I glanced around the table. It seemed empty. “I guess this is it?”
“Devin’s not here,” Kate said.
“Who?” I asked, although I knew perfectly well who she was speaking of.
She tilted her head toward the door. “The receptionist?”
The last thing I needed was to be drooling over the man I’d been daydreaming about. I rolled my eyes so heavily they ached. “I don’t know that we need him in here. Do we?”
“Seriously?” She looked at me like I was nuts. “He’s our first point of contact for new customers. Sixty percent of our buyers are first-time clients. If we’re having a strategic meeting, he needs to attend.”
Kate was right. She was always right. Second-in-command with the company, she was a wealth of information about Naples, the neighborhoods, the homes, and the often-fluctuating market. She retained information like a sponge held water. It didn’t diminish the fact that I’d likely make a fool of myself in his presence.
“Fine. Go get him,” I said with a wave of my hand. “What’s his name again?”
“Devin,” she said. “Devin Wallace.”
I opened the file on Margaret’s home. When Kate and the undeniably handsome receptionist returned, I lifted the home’s datasheets from the file. Intending to pay minimal attention to the tattooed distraction, I gazed at the file as I explained my dilemma.
“The home detailed on these sheets is an exclusive listing.” I blindly slid the sheets across the table. “Almost twelve thousand square feet, five bedrooms, and nine bathrooms. It’s situated on Gordon Drive and has its own nearly two-hundred-foot-wide private section of sugar sand beach. The views from each bedroom—all of which face the gulf—are breathtaking. I’ll admit I’ve been a little lackluster on getting interested clients into the property.”
I let out a long sigh. I had no alternative but to lean on my team to assist me, or I was going to lose the listing.
My status in the industry would plummet.
I looked up. “To be honest,” I continued, “I find this home repulsive. It’s probably prevented me from investing the time and effort I should to get it sold within the conditions of the contract.” I alternated glances from one person to the next. “I need to make sure this piece of property is everyone’s priority for the next fifty-three days.” My gaze went from Kate to the last person at the table, Mister Sexy. “If it’s not sold, we’re going to lose the listing.”
I had every intention of looking away, but I couldn’t force myself to peel my eyes off him. Other than a drunken encounter that I barely recalled, the only contact I had with him was when I passed by his desk in a rush. Now that he was sitting within arm’s reach of me, I realized just how disgustingly handsome—and tattooed—he was. Wearing a powder-blue long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his tattooed forearms, he looked like he was posing for a cologne ad in a magazine.
I ogled him like he was up for auction.
The backs of his hands, entirely, were tattooed. One was covered by a lavender-colored flower and the other with a black-and-gray sugar skull. Various unidentifiable symbols covered the knuckles of each hand. The colorful tattoos continued up each forearm, disappearing beneath the cuffs of his shirt. I wondered where—and if—they stopped.
He studied the datasheet intently.
Mesmerized by his tattoos—and his honey-colored eyes—I gawked like he was a ten-car pileup of exotic cars on Highway 41.
He shifted his eyes from the folded paper to me. “They put hardwood in a Mediterranean home? Why?”
“Huh?” I muttered.
He glanced at the datasheet. “How many square feet of the home is hardwood?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hardwood,” he said. “How much hardwood…”
Beyond hardwood, I heard nothing. My mind made the phallic connection between Margaret’s flooring and what I suddenly recalled about the hard wood Devin was packing in his jeans on the day we met.
My pussy ached for him. I was sure everyone could see my discomfort. There was a reason I didn’t employ handsome men, and this was it.
I crossed my legs. “What does it matter?”
“Short of someone who wants a Mediterranean home with the warmth of a cave, no one is going to move into this home,” he explained. “If they can’t see themselves in it, convincing them to buy it is going to be impossible. It would be cost prohibitive to change the architecture, and it would be a nightmare to re-trim the place with lighter wood, but the flooring could be redone with something brighter and more inviting. That alone would change a potential buyer’s perception entirely.”
His ability to communicate astounded me. Nevertheless, he was out of his mind. The change would cost half a million dollars or more. “I can’t change the flooring. It would cost half a mil—”
“What would you lose in commission if this listing was pulled?”
The last time I revealed my income to a man, it ended disastrously. I mentally cocked my hip and peered down my nose at him. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“No?” His look hardened. “Do you want my help or not?”
“I want ideas and action on selling this property,” I snapped back. “I don’t need some tattooed biker who has no knowledge of—”
He shot a fuck you glare right at me.
He stood and leaned toward the center of the table. “If I didn’t have knowledge, I’d be listening, not speaking. I’ve worked here for eight days. I don’t expect you to respect me. Hell, you haven’t spoken to me more than twice in passing. But if you want me to be a member of this team, you’ll treat me in a respectful manner. If you don’t, or if you ever talk to me in that disrespectful tone again, I’ll walk out of here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
My heart was in my throat. Incapable of speaking, I simply stared back at him like a mindless idiot.
“Obviously you didn’t review my application,” he said, still looming over me. He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “If you had, you’d know a few things about me. Because you didn’t and you don’t, I’ll hit the highlights. I was born and raised here. I have nearly fifteen years of construction experience. Ten of them were spent overseeing the construction of homes that would make this ugly son of a bitch look like an Italian cracker box. Based on my experience, I’d suggest spending a little less than a hundred grand on flooring. It would make the home appeal to a wider market, and it would only cut your commission by a few percent. If you’re too stubborn, too money hungry, or just too goddamned blind to see the benefit in making that change, leave it the way it is.” He tossed the datasheet in front of me. “I’m sure you’ll sit on it for another hundred and eighty days.”
He was Alpha with a capital A.
To minimize my discomfort from my wet panties, I wagged my knees back and forth and hoped he couldn’t sense my state of arousal.
I gave him an apologetic look. “You’re telling me that I can get that floor done for less than a hundred grand?”
“Between fifty-five and ninety, depending on what you want to put in place of what’s there. It won’t be the quality of the rest of the home’s interior finishes, but it’ll get the home sold, and that’s what matters.”
I sold homes. I didn’t build them. I had no idea what real-world construction costs were. When I’d asked for previous clients, the prices I’d been given were ten times what he was suggesting.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He arched an argumentative eyebrow.
I swallowed a lump of humility. “Can you get me an exact quote?”
“I can get you a damned good one,” he replied. “As long as you’re not opposed to having a few tattooed bikers in there doing the work. Before you ask and piss me off even more, yes, they’re licensed.”
Feeling defeated—and horny as hell—I glanced around the room. Three wide-eyed women and one stern-looking man were staring back at me.
“Does anyone else have some
thing to add?” I asked.
The meek silence that followed was deafening. If no one had anything constructive to say, I desperately needed to change my panties. I closed the folder.
“Meeting adjourned,” I squeaked.
Chapter Five
Devin
Herb Riley was a family friend. Following my father’s death, he and I became rather close. He insisted at the time of my incarceration that I list his home as my residence. Unlike state prison, federal prison requires approval of an inmate’s proposed residence prior to them being released. If the residence is preapproved, the transition from incarceration to freedom is seamless.
A former brigadier general in the US Army and a decorated combat veteran, Herb wore his gray hair in a crew cut, woke every morning at four thirty, and briskly walked the neighborhood’s four-mile footpath prior to breakfast each day. He was opinionated, argumentative, and entertaining. One thing he wasn’t?
Delicate.
“First she talks to you like you’re some punk kid,” Herb said. “Then she spends the next week and a half parading by your desk in tight dresses while giving you the stink eye?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “I keep waiting for her to apologize, but she hasn’t. Not yet, at least.”
“If she treated me like that, I’d have told that bitch to go fuck a goat.”
“Just dive right into a bestiality conversation right there in the meeting?” I chuckled at the thought. “In front of all those other women? That would have gotten me some points for originality, I suppose.”
He gave me a contemptuous look. “I was being facetious.”
I raised my cup in a toast. “I was being a smartass.”
“Comes natural, doesn’t it?”
“More or less.”
“Your dad was a smartass,” he said, laughing as if recalling my father’s lack of a filter. “Mouth got him in trouble on numerous occasions. Son of a bitch had a temper, too. When he built that house for me on the south end of town, he punched the stonemason right in the cocksucker. Dropped him like a sack of shit, right there in the kitchen.”
Following a long bout with breast cancer, my mother passed away when I was in high school. My father died of a heart attack fourteen years later, nearly three years before I went to prison. Losing him caused a downward spiral of my emotions. My life soon followed. Hoping to save myself from complete destruction, I joined a motorcycle club.
Being in the club gave me a sense of belonging. The men I rode with were the siblings I never had. The MC soon became my family—one I was prohibited from returning to until my federally mandated supervised release was over.
“My father’s high blood pressure cost him his life,” I said. “I’m trying to keep my temper at bay.”
His wiry brows pinched together. “Biting your lower lip doesn’t change your DNA. You are who you are.”
He was right. Despite my desire to refrain from losing my temper, it seemed to eventually rear its ugly head. I’d used sex as an outlet in the past, but my options in that respect were currently nonexistent.
I carried my plate to the sink. “While we’re on that subject, do you know any of the other girls who work for Teddi?”
“Are we done talking about that inconsiderate bitch you’re working for?”
I rinsed my plate and put it in the dishwasher before turning to face him. “For now, I suppose.”
“You want to know if I know one of those gals?”
“Katelyn Winslow. She’s one of the agents. She goes by Kate.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Winslow?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
He lowered his gaze. He rubbed the backs of his sun-spotted hands. “Can’t say I do. Why?”
“The guy she was seeing punched her in the face. Guess he lives here in—”
He spun around. “He did what?”
I didn’t like it any more than he did. “You heard me,” I said, taking my seat. “He smacked her in the face.”
“Sounds like there’s someone besides your employer who needs to be taught a lesson on the difference between right and wrong. If I find that cocksucker, I tell you what. I’ll butt-fuck him.”
“You’re out of your mind, old man.”
He glared. “According to who?”
“Me.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re going to fuck a guy in the butt?”
“Sounds like that prick needs it.”
“While you’re talking about sticking your cock in a guy’s poop shoot, your wife’s turning over in her grave.”
“Butt-fucking isn’t sexual,” he argued. “You do it because you’re angry at the recipient, not because you’re attracted to them.”
When Teddi snapped at me during the meeting, I wanted to bend her over the table and fuck her like she owed me money. Since then, I’d thought about it on numerous occasions for no other reason than to teach her a lesson about how she treated me.
I laughed, partially at Herb’s remarks and a little at the thought of butt-fucking Teddi. I’d get tremendous satisfaction out of it, but there was no way it would ever happen. She was far too uppity to offer herself to a tattooed biker.
It didn’t mean I couldn’t throw a bottle of wine in my saddlebag and give it to her as a peace offering. From what I knew of her, a little alcohol would certainly loosen her up. What happened afterward would be anyone’s guess.
“Enough of the butt talk,” I said. “I was just thinking I’d pay that guy a visit if could find out who he was.”
He rose from his seat and riffled through a drawer. After producing a pen and notepad, he scribbled something down. “How the fuck is Katelyn spelled?”
“Hers is K-A-T-E-L-Y-N.”
“That’s what I figured.” He finished writing and pushed the small pad to the side. “I’ll find the prick. Don’t worry.”
“You’re a detective now?”
He peered into his coffee cup and then looked at me like something was terribly wrong. “When did I pour this?”
“About the time I took my toast out of the toaster.”
A confused look washed over him. “You drink any of it when I was taking a shit?”
“I was scrambling eggs when you took a shit.”
“Just thought I’d ask.” He looked at me with concern in his eyes. “Seems like it either evaporated or someone stole it.”
“Why would I drink your coffee when I have my own?”
“That’s the same question I’m sitting here asking myself,” he replied. “All I can come up with is that you’re an ornery fucker.”
“No, Herb,” I said. “I didn’t drink your coffee.”
“Back to the asshole who hit the girl.” He stood and walked to the coffeepot. “I might not be a detective, but I’m resourceful. You ever heard of the six degrees of separation?” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m only six handshakes away from knowing that crazy bastard in North Korea, the redheaded girl with the nice tits, and that prick who hit the girl. Mark my words, I’ll find him.”
“When you do, let me know.”
“I might and I might not.” He sipped his fresh coffee. “I’ll ask Vinnie when I see him at the clubhouse this afternoon. He’s got more money than sense. I bet he knows how to find that prick.”
The redheaded girl comment registered. I couldn’t care less about Herb’s card-playing friends. I wondered if there was someone in the neighborhood I needed to meet. “Who’s the redheaded girl with nice tits?”
“Johansson, or whatever her name is. She’s in those movies with Tony Stark. She wears that tight suit, and the damned thing fits her like a glove. Looks like she’s trying to smuggle a couple of cantaloupes out of the farmer’s market over on Pine Ridge. I wouldn’t butt-fuck her, I’d poke it right between her big fat knockers.”
I shook my head. “Like I said, if you find him—”
“I heard you the first time,” he grumbled. “I might be old, but I’m not deaf. Or stupid.”
I gl
anced at my watch. If I stopped talking and left, there would be time to go by the liquor store before work.
“I better get to work,” I said. “Getting flooring quotes today.”
After taking his seat, he traced his finger over Kate’s name on the sheet of paper. “Better be careful talking to those old running mates of yours. If that little prick who oversees your every move finds out you’re hanging around them again, you’ll be back in the pokey.”
“I’m not going to hang around with them,” I explained. “I’m going to have them do some work for me. If they’re priced right, that is.”
“Damned shame your father’s partner sold the company. You could have gotten those mustachioed villains who worked for him to do it for next to nothing.”
My father co-owned a local construction company until his death. Although he had nothing more than a minority stake in the business, it had been a somewhat profitable venture for him. The rewards for his hard work were then squandered on my legal defense. What money he hadn’t placed in a retirement account was used to fight for what I believed was right. After my conviction and subsequent sentencing, I sold his home and used the proceeds to finance the appeal of my case. When the legal smoke cleared, I’d lost much more than my freedom.
When I left prison, my motorcycle, the clothes on my back, and a mind filled with memories were my only possessions. Having previously relied on my father’s company for employment, I felt starting from scratch would provide me with a sense of accomplishment. Now, win or lose, I had no one to blame but myself.
“I’m headed out.” I carried my cup to the sink. “If you find anything out about that guy, let me know.”
He raised his cup. “Will do.”
When I was almost to the door, he cleared his throat. “Hey, dipshit. What’s for dinner?”
I paused and gave it a moment’s thought. Grudge-fucking Teddi seemed like a great idea, if I could pull it off.
Misadventures of a Biker Page 4
