~
Now that the issue with Tom was resolved—he’d been excited about the news of the upcoming Facebook page when Rick called him about it—Rick could get to work, looking for his COO. The candidates that Amy had found were all guys he didn’t know, which surprised him. After a decade in Palm Springs real estate, he thought he knew just about everyone in town who could possibly serve as a chief operating officer of a small construction firm.
Amy had done another thing he would never have thought of. Instead of looking for candidates who were already in construction or real estate management, she had created a list of a set of skills that she thought would be needed to do the job, developed keywords based on that list, and then looked for people whose resumes included those keywords—obvious things like “budgets,” “P&L,” “real estate transaction,” “construction,” and “building permits;” and some more general, less obvious terms that would get at the softer skills required by the job: “communication” (unmodified; she must have assumed no one would mention communication if they weren’t good at it), “independent worker,” “attention to detail,” “efficient,” and “extrovert.”
The results included the three men he chose for further consideration: a school superintendent, the general manager of a mid-sized golf resort down valley, and the locally based district manager for a national fast-food chain. All had listed experience in managing major construction projects and real estate transactions for their employers somewhere in Riverside County in the past few years. In the memo she had written to explain her process to him, Amy had added that each of the candidates she was recommending had applied for a new job in the past six months, indicating a willingness to move on. Further, she said, each of them might bring new ideas—having worked outside the real estate development community, they wouldn’t be as beholden to doing things the way they’d always been done, which in her opinion was a good thing.
“Obviously,” he agreed with that statement out loud. Clearly Amy was one who practiced what she preached: never settling for the usual solutions to problems.
What the hell! Rick thought. How did she come up with this idea for a way to conduct an executive search? He couldn’t remember Amy ever mentioning past jobs as a headhunter or recruiter. She’d never mentioned social media marketing skills either. He shook his head and swung his chair around to stare at the mountain. It was too bad she would have to leave Buen Dia if they were going to have a relationship. In fewer days than he had fingers on one hand, she had proven she was capable of helping the company out in so many ways. But, of course, that also meant that she was probably capable of the same kind of coup his mother had pulled off some twenty years earlier.
~
It was couple of days later before Rick remembered that he had seen Amy sitting in her car in front of the Corona Inn project, watching him.
His paranoia about what she was doing there had disappeared as soon as she came into his office later that morning. She had been dressed in a plain white oxford shirt and navy khakis—nothing nearly as revealing as that little black dress from Friday night. But it hadn’t mattered. He still felt the crotch of his pants tighten and his heart rate rise the instant she walked in and asked him she should close the door.
She had been so eager, so helpful, so … well, willing that first week. And then they’d had that incredible kiss in his mother’s casita. Further, the second week had started out well, with her presenting a good list of candidates and coming up with a virtually free solution to Tom’s publicity issues—the Facebook page.
But, now, she was starting to worry him. Sometime on Monday, things had changed. A cloud of tense air had descended on the office, and she had turned sullen and distant. She had rebuffed his invitations to “work late” Monday and Tuesday, quietly and efficiently, as if she had no idea what he was hinting at. What he had hoped would become a relationship may have turned out to be a couple of kisses that would simply leave him wanting more.
Was there some connection between the way she was spying on him on Monday and how cold and distant she had suddenly become? Had their embrace on Friday night been part of some plot he was too dense to figure out? But if that was the case, it didn’t make much sense that she had accepted his embrace so warmly Monday when he came into the office.
Rick shook off the memory. He had work to do. He couldn’t let a woman, an administrative assistant, distract him from moving forward with his business. He had always avoided bringing smart, ambitious women into his company. This was proof he had been right, although he certainly didn’t need it. His mother had provided proof enough.
He was in tenth grade when she had met him gliding on his bicycle into the driveway of their suburban home in Palm Desert one day after school. Waiting there for him was completely out of character for her. She was always the one working late at his father’s construction company, arriving home just before he went to bed, asking distractedly if he’d found something to eat for dinner. His father was the one more likely to be home, sleeping on the family room couch with ESPN blasting on the TV. Three-martini lunches were required in his business; they weren’t fun, his father had explained to Rick, they were essential. He had to schmooze with union officials, entertain county and state bigwigs, lubricate relationships with subcontractors. Rick had believed him to a degree. He suspected that lunch without the martinis would have been just as effective, but what did he know?
“Your father is packing his things in there, Rick,” his mother had said that afternoon in the driveway, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking into his eyes with both sadness and purpose. “I don’t want you to go in there right now. Come on, put your bike in the garage and let’s get in the car and go out for dinner.”
“What do you mean packing?”
“He’s going to be moving out.”
“Why?”
“There are things you can’t understand, yet, Rick, and this is one of them,” she had said, reaching to pull his backpack off his back. Rick had pulled away. “I’ll explain what I can to you. Just get in the car.”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to go talk to him!”
“No, Rick!” his mother yelled as he dropped the bike at her feet. “Don’t! It’s not safe, Rick!”
She had been right about that. The second he stepped in the back door to the kitchen, a large ceramic plate whizzed by his head and crashed on the door jamb behind him. He ducked.
“Dad!” he yelled. “What are you doing?”
“I thought you were that bitch,” his father said. He looked at his son mournfully, and sunk to the kitchen floor. He leaned back against a kitchen cabinet door and slumped down farther. “You know what she is doing to me? She is taking my company away from me. She’s taking you away from me. She’s stealing everything.”
At that point, in spite of the lugubrious behavior of the past few years, his father was still Rick’s hero. He had taken the young Rick fishing, taken him to LA Dodgers games, and taken him to work so he could ride in the big dirt movers and back hoes with his employees.
“She can’t do that,” Rick said, sitting down on the floor next to his father. “She isn’t your boss.”
“Oh, yes. She is,” his father said, looking up at Rick with blood-shot eyes. “That was part of her plan. She’s been my boss for months, and now she’s sticking it up my ass.”
Immediately, Rick knew that the three-martini lunches probably had something to do with why his father was moving out. But he couldn’t see how they were so unforgivable that they could have cost his father his own business, his pride, his success.
Rick had only seen his father twice after that before he disappeared forever, and Rick could never forget how dejected, defeated, and deflated he had become. Ten years later, he was dead. Rick’s mother had taken his company away from and refused to explain to Rick why she did it. She said he wouldn’t understand. And when Rick came back to town after college to start his own business, he vowed it would never happen to him.
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Rick had just turned back to focus on the COO candidates when Amy’s voice crackled over the intercom. Apparently, she had decided it was a better way to communicate in the office than meeting face-to-face after all. Or was this a further sign that she was pulling away?
“Rick,” she said, “pick up your phone.”
Rick picked up the receiver, and connected himself to the only line that appeared to be in use.
“Yes?”
“Rick, I don’t know what to do with this guy,” Amy said over the phone.
“What guy?”
“On the phone. He is insisting that he talk with you, but he won’t give me his name. I tried to brush him off but he said he quote ‘didn’t think that was wise’ unquote. The tone of his voice indicates he’s going to cause some kind of trouble. Do you want to talk to him?”
Rick had no idea what kind of trouble anyone could cause for him, but he didn’t like someone trying to intimidate him or his staff by threatening it. He thought for a moment.
“Tell him I’m busy and take a number. See if you can’t get him to give you his name. Tell him I will never talk to people unless I know who they are.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Amy said. “Now hang up, and I’ll get him back on my line.”
“Thanks,” Rick said, barely getting the word out before she cut him off.
Five minutes later, she stepped in to put a note on his desk and walked back out. He picked it up.
Beau D’Matrio. 503-225-9928.
A relative? Rick wondered. He had no first cousins that he knew of, and had never met his second cousins or any other shirt-tail relative. Who could be trying to reach him now, and why?
Rick shook his head and threw the note in the trash. If the guy couldn’t leave more of a message than that, he wasn’t worth worrying about. Whether he had Rick’s last name or not.
~ Eleven: Amy ~
Amy put aside the work she had intended to finish that afternoon to build the Buen Dia Facebook page. She had hoped to make appointments for the final building inspection at both the old Dew Tune Inn and the single-family home, which were both nearly complete and just waiting for final occupancy permits. She’d also hoped to make some progress on her own secret project—finding the Mexican woman who owned those beautiful empty lots she’d discovered at the beginning of the week.
Guy brought over a thumb-drive full of photos of past projects and headshots of the Buen Dia staff, and Amy downloaded them onto Facebook. She filled out the basic information required to open a business page, and set up a BlogSpot address where she could send page visitors to read the weekly blog she would now be writing on a weekly basis.
Glad to have an excuse to get out of the office, she drove over to the Corona Inn and located Tom, who turned out to be the man she had seen Rick talking with earlier that morning. The contractor had been waiting for her; apparently he was very excited by the news Rick had shared of the upcoming Facebook page and his starting role in it.
Amy took her own camera and shot photos of Tom and his crew in front of the construction project. She got enough information about Tom to write a nice, flattering blog about him for the page. The project was finished before she left for the day, but she didn’t publish the page. Rick would have to approve it first, and she didn’t want to risk talking to him at the end of the day. He’d undoubtedly try to suggest “working late” with him again.
Besides, it was five o’clock and she was meeting Katie for drinks and dinner at the bar at Sammy G’s on Palm Canyon Drive.
“Are you sure that you have to choose?” Katie asked as soon as Amy had filled her in on what had happened that day.
“I think the question is, do I have a choice?” Amy said. “I have to leave. If I stay there, I’m stuck in an admin role because that’s all he thinks women are capable of. And, I will be so angry with him for it, it would destroy any relationship we might try to have.”
“Well, why don’t you leave and just date him?”
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I like the job, I could be COO if he’d let me. I’ll resent him for not letting me stay. Let’s face it, the relationship is over. It’s all fucked up.”
“Maybe you’re reading too much into things. Maybe he chose those three men because they’re the best qualified,” Katie said. She seemed determined to find a way for Amy and Rick to continue having a relationship.
“I know for a fact that they’re not,” Amy said. “I did the research. Two of the women on that list were better qualified than two of the three he chose. Hell, even I am a better choice than at least two of those guys.”
“But you said the kiss was fantastic!” Katie wasn’t ready to give up.
Amy nodded, and let herself think about Rick in a way she hadn’t allowed since that morning. She’d pushed him out of her mind as much as she could. She refused to think about how attractive she had found him from the start, and how incredibly sexy he had made her feel Friday night in the casita. Now, she shuddered at the powerful sensation of remembering his touch. How could she give that up forever?
“I really have no choice,” she said, putting her drink to her mouth to hide the quiver in her lips. She was going to cry right there in the bar if she didn’t change the subject soon.
“But what about you? What’s new in your life?”
“Nope,” Katie said. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easy. My god, Amy, you forget who you’re talking about here. It’s Rick D’Matrio. Half the women in this valley would give their entire handbag collection just for one date with him. What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you ever really fought for a guy before?”
Amy put her drink down and scowled at the question. Had she? Had she fought for Rob, or had she just let him go? Had she let him go when he started sleeping around? Or had she given up way back when he started showing up in the society pages with all those beautiful women on his arm? Had she not fought back because she didn’t care or because she didn’t think she could win? And did she now regret it?
Katie wanted to visit another bar or two and continue their discussion, but Amy declined. Sharing her problems with her best friend was one thing, and probably something most people would consider normal, but letting Katie obsess vicariously with them was something entirely, unsettlingly different. One of the reasons Amy had stayed out of those society pictures with Rob in the first place was that she didn’t like letting her personal life become public. Maybe she’d even have trouble ever getting married because of it, she surmised. What business did the rest of the world have in knowing whom she was sleeping with or committing her life to?
Amy walked back to her car, which she had parked a few blocks north of the restaurant to force herself to get in a few more steps. She was getting a lot less exercise than she used to when she waited on tables, and while she hadn’t started putting on weight yet, she didn’t want it to sneak up on her.
She sunk down into the driver’s seat and started the Z3’s engine. Its low roar attracted a wolf whistle from a gaggle of guys leaving the Legion Hall bar, and she waved. She put the car in gear and took off quickly, hoping to avoid any approach she might have encouraged by acknowledging their approval.
She drove north and turned around the block to drive down Palm Canyon Drive through the heart of downtown. Traffic was more congested than she would have expected for a week night during the shoulder season, and she had plenty of time to look around at the proliferation of public displays of affection on the sidewalks on either side of the street. The warm evening not only brought out the skin-revealing outfits, it apparently gave everyone permission to act like they were off at some adult-only beach resort where deep kissing and fondling in public wasn’t just tolerated, but expected.
What made her so obsessed with privacy? she wondered. She couldn’t think of any family history that explained it—any embarrassing scandal that had burst into the public eye. Perhaps it was simply the weariness she’d felt by the time she was fourteen from the attention
her looks had attracted. She had matured from a cute adolescent to a precocious beauty in a matter of only about eighteen months, and neither she nor her mother had enough time to prepare her for it. She hid behind dark-framed glasses that she barely needed and a style-less ponytail for most of her high school years, just to avoid uncomfortable advances from adults, including teachers, who should have known better.
She wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but a relationship with Rob, who was so pretty himself, let her off the hook. People would look at him as often as they would focus on her, and that only became more common the more his celebrity rose. In tiny Billings, Montana, he was about as high on the A list as the mayor, and by the time he had hopped his way up to evening anchor in Palm Springs four years later, she had managed to fade into the background, a place she found comfortable.
Amy’s cellphone rang in her purse, and she waited until she stopped at the next red light before pulling it out to see who had called. As if she had conjured him up by thinking of him, it was Rob. She caught her breath quickly, and then wondered what that meant. Was she excited to hear from him? Shocked? Obviously, by her reaction, it wasn’t disinterest. She let the call go to voice mail. She wanted to sort out those feelings before she called him back.
~
Rob was coming back to Palm Springs the next weekend to visit. According to his lamentations on the phone the next evening, when Amy finally felt composed enough to call him back, he was lonely.
He had been hired to be the morning news anchor with the promise that he might be promoted to the evening news if his ratings rose high enough. But in the meantime, he was leaving his house for work at three in the morning, which required him to go to bed at six at night. If he didn’t, he didn’t look rested enough for today’s High Definition TVs. No wrinkles were allowed! No dark circles under the eyes, either, which was cutting into his happy hour partying as well. So far, his weekends had been eaten up by celebrity appearances at county fairs and animal rescue rallies, which were boring him to tears.
One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) Page 11
