Kings and Butterflies Read online

  Dallas watched him kneel down but his gaze darted away when Eros looked up at him. He didn’t want Eros to think that he had the slightest interest in him—and he didn’t, not really, because as good looking as Eros was, he wasn’t just his employee, he was an asshole and a huge slut to boot.

  “Are you okay here?”

  “Yes, boss,” Eros said. “Are you okay? You look a bit… pale.”

  “I’m fine,” Dallas replied. “I’m just tired. I need to get some sleep.”

  “Great.” Eros smiled at him.

  Dallas had started to walk away and toward the stairs when he looked back at Eros. “Hey, if the guy from 3 calls you, wake me up.”

  “What? Really?” Eros said.

  “Yeah,” Dallas replied.

  Eros watched him.

  Dallas sighed. “He just… he’s a VIP.”

  “Oh,” Eros said, his eyes glimmering. “Do I get to meet this VIP?”

  Dallas rolled his eyes, but he was laughing. “Get to work, Eros.”

  “Copy that, boss. I’ll get to work so you can get some rest to deal with your VIP.”

  Dallas almost turned around to say something to that but he shook his head as he grabbed the banister. He decided it wasn’t worth it as he went upstairs, shaking his head and muttering under his breath until he got to his attic bedroom.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dallas’ eyelids were sticking together when the alarm on his phone started to go off. He hated how difficult he found it to wake up. He was very much a night person.

  If it had been up to him, he would have worked the third shift, but he needed to do things during the day. It didn’t matter how big the city was, banks still weren’t open past five o’clock in the afternoon, which Dallas felt was a catastrophe.

  It was handy to have Eros around.

  He had a couple of other employees, people who had been there for a long time. He had hired them almost the moment that his dad had gotten sick.

  Mostly because he knew that he would have to spend a lot of time looking after him instead of working at The Butterfly Inn, which was something that he did for his father when he was well.

  It was practically a two-person operation when his father was fine, but when his father got sick everything changed. Dallas was only nineteen, and he was struggling. He was going to culinary school at the time after he had decided that community college was not for him.

  Culinary school was competitive, time consuming and expensive. His father hadn’t wanted him to drop out, he wanted him to continue his education, but Dallas didn't have much of a choice.

  He either dropped out or he hired a full-time carer, and at the tender age of nineteen, he had no idea how to go about doing anything like that. He didn’t have anyone to call. His aunt, Dallas Sr’s only sister and remaining living relative, was only a couple of years older than Dallas himself and she was on some sort of spiritual retreat in Bangladesh.

  He couldn’t reach her, but in fairness, he hadn’t tried very hard.

  He had to do things very quickly then. One of them was learning how to take over the inn, and while his father was a good teacher before he got so sick that he wasn’t able to function anymore, there were still things that Dallas was figuring out on his own.

  For instance, waking up when his alarm went off, which seem like a tenet of adulthood. Dallas still had to figure that one out.

  It didn't help that he slept like absolute shit. He kept waking up, telling himself that he shouldn't go to the door, press his ear against it and listen to see if ‘Paul Starr’ was doing something sketchy.

  But it was only a week, and one week was, in the grand scheme of things, nothing. Plus, once the week was over, he would have $10,000 more to his name, which he could use to get the inn out of trouble.

  Maybe he would be able to start paying himself a decent salary again.

  Dallas stretched out, threw on his most presentable clothes and made his way down the stairs and into the dining room, also known as the common room, which led into the kitchen.

  He was always there early, regardless of a difficulty he found it to wake up, because cooking breakfast for people was probably his favorite part of the job. It was the only part of his job that he was reasonably sure he was good at. Everything else, he would rate in a scale from mediocre to okay, but when it came to food, Dallas knew what he was doing.

  Before he started to prep for breakfast, he put coffee on. It was for his guests—some of it—but he would have to make more before the dining room opened, since the quantities of coffee that he consumed every morning would have shocked even those who weren’t at all health conscious.

  Once his coffee was ready, Dallas would be able to put a podcast on, blast it through the speakers that he kept in the kitchen, and get to work.

  He didn't have to do much prep, because his menu was tiny.

  There was a savory option, a sweet option, and the option to have both. That was it.

  The size of the menu was partly because he didn't have that much time to cook when the entire inn was full of guests, but mostly it was because he was very proud of his food, and part of that was tastefully curating a menu that he could easily and quickly execute.

  Getting both options didn’t cost a guest any more than getting one, though there was an upcharge for alcohol. Well, most of them did.

  He wondered if he would upcharge Paul Starr anything.

  He looked at the menu that he had planned for the day, his handwriting plastered on the whiteboard above in intricate blue lettering. He would put it on in the dining room when service started and he was very likely to rewrite it all before the bell rang.

  He liked everything about breakfast service to be perfect. That included the way the menu looked.

  That morning, he was making banana pecan stuffed French toast with peaches on top and a rum glaze. He was also making a jalapeño cheddar egg soufflé, topped with cilantro, melted cheese and slices of avocado. All of the ingredients were locally sourced and the savory breakfast could come with or without meat, depending on the guest’s preference.

  He wondered what Paul’s preference was. He shook his head, he shouldn't be thinking about his gorgeous, possibly mafioso guest and meat in the same sentence.

  He didn't look like he swung that way, but Dallas could never be sure of what his gaydar told him. He’d gotten rejected by straight guys at gay bars who just happened to be there with their friends and he’d gotten hit on by ‘straight’ groomsmen whose favorite thing to do was getting on their knees and going to town on a guy they barely knew, particularly if that guy was wearing a tuxedo.

  He just hoped that Paul wasn’t a vegan. The Butterfly Inn did vegan breakfast, but only on Tuesday. He shook his head as he started to get the ingredients out of the cupboard.

  He shouldn’t have worried about whether Paul Starr was going to like his food. Sighing, he grabbed his hair net, pressed play on his phone and got to work.

  ***

  As far as Dallas was concerned, no one should be allowed to look that good this early in the morning. Unfortunately for Dallas, even though he had tried his best to ignore him, Paul looked amazing.

  Again, like he had been ripped from the cover of a magazine, an expensive one with glossy pages and superstars eating salads during interviews.

  Dallas didn't want to think about how he looked. He was pretty sure that he looked like absolute shit.

  He was tired and there were bags under his eyes.

  He hadn’t slept too well, on account of the whole Paul Starr thing. During the night, and even over breakfast prep and service, Dallas had come to several conclusions.

  So far, he had decided that Paul Starr was some sort of foreign superstar, who was hiding incognito in an inn that nobody had ever heard about.

  Or maybe he was a superspy, someone from MI6 or something, because he had a weird accent that meant that he couldn't be American.

  Or maybe, just as Dallas feared, he was a drug dealer. Not a
drug dealer like his best friend Marty had been a drug dealer back when they were in high school and he sold marijuana and speed to his friends, a drug dealer like the people that they made movies about, with the helicopters and the K9 units and all the dismemberment.

  Dallas could hardly stomach those shows and they were all pretend, so if that was the case and he was right about what Paul’s identity was, then he was so many levels of fucked.

  He hadn’t ever even seen a gun in real life.

  He needed to get over it. Once he was done with service, he was going to go into town to deposit the money, then to a brand new accountant, maybe one across the bridge in Sunrise Sands.

  He should have done it earlier, but nothing would have been open. He would have just spent the last few hours wandering around in his car, cursing the city for not having banks that opened early.

  He could have done it at an ATM, but that felt wrong. He needed to hand the cash to someone in person, mostly so that he could verify that the money that Paul had handed him was real.

  Once he was done with breakfast service, which was mercifully coming to a close in ten minutes. He had Shandra helping him with the waiting, as she always did, but he liked to go out into the dining room and ask how everything was going for his guests.

  That was how he kept guests coming back to the inn and how he had made some surprisingly close friends. That day, he didn’t want to go out, but tradition was tradition and he needed to do the best that he could for his business, even if it meant seeing Paul again.

  Paul Starr, for fuck’s sake. How stupid did he think Dallas was? He tried to keep his composure as he looked at his reflection on his phone screen, taking off his hairnet as he did so.

  He took a deep breath and stepped through the glass door—one of his father’s last renovations, and a weird one, but Dallas had never questioned it—into the common room.

  His plan was to go to Paul first so that he could see that he was busy, but Paul had stood up and wasn’t there, though he was clearly still in the middle of breakfast. If the half-eaten food and half-drank orange juice wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the phone and sunglasses on top of an European magazine that Dallas didn’t recognize certainly were.

  For a brief moment, Dallas was sure that he had planned this. He went around the room greeting other guests, smiling widely at them, trying his best to make conversation.

  Unfortunately, the majority of them were very hungover and none seemed to be much for conversation that particular morning. Dallas was almost sure that he was going to get to skip over Paul’s table when Paul came back into the dining room, a smile on his face.

  Shit.

  “Hi,” Dallas said, approaching him and sticking his hand out. “I hope you enjoyed your breakfast. How has your stay been so far?”

  “Breakfast was delicious,” Paul said and smiled widely at him. The bastard. “Send my compliments to the chef, please. That soufflé was to die for.”

  Dallas resisted the urge to wink at him as they shook hands. “I’m very flattered you think so.”

  “You made that?”

  “Yes,” Dallas said. He didn’t hesitate to smile this time, when it came to food, he knew that he could be proud of what he had made.

  Paul grinned at him. “Cute and talented, huh?”

  Dallas wiped the smile off his face immediately. “I—yeah, anyway, let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Can I put a special request for dinner service?”

  Dallas shook his head. “I told you, The Butterfly Inn doesn’t do dinner service.”

  “I was hoping I could hire you to cook for me,” Paul replied, crossing his arms over his chest and looking him up and down.

  Dallas cocked his head. “I’m not for hire,” he said. “I have a business to run.”

  “I would reward you handsomely.”

  Dallas frowned. “I’m sure you would.”

  They stared at each other for a little while, Paul with that stupid smile on his face that made Dallas want to punch him. He had never met anyone that could pull off looking gorgeous and like a smarmy douchebag at the same time before.

  “Anyway,” Dallas broke the silence after a bit. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need for your room, Mr. Starr.”

  Dallas wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn that Paul’s stupid grin widened. He flipped his hair a little and then trained his gaze on Dallas. “You’d have fun, you know.”

  Dallas stared down at him. He cleared his throat before he repeated himself. “I’m not for hire, Mr. Starr.”

  Paul wrinkled his nose. “Such a shame.”

  Dallas swallowed. “If there’s nothing else…”

  Paul waved him off. “No, no. Thanks again for the food.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dallas thought that he would have felt better after running all his errands, but if anything, he felt worse. Now that it was real—now that he had definitely taken his most sketchy guest’s money—he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.

  The thought of celebrating was fleeting and unenthused. What was he going to celebrate? Who was he going to celebrate it with?

  What he wanted to do was curl up in bed with a good book and let his staff take care of things downstairs. It was around two o’clock when he got back to the inn, the perfect time to make sure that he didn’t run into any guests since most would be out exploring the city and the many things that it had to offer tourists. Unlike his father, Dallas did not enjoy interacting with guests every day all day.

  People tired him out. His perfect evening was with a book in one hand and a glass of wine in another.

  He didn't care if that made him boring or if it made him seem older than he was, he was tired of always being around people.

  He was going up the stairs to the second floor when he ran into Paul.

  Fortunately, Paul was going down the stairs quickly, and he didn't seem too spot Dallas, not until he got to the lobby, and then he looked up and smiled at him. Unfortunately, Dallas had been checking out his ass as he had gone down the stairs. Their gazes met and Dallas felt a little sick.

  “Hey,” Paul said, then took a deep breath. “I'm glad I run into you. I've been meaning to apologize about earlier.”

  “There's nothing to apologize for.”

  “Yes, there is, because I shouldn't be making assumptions about you. Look, I'm the kind of man who is used to getting what he wants, okay? It's weird for me when people shoot me down. I can get… pushy.”

  “Maybe you should get used to a little rejection,” Dallas said, trying his best to hold back a smile.

  “Maybe,” Paul said. “From you, though, it would be a tragedy.”

  Dallas bit his lower lip as he felt himself blush. Of course Sketchy McSketcherson was also masterful at flirting.

  The bastard.

  He took a deep breath. “How has your stay been so far?”

  “Wonderful,” Paul replied. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  Dallas smiled and shook his head. The Butterfly Inn had been well regarded once, but that was when his father was around. He had to resist the urge to ask Paul where he got his news, but he was the kind of person who read magazines, so of course he might have thought that reviews from traditional publications were up to date.

  He did look like the kind of person who lived in his own world.

  “Thanks,” Dallas said. “Well, if you need anything else, please let me know.”

  “I will. I’ll make sure that I tell all my friends about The Butterfly Inn.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Paul smirked.

  “Oh, shit,” Dallas said. “I didn’t mean it like that, you’re just…”

  “I promise you, I’m not all trouble.”

  Dallas sighed then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sure, yeah.”

  “I have respectable friends.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I’m sure you are.”


  “I’m not as bad as you think I am.”

  Dallas licked his lips. “I never said that you were bad.”

  “I can see it in your eyes,” Paul said. “No one has ever thought I was bad before. It’s kind of hot.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

  Paul’s eyes narrowed. “Let me take you on a date.”

  “What? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t go out with guests.”

  “I’ll take you out on Sunday. Once I’ve checked out.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Can I change your mind?”

  Dallas sighed. “Not really.”

  “I have money,” he said. “Lots more money.”

  “Wow.”

  “Shit. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Have a good stay, Mr. Starr,” Dallas said, turning away from him. “Please let the staff at the front desk know if you need anything.”

  Dallas walked up the stairs before Paul could say anything else to him.

  ***

  Dallas woke up feeling disoriented. He wasn’t when he had fallen asleep, but his ebook reader was on his chest and he was still holding a wine glass in his hand. He was barely propped up on his back so that he was sitting up, but only a little bit, and Dallas marveled at the fact that the wine glass was still upright in his hand.

  He hadn’t spilled a drop. He put it on his nightstand and fumbled as he tried to find the switch on the lamp. He’d had the same lamp for about five years and he was still not sure where the stupid switch was. Of course, the moment that he stretched out his arm and finally flipped the light on, he knocked the wine glass over.

  The wine got on the pile of books that he had been meaning to clear for days, his phone, and all the assorted bills and bits of mail that he hadn’t gotten to. Swearing, he took everything off his nightstand as quickly as he could, putting it all on the floor and taking a deep breath as he looked at the mess he had just made.