“Glad you’re here, boss,” Dez said. “We were running out of chairs! And hey, Mister D. How are you?”
Mister D, thanks to Jordan, was beginning to make its rounds as the affectionate name the younger set, at least those close to the Grants, called him. He liked it. “I’m good. How are you?”
“Busy this morning.” She motioned her head toward the three ladies, or the three biddies as she inwardly called them. “Very busy.”
Shantel had already stood on her feet, her finger twirling around the collar of the lightweight jacket she held in her hands, and she waited to get Kari’s attention.
But the three biddies had risen to their feet, too, and were not accustomed to waiting their turn. “Miss Grant, how wonderful to see you this fine morning!” That was Florence, the leader. Kari knew all three women well.
“Good morning,” Kari said.
“And Mr. Drakos,” Florence said, “how nice to see you again.”
Alex gave a slight smile, but he was generally very mistrustful of the locals in Apple Valley. They treated Kari horribly, from what he knew to be true, but they acted as if she was their best friend whenever he was around. He didn’t like fake. He didn’t care for them.
Kari didn’t care for them, either, and her attention, automatically, went to her employee. “What’s wrong, Shantel? Why aren’t you at your assignment?”
“I was there, but Teresa made me leave. She said she didn’t need me today. But I can’t lose a whole day’s pay, Kari.”
“You told her that?”
“Yeah, I told her! But she didn’t wanna hear that. She’s been acting like she running this whole thing ever since you’ve been in New York.”
“She ain’t lying, either,” Dez said. “I had to give that sister a piece of my mine too when she was trying to boss me. I said ‘wait a minute. Hold the hell up. You’re my boss since when?’ She backed off then, I’ll bet cha. But Shantel can’t go in like that on her. She called me, and I told her to come talk to you.”
“And that’s why I’m here,” Shantel said.
Kari didn’t need this headache her first day back, but she knew this was only the beginning. She had a small operation. When something went wrong, it festered until she could make it right. She made her way behind her desk.
Alex, for his part, sat on the window seat of the small front window, stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles, and folded his arms. And watched his woman at work.
Kari didn’t know he was watching her, but she knew those three biddies were. The sooner she got rid of them, she felt, the better. “How can I help you ladies?” she asked as she searched her Rolodex for Teresa’s cell number.
Florence waited for Kari to look at her and give her some undivided attention. Kari, however, ignored her wait. Alex was inwardly pleased. For some reason those town leaders acted as if the world revolved around them. Why they felt that way was a mystery to him. But their arrogance was real.
Kari found Teresa’s number, removed her desk phone receiver and sat it on her desk, and dialed the number. “What’s that again?” she asked Florence without looking up.
Alex watched as Florence glanced at her two partners, and then placed one hand over her other hand in front of her. She wasn’t pleased. “We’ll wait until you finish your phone call,” she said.
Kari, after dialing the number, placed the call on Speaker, for Shantel’s benefit and waited for a pick up on the other end. As she waited, she looked at Florence as if she wasn’t about to let that woman bother her. “What is it you want, Flo?” she asked her.
Now that Kari was actually looking at Florence, Florence felt she could respond. “We’re here on behalf of,” she started, but then Teresa answered the phone.
“Teresa, hey, it’s Kari.”
“Hey, Kare, welcome back!”
“Thank you. I have you on speaker, T. Shantel’s in my office with some concerns she has.”
“In your office? No that heifer didn’t go running to you.”
“I’m not a heifer!” Shantel shot back. “And I went to my boss, my real boss, for assistance. That’s what we’re supposed to do!”
“What’s going on, T?” Kari asked over the phone. “Why isn’t she needed onsite?”
“Because we got it. We work better without her and all her complaints. That’s why.”
Kari frowned. “You work better without her? What is that supposed to mean?”
“I like the crew we have. She’s slower than we are and she gets on our nerves with all of her criticisms, as if she knows better than everybody else. She wouldn’t do it this way, she’d do it that way. She wouldn’t say it this way, she’d say it that way. Nobody wants that negative energy around them all day long, Kari. She likes tearing people down to build herself up. We ain’t with that. We work better without her.”
“Now you listen to me,” Kari said. “You don’t dictate who works on site, you hear me, T? That’s not your job. If you have a complaint, you register it, but you don’t remove anybody. She’s going back there and you, nor any of the other ladies, will be harassing her. Got me?”
There was a hesitation, but then a, “yes, ma’am.”
“She’s on her way back. And she won’t be docked a penny for today because she showed up to work this morning exactly as she was supposed to. You, on the other hand, because you dismissed her without having the authority to do so, will be docked for the time she missed.”
“Me?” Teresa sounded stunned. Even Alex was surprised by that move.
But Kari was firm. If she didn’t make Teresa accountable for her decisions, she’d continue to make bad ones. “Yes you,” she said.
“But I can’t afford to lose a dime of my pay check!”
“You should have thought about that before you tried to take dimes from hers. I don’t play that out-of-order shit, and you were out of order. She’s on her way,” Kari added, and then ended the call.
Shantel smiled. “Thanks, Kari.”
But Kari had a warning for Shantel too. “Don’t go on that job rubbing that shit in,” she warned her. “Or you’ll get docked too.”
“Don’t worry,” Shantel said with a smile.
“And cut out all that negative talk. T’s right. Nobody wants to hear all that. Because if I find out you’re still doing it, I will get rid of you. Understand, Shantel?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. And I’ll keep my mouth shut. I just want to make those coins and go on about my business. I ain’t thinking about Teresa or none of the rest of them, either! Thanks, Dez,” she added, and hurried out of the office.
Then Kari sat down and gave Florence and the ladies her undivided attention. “What’s this about?”
“As I was about to say,” Florence said, congratulations on your engagement, first of all,” she said, and the other ladies gave their congrats too.
Kari did smile. “Thank you,” she said to them all. “Thank you very much.” A couple of them looked back at Alex and smiled, too. Alex nodded, but did not smile. He was too curious to know what they really wanted.
Kari was too, but she waited for Florence to continue.
“We have come here, to your office, bearing gifts. The gift, the magnificent gift, of membership.”
Alex looked at Kari. Would she take the bait?
But Kari was confused. “Sorry? Membership in what?”
“In our organization,” Florence said as if it should have been obvious. “We have selected you as the newest, and youngest I might add, member of the prestigious Greater Apple Valley Steering Committee!” She smiled. “Aren’t you honored?”
Dez rolled her eyes and looked at Alex. But Alex, she realized, was still staring at Kari.
“Let me get this straight,” Kari said. “You want me on your committee?”
“As president of the group, yes. I’m happy to have you!”
“Since when?”
Florence looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Since when, Flo?” Kari asked. “
When I asked to join your committee just last year, because I wanted to be of service in my community, you blocked me. You said no way. You said I wasn’t qualified to be a member. You said I wasn’t, how did you put it, cultured enough to be a member. What changed since just last year?”
Dez knew what changed, and she immediately, and playfully lobbed her head from one side to Alex’s side, looking at Alex.
“But you’re a businesswoman in town,” Florence said.
“I was a businesswoman in town last year too,” said Kari.
“But . . . What are you saying, Kari? You don’t wish to join us? Surely you aren’t saying that!”
“Surely I am saying that. I mean come on now! You treat me like dirt every time you run into me around here. When my son got arrested on that bullshit charge that time, you were one of the main people giving us grief. But now that I’m engaged to Alex Drakos, everything’s changed? I’m suddenly this upstanding citizen you want on your team? Please. I’d rather join the KKK.”
“Which is probably what you’d be joining if you hook up with them,” Dez said.
All three biddies, wholly offended, looked at Dez. “Aren’t you the help?” one of them asked.
“Stay in your place,” said another one: the black one.
“Whatever sell out,” said Dez dismissively to the sister.
The black member was about to ding Dez back. The nerve! But Kari cut her off. “Okay, ladies,” she said, rising to her feet, “you’ve wasted enough of my time. The answer is no.”
“No?” asked Florence. “You can’t be serious! You’re turning down the chance of a lifetime?”
“No, I’m not,” said Kari. “I’m turning down you. Now get out of my office.”
“You don’t want to make an enemy out of me, Kari Grant,” Florence said angrily. “I can make life in Apple Valley very difficult for you.”
“Bitch how?” Kari had a fixed frown on her face. “By lying on me and telling all of your stick-up-their-asses friends not to associate with me? Well guess what? They don’t associate with me anyway! You won’t be telling them to do anything they aren’t already doing. Just get out of my office with your bullshit offer, and stay out!”
Florence gave her another look of umbrage, but she had no choice: she and the other two ladies left.
Alex was impressed. “Good handle,” he said.
But Kari was still hot. She grabbed her purse. “I’ll be back, Dez,” she said as she moved from around her desk. “Come on, Alex.”
Anybody telling Alex what to do was as foreign to him as Japanese, but he stood from the window seat at Kari’s command. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“To get my Rolls,” said Kari. “I’m about to parade that motherfucker all up and down these streets like it’s nobody’s business. I’m tired of people like them putting people like me in boxes, and our stupid asses let them! Not me. Not anymore. I’m going to live my life and to hell with what they think!”
“Preach!” yelled Dez. “Yazz!”
“And I wish a cop would stop me because I have the audacity to be black and driving a good car,” Kari continued, ignoring Dez’s exuberance. “That’s what they want! They want us scared and cowering in corners. But last I looked this was still America, I’m still American, and I’m going for it.” She looked Alex dead in his stern blue eyes when she made it to his side. “I’m going for it,” she said with blazing brown eyes of her own.
Alex nodded his head. “Good,” he said. “I’m going with you.”
Kari inwardly smiled. She had one powerful man in her corner. But even if he hadn’t been there, she knew she would still take on the fight. Long before Alex came along, fight, many times, was all she had.
They left her office together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Finally, Jordan thought as he, Alex, and his mother sat around the kitchen table planning the wedding. They were actually planning the wedding! Alex sat the parameters: set the date. Pick the venue. He would take care of the rest. It was like a dream come true for Jordan and his mother.
Setting the date was the easy part. They decided on two months from that day, which, Kari felt, would be pushing it majorly, but it was at least doable. But the venue was another matter. That was the hard part.
“What about Las Vegas?” Jordan asked as he thumbed through various locations on his cellphone. He wore his glasses because he could see the text better with them on. “Dommi Gabrini’s father has this boss hotel with the most magnificent ballroom I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s a good idea, Jordan,” Kari said. “And since you know Reno Gabrini like that, Alex, we might be able to rent it for a cut rate.”
Alex laughed and Jordan hit his forehead. “Ma, quit!” he said. “Why are you always worrying about the cost? You’re marrying a billionaire, not Ray-Ray Jones from up the street! Ray-Ray, yes, would probably need the cut rate. But Alex Drakos? Not so much!”
Kari couldn’t help but smile too. “I just don’t think we need to spend extra money if we don’t have to, that’s the only point I was making. Rich people go broke, too, you know.”
“Now that’s true,” Alex said, nodding his head and defending Kari.
“Are you saying you could go broke?” Jordan asked him.
“No, I’m not saying that,” Alex said, and he and Jordan laughed.
The doorbell rang as they continued to laugh. “I’ll get it,” Jordan said and hurried to answer it.
But Alex was on his feet. “Don’t open that door if you don’t know who it is,” he said as he followed behind Jordan. Kari watched him reach inside his suit coat, as if he was getting his gun ready for battle, and that unnerved her a little bit. Ever since Virginia she’d been shaky like that, and that wasn’t even the worse thing she’d experienced that week! That shootout in Moscow was more dangerous. But Jordan wasn’t in danger with her in Moscow. He was in Virginia.
When the door was opened, and she heard Oz’s big, booming voice, she relaxed. Alex did, too, and went back to the table with Kari.
“Welcome to Apple Valley, Oz,” Jordan said with a smile and in stepped Oz and his oversized personality. As usual, he was over-dressed too, this time in a blue periwinkle suit, a cream-colored overcoat, and a matching hat and gloves. He, Jordan felt, would fit right in in Vegas. But Apple Valley? Not so much!
But Oz wasn’t alone. “Who do we have here?” Jordan asked, checking out the beautiful redhead on Oz’s arm.
“This, my young friend,” Oz said, “is American beauty.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Beauty,” Jordan said, and the woman burst into a laugh so loud that even Jordan wanted to tell her to pipe it down a little.
Kari smiled and shook her head, and she and Alex looked at each other. “Oz and his airheads strike again,” Alex said.
“Come on in,” Jordan said, closed and locked the door, and then he escorted both Oz and his lady to the kitchen.
They all could hear the woman, who called herself whispering to Oz, diss Kari’s home. “I thought you said your brother was a billionaire,” she said to Oz. “This house crapier than mine.”
“Crapier is it?” Oz asked, and he and Jordan shared a smile.
“College graduate, are you, Miss Beauty?” Jordan asked.
She had enough sense to hear a putdown when she heard one. “No, four eyes, are you?”
“Damn, Jordan!” Oz said with a laugh. “You’ve got to up your game player!”
Jordan smiled, too, and they all made it to the table.
“This is the lady of the house, Kari Grant,” Oz said, and the woman laughed again.
“You joke too much,” she said to Oz.
But Oz didn’t get it. “What joke?”
“You called that lady Cary Grant. She looks nothing like Cary Grant!”
Oz was lost. He had no idea what the woman was talking about. But Kari knew. “I get that a lot,” she said.
“Oh,” the woman said. “That’s your real name?”
/> “I’m afraid so, yes.”
“I am so sorry! I thought Oz was joking. He’s such a kidder.”
“Yes, he is,” Kari said. “But no joke. That’s my name.”
“At least for now,” Oz said. “She and my brother are engaged.”
“But Ma’s going to keep her last name too. She’s going to hyphenate it.”
“You mean Grant-Drakos?” Oz asked. “I doubt if my brother will stand for that.”
Kari and Jordan looked at Alex. Kari had not, as yet, discussed it with him, and he was not about to give his answer right then and there. He said nothing.
“That silent one,” Oz said to his date, “is the brother I told you about. The great Alex Drakos.”
Alex rolled his eyes and the woman laughed again. “Nice to meet you,” he said as he rose slightly and shook her hand. “Have a seat, please.”
“Thank you,” she said, and Oz and the woman sat at the table. With no chairs left, Jordan pulled up a stool from the center island.
“So, what’s your name?” Kari asked.
Jordan was about to tell them what he called her, but his mother stopped him. “Don’t even try it,” she said.
“This is my lady friend,” Oz said, “Mandy.”
“Brandy,” his lady friend corrected him with a little anger in her voice.
“I mean Brandy,” Oz said. “Sorry.”
“It’s good to meet you, Brandy. Are you from around here?”
“Pensacola,” Brandy said.
“Really? How did you guys meet?”
“I told my driver, instead of bringing me straight here, to take me where the hot girls are. He took me to this club in Pensacola.”
“There’s plenty hot girls in Apple Valley,” Jordan said. “Girls like my mother.”
Brandy laughed. “Boy please,” she said. “Your mother is not hot!”
Oz looked at Brandy as if she were nuts. Alex didn’t like it, either, and looked at Kari. Jordan was looking at Kari too.
But Kari smiled and shook her head. “Ain’t that the truth,” she said, as if it wasn’t an insult to her at all. “Where in Pensacola do you live?” she asked Brandy.
And as Brandy answered, Alex placed his hand around Kari’s chair. That was why he loved her. She kept it moving. It seemed as if people made it their business to diss her every turn they could, and she made it her business to take it in stride and keep it moving. But he wasn’t about to let that dig go unchallenged.
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