by Mara Wells
“Let me show you the empty unit,” she said like there was only one.
“I’d appreciate that.” He knelt to double-knot his laces, and she found herself staring at the breadth of his shoulders, the nimbleness of his fingers. But now was not the time to get distracted. He still hadn’t introduced himself. Caleb Donovan was definitely hiding something.
She stuffed the mop in the bucket and busied herself arranging it so it wouldn’t tip over. They’d never met in person, of course. As far as she knew, he’d never been to the Donovan Resort while she worked there. She had no reason to be mad that he didn’t know who she was. Who she really was—one of the many employees who’d relied on his family for their livelihoods, their futures, and been cast aside like so much collateral damage.
“Which one is vacant?” Caleb helped her wheel the supplies back to her apartment, where they left them outside her door. It was hard to stay angry at someone amenable to cleaning dog pee off the floor, but it was easy to be mad at herself for so easily forgetting who he was. Who she was. And why they could never be friends.
“Unit 207 is across from my Grams’ with the street view, but it’s got a nice view of the dog park on the other side of the building.” She led the way to the elevator, hands stuffed in her back pockets.
“Your grandmother live here long?”
“My whole life.” Unexpectedly, Riley found herself telling him about life at the Dorothy—the weekly potluck dinners at Grams’ and the monthly excursions to the Hard Rock Casino. “It’s a great place to live,” she was saying when the doors opened onto the second-floor hallway.
She’d imagined shabby chic as she’d arranged a few of her college textbooks on the table across from the elevator doors for decorative effect, but looking at it through the lens of the Donovan Resort, it was just plain shabby. At least the walls looked nice. She’d painted them a pale yellow with fresh white trim a few months ago, and the light color never failed to cheer her up. But the carpet was threadbare, and the table leaned a bit to the right, kind of like Patty on her walker.
Who were they kidding with this charade? No Donovan was going to live here. Why was she bothering with her “welcome to the community” speech? Caleb probably didn’t even have a grandfather.
“My grandfather would love it here. He’s been isolated ever since—” Caleb cleared his throat and started up again. “—ever since some family trouble. It’d be nice for him to make some new friends.”
Suddenly, it occurred to Riley that perhaps the Donovans’ fall from grace had been a true plummet. This man had lost his company, his father, his wife. Perhaps all his financials had been seized as well, and now he was focusing on his grandfather’s care. She understood that—the need to care for a loved one, especially an elderly loved one, whose days might be numbered. Lord knew her own Grams could be a handful, but Riley’d do absolutely anything to keep her happy.
She walked him all the way to Unit 207, finishing what had suddenly become an orientation tour. “Everyone looks out for one another in the building. Your grandfather will be safe, and if he’s got your looks, the ladies will drown him in casseroles and invitations to fix their plumbing.” She winked, copying his earlier move and feeling her old assistant-manager persona come out to play. He laughed with her. God, it’d been so long since she laughed with a man for the simple pleasure of it. Could he hear how out of practice she was?
“Thanks for the info.” He rocked forward and back on his heels. “Do you mind if I check out the place by myself?”
“Do you promise not to fire me?” Riley teased, finding it easy, too easy, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Where was the rage she’d nurtured for months?
“I’m sorry about that. Old habits, you know?” He ducked his head, and when he looked up again, his blue eyes caught hers, and she was trapped in the whirlpool of emotions she saw in their depths.
“You’re in the habit of firing people?” She forced her gaze away, flipped through her keys for the master.
“I’m in the habit of being in charge.”
“And you’re not anymore?” Introduce yourself. Somehow, if he’d say his name, admit who he was, they could start over. She’d tell him how his fall from grace had been hers, too, and they’d have that in common and maybe even laugh.
But he stayed silent, so she reached past him to open the door, giving him a sarcastic bellman’s sweep of the arm to guide him inside. “I’ll be across the hall if you have any questions.”
“Thanks.” He slipped into the apartment with a final nod and shut the door.
Click. Riley was left alone in the hallway, wondering why she felt locked out of the building that was her whole life. She clutched the key in her hand. Maybe Caleb Donovan really was the down-on-his-luck man the media portrayed. Or maybe his machinations were carefully calculated to lull her into trusting him. After all, the Donovans weren’t known for their compassion and community service. They were business sharks, and the Dorothy was simply their latest prey. Whatever Caleb was up to, she wouldn’t give him the chance to ruin her life a second time.
Chapter 4
Caleb watched through the peephole in the door until Riley disappeared into her grandmother’s apartment, the gold-plated 6 in 206 rocking when the door swung open. Riley Carson was a woman, a beautiful woman, and because he’d opened his stupid mouth and said that thing about firing her, she didn’t like him. Not much anyway and rightly so. Sometimes he could hear his father’s words coming out of his mouth, and he couldn’t stop himself.
Business was business, but he had the feeling Riley Carson was a lot more than business. He couldn’t decide if it was cute or delusional that she thought her grandmother owned the building. Definitely leaning toward cute. Too bad she was going to straight up hate him when the condo conversion notices went out. He pushed down the sense of loss, pushed the image of dark eyes—both hers and her dog’s—out of his mind, and turned to check out his new future.
It wasn’t easy. He kept thinking of Riley’s downright pleased smirk when she’d put him to work mopping floors, the flex of capable muscles under that ragged T-shirt while she worked alongside him. And all those shoes outside her door. If he were a neighbor, public shoe storage would be an outrage. Worse, he found it adorably quirky, like her sweet poodle, and that was more troubling than her willfully ignoring the line between private and public space. Equally troubling was how hard he found it to focus on the business at hand. Inspect the apartment. Take notes. Plan for the future. He strode toward the small kitchen, the heart of the home and the perfect place to start his analysis.
Twenty minutes. That’s how long it takes for a dream to die. Caleb ended his tour of the one-bedroom in the living room. If all thirty-two studios and one-bedroom units were as run-down as this one, it was going to take more money than Grandpa William was willing to loan him to upgrade the place. Galley kitchens, tiny bathrooms, broken tiles. He was no architect or engineer to evaluate the sturdiness of the building itself, but the basic construction seemed sound enough. Cosmetic repairs alone, however, were already totaling tens of thousands in his head for this one unit.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Riley Carson wasn’t the complete screwup he’d imagined at first, and maybe with an influx of cash from the renters buying into the condo conversion and some skilled management… Oh, who was he kidding? The renters would most likely not be able to afford to buy into the conversion, at least based on his study of the median income in the neighborhood, so he’d be kicking out Riley’s grandmother and all her friends.
On paper, it’d made sense to go for a higher-end market, and he hadn’t thought much about the renters who’d be displaced. If they’d found this rental, they’d find another, he’d reasoned. Now he wondered how long Patty had lived here and where she and her walker would go once the renovations started.
Robert Donovan would never feel the guilt gnawing at Caleb’s gut—
he’d do what had to be done to make the place profitable. And that was what Caleb needed to do, too, for his grandfather and his brothers. If he could get his brothers to play ball. Grandpa William’s stipulation circled in his head, a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. He took some pictures with his iPad, hoping something would pop out as the missing piece that he could present to his brothers.
Maybe he’d figure out something else for Patty and the other renters. He could already hear his father’s laughter. “Why bother?” he’d say. “It’s only a bunch of old people.” But his father hadn’t met Patty, hadn’t seen her wobbly walk and wobblier hands. Caleb couldn’t simply kick her out, but maybe she’d be better off in an assisted-living facility. Yeah, that was what he’d do. He’d find more accommodating accommodations for the fifty-five-plus residents. They’d be happier in their new homes where their needs were better met.
How he’d do that, he had no idea, and he knew for sure his father’s legal team would advise against it. But they were gone now, as soon as the last check was cashed, and Caleb would make his own decisions. He was building his own company, not his father’s. Well, not quite his. That damn stipulation of Grandpa William’s needed to be addressed, and he needed his uncooperative half brothers to do it.
“Call Lance.” Caleb bit the words out tersely, and soon the phone was ringing. Once, twice, voicemail. Just like the last five times. “Dammit, I know you’re screening me. Call me back.” The same message he’d left yesterday. “It’s about Grandpa William. Seriously, you need to call.”
It wasn’t a lie. Grandpa William was the reason he was trying to reach his brother—both his brothers, actually—but Lance was closest, still in the Miami area, and if Caleb could get him at least to offer some advice or do a minor job on the project, maybe Grandpa William would bend on the stricter stipulations of his business proposal. Give him props for good-faith effort. Maybe cough up some more cash.
Caleb hoped so because Knox, the oldest of Robert Donovan’s three sons, was not an easy man to track down. Getting him to agree to Grandpa William’s conditions would be tricky. Knox was career military and had never shown an ounce of interest in the family hotel business. The business their father, Robert Donovan, bankrupted and destroyed but that Grandpa William was sure a helping of family togetherness could put right.
Family togetherness? The last time he’d seen Knox was when he left for basic training sixteen years ago. And Lance? Caleb had sat in the back row at Lance’s wedding and had a few too many manhattans at the reception. Lance was divorced now, must be over three years ago. Sure, the three of them had different mothers, but they were still brothers. How could so much time have passed without any contact?
Honestly, he didn’t blame Lance for not calling him back. If the tables were turned, he’d want nothing to do with the brother who’d stuck by Dad’s side, even stupidly defended his actions in court, either. Knox and Lance had seen their father for who he really was early on, but Caleb had held out hope that their father had a larger plan, that somehow it would work out, and he’d let his father’s fight with his brothers become his own.
Stupidly, he was as guilty of pushing them away as his father had been. He could only hope that his brothers would eventually hear him out and maybe even forgive him. Grandpa William wouldn’t sign the deed over to Caleb alone. All three brothers needed to be in business together. Caleb didn’t like having his hands tied, but a deal is a deal, as Grandpa William liked to say, and Grandpa William had been adamant that without all three brothers, there was no deal.
Even more pressing, though, was his need to find out how their lives away from Robert Donovan had turned out. Without their father pulling their strings, what kind of men had they become? And could they help him figure out how to keep the best of being a Donovan while leaving the worst behind?
Pacing the boxed-in living room—really, had no one thought to knock out the kitchen wall and open the place up?—he made one more call to the most recent number he had for Knox, even though it rang and rang and never went to voicemail. He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, fingers gliding over the pencil marks on the doorframe. Someone grew up here, someone long gone now, but their progress from three feet, two inches to five foot ten remained behind, like a crab leaving its shell when it grows too small. He knew it wasn’t Riley’s life marked out on the wall, but he pictured her anyway, growing from year to year, her Grams marking time and keeping her close all these years.
Caleb tried to imagine his father—always on the phone brokering some deal or another—taking the time to measure him at the beginning and end of every school year. The picture was even more ridiculous than trying to envision his mother with a pencil and measuring tape in hand instead of the tiny Pomeranian whose paws rarely touched the ground. Perhaps one of his nannies would’ve done it if he’d asked, but none of them ever lasted an entire school year.
Midday sun blazed through the back-facing window, and Caleb slumped to the floor, heedless of the dirt and dust, and sat cross-legged on the chipped pine. Elbows propped on his knees, he rolled his neck and took a few deep breaths. This project wasn’t about his parents or his brothers or the past. He was supposed to build the Donovan future, and although he’d worked for his father’s company since graduating from Duke with his business degree eight years ago, he’d never singled-handedly headed a project of this type before. Conversion? He gazed up at the lopsided ceiling fan with the cracked blade. It’d be easier to raze the building to the ground and start from scratch, just like he was having to do with the business.
He pushed aside the memories of the day the feds came to the office and took his father away in cuffs, of the endless days spent in the courthouse while the trial dragged on, the slam of the gavel after the guilty verdict was delivered. His mother’s useless tears; the lawyer’s even-more-useless assurances that the business was protected. All that was in the past, and if he wanted to move forward, then he had to make this condo conversion work. Maybe his father’s less-than-legal business practices cost the family everything, but that didn’t mean Caleb hadn’t learned a useful thing or two from his old man. People liked new; they liked shiny, sleek, modern. And Caleb would deliver.
“LouLou!”
The familiar shout shook Caleb out of his reverie. He walked to the window that looked out over the back lot, an overgrown plot of land that, according to the blueprints Grandpa William had shown him, was technically part of the property but had never been developed. An aging chain-link fence enclosed the land, and a handful of people congregated in one corner while half a dozen dogs of many shapes and sizes roamed the grass. A German shepherd and a black Lab raced the perimeter, and a Chihuahua barked from the top of a tree stump every time they ran by. What had Riley called it? A dog park?
“LouLou!” she shouted again.
He leaned into the window, craning to see her. There she was, T-shirt showing a tantalizing flash of belly when she raised her arm. LouLou danced on her hind legs, catching Riley’s shorts. Caleb held his breath, wondering if he was about to get an eyeful, but all he could make out was a flash of hot pink, just like her toenails. Riley laughed, brushed the dog away, and hitched the denim back over her hips.
“LouLou, fetch!” she yelled and used some sort of catapult contraption to fling the ball. The poodle ran toward the far fence before the ball even left the catapult. Soon, she was flying back toward Riley, bright-pink ball in her mouth. Though Riley threw the ball again and again, LouLou never seemed to lose interest or energy, always back in a flash and ready to go again. Age and incontinence weren’t slowing that dog down one bit.
Caleb couldn’t help himself. He locked up Unit 207 with the master key Grandpa William’d given him, took the elevator down, and ambled toward the back lot. LouLou saw him coming before Riley did and, with an excited yip, ran toward him. He crouched down on one side of the chain-link fence while the poodle tried to lick him through the diamond
-shaped holes.
“I see you, girl.” He scratched behind her ears, and she leaned against the fence, curls pushing through to his side.
“You found the dog park.” Riley leaned against the fence, too, arms raised above her head to hang onto the chain-link. He didn’t look at how her breasts strained against her T-shirt. He didn’t.
The lot was filled with patchy grass and a few tree stumps. “Not much of a dog park, is it?”
She laughed and scooped up LouLou. “It’s not the dirt that makes a dog park. It’s the dogs. Come on in, and I’ll introduce you.”
Caleb had done his research. He knew the zoning regulations and where the nearest schools were, but her offer would give him something he couldn’t find in county records or on the internet—a real feel for how the community would react to the proposal he’d submitted to the city.
“Hang on.” Caleb located a gap in the fence that looked well used as an entry point, chain-link bent back so the pointy bits didn’t point at him. He saw another opening across the lot, two poles leaning away from each other to create an odd door—an upside-down triangle through which a middle-aged man in a business suit was trying to coax a reluctant Yorkie. Caleb pushed the broken chain-link a few inches more to the side, careful of the sharp ends where someone had clearly cut the chain. Vandalism. Was there no end to the problems with this property?
“Watch your step.” She offered her hand as if he’d need help squeezing through. He wasn’t an old lady to need assistance crossing the street, but considering what a butthead he’d been—You’re fired, indeed—he felt lucky to be offered this olive branch. He placed his fingers against her soft palm. And discovered a different problem. He didn’t want to let go.
