is back.” He helps me sit up because I’m orgasm drunk and dazed, apparently. He feeds my arms through the bathrobe sleeves, then uses my brush to work out the tangles. When he’s done, he braids my hair for me, and rolls the cart up to the edge of the bed.
I finger the braid as he fills a mug of coffee in front of me. “You can braid,” I comment, trying not to hyperfocus on the way he called Archie our boy.
“Yeah, I learned how when my mom had shoulder surgery a few years ago. Had to do her hair. YouTube to the rescue.” He takes the silver dome off my plate and the room floods with cinnamon sugary goodness.
“Let me just make sure the do not disturb is still on the door,” he says, getting to his feet. The in-room phone rings, and since I’m nearest, I answer.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Anita with guest services. Check out is this morning at eleven, will you be needing a late check out?”
“No,” I reply without confirming with Dean, because a glance at the clock tells me it’s not even eight a.m. yet. We have time. “No, thank you.”
“Great,” she says, typing way too much for a simple no. Then Anita says, “and are we good to go ahead and charge that remaining balance to the card on file?”
I wait a moment for Dean to return, but I hear him at the door, declining housekeeping.
Anita must take my reservation as hesitation, and helpfully adds, “the remaining balance, Mrs. McAllister, is two thousand and six dollars, and seventy two cents after the nine hundred and ninety nine dollar deposit.”
“What?” I gasp. “How much?”
At that moment, Dean returns, tugging at the tiny tie athis waist. I pass him the handset. “I think they messed up your bill.”
Dean winks and takes the receiver, sitting on the mattress next to me, using his free hand to ready his coffee cup for a sip. “Hi there, this is Dean McAllister. That was my girlfriend.” Heat flares in my belly at the way he describes me. “Okay,” he bobs his head while listening, forking one of the six strips of bacon on his plate. “Yep, that’s the card. Yep, that’s it. Run it. Yep. Alright.” He hangs up and bumps his knee into mine. “Eat. If you finish fast enough…” he smiles. He doesn’t have to finish that sentence.
But while eating, I have to ask— “I didn’t hear you correct her—did she figure out she made a mistake? You know, on the room charge?”
Dean chews his bacon before answering. “No mistake.”
I sip my coffee then laugh. “This is a two thousand dollar suite, then? Or three thousand, since she alleged you paid nearly a one thousand dollar deposit.”
He shakes his head, setting his coffee cup back down with a little clink. “So… the school board denied the request to stay in the hotel last night. They felt it was reasonable that the students take buses home at night, risking their lives, instead of staying one night and driving home in the daylight when the curve on Gull is twelve times safer.”
I just blink.
“But I couldn’t tell the parents that I was watching out for their kids and in the same breath, go to that game. The drive home is horrible, you know? One kid had so much anxiety around it that he quit the team just to avoid the game.”
I listen and blink, because I’m still not really getting this.
“If we forfeit the game, we take ourselves out of the running for championships, which is what most of these boys are working for, you know? Not everyone is a Tanner Colt, ora Boone Holt. And for the ones that aren’t going onto scholarships and the NFL, playoffs are the big thing. I couldn’t take that away from anyone.”
I nod my head. Dean is unlike any other man I’ve met, and that may be cliche and if it is, fine. I’m cliche, because it’s true.
“How did you manage to find a solution?”
He pulls at the back of his neck, cheeks going a little pink. “Ahh,” he says, almost bashfully, like he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I told Leah—Leah Mitchell, the principal—that if she and West, the athletic director kept it a secret, that I’d fund it myself, and we’d tell parents that the district funded it.”
I lean back, trying to understand. “Why don’t you want the boys to know you paid for this and made all of this happen?”
He shrugs. “It’s not about me. It’s not even about the hotel stay. It's about letting these boys play the game they love without worrying about being splattered across asphalt on the drive home.”
