As the day wore on though, Raina found her thoughts drifting often to the enigmatic handyman. There was something about him that she was drawn to apart from his good looks. He spoke with charm and grace. Whatever his circumstances were, Chri
stopher carried himself with dignity, and like someone who was used to getting what he wanted.
Then there was that smile—easy—as though everything in the world would fall in place before him as it should.
Raina shook her head. “Idiot,” she whispered to the air and to herself. Realizing how much thought she was giving a new employee—one who had likely already forgotten her name— Raina laughed at her ridiculousness and turned back to her work.
Christian Del Mar couldn’t keep his eyes away from the hotel manager’s lips.
They were large, and wide, and he wondered what they would taste like. And when she smiled, her whole face lit up and her serious demeanor faded away.
Her mouth begged to be kissed and he longed to be the one to do it.
Christian pulled hard on his jeans, willing his cock not to betray the direction of his thoughts. He swallowed hard and scolded himself. That wasn’t the reason he was here. He had far more pressing matters, and getting the maintenance man job was the first step to accomplishing his goal. He hoped the quick study he had done in the last couple of days would help him pass the interview.
He watched Raina with admiration as she deliberately set about making him feel at ease. Her outfit was neat and tidy, one that didn’t make her stand out but also made her look very professional. Her dark skin contrasted beautifully against her cream colored blouse, and when she leaned over he could just barely catch a glimpse of the shadow between her cleavage that tantalized him with hints of what lay beneath the delicate fabric.
Christian had seen her picture in the brochure he had been sent to proof a few years ago. He had noticed how remarkably pretty she was then, but a picture was nothing compared to the woman in real life.
He tried to keep his train of thought on the interview and responded to her questions, taking care not to show off his knowledge on the Del Mar group so much it raised her suspicions. He saw her eyes move to his torn collar, and the shadow of sympathy that followed.
Christian knew he had answered the questions adequately, but the last one about fixing a leaking toilet had thrown him off. Most of the knowledge he had on maintenance work was from his own experience back in the days when he was scraping by and working towards his dream of owning his own hotels. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d fixed anything at all, let alone a leaky toilet.
Fortunately, one of the skills that had helped him get where he was in life was a photographic memory. His mind flew to the page in the text book and a passage came to him. He recited the process of identifying the leak and fixing it but he saw the look of curiosity on Raina’s face. She was a little perplexed by the way he had answered the question, he could tell, but Christian hoped it wouldn’t prevent him from getting the job.
In the end, it hadn’t. She gave him the job on a trial basis and he congratulated himself on getting hired on his own merit. He chuckled to himself as he caught his reflection in the glass walls as he made his way to Human Resources. With the cap and jacket, he looked nothing like himself. His hair, normally jet black, was dyed in an unbecoming shade of brown and his blue eyes were hidden behind dark contact lenses. His Board of Directors would faint if they saw him now.
This was his grand strategy to rescue his hotel from several months of dwindling profits.
Christian mused over the circumstances that had gotten him to this point.
A year ago, feeling burned out, and feeling the need to give back, he had decided to take an extended leave from the company he had founded. It had been a wonderful interlude, though he had missed the hurried pace of his work.
Lazy mornings were not for him and during those six months, Christian never once woke up later than six o’clock in the morning. His schedule was tight, with at least four lectures per week. He hated idleness and so even while on a sabbatical he had traveled across the country in an effort to motivate young men and women to think of entrepreneurship as a possible career by sharing with them his own rags-to-riches story.
Growing up in a poor neighborhood and attending a questionable school district had been hard, but Christian had been a brilliant student. His guidance counselor had seen his potential and encouraged him to apply to schools he would have thought far out of his reach. He had gotten scholarship offers from three Ivy League schools and in the end he had decided on Harvard.
From the beginning, his focus was on starting his own business. He had seen his father lose his livelihood when he was deemed expendable after the company he worked for decided to downsize.
His father had trudged from office to office, looking for a job, even those well below his previous income levels. Even though he was a qualified mechanical engineer, his father had been forced to settle for a poorly-paying job as a machine operator in a steel factory.
At age thirteen, Christian had seen what being unable to earn an income did to a man’s self-esteem, and he had vowed to never find himself in that position. The family of five had survived on his mother’s paltry income as a teacher. Broken by the inability to take care of his family, his father had turned to drinking. He had died twenty years later, broke and alone, after Christian’s mother had divorced him due to his alcoholism.
Every time Christian thought of his father, he shuddered. He had kept his eye on the most lucrative businesses and had settled on real estate as a solid investment strategy. Working throughout his time in college and saving and scrounging, he had managed to pinch enough pennies to purchase a run-down motel, convincing an investor to back him up.
That had been the beginning of his rise, and fifteen years later, he owned one of the largest hotel chains in the country, and it was quickly expanding to become one of the premier resort brands throughout the world.
His only regret was that his father had not lived on to see Christian become a success.
Perhaps based on that guilt, Christian had given his Uncle Roger the job of regional manager, though after the poor performance of the Del Mar and other hotels in his uncle’s district in the last few months, it had made Christian question his uncle’s capabilities.
To Christian’s dismay, profits had dropped considerably in the South-East region where his Uncle Roger was the regional manager. His Uncle Roger should have caught and rectified the problem before it became a major issue, but instead, it had spiraled out of control, and thanks to poor budgeting, out-of-control hiring, and terrible marketing, the Del Mar hotels in the South-East were suffering.
Christian had jumped back into work after that, scheduling extensive meetings with Roger to try and focus on one problem at a time. But nothing concrete came out of it and as far as Christian was concerned, what Roger gave him were excuses. He spoke of high staff turnovers and theft, both of which were unproven, and made Christian wonder what was going on at the hotels themselves. It was time for him to get his hands dirty and actually see what was happening on the ground.
One conundrum he faced was knowing that if “The Boss” came to town, employees were immediately going to be on their best behavior, doorknobs would be shined to perfection, and the food would be so fresh it would still be swimming.
To get a better idea of what was going on, Christian realized he had to go undercover and see for himself what the atmosphere was like, and he’d chosen the Del Mar as his first stop. So far so good, he thought, his mind straying to Raina. She appeared to love her work and he could see the passion she conducted it with. He hoped the rest of the staff were as motivated as Raina was. He would then be able to rule out the problem of demoralized staff.
So, he changed his name from Christian Del Mar to Christopher Smith, got a couple fake I.D.’s made up, falsified his resume, and started applying for entry level jobs at the hotel. Maintenance work couldn’t be that hard, could it? He would figure it out, and as he did he would also figure out exactly what was going on in his hotel.
After falsely filling out the necessary forms in the human resources department and feeling a twinge of guilt for the deception, Christian returned to Rain
a’s office as she had instructed him to. He knocked lightly on her door, surprised that she did not have a secretary.
“Come on in,” she called out.
Her head was bowed low as she read over some documents.
“Have a seat; I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said, distractedly.
He took the opportunity to observe her. She wore a black suit, the jacket of which was flung over a chair, and a simple cream colored shirt, but the quality of the clothes was clear from their elegant cut. Her curly black hair fell over her cheeks and Christian fought the urge to brush it away.
He found his strong reaction to Raina odd considering he had dated the most beautiful women in the world.
It was not that Raina wasn’t beautiful—far from it. She was stunning in a way that wasn’t obvious to the casual observer. The more he looked at her the more he saw to appreciate—from her wide brown eyes framed with delicate lashes to her curvy backside that he wanted to fit perfectly in his hands.
It was his own randy school-boy-like reaction that puzzled him. He had felt strong attraction to women before, but this had hit him like a ton of bricks. He had observed her from the lobby as she walked ahead of him and loved the curves that flowed from her small waist. She was not model-thin as most women imagined men liked; instead she had a womanly figure that made his blood race.
Cleary, he thought wryly, he needed to date more. That was probably it. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since before he’d taken his sabbatical, and he wasn’t one for casual dating or flings. For one thing, he was never quite sure if the women liked him for himself—or for what his bank account could buy them. It always took him awhile to open up to someone and trust them. In the meantime, Mrs. Thumb and her four friends had been taking care of business. His body was clearly having ideas of its own though.
“Right, ready for the tour?” she said and smiled again.
Christian smiled back at her and nodded. By instinct he started to offer her his arm, but he quickly pulled it back as he remembered his place. She looked up at him and smiled curiously.