Brave (Contours of the Heart Book 4)

by Tammara Webber

  “I’m confident we can get the Hooper project on track.”

  “It sounds as if you’re psychoanalyzing our clients,” Isaac Maat said.

  I gave a cursory, faintly guilty shrug. “Figuring out who people really are and assessing their inner workings is my strength. I might as well use it to do my job.”

  He looked dumbfounded. And more distrustful than ever. His left hand was a tight fist, as though his state of mind was held constrained within its grip, and he drummed a pen on a blank notepad with his right. Tap tap tap. He noticed me looking, dropped the pen, and loosened his fist, but his chin was still tucked low like a grouchy turtle. As if I’d verbalized that thought, his chin popped up and out. His whole body was poised for conflict.

  Maybe because I was staring at every move he made. I began to inspect his office instead, giving him time to unwind and hoping for clues to why he didn’t want me here—aside from the obvious.

  “So, Wharton MBA, huh?” I commented.

  “Hank tell you that?” The words rang subtly, like a curbed accusation.

  I pointed over his shoulder where his diploma—in all its triple-matted, professionally framed glory—hung. His magna cum laude architectural undergraduate degree hung just below it in a matching gilded frame, the archival mats Pantone-matched to the schools represented.

  “Ah,” he said, caught off guard. “I forgot that was there.”

  “That’s pretty impressive.”

  “Does that surprise you?” he asked, his words low but snapping like hot oil.

  Holy banana nuts—what had I said now? “Why should it?”

  “Why remark on it, then?”

  “I was trying to make conversation. Futile endeavor, I guess.” I rose and stomped toward the door, muttering, “I withdraw the commendation.” As I reached his doorway, the implicit meaning behind his comments became appallingly clear. “Wait.” I turned. “Was that some sort of assumption of micro—what’s it—microaggression? Like, a racial thing? Because I’m not like that. I don’t think like that. You don’t even know me!”

  My anger dissipated before I stepped foot into my office, to be replaced by unanticipated insights into my supervisor, and right on the heels of those, nagging questions. Had I meant it like that? Even if I didn’t see it?

  I’d never known anyone who went to Wharton, though Christina—my studious chore of a roommate for the past two years—had mentioned it once, when we were still on limited speaking terms. Our rare conversations had been ninety-five percent me asking questions that she answered with barely veiled annoyance and five percent stuff like “Excuse me,” necessitated by the cramped shared quarters. She had never inquired about my life, goals, or relationships. I’d been evaluated as deficient the moment we met—chirpy, airheaded sorority girl—and her initial estimation never changed. Senior year, I hung out at the Chi-O house to study and socialize, and our dorm room became little more than the place I slept and kept my stuff.

  In a singular show of insecurity during junior year, she’d confessed her first choice for grad school, Wharton, and her concern about being accepted. “I’ll have to work for two or three years after graduation before even applying—something innovative and distinctive that will stand out to the graduate committee—or I’ll never get in.”

  I knew her grades were stellar; I’d once overheard her tell someone that she’d had “another” 4.0 semester, and her tone was more blasé than thrilled. The fact that she had fretted about getting into Wharton left me with the impression that it was a top-tier school, but that was all I knew about it.

  I considered my father’s company a last-ditch springboard for me to ever go on to be anything, yet here was this guy with an MBA from a big-deal university, working at a Podunk construction company. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Podunk. We did build multimillion-dollar mansions. But still—why would anyone be here, with a degree that could open doors anywhere? Not to mention his with-honors degree in architecture.

  He’d identified my amazed response correctly, but not the reason behind it. I’d told him he didn’t know me, but the truth was I knew as little or less about him. Those degrees and our combative exchange told me two things though. He was brilliant, even if his social skills needed some serious work. And he was defensive about being a highly educated black man.

  Defensiveness is often rooted in fact, and I got the feeling that Isaac Maat relied heavily on facts. Either he’d experienced racism personally or knew he was susceptible to racial prejudice because he’d observed it firsthand. I considered the possibility that he’d encountered it here, in my father’s company. From Joshua Swearingen, maybe, with his “uppity” comment and his unjustified grandstanding posture.

  From me, when I appeared to be surprised that he’d earned a degree from Wharton. That wasn’t what had surprised me, but he couldn’t know that.

  He was defensive because he had to be. Anything could resemble an affront because anything could be an affront.

  After my sorority sister, Mindi, was sexually assaulted at a frat party, a restraining order and even her rapist’s eventual incarceration wasn’t enough to quell her disquiet, because the threat wasn’t confined to him. Once she was aware that evil could exist in plain sight—in a place she’d felt safe, in the guise of someone she’d trusted—she knew it could lie in wait anywhere. Every shadow on the wall was a potential menace, and if the danger turned out to be real, survival depended on an immediate, suitable response. Her personality around guys went from convivial to cagey in the space of that one night. Now, after almost three years, she’d made transformative progress, but she would never be that trusting, bubbly girl she had been.

  My mindless reaction to Isaac’s response—my own defensiveness—had done nothing to alleviate the perceived offense. I’d only made it worse. With my training, I should have recognized his reaction for what it was. I should have known better, but where Isaac Maat was concerned, I couldn’t think straight.

  Sounds like a personal problem, as my brother Pax would say.

  When I’d agreed to work for Daddy and Hank, the last thing I’d expected was a supervisor so blazing hot I just wanted to stare at him. He was what—twenty-eight, thirty? He could have at least had a little gut going on, for chrissake. Hair loss? Dry skin?

  Freshman year, I had compared life-with-brothers notes with my lab partner. She’d had to teach her skin-care-clueless sibling how to exfoliate. “Him and his cheap soap and ‘moisturizer is for girls’ foolishness, taking twenty-minute, use-all-the-hot-water showers. He looked like the black undead, I swear to God.”

  I’d snorted. “Brothers and their long showers. Like—we know what you’re doing in there. Ugh.”

  “Right?” She’d laughed. “Boys are so nasty. It’s a miracle any girl with brothers ever wants a man at all.”

  Isaac Maat’s chestnut-toned skin had no trace of undeadness, and his stomach looked flat in his fitted dress shirts, which strained across his wide, rounded-with-lean-muscle shoulders just enough to flaunt the chiseled definition underneath. Even his hands were a perfect balance of rugged and refined—as he was tapping his pen with irritation. At me.

  He’d seemed appalled that I was psychoanalyzing our clients, which made no sense considering the fact that it appeared to be working. I wasn’t doing anything I hadn’t done my whole life—encouraging people to talk to me, to like me, making them happy so I got what I wanted, whether that was a better grade, a social invitation, or the loan of a pair of killer boots. I simply observed people’s fears and insecurities and quirks, drew conclusions about what they wanted, and then I gave it to them—or didn’t, depending on my objective. Admittedly, some—like Christina—were so resistant to forming attachments that there was no altering their initial reserve. I wondered if Isaac was like that.

  Maybe he thought I was analyzing him? He was my boss, but my father owned the company that employed him. That had to be awkward but didn’t account for his unease over my opinion of him, unless he though
t I would go crying to my daddy if I got sulky. Which I would not do, but he didn’t know that.

  “I owe you an apology.” I stood in his doorway, hands loosely laced in front of me. “I made that about me, and it wasn’t about me. Or it was, but I shouldn’t have made assumptions or taken offense like that. I’m sorry.” He watched me, deconstructing my words to extract the truth or deceit in them, perhaps. I moved into his office and lowered my voice. “The thing is, I’ve grown up with Jeffrey McIntyre Custom Homes. I know it’s a successful company and it makes total sense for you to work here. But I know just enough about Wharton to wonder why you do.”

  “I don’t follow,” he said, but then he seemed to understand. “Are you saying you think I’m too educated to work for your father’s company?”

  “That’s not what I—” I stopped. Only honesty would work here. “Okay, yeah, I guess that’s what I meant. But—”

  “I took the job I could find at the tail end of an economic recession—a downturn based on a rupture in the housing market. Just because you and your brother landed well-paying jobs through no personal effort of your own doesn’t mean the rest of us get that opportunity, Ms. McIntyre.”

  Ouch. “You’re right, of course.” I nodded and backed toward the door, volcanic insecurities erupting from the accuracy of his words. “I’m just gonna go contact the next client.”

  “Wait,” he said, and I froze two steps from the door. “You didn’t finish giving me the details about the Hooper project.”

  “Oh.” I straightened my posture and cleared my throat like a kid giving a book report, trying not to fidget under the teacher’s gaze. “Where was I?”

  “You were psychoanalyzing the client.”

  Iris Hooper had been unreceptive at first, but I’d pretended I didn’t notice. “Many clients who travel full-time are less confident in their spouse’s judgment so they check up on every detail, micromanaging from afar. We turn into amateur marriage counselors just to get their house built. Ha, ha.”

  “My husband hasn’t called you—?” she began.

  “No.” I suspected the primary conflict might not be confined to the home build. I was prepared to hold her hand until the project was done if I had to, but I hoped to actually help her. I inched out on a limb. “Perhaps he just worries that you’ll think he’s not contributing if he doesn’t give feedback?”

  She sighed. “Maybe?”

  We went over the items at issue. That activity, coupled with a little positive feedback, proved that as long as she ignored how or why her spouse might object she had no problem identifying what she wanted.

  “Well?” Isaac asked now.

  “I’m going to work with her on trusting her gut and sticking to her decisions.”

  One eyebrow rose. “You’re going to ‘work with her.’ How, exactly?”

  I shrugged one shoulder and he rolled his eyes and tapped his pen.

  “I can do this. Just… trust me.” I was floored by how much I needed his trust. “I know I’m not what you imagined for this position.” My chin rose a fraction of an inch. Acknowledging that I knew he hadn’t wanted me here was mortifying, but I persisted. “But this company is my father’s baby. He built it from the ground up. I wouldn’t do something stupid and cause problems for him. I want to do a good job, I swear. So I’m just going to believe you’re willing to reconsider your incorrect preconceptions about me. And… I’m sorry for any I had about you. Maybe we can start over from here?”

  His assessment was guarded, searching my face for clues while giving nothing away, but he was diplomatic, if reluctant. “All right.”

  I left before he could rethink it.

  chapter

  Seven

  Since I was working with Iris Hooper every other day while trying to keep her project foreman—my lughead of a brother—from crossing paths with her at all, I decided to dispatch a few of the low-priority, yellow-tabbed clients.

  Some of those were nitpicking, trifling specifics like an outlet placed a foot farther left than they thought it should go or cabinet hardware that looked a shade darker than they recalled. With clients like that, I indicated on their contract where they’d signed off on said outlet or knob finish and then explained the cost they would incur and the amount of damage it might cause to alter the original, agreed-upon plan. I exaggerated a bit for effect when required.

  When those efforts failed or a client had an understandable complaint about work done shoddily or incorrectly or not at all, I worked with them to order the changes. That often meant shielding them from construction division wrath and reminding foremen in particular that if we (he) had screwed up or the client was paying to have something changed, it was part of his job to make the change without going into a man-baby sulk. (The man-baby was Leo four times out of five. Shocking.) Alarmed that my brother had his big, dumbass hand in so many of our miffed to hopping-mad client files, it was all I could do not to tattle on him. Nose to nose over a mistake one of his subcontractors had made in the Hooper’s kitchen, I made that very threat, which worked as well now as it had when we were five and fifteen.

  By the end of my first month, I felt like I was doing work that mattered to my father’s company. Work that no one had been able to do before I arrived. I grew more confident with every mollified or downright delighted homebuyer. The green-tabbed client list grew, and with it my cockiness. My parents hadn’t believed in my ability to use my powers of negotiation and persuasion for anything but getting my own way, but I was kicking ass and carrying my own weight. Joshua had confided that Cynthia Pike wanted to steal me for the sales team.

  I’d declined. I had come to relish the way Isaac Maat’s jaw hardened when he knew my psychoanalytical mumbo-jumbo had resulted in another satisfied client. Not that he wanted disgruntled clients, he just didn’t want me to be right, especially when it made him wrong. He never stated any of that explicitly—his body language and facial tics spoke for him.

  Being right became my new favorite thing.

  No surprise then that when my comeuppance came, it didn’t blow in gently—a storm moving in from the horizon that gives you time to batten the hatches and soften the damage. Oh no. It was the thin funnel of a tornado at the moment it descends from the sky like an accusatory finger—dooming one unfortunate structure to wreckage and leaving another intact. There was no moderating the devastation, though I couldn’t say there was no foreseeing it had I not been drunk with my own success.

  I just wish it had been an actual tornado so it could have been an act of God and not an act of Erin.

  The Andersons had never been cause for concern. Recently retired, with West Texas oil money out the ass, they were “downsizing” to a six-thousand-square-foot, five-bedroom home with a meticulously landscaped garden for her to putter in and an air-conditioned, eight-car garage to house his vintage sports car collection. They could have been a perpetual pain in the ass. But all through the design phase, they were model clients, deferring to their architect’s expertise with a balanced amount of trust and involvement. Likewise, their build had moved along beautifully until they wanted permission to make an artistic modification just before the house was complete.

  A world-renowned artist was in the area for an exhibit of his early work at The Modern, and somehow they’d managed to get him to agree to paint a mural on their towering great room wall, which they technically wouldn’t own until August. When their request was summarily denied—clients were never allowed to make non-JMCH customizations to the property until they owned it—they dug in their heels. As days passed, they began calling or emailing every day and were beginning to rumble to Cynthia about making their complaint public.

  During the weekly planning meeting, Uncle Hank didn’t seem worried. “We’re just following the rules in their contract. There’s no valid grievance to make public.”

  “Sheila Anderson is a piranha in a sweet-little-old-lady pantsuit from Neiman’s,” Cynthia said. “She was an executive editor for the Star Tele
gram in her former life. Those warning shots aren’t blanks.” She passed me the file. “Work your magic, Erin!”

  I caught Isaac’s furtive eye-roll though he pretended to concentrate on flicking a crumb from his cuff-linked shirtsleeve in an effort to hide it. When he glanced up, I stared straight into his insufficiently stunned face and said, “Done!”

  As though I would reach into my oversized bag, pluck out a wand wrapped in enchanted unicorn mane and glitter, wave it around a bit, and poof, obstacle dissolved. I think my dumb ass half believed my own mythical hype as the Cranky Client Wrangler.

  When I contacted them, Harold Anderson harrumphed and handed the call off to his wife.

  She was all charm, sensing the probability that someone with the title Client Liaison could be persuaded to her side of the dispute. “His work is ahh-mazing and highly distinguished! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us and for McIntyre Homes! He’s legendary, and a friend of a friend, you know.”

  I didn’t know, nor did I have a clue who this legendary guy was, but I googled him and was duly impressed. My brother and everyone else at JMCH, not so much.

  “He’s never even had an exhibition in Texas before and may never again! He’s returning to Stockholm in three weeks, and we aren’t set to close until mid-August!” Sheila Anderson had contagious enthusiasm. “Surely these are the sort of extenuating circumstances calling for laxity in the usual policy?”

  I tried to resist, I swear.

  “Well,” I said, not indifferent to her cause and aware what a coup it would be to include images of that room’s incredible focal point on the JMCH website and in future promotional brochures. She seized my Well and made it as close to a yes as a word that is not yes could be.

  “Hurrah! I just knew if I could find a fellow devotee of art and culture that he or she would champion our cause with management!”