to be part of it.
Vienna’s comment that he was a kept boy had jarred him, reinforcing his fear that Hunter saw him that way, too. But what was he being kept for? Some rainy, romantic Sunday when Hunter might finally realize and verbalize feelings of love? As much as Derek wanted that, he was no longer naïve enough to expect it. Instead, he’d pared down his expectations to a single objective. For his own self-respect, he needed to prove that he wasn’t the kind of man who was just looking for a bank account, a circuit party, or a room service life.
4
Bland Ambition
After Riley Blake called in changes to the Congreve room service menu, he settled into Hunter’s leather chair and indulged himself with a Gitane from the gold cigarette box on the desk. One of the perks of working for a smoker was that Riley could light up in the office. Of course, Hunter didn’t smoke the pungent Gitanes himself; they were kept for visiting dignitaries. Hunter preferred Marlboro Lights in a box, and Riley kept a desk drawer supplied with cartons for his boss.
With Hunter on another continent, Riley could smoke the Gitanes without fear of detection. Not that Hunter would give a damn. If he knew that Riley enjoyed the French cigarettes, he’d have urged him to take all he wanted. But Riley liked the feeling he got from stealing the Gitanes, as if he was pulling a fast one on Hunter.
It was the same feeling he got when he powered up his laptop and accessed the private accounts of Hunter and his loathsome boy toy, Derek. That had been so simple to arrange. Hunter had wanted a computer system in his office and apartment that was independent of the Congreve network. Riley figured Hunter knew that his father, Randolph Congreve, wouldn’t hesitate to order his lackeys to monitor Hunter’s private e-mail and computer use. Old Randolph’s spies were everywhere. It hadn’t taken long for Riley to suspect that the chanteuse in the hotel’s piano bar, Sheree Sheridan, kept an eye on both of them and reported back to the elder Congreve.
Riley had discreetly hired someone to set up a separate computer system. What he didn’t explain to Hunter was that he’d had the consultant link the computers with another line on Riley’s desk, giving Riley the control of a network administrator via his laptop. Riley could read the files and e-mail on Hunter’s and Derek’s PCs. He could track what Web sites they visited, know what games Derek played and for how long, and access Hunter’s financial records. Riley understood that knowledge was power, particularly when he was the only one with the knowledge. He hoarded all the information he got, sure that it would prove useful to him one day.
He checked Hunter’s READ mail and found a recent message from Hunter’s best friend, Garry Prophet.
Con,
Australia, huh? When you say distance, you aren’t kidding. No, I don’t think you’re an asshole for asking the old bastard to send you there. Derek will survive. The separation may do him some good, too. Not that I’m in any position to give you relationship advice. But I know better than anyone all the ways you drive the boy crazy—bad and good.
Screw e-mail. As soon as you’re there and I figure out the time difference, I’ll call you. If you’re not already stateside by then. Or maybe Derek will have decided to join you in Sydney.
Pro
Riley scowled and closed the e-mail. Pro and Con. So precious it made him want to retch. It had probably started when they were roommates at Andover and continued through their tenure at Yale. He wondered how many other people had figured out the true nature of their relationship. Probably both families. That was why the Prophets were trying to force Garry into a sham marriage with pimento heiress Buffy Barlow. Hunter wasn’t as malleable as his friend-slash-lover. He’d apparently never made a secret of his sexual orientation, whereas Garry continued to maintain the charade that he was straight.
None of that mattered to Riley. Although he was himself gay, his interest in Hunter was not romantic. A cruel twist of fate had tied his destiny to his boss’s. When Hunter prospered, so did Riley. If Hunter failed, Riley would be banished from the Congreve dynasty.
It was a bitter pill to swallow after fourteen years of fighting his way up the Congreve ladder. He’d left San Antonio a seventeen-year-old runaway, ending up in Boston because that’s where his money ran out. The first job he’d been able to get was shining shoes at the Boston Congreve. From there, he’d been a doorman, bellhop, and desk clerk. After years of ass kissing, blackmailing, and otherwise manipulating himself into better positions, he’d been accepted into the hotel’s management training program.
He stubbed out the Gitane and lit another, brooding over the injustice of it all. A few years earlier, just when Riley was sure he was poised to take over any of the more elite hotels in the chain, Hunter had abruptly entered the family business. Since Hunter was too pampered to start at the bottom, Riley had been transferred to this godforsaken hotel in the middle of nowhere to make sure the youngest Congreve heir didn’t screw things up too badly. Instead of being master of his own domain, Riley was nothing more than a glorified secretary.
In all fairness, he had to admit that Hunter didn’t treat him that way. He gave his assistant the authority to act on his behalf, and Riley made the most of it. Around Hunter, he adopted a self-effacing facade. But Riley ruled the rest of the hotel staff with steely resolve. He couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong and bring down Randolph Congreve’s wrath on his son and, consequently, Riley.
Riley went to great pains to know his new boss, although it wasn’t easy. Hunter was not a man who invited confidences, nor did he talk about himself. It seemed that Hunter was no happier than Riley to be in Indiana; Riley took satisfaction in this. If he was discontented and bored, Hunter would move on sooner, either taking Riley with him or getting out of his way. It pleased him to see that Hunter made no real friends, nor did he seem eager to find male companionship.
Until Derek Anderson. In the beginning, Riley had regarded Derek as a harmless distraction, someone who could keep Hunter occupied while Riley ran the hotel. He’d expected that when the relationship died a natural death—which it was sure to do, since Hunter and Derek came from different worlds—Hunter would ask for a transfer. Then Riley could take over the mall hotel and prove his value to the Congreve empire.
It hadn’t been the most attractive solution, since it left him exiled in the wasteland between Terre Haute and Indianapolis. But Riley figured it was an easy proving ground. The more upscale Congreve hotels hosted world-famous figures from the entertainment industry, royal families, and governments. The best bookings Riley could get were those connected with beauty pageants, colleges, agriculture, small-town governments, and families succumbing to the allure of a super mall.
He shuddered inwardly at this last group. It was the final irony that he had to promote the hotel as a family-friendly environment, because children were the bane of his existence. While parents conducted business or shopped, their children ran the halls early in the morning and late at night, tied up the elevators, turned the swimming pool into a piss pit, and threw up junk food in the well-appointed rooms. No matter how many guided visits Riley arranged for them to such mall attractions as the planetarium, the arcade, the roller rink, and the bowling alley, it seemed their major source of entertainment came from wreaking havoc in his hotel.
But he smiled, kept his mouth shut, and buffered Hunter from the more hideous realities of their clientele. He inflicted his vengeance on the housekeeping staff, who were expected to immediately eliminate all evidence of the destruction caused by the Lollipop Guild.
That had nearly proved to be his undoing when Randolph Congreve dispatched someone to find out why housekeeping had such a high turnover rate. Hunter had sought answers from the only hotel employee other than Sheree Sheridan who was bulletproof, his personal housekeeper, Juanita.
Juanita Luna was the unofficial leader of what Riley privately called the Disunited Nations, the melting pot of college students, blacks, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and Asians who composed the housekeeping staff. Riley knew Juanita didn’t like him, and he’d fully expected her to use her inside track to Hunter to bring him down. He’d even armed himself with a counterattack. Juanita might consider herself as cunning