What kind of sense would that have made for me? What kind of sense did it make at all? Real estate wasn’t the sort of business that you dabbled in. You could do it part time or full time, set your hours and such. But you didn’t ever go anywhere in the business if you just did it a few hours a week!
“So you’re saying what,” I prodded my father. “That for the last two years I’ve been ignoring my responsibility to the restaurant in favor of pursuing a hobby—real estate—and that I was really supposed to be working full time here at the restaurant instead of just filling in?”
“Yes!” Mama snapped. “And we are tired of it!”
I was floored. I felt my mouth pop open and stay there. I had come back to the restaurant for one purpose. To get enough cash money to pay off my car repair bill. Maybe it had been a mistake to do that. Maybe I had to choose. One job or the other. I could not try like hell to get one thing going and then just supplement my income with the other when I needed to.
Except that wasn’t right. I pointed to my mother. “How many waitresses do you employ?”
“What?” She looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I want to know how many waitresses work here!” I didn’t bother to tone down my demanding tone of voice. “I have worked three nights with the same two women. Susan and Brianne. You cannot possibly tell me that they are your only two waitresses!”
“Well no.” My mother fiddled with her dress. “They work Tuesday through Thursday. I have another group that covers the Friday through Monday shifts.”
“I didn’t even ask before I showed up. You kept calling me and saying that you’re short. If you have another shift of people who work Friday to Monday, why wouldn’t you call one of them to pick up an extra shift?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Mama said, looking uncomfortable. “Besides, they can’t always be filling in during the week.”
“Meaning that you want them on the weekend where they are and you want me to fill in during the weeks! Is that why you’re trying to get me to come back? You’re going to saddle me with Tuesday through Thursday?” It didn’t sound quite right to me. And then I realized that my mother had been calling me every other day for weeks now to ask if I could pick up a shift. The thought chilled my blood. “I’m not even supposed to be given regular hours. Is that it? I should just be willing to drop everything and come to work whenever you need a shift picked up seven days a week. Right?”
“You used to brag to us how real estate was such a flexible career,” my mother snorted. “Why are you upset?”
“I’m upset because you’re selfish!” I shouted. “And you don’t even realize it! It’s like you don’t care! You don’t care if I have a life or if I feel fulfilled by my job! You just don’t care!”
“Of course I care!” Mama shouted right back. “We are bringing you a man, aren’t we? You can’t seem to find one for yourself so we are bringing one over here for you! Then you will have everything that you need right here in this restaurant! There will be no need to go anywhere else. You can be happy right here.”
I can’t imagine what my face looked like right then. I felt my jaw go slack. I felt as though my entire body were dropping both with fatigue and just with the horror of what I was hearing. It felt like my parents cared, but they cared about themselves and their personal goals more. And then they stuck their personal goals under the heading of family goals and it was basically all over. Great.
“You know what?” I muttered to my parents. “I can find my own husband. Thanks. I don’t need help with that. So you can just tell Anatoli to go back to Greece.”
Chapter Fifteen
Valentino
Unpaid. Unpaid. Unpaid. Ugh! Was there anything else this stupid balance sheet could tell me? I did not want to have to ask my little brother for a loan to keep my business running. I had done that once before. It had ended in disaster. For years my father had been proud of me as the one to take over the business and keep the Alvarez family legacy going. He had shunned my brother as Damion embraced his new high-powered world of software engineers and database managers and all of those other technology geeks that were hired and fired and placed and replaced all by Damion’s design. But now my brother had something like eight different offices in seven American cities and one in Canada. He was a multimillionaire. It was kind of difficult not to be proud of a son like that. Especially when your other kid—me—was struggling to pay the bills and keep his head above water.
I drummed my fingers on the desktop. I had to come up with a way to get these people to pay. Was there some kind of plan I could look at? Payment plans. How did that work? A little money was better than none. Right? And what about the fact that I actually suspected Harvey Kraus of lying when he said he didn’t have the money to pay me. How could I even find that out?
I stabbed a key on the computer keyboard. The internet sprang to life. I typed in Harvey’s name. I got information, but it wasn’t really helpful. Surely a business could do a background check or a credit check. Right? Except how did you go about that? Did you need someone’s signature?
“Here you go.”
A wad of twenties hit the desk in front of me so abruptly and with almost no noise. I was so intent on my screen that I nearly leaped out of my skin. The bills were not in an envelope or anything. They were actually rolled into a little bundle and then bound with a rubber band as though they had come from some drug deal. I glanced up and found myself staring into the very tired face of Tansy Economides.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I suppose after the other night I kind of wondered if you would come in and take care of this or not.”
“Oh, because I’m that much of a rude little liar?” Her expressive features went from tired to pissed off in five seconds flat. “Thanks. That’s great. You know, I get that your ex-wife was such a bitch, but that doesn’t mean I am. All right?”
Wait a second. Where had she gotten that information? I put up both hands. “Okay, stop. Please?” I took a breath. “I’m not even sure I want to know where you got an idea like that. But for starters, when I said that about not coming in I was referring to the fact that you tried to make a payment the other night and I basically declined. I had my own reasons for that, but they had nothing to do with you. I get that what you did was in good faith. It wasn’t meant to be anything but a very decent gesture and I appreciate that. I just wasn’t prepared to deal with my parents.”
“Your parents?” She looked mystified. “Because I tried to give you money toward a debt?”
“Because they really liked you and were already raving about how nice you were and what a wonderful waitress you were.” I swallowed. Did we really have to discuss this now? “I told them the reason that we knew each other was that you were a customer at the shop. Then you tried to comp the meal and all of a sudden my folks assumed that’s why I was there. Like I’d taken them for a freebie dinner.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Wow. Okay. That’s kind of a leap. That’s really what they thought?”
“Yeah.” I leaned back in my chair and stretched. On the other side of the desk, Tansy lowered herself into one of the other chairs I used for customers who were getting their bad news estimates. “Come on. Haven’t you ever experienced the good old parental misunderstanding?”
“All the time,” she muttered. “At least yours doesn’t leave you with some Greek guy needing a green card.”
“Excuse me?” I was pretty sure I’d heard her wrong. “Did you just say some Greek guy needing a green card?”
“Yeah.” She bobbed her head up and down and looked glum. “I knew that I wasn’t going to find the money that I owed for the repair bill in an old shoe or something, so I took a few shifts at the family restaurant in order to make some quick cash. Waitressing is good for that. But evidently going back for three days made my parents think that I’d changed my mind and wanted to go back for good.”
“You sell real estate,” I pointe
d out. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. “Surely they realize that it’s a much better career in the long run, right?”
“Yeah. No.” She gestured to the shop. “Would your father rather you work here or with your brother?”
“Probably here. He’s always been all about the shop, when it can keep its head above water anyway.” I considered that last bit. What if my parents were thinking that Damion had the right idea? “You know, in the beginning they thought that Damion was a complete idiot for going into the recruiting business. They railed at him about it. I think my father even threatened to disown him.”
“But now they seemed pretty supportive?” She looked almost wistful. “I wish mine could just realize that I’m going to be in much better shape eventually working this job.”
“It’s hard for parents to see that when they think they’ve done pretty well for themselves with the family business.” I rubbed a hand down my face. “I’ll admit to being pretty smug about the whole thing to start with. My brother was really struggling. I had to give him a couple of loans. And it felt like he was going to wind up back on my doorstep begging for a job. I honestly felt like I was humoring him.”
A smile played at the corners of her mouth, but I found that I did not assume it was rude in nature. She gave a little chuckle. “And now? What do you think of Damion now?”
“I think I have to ask him for another loan just to pay the taxes on this place,” I told her glumly. “I never expected him to be the kind of successful that he is. So maybe that’s where you’re heading too. It’s not like you’ve been building your real estate business for decades without ever getting anywhere, right? You have leads that you’re pursuing. You have things that are happening. So I find it odd that your parents don’t realize that this is going to take off at some point and they’ll be begging you for a loan.”
She smiled at me then. “It’s a nice thought.”
I found myself smiling back. I wasn’t sure why. I should be chasing this woman out of my office, but surprisingly enough, I liked having her around. I liked her company. It didn’t make much sense since I considered her to be a total shrew. But she wasn’t being a shrew right now. She was being—well, the word nice came to mind. She was just nice. That was good. Right? Wait. Or was it bad? Like I was getting drawn into a web.
Paranoid much?
“So,” she began, drawing out the word as though she were dying of curiosity but did not necessarily want to admit it. “If you don’t mind me asking, why would you need to ask Damion for a loan on the taxes? I don’t know anything about the engine repair business, but you guys seem very busy.”
“Busy yes.” I bobbed my head up and down. Then I made a sweeping gesture toward my computer screen. “But nobody is paying their bills.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a problem,” she murmured.
I could actually see the thoughts coming in and out of her head. It wasn’t her problem. It had nothing to do with her. I could not imagine why she would even care and yet I could absolutely see that she did. Her thoughtful expression gave me a strange feeling in my gut. I wasn’t sure how to classify it. But I knew that part of it was simply the sensation of not feeling quite so alone.
She reached for the wad of bills on the desktop and turned it carefully over and over in her hands. “Do you guys take payments?”
“Not usually.” I sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it though. A lot of these accounts are situations where people take advantage of our policy where we only ask for half up front and then the rest when they pick up the car. They don’t pay the second half.”
“So why do they get their car back?” She asked the question flat and quick as though it seemed like a no-brainer. “How often does this happen? Are people taking advantage of you that way?”
“I feel like they probably are,” I admitted. It was kind of hard to sit here and discuss this as though we were just having an average conversation. I felt as though I were admitting a bunch of failures on my part. Failure to make people respect me enough to pay me for my work.
“Well, you can’t go around and take back cars that you already released, but I wonder if you could change the policy? Just change it. Now. And if someone can’t pay off the second half, you keep the vehicle until they make payments. Maybe you could offer a ten percent discount off the second half if they pay all at once. Or no! I know. Offer a ten percent discount off the work if they pay for all of it upfront. People love discounts.”
“That’s a good idea,” I told her. It was too. I only offered the chance to pay in two installments if the work was a thousand dollars or over, but almost everything these days was a thousand dollars. “It would be better to take a ten percent hit off the top than to sit here and have to waste my time trying to collect after the fact.”
“Exactly.” She made a face. “So who owes you the most money?”
I grimaced and told her about Harvey Kraus. Her jaw dropped and her dark eyes got huge in her face. She actually looked outraged. For some reason that made me feel good. Like she was somehow supporting my opinion that what Harvey had done was just wrong.
“How much trouble would it be to undo the work you did?” Tansy spoke slowly but with a great amount of curiosity. “You know, like you could just go and remove the new transmission. How hard would that be?”
“A pain in the butt, but completely doable.” I wondered why I would want to do such a thing. “Seems a bit counterproductive, don’t you think?”
“You have a truck sitting out there because a single customer owes you six thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, Valentino.”
Valentino. I was suddenly distracted by the way that she said my name. It just sort of tripped off her tongue. It was so incredibly sexy that for a moment I could not help staring at her lips. I wanted to see them form my name again. It actually gave me a little thrill to hear it. What was wrong with me?
“Do you have any idea if the guy can actually pay for the work? Is he employed? Does he have a house or bills or too many bills? Does his wife work? What’s his credit like?”
“That’s what I need to find out!” I told her in frustration. I was practically stabbing my hand at the computer screen now. “But I can’t figure out how to do a background check or a stupid credit check on him!”
“Oh. That’s easy enough.” She got up from her seat and came around to my side of the computer.
I think I forgot to breathe. No. I had to be breathing because I could smell her. She smelled incredible. All woman. That little hint of spicy feminine fragrance that was so absolutely attractive and yet not heavy or overdone. I could almost taste a hint of vanilla too. It made everything inside my body soften and harden at the same time. My breathing was shallow. My muscles grew tense. And there was something going on between my legs that was likely to make it impossible for me to stand up anytime soon.
“Okay. So you go here.” She murmured the words as she typed something into the search window. “Then you click here. And you need to get a membership with these people, but it’s only fifteen bucks a month and you can do as many credit checks as you want. Maybe you need to start doing that before you take on these transactions that wind up leaving you holding the bag.”
I cleared my throat. “Uh. Sure. That sounds like a good idea.”
My voice sounded as though it had been dragged through a gravel pit. She was busy typing something into the login screen. “Here. I’ll let you use mine for now. I do this on a lot of my real estate customers once they fill out an information sheet and tell me that they’re seriously interested. Some people couldn’t qualify for financing at all. Others can’t qualify for the house that they want. I’d rather know that before I waste a bunch of time making us all frustrated. You know?”
“Uh huh.” I tried to swallow and found that my tongue was actually stuck in my throat. “Thanks for your help.”
Then she turned and looked down at me. Her position left her practically leaning over my lap. Now she was staring into
my face and I felt the oddest urge to lean forward and kiss her. I wanted to taste her lips. I wanted to know what it was like to feel her mouth underneath mine.
I was losing my mind. I had to be.
“What did you say his name was?” she prompted.
“Harvey Kraus.” I stammered the name. Then I pointed to a sheet of information on the desk right in front of me. “I think his address is right there.”
“Perfect,” she murmured. Then she typed some more. And finally I heard her suck in a little gasp. “Oh boy. Look at this!”
I had to reel myself back in from the deep dark crevasse that was about to swallow me whole. “What?”
“That truck. He’s got a loan on it. At least I think that’s the vehicle you’ve got on your lot.”
I forced myself to lean around her and pay attention to what was happening. “Yes.” That’s the one.”
“According to this credit history, the man and his wife have ten credit cards. They make pretty good money. And he’s only got three thousand dollars left to pay on that vehicle. If even half of this credit report is true, then there’s every possibility that Harvey Kraus could pay you if he wanted to. He just doesn’t want to.”
I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. But I did know that I was having trouble breathing with her that close to me. Then she shifted again and I felt her round hip pressing against my side. If I wanted to, I could have reached out and pulled her down onto my lap. If I wanted to. Wait. I did want to. I just had to stop myself from doing something that inappropriate. But at this point the woman was driving me absolutely out of my mind and I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.
Chapter Sixteen
Tansy
This was really none of my business. No. Even more importantly than that? I did not have time to worry about this right now. Yet I could not stop thinking about the fact that the guy on the screen in front of me, or at least his credit report was there, he was choosing not to pay his repair bill. I could see that there were a couple of late payments on certain accounts. The pattern seemed to be that the guy took a lot of short-term loans for everything from furniture to tires. Then he seemed to get tired of either making the payments, or more likely forgot about the six-month term. But we were talking about a company that could easily take the guy to court. It wasn’t like the Alvarez Engine and Transmission Shop was likely to have the resources to do that. And that was why I got the feeling Mr. Kraus just didn’t want to pay.
Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Page 58
