“I have a big problem, dude,” Rick said as soon as Kent answered. “You’ve got to help me.”
“You slept with her.”
“Not quite. But I wanted to. How did you know?”
“I’m psychic.”
“Sure. So who’s winning the World Series?”
“My psychic powers are fairly specific. I seem to know how my friends get themselves in trouble, but not much else.”
“I agree with the ‘not much else’ part.”
“So do you want my help or not?”
Rick took a few seconds to organize his thoughts. Just what could Kent tell him that he didn’t already know?
“Okay, it’s pretty simple really. I’ve got to let her go.”
“You mean as an employee or as a girlfriend?”
“As an employee.”
“Isn’t she any good?” Kent asked with a tone that indicated he was playing devil’s advocate, not that he didn’t know the answer. “I thought she was just going to be your secretary. How hard can that be?”
“Actually she’s doing a lot more than I expected. A lot more than her admin job. She could probably be my COO, but of course she can’t. You know why. And it’s been less than a week so far, so who knows? Maybe her enthusiasm won’t last. She’ll run out of steam.”
“So, she’s industrious, efficient, smart, and a hard worker. Not to mention easy on the eyes and sexy as hell.”
“You got it.”
“And of course, you can’t both sleep with her and let her run your business for you.”
“Bingo again.”
“You idiot!” Kent took no time coming to his conclusion about the situation. “You had a rule and you broke it. You’re smart enough to build a business from scratch, no help from your family, but not smart enough to keep your dick in your pants.”
“Well, I did keep my dick in my pants. But I kissed her, and it wasn’t on the cheek.”
“And you want to sleep with her.”
“She’s amazing.”
“You are a sexist pig,” Kent said. “Do you think you can fire the woman, and because you’re such an amazing lover, she’ll still fuck you? You’d rather have a sex toy than a good employee?”
“You’re not helping much.”
“That’s because you’ve already fucked this one up, Rick.” Kent was nearly shouting into the phone. “It’s over. You’ve lost her. She not going to be your girlfriend or your admin. Get over it and try not to make the same mistake again.”
Rick had no response. Kent was right; Rick had to give it up and move on.
“Hey, why don’t you fly up here next weekend,” Kent broke the silence. “Find an excuse to write off a plane ticket, and let’s get together over a beer.”
“Yeah, maybe in a couple of weeks when my projects are done,” Rick said. He could use a weekend out of town.
They talked a little while longer, mostly about things that would take Rick’s mind off of Amy, like Kent’s latest intriguing cases. When Rick finally hung up the phone, he realized not much had been accomplished by calling Kent. He really wanted to find a way to hang on to Amy. As a girlfriend, that was. After all, he was attracted to her before he knew she was any good at business. It was her body, her face, her composure, her warmth that had him whipped from that first morning when he hit the dog and saw her kneel down on the hard pavement to comfort the animal.
Had he been this mad about Beautiful Betty once upon a time? Maybe as libidinous, he guessed. At least at first. The difference was he never came to respect her. He knew why he was marrying her: she was attractive, receptive if not passionate in bed, happy to stay out of his business, and willing to start a family with him at some point in the future. And she was needy: not so much for sex as for constant compliments and entertainment.
Maybe Betty wasn’t dumb, but she sure as hell wasn’t clever or ambitious.
Like Amy was.
Like his mother was.
“Oh, god,” he moaned out loud. “I’m really fucked up, aren’t I? I’m crazy about someone because she’s like my mother?”
Well, he thought, not physically like his mother. At least he could take comfort in that. Amy was tall, athletic, and had the blue eyes and light brown hair of someone of northern European descent His mother was perpetually underweight, even for her short stature. Her skin and features were Latin, and she wore her long, dark hair in a severe bun on top of her head.
Maybe, he thought, just maybe he could figure out a way to make this work. He was a smart guy. He had, as Kent said, started this business from scratch, not accepting any money from his family. In his more humble moments, he had admitted that he probably couldn’t have done it if the bankers, real estate developers, equipment companies, and just about everyone else in town hadn’t known his mother and the size of her bank account. He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, even if he refused to eat off of it. His mother had offered to lend him start-up capital, to co-sign loans, to put in a good word with her bankers, and help him lease equipment. He’d turned it all down. As far as he was concerned, hers was tainted money—stolen from his father.
Rick walked back to the garage. He sank into the seat of his Z3 and punched the remote control to open the garage door. As he pulled out, he decided not to give up. He was an attractive guy. He could have a relationship with Amy without promising her lifetime employment. He’d give it a couple of weeks and see if some solution didn’t present itself. Maybe she’d find another job she liked better. Maybe he’d wake up a week from now and find out he wasn’t attracted to her anymore.
“Yeah, right.” He laughed at that last notion and backed out of the garage.
~
Rick got ready for work on Monday morning, feeling anxious. He wondered how he would react when he saw Amy again for the first time after what had happened at his mother’s house. Sinking into his BMW, he decided to postpone it by stopping in on all three of his work sites on the way into the office. He needed time to steer his mind away from her, and he thought a few construction issues might help distract him.
Zipping through the cool morning air, he kept his eye open for empty lots, run-down houses, and for-sale signs that he might have missed before. The construction work on his projects was wrapping up, and although setting up the hotels for business would take at least another month, his building contractors would be looking for more work soon. He would have preferred to have kept them busy with his business, but it was starting to appear that nothing was going to happen soon enough. He was likely going to lose them to some other developer before he nailed down a new project.
The single-family home was looking good, he noted as he pulled up across the street. The landscapers were already on the job, raking crushed granite over the gentle, fake mounds they’d fashioned into the front yard. Large buckets of palms, cacti, and agave, and a pile of boulders sat in a row along the edge of the driveway, awaiting their placement.
Rick walked through the house, greeting the painters and the finish carpenters who were putting the final touches on the interior. The stark, cold, modern look wasn’t Rick’s favorite, but he had to admit that the choice would probably help the house sell once the owner decided to move on, even if the single bedroom proved a detriment.
None of the crew chiefs had arrived yet, and Rick had no reason to stick around for them. He would be getting their bills and passing his final invoice on to the owner within the week. The only things he had left to do was make a final inspection of the landscaping in a couple of days, and walk through the project with the city building inspector.
What he thought would be quick stop through the drive-thru at Starbucks turned out to take a lot longer than he expected. The snowbirds were starting to arrive already, and he was going to have to start factoring both longer lines and more traffic into his daily plans.
By the time he pulled in front of what was soon to be the Corona Inn, a half-dozen pick-ups were jammed at various angles onto the asphalt sl
ab that would eventually become a concrete parking lot. A crude plywood sign leaned at an ugly angle against the building, declaring that Desert to Valley Builders was the general contractor of the construction site. It was the name of subcontractor Tom’s company; apparently he had given up on getting Rick to post a sign for him.
“Is Tom around?” Rick asked the first journeyman he ran into as he walked into the building.
“He’s just pulling up,” the man answered, pointing back out the front door. Another pick-up was squeezing into a space on the asphalt that was so small, Rick had opted to not try to park in it.
“Hey, Tom.” Rick walked toward the man getting out of the truck, and extended his hand for a shake, even though he wasn’t really in the mood for pleasantries. “What’s with the sign?”
“Well, I asked you for it, but you never delivered, boss,” Tom responded, stopping with his hands on his hips, refusing to take Rick’s hand.
“That’s because there’s no traffic down this street to see a sign,” Rick said, “and there was no agreement for one in our contract, if I remember right.”
Tom shrugged and looked down the street defiantly, as if the conversation was boring him.
“Further, you are not the general contractor, Rick said. “You know I am.”
“What’s the difference, boss?” Tom said, turning a steely eye at Rick.
Rick took a deep breath. There was no benefit in getting in an argument with the contractor. He needed to retain good relationships with anyone who was capable of doing good work and finishing his jobs on time. There was plenty of work around town these days for contractors, and keeping them happy and willing to work with Buen Dia was more important than arguing over a sign.
“Okay, look,” Rick said, reaching out and putting his hands on Tom’s shoulders. He stood at least six inches taller, and the gesture could easily have been interpreted as hostile. Tom seemed to shrink under the weight of Rick’s arms, but he didn’t try to wiggle away.
“If you get rid of it, I’ll ask my marketing guy to figure out some way to create some exposure for you,” Rick said. “But, I don’t want this false advertising. I need to get credit for my projects, too.” He slapped Tom’s shoulders companionably and waited for him to meet his eyes in agreement.
“Alright.” Tom shrugged again. “Is Guy going to call me?”
“I’ll make sure of it. Now, how’s the project going?”
Rick walked around the building with Tom and then stopped to talk with the electrician. Although the job was still a little behind where Rick thought it should be at that point, he wasn’t terribly worried. He didn’t have anything new begging for his attention, so the only problem with the delay was the additional cost of financing, and with interest rates as low as they were, he wasn’t in danger of losing money on the venture.
Rick settled back into the Z3 to head to the next project, he saw a car that looked just like Amy’s matching Z3 parked down the street a ways out of the corner of his eye. He fought to keep from looking directly at it, trying to catch as much out of his peripheral vision as possible.
Was that Amy? Was she spying on him? If she had driven to look over the project, why didn’t she come over and talk? Why would she hide?
As he pulled away from the curb, he stole a glance in his rear view mirror. Amy was just getting out of the car and walking up to the hotel. She must have just arrived, he thought. And maybe she didn’t see him.
Or maybe she didn’t want him to know what she was doing.
As he drove away, he cursed at himself for being paranoid. At least he hoped he was just being paranoid.
~ Nine: Amy ~
The Coral Seas Lounge next to the Tropicale was loud and packed with a few barely clad women and dozens of gay men in sleeveless shirts and skin-tight jeans—none of which surprised Amy or Katie. They liked the place for its so-artsy-deco vibe and the likelihood they’d be unmolested by straight males looking for dance partners. Amy guessed that most of the skin-flashing women were tourists who didn’t know that they’d have more luck finding fish on bicycles than straight men on the north side of downtown.
They were only on their second mojito and Katie had already managed to bust through Amy’s pledge to herself not to share any details about her encounter with Rick in the casita.
What was it about a good kiss that made it so hard to not kiss and tell? Amy wondered. Was it the incarnation of the combined physical and emotional punch of a long-anticipated embrace? Even though the evening had ended suddenly, with Rick’s anger at his mother, she knew his kiss was brought on by more than just her cleavage.
“You have to keep this to yourself!” Katie concluded at the end of Amy’s Readers’ Digest version—both abridged and PG—of the night before.
“Well, you just pried it out of me!” Amy laughed.
“It wasn’t that hard. But if anyone else finds out he’s such a good kisser, you’re never going to hang on to him. Every single woman in this town is going to be swarming all over him.”
Amy believed that was already the case. Sandra, the receptionist, had told her how Gloria’s “hots” for Rick that apparently contributed to her dismissal. And by the condescending way she told that story, Amy considered that Sandra might be hiding her own infatuation as well.
“Well, I’m not going to write a letter to the editor about it,” Amy said, laughing at the idea. Then it occurred to her: this was no laughing matter. She was really enjoying her new job, and it wasn’t just because Rick was in the office next to hers. The challenges of finding properties, negotiating their purchase, permitting the construction, and completing the project, as well as the gratification that could come from managing the business well intrigued her already, and she had just started. She could see a promising future for herself at Buen Dia, a future that involved much more than answering the phone and running documents up to city hall. A future that finally constituted a real career.
She intended to prove herself to Rick, but now, would that be possible?
“I really don’t want anyone to know about Rick and me,” she said, frowning down at her drink. “If there is a Rick and me. It didn’t end so great, so who knows. But the last thing I want is for people—even you, my best friend—to think I succeed because I’m willing to sleep with the boss.”
“But wait a minute.” Katie knew Amy well enough to know that frown meant serious business. “You got the job before you kissed him. You didn’t get it because you kissed him.”
“Yes, that’s true, but administrative assistant is not the job I want.” Amy twirled the straw in her mojito, watching the neon lights in the room bounce around in the ice cubes. She looked up at Katie. “I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I know I can do so much more.”
“Well, why can’t you?” Katie raised her eyebrows. “Just because Rick likes you, does that mean he can’t promote you? That he can’t work with you?”
“I don’t know,” Amy admitted. “His mother said something the other night, something about how there were no women in Rick’s office who weren’t receptionists or secretaries. And Rick’s former admin was fired, in part because she was interested in him. It makes me wonder. I think I can handle both work and romance, but I’m not sure he can.”
Amy watched Katie mull that over. Even though her friend seemed to have no interest in a career beyond the café where they had worked together, she knew Katie, too, was capable of more. Not that waiting on tables didn’t require skill; it called for talents as varied as multi-tasking, sociability, and organization, as well as physical endurance. Amy knew it wasn’t easy.
Now Katie turned. “You know, I was really happy for you when you got that job,” she said. “And happy for myself. It’s hard to make friends in Palm Springs if you’re not L.A.-trendy, if you are female and you’re straight. And if you don’t play golf. I was so worried when you were looking for a job that you would leave town. So don’t blame me if I want to see the possibilities here, and not the proble
ms. I don’t want you to leave.”
“Ah, thanks, Katie.” Amy stood up from her bar stool and hugged her friend. “I hope you’re right. I’d like to make this work. And, I’d rather not have to choose between having my cake and eating it too.”
She sat back down and knocked her mojito glass over with her elbow. Luckily for her, it was already empty.
That night, Amy ended up sleeping on the couch in Katie’s apartment, just two blocks east of the Tropicale. Too many mojitos in too short of a time made it unwise to drive her little BMW the five miles to her condo in south Palm Springs. They left their cars parked on the street and walked.
The next morning they walked past Tropicale to Cheeky’s for breakfast, stoically enduring the hour wait for a table. Amy was glad to have chatty Katie to entertain her. It helped blunt her worries about going back to work the next day. How would Rick react to what happened? Would he be sorry? Would he call her into his office and fire her right away, to avoid any further complications?
In between fretting about her future, though, all she could think about was the warmth of his hands on her body and his seductive kiss.
~
Monday morning, Amy decided to postpone the imminent reckoning with Rick at the office. She had been meaning to visit the company’s three job sites and see what she was helping to accomplish.
After stopping at the Starbucks, she drove to the inn that was nearly finished—the former Dew Tune Inn, yet to be redubbed for its new incarnation. It was a simple, art-deco style U-shape of ten rooms and a small office, all facing a center courtyard filled with large succulents and tall, wispy palo verde trees. None of the workers had arrived yet, and the rooms were still locked, so she sat down on one of the benches scattered around the perimeter of the open space and finished her latte.
One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) Page 9
