Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,3

kept the thick dinner napkin together that was presently draped over my right knee.

Instrumental music poured out of the speaker on the dresser in my hotel room. It was the very same playlist I’d cultivated over three months ago when I first started writing my current project and I hadn’t bothered to turn it off when room service arrived with my meal. It played a pleasant tune with a balanced mix of a piano, harp, and violin, and my foot tapped out a somewhat offbeat rhythm while I chewed.

I was a writer, not a musician, and it showed.

Lucky for me, there was nobody there to see.

The El Cartana had become somewhat of a sanctuary to me over these last couple of years. The hectic chaos that was New York City had a tendency to stifle my creative side and make it hard to put the characters in my head down on paper. I was constantly pulled away from my work by obnoxious neighbors in my apartment building above, below, and beside me. The car horns blaring down on the street were no treat, either. Clanging pots and pans from the restaurants down below accompanied domestic arguments on patios and screaming children at bedtime.

But the El Cartana?

This place was blissful. The loudest sounds in the mornings and afternoon were the hum of my in-room coffeemaker and the rustle of palm leaves blowing in the tropical breeze. It smelled like salt and sweet nectar flowers. I ate well, slept well, and wrote well whenever I stayed at the honeymoon resort that I really had no place being at.

Fortunately, I had connections in the hotel.

Katie, the honeymoon coordinator, had caught wind that their guest, a Mr. Wes Parker, was not just an ordinary solo traveler, but rather the world-famous romance author, W. Parker. She’d approached me quietly one day while I was writing by hand at one of the bars and asked if she could sit with me. She had a bag over her shoulder and a bashfulness to her smile that I’d found endearing, and every interaction we’d had previous to that one had been pleasant.

She’d pulled a book out of her bag—one of my books—set it facedown on the table to hide the cover, slid it toward me, and tapped her index finger on the summary. Then she’d looked me in the eye and asked if it was my book.

At the time, my feathers had been ruffled.

I preferred to keep my identity a secret for a reason. A writer like me tended to attract fans that were quite passionate. Also, romance books with steamy sex scenes could sometimes give people the wrong idea of who I was as a person. I wasn’t the epitome of my books. I was just a guy who wrote about what he dreamed of having one day.

I was the sad fraud behind the love and the picture-perfect happy endings.

Katie hadn’t fan-girled over me. She’d grinned like a fool, to be sure, and was very proud of herself for solving the little mystery. She’d promised not to tell a soul who I was, but over the years, she and I became friends. I started giving her free advance copies of my work and, shortly after that, was giving her boxes of signed books to send to friends and family. They all knew she knew me, but they didn’t know who I was, and that was a happy balance for me.

When I checked into the hotel this go around, Katie had been in a particularly good mood. She was in a new relationship and she and her man had moved in together somewhere nearby on the island. I’d joked and asked her if this new guy of hers would care if I still used her as a muse. She’d told me she’d be upset if I didn’t. Just because she was off the market didn’t mean she wasn’t still charming as hell.

I steadfastly agreed.

Katie was a woman any good man would be lucky to love.

I finished the rest of my meal, and three more songs played on my playlist. When I finished, I set the dishes outside in the hall on the same tray the meal had arrived on. Moving to the liquor cart near the patio doors, I poured myself a drink and stepped through the sheer white curtains and out onto my patio.

I preferred ground-floor corner units. That way, I could eliminate the potential of there being loud guests on one side and below me. Sure,