Hideaway

Hideaway is a 2017 romance by Penelope Douglas, published as a 435-page paperback under the CreateSpace independent publishing platform and also issued in a signed cloth edition.

The setting is a derelict hotel, The Pope, with a legend attached to it about a twelfth floor that does not appear on any plan and a guest who never checked out. Kai Mori has been looking for what is hidden there. Banks, who has known him since childhood, tells him plainly that the thing he is seeking is nearer than he thinks, and that she will not give up the person she is protecting, whatever pressure he applies. Kai has served three years in prison for a crime he says he would commit again, and what he wants from the hotel is the person hidden there rather than the building. Banks has kept her feeling for him since childhood and will not trade it away for anything he can threaten her with.

The book is narrated in alternating first-person passages that speak directly to the other character. The two narratives are in a contest about what has been concealed, and the deadline named is Devil's Night, an occasion the story treats as its point of reckoning. It is a genre title rather than a standalone, written for the same audience as the author's earlier books.