One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1)

by Marjorie Pinkerton Miller

  “What? You talked with my mother? When?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Amy said. She shook her head at Rick as if he were a misbehaving child. “You need to get a grip, Rick. It seems to me this is an unbelievable opportunity for you, and I promise I won’t tell anyone how it happened.”

  “But, according to this letter, I don’t get the deal if you don’t get to run it.” Rick shook the sheets at her again. “That is blackmail. How did you come up with that scheme?”

  “Yes, I saw that,” Amy said. She didn’t deny the blackmail; she simply smiled sadly. “But I’m sure Marlena will be overwhelmed by your good looks and your charm, and she will work with you anyway.”

  Amy’s flattery nearly disarmed him, and Rick sat back and fumed.

  “I don’t know where we go from here,” he said, flipping back and forth between the two pages of the letter and shaking his head.

  “I think I know,” Amy said. “I am going to leave, and you will convince Marlena that you are a good guy and that I left for personal reasons. I think she will understand that. She’s a very warm, empathetic woman.”

  Rick threw his head back and looked at the ceiling. He needed to calm down, whether that was Amy’s idea or not. Throwing a temper tantrum was no way to run a business, and certainly not a way to assert his authority over an administrative assistant. Especially not one as maddening as Amy. He closed his eyes and sat without saying a thing for a couple of minutes. He focused on his breathing and slowing his heart rate. Amy wasn’t his enemy, he told himself. The enemy was the empty slate of projects that Buen Dia faced. She had merely pulled off a major coup that should make him happy to have her on the team.

  But then, she was leaving. She had already quit. So maybe, this was the best of both worlds: he got a project that would be envy of the town’s developers, and she was no longer going to threaten his business.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. She looked both relaxed and sad. She met his eyes and held them. He was torn between an intense love and an intense fear.

  Wait a minute! Did he just admit to himself that he loved her? He squinted his eyes in pain at the thought. Loving a woman like Amy was a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe it already had happened.

  Without a word, Rick got up, concentrating on the idea that he was leaving his confusion behind in the chair in her room, and returned to his office. He had work to do, and nothing said he had to think about Marlena Benavides de Pascal today. He needed to hire his new COO and finish the negotiations on the Movie Colony property. Marlena could wait. He’d get to her when things calmed down.

  He picked up the phone and called the golf pro who wanted to come to work for him and offered him the job. Then he called his mother and asked her to meet with him for dinner.

  ~

  Rick hung up the phone. His mother would meet him for dinner, and while he didn’t expect it would be fun, after the nasty exchange with Amy, he figured things couldn’t get much worse. It had been one of the ugliest days of his life, and he wasn’t even sure how it had happened. Here, he’d just gotten a letter offering him a chance to develop the most coveted property in Palm Springs, and instead of rejoicing and thanking Amy for making it possible, he’d driven her away.

  Sandra called in on the intercom.

  “Two things, boss,” she said. “One, Amy just left. Looks like for good. That’s too bad, or at least I think that’s too bad, and I’m guessing you do, too. And secondly, there’s a guy here who says he has an appointment to talk with you. Should I send him in?”

  “Who is it?” Rick threw open the calendar on his desk and looked down the day’s list of things he had intended to work on. There was no appointment listed. Perhaps Amy had made one and forgot to tell him.

  “He won’t say.”

  “Well, tell him I’m busy, I don’t have an appointment with anyone today. If he won’t say what he wants, just ask him to leave.”

  “Okay, boss, I’ll try.”

  A minute later, Sandra’s voice squawked over the box with new urgency.

  “Sorry boss. He’s coming back. He won’t take no—”

  At that moment, Rick’s door slammed open, and his father stood before him.

  ~ Nineteen: Amy ~

  Shaken by Rick’s reaction to Marlena’s letter, Amy decided she had better go right away. She packed her meager personal belongings and carried the box to the car. There wasn’t much; she had been there only a total of three weeks.

  It was the shortest job Amy had held in Palm Springs, and sadly, she thought, it was also the best job. Maybe she only thought that because she hadn’t had time to get tired of it or bored. Or maybe it was because she was working with Rick.

  She walked back into the front lobby and said goodbye to a shocked and perplexed Sandra.

  “I thought you were going to be really good at this,” Sandra whined. “And I was sure you had something going with Rick. Why do you have to leave?”

  “That’s probably why,” Amy said, “I overstepped some boundaries. I hope you find someone else soon.” She bowed her head and walked out without talking with anyone else in the office.

  Driving back to her apartment, she put a set of headphones in her ears and used voice command to dial Rob’s home number. She left a message telling him she would be moving to L.A. a little earlier than planned, and she’d explain as soon as she got there the next day. Then she called Katie.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said as Katie answered.

  “Good news first.” Katie decided for her.

  “Okay. I’m done working at Buen Dia right now. Just left.”

  “That’s good news? What’s the bad news?”

  “I’m done working at Buen Dia. Just left.” Amy caught herself choking on the words.

  “Oh, honey!” Katie moaned loudly. “I’ll come over right away. Are you at home?”

  “No, but on my way. Please come.”

  Amy was barely inside her condo when the doorbell rang, and without waiting for permission, Katie burst into the apartment.

  “What happened?” she asked, holding her arms wide to take Amy in her embrace.

  Amy frowned, and then tears poured down her cheeks. She cried for the next three hours, at times with Katie’s arms wrapped around her, and at times standing in the kitchen pouring herself sequential glasses of wine. By the time Katie left around eight o’clock that night, she had quit crying, and was anesthetized to the point she couldn’t feel much of anything.

  And she decided: that’s the way she wanted to be for the foreseeable future.

  ~

  The next day, Amy awoke with a sloppy hangover, but she told herself she felt better for the simple reason that the confusion of what to think about her job and her attraction for Rick were no longer going to concern her. Even with all the disappointment that she expected to feel over the next few weeks as she tried to replace the best job of her life with something even half as good, at least she knew where she stood with Rick and with Buen Dia. Nowhere. It was, finally, time to accept the inevitable and settle for a life with Rob—for as long as it lasted.

  She packed most of her clothes in three large suitcases, leaving some summer outfits and her swimming suit in the closet and dresser. She emptied out the refrigerator except for the condiments on the shelves inside the doors. It would be at least a couple of weeks before she and Rob returned for a Palm Springs weekend get-away. She took the trash down to the big bins on the ground floor, and called the newspaper to stop delivery. When she felt steady enough to drive, she delivered two small houseplants to Katie’s house and left them on her front doorstep, and she stopped at the post office to fill out a change of address form.

  Rob sounded cheerful but also slightly reserved when he returned her call from the night before. He had just finished his morning news show. She told him she had quit her job and would be driving to L.A. immediately.

  “Really?” He sounded surprised.

  “You don’t sound
too happy about this,” she said, hearing the hesitation in his voice.

  “No, no,” he said, but he missed a beat. He cleared his throat and started over. “This is really good news. Things have started to improve a bit here for me, for sure, but I’m glad you’re ready to come over. We’ll just see how it goes.”

  “Well, I’m sure it will take a bit of adjustment,” she said. What did “see how it goes” mean?

  “Sure. Anyway, I’m back on the air in two hours, and I’ve got to meet with the newsroom now. But you’ll be here by the time I get home. If you want, just wait at the cocktail lounge next door. I’ll find you there.”

  Amy wished he could have simply left a key to his condo with the neighbors or under a mat so she wouldn’t have to cool her heels waiting for him. Perhaps, she decided, it would be better if she just waited in Palm Springs and took off a couple of hours later. She put her purse and the few things she hadn’t yet packed in the car by the door, and stretched out on the living room couch to take a nap and, she hoped, sleep off a bit more of her hangover. She’d call Rob once she left for L.A., and tell him that she was held up by traffic and wouldn’t be able get there until mid-afternoon.

  Before she fell asleep, she called her mother to warn her she was coming to town.

  “What happened to your job there?” her mother asked. “I thought that was going well. Did you quit?”

  “Mom, let me be blunt. I made a big mistake. I slept with the boss.”

  “Oh,” her mother sounded shocked, but then she gained her usual cynical composure. “Well, I guess that’s one way to succeed.”

  “Or not,” Amy said. “In any case, it’s over and so is the job. Rob didn’t sound terribly excited about my coming to L.A., so if it turns out he’s sleeping with bimbos again, maybe I can come and live with you for a short time.”

  With that back-up plan in place, she pulled one of the perfect decorator pillows she had carefully chosen for the condo two years before, stuffed it under her head, and fell asleep. What woke her up again three hours later wasn’t a call from Rob, wondering where she was; it was the insistent sound of the doorbell.

  ~ Twenty: Rick ~

  It took a moment for Rick to realize the man who had barged into his office wasn’t his father; his father was dead. But he was a dead-ringer for the man Rick hadn’t seen in fourteen years.

  “Rick!” the man called out. “I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

  Before Rick could rise from his chair, the young man bounded across the room and stuck out his hand. He looked like he couldn’t even be twenty yet, dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt, and hiking boots as if he’d just come off a job as a lumberjack. His hair was long and unkempt, and he wore a beard that nearly obscured the entire bottom half of his face.

  Rick pulled himself to his feet. “I’m sorry, you can’t come in—”

  “I’m Beau,” the man announced, still holding his hand out for Rick to shake. “Your brother. I’m thinking you might have a job for me.”

  ~

  Four hours later, Rick walked in the big wooden door of his mother’s house and found her in the kitchen, nursing a martini at the breakfast bar. A pot of green chiles and a pot of pinto beans were cooking on the stove, and Rick could smell carnitas browning in the oven. His mother must have suspected that he wanted to discuss something fairly contentious if she was fixing him his favorite food.

  “Hi dear!” she called out with prophylactic sweetness. He wondered if she thought it would work: by being especially nice to him, she could shield herself against his anger.

  “How is Amy?” she trilled, leaning forward for a kiss.

  “Why do you ask about Amy?” He ignored her cheek and kept his distance.

  “Because I like her.” His mother’s back straightened, and he saw her quickly adjust her attitude to match his. As usual, she would be ready to engage in any battle he wanted to wage. “Although she has a bit of a temper. But then, you probably know that already.”

  “And you met with her recently, right?”

  “Yes, I did. We had coffee.”

  “I guess you told her about my father. But, whatever else you told her, it apparently convinced her she had to leave. She quit today.”

  “Well, that wasn’t my intention!”

  “What did you intend?”

  “Nothing! She called me and asked if I would meet her for coffee. It seemed like a perfectly innocent thing to do. She asked me why you couldn’t work with women, and I told her I thought it had something to do with your father leaving us. I have always known you blamed that on me. That’s no secret.”

  “You are right about that.”

  “So, Amy must have figured she wasn’t going to change you.”

  “No one is going to change me. And the reason she left was because I wouldn’t let her engineer a takeover of my company,” Rick said, finally sitting down at the bar across from his mother. “She was even using sex with me as a way to weaken my defenses.”

  “Oh, that is absurd,” his mother retorted. “She quite clearly loves you.”

  “No, mother. That’s absurd!”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk about tonight? You wanted to yell at me because Amy left? Did you want my advice, or did you just want to accuse me of interfering? I don’t see where this is going.”

  Rick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The moist odor of carnitas filled his lungs. “Yes,” he said. “That was what I wanted to talk about, although now that we’ve gotten into it, I don’t see where I thought it would lead. And, I’m sorry to say, I think we have bigger problems on the horizon.”

  “We? We have problems?”

  “Today a man who calls himself Beau D’Matrio showed up in my office looking for a job.”

  His mother sat up straighter and grabbed her mouth and chin with one hand.

  “I’m guessing from that reaction that you are not surprised that I have a brother—or a half-brother, I guess. When were you going to tell me about this?”

  Janet stood up and reached for Rick’s hand. He pulled it away, but she grabbed it and held on.

  “Let’s go sit down someplace comfortable,” she said, reaching over to turn off the oven. “This is going to be a long story.”

  ~

  “There was a time when I loved your father as much as Amy loves you,” she started after leading Rick to one of the big leather couches in the living room.

  Rick brushed off the suggestion with a dismissive wave.

  “But,” she continued, “he never really settled into the marriage. Perhaps it was the exclusively male cohort he worked with—union guys, other contractors, state and county highway officials, you know, the guys I work with today. Or perhaps his nature just wasn’t monogamist. Whatever the cause, as I started managing more and more of the business, he took more and more time out of the office. At first, I thought it was just PR, you know—doing public relations on his feet. He was gregarious, you know. Very good at meeting people. He could talk to anyone about anything: Schopenhauer or what brand of beer cans he found in the ditch.”

  Rick had a vague memory of his father at a baseball game, his back turned toward his son as he pumped the arms of big men seated all around them. He knew his mother was right; his father never met a stranger.

  “Then, it went from PR on his feet to long lunches, and then to long lunches with martinis, and then …” She paused. “It hurt so much back then because I still loved him so much. He wouldn’t come back to work for hours. Finally, it got to the point that once he left about eleven in the morning, I knew he was done for the day. I thought he was just going home to sleep it off, but he wasn’t going home. First it was Al’s wife, then Ron’s secretary, then it stopped mattering who it was. It was as if the alcohol and the sex were parts of the same addiction—an addiction he couldn’t satisfy at home.

  “Finally, I had started to understand what was happening, but I was so busy running the business, I made a deal with the devil. As long as he w
as always there for you when you got home from school, I would let his philandering go. By then, I had stopped loving him anyway, and if he never touched me again, I was better off. But then one day, Julie showed up at my door with little Beau on her hip and demanded money.”

  By the time his mother had reached that point of her story, Rick was already feeling adrift—unmoored at least from the world he thought he had known. He sat, wordless and trying to remember his father, but his brother’s brand-new visage kept blocking his memory.

  “So, you didn’t kick him out,” he mumbled.

  “No, I kicked him out. But first, I gave him a choice, and he chose Julie and Beau. He chose them over me and you and the business, and I never wanted to tell you that.”

  If that was true, then Rick knew he had years of assumptions and decisions and attitudes to rethink. If his mother hadn’t forced his father out, then he had built a bulkhead against an enemy that didn’t exist: the venomous, acquisitive, lecherous female executive. Could he get rid of it? Did he even want to?

  “Does Elaine know any of this?” he asked. Surely working closely with his mother, his sister had to have learned the story long ago.

  “Yes,” Janet said. “She’s known since high school. She was too young when he left to have revered him the way you did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You had already lost your father. I didn’t want you to hate him too.”

  “But if I had known, maybe I wouldn’t have started Buen Dia,” he said. “Maybe I would have come to work for you.”

  “And what a shame that would have been, Rick. Heavy road construction is hard and complicated but in the end, it’s just engineering. It’s boring work. It’s fine for your sister and me. We’re not the creative types. But if you had joined the company, Buen Dia and all those beautiful projects you’ve done never would have happened.”

  “Is that why you continued to lie to me about why dad left? You didn’t want me in the company?”