Low Sided
Page 25
It was a real odd situation, this whole job. The buyer’s agent had reached out to me for one – which that almost never happened and after meeting the current homeowner, I understood why.
She wasn’t interested in anything except getting her money, period. Gold digging hooker. She’d even had the nerve to get up in my face about shit and I was fuckin’ trying to help her ass – giving her options. Not my fault she wanted top-tier everything at bargain basement prices. That wasn’t how this fucking shit worked.
“Jared?” a female voice called from upstairs, and I frowned and looked at my watch.
“Yeah, just a sec!” I called back.
“Holly?” Mace asked.
“Sounds like it, also sounds like she’s early.”
“Fuckin’ great.”
I huffed a laugh and slapped him on the back.
“Time to be the bearer of bad news,” I said and turned toward the stairs. Holly was the buyer’s agent – and thus, she was on our side.
“Hey, Holly,” I said as I came up the stairs.
Holly was the quintessential bubbly blonde, buxom, too – which I could appreciate both. She blinked wide blue eyes at me and said, “Uh oh, you don’t look happy. Homeowner or…?”
That was the other thing I appreciated about Holly – she was sharp as a tack. Today, that worked against me, some.
“I don’t know yet, give me half a second here,” I said and went over to the kitchen counter. That was the one thing they’d done right in this place – or at least on the surface. Granite countertops, gleaming white cabinetry, and brick facing for the backsplash, the kitchen looked sharp all except for the shitty, half-assed paint job in the same unrelieved gray throughout the whole fucking house.
I swear to God, the woman selling this place was painfully fuckin’ cheap. She probably had her fuckin’ kids paint the place.
Holly waited while I flipped through like the fifty-four-page printout that the fuckin’ inspector had handed her on the house. Yeah, it seemed like a lot, but a lot of it was penny ante shit. Nothing to write home about when just about every fuckin’ house in the history of ever had the same shit going on.
I tapped the third page and said, “Gah…”
“What is it?” Holly asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Your guy was maybe a little too thorough. Yhis is a problem that really needs to be addressed but he’s got so much penny ante shit packed into this report it got overlooked.”
“Oh no,” Holly said dismayed. “Show me.”
I took her down into the basement and showed her she covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head.
“Jared this is really bad… the negotiations have been made, and the contract has been signed, how immediate of a repair is this?” she asked.
“It’s bad,” I agreed. “It really shouldn’t wait.”
“How much are we looking at, though?” she asked.
“There’s the good news,” I said with a sigh. “I mean, I could do it for…” I ran the calculations through my brain and shrugged. “Five-seventy-five, maybe.”
Holly let out her breath in a woosh. “Okay, that’s not completely awful, but Jared I don’t know if my client can do it,” she said. She looked worried, and that was weird. Like, who was this woman that was buying that Holly was this invested?
“What’s going on, Hols?” I asked her.
“She’s a really nice lady,” Holly said with a sigh. “And she’s really been through it. Single mom, husband left her and tried to leave her cold. It’s just her and her son and she got a job out here, but they weren’t going to pay for her relocation fees. She’s spent just about everything she’s had on securing this house and of course we get so far into the process and the woman that owns this place—” I raised my hand to stop her.
“Say no more on that last one,” I said.
Holly looked at her watch and said, “She’s supposed to be here any minute.”
“The seller?” I asked. “Or the buyer?”
“Oh, God no! The buyer! The seller was warned away from the walk through. My client doesn’t want to have anything to do with her, she’s been jerked around so much. Between you and me,” Holly made a cringy sort of face.
“Always, Hols. You know I take care of you,” I said, and it was true; in a business sense, I did. Always had and always would. That was why she and her real estate group were one of my best repeat customers.
“Jared, she’s really been through it and I don’t know that she can take much more bad news,” Holly said. She genuinely sounded like her heart went out to this lady.
“Got pretty close with her, huh?” I asked.
Holly nodded. “She’s an amazing person.” She sighed, chewed her bottom lip, and drew herself up to her full height which was only like five foot six which to my six one, looked adorable.
“I’ll pay for it,” she said. “Out of my finder’s fee.”
“Shit, you’re fuckin’ serious,” I said wide-eyed and surprised as fuck. I’d never seen her do anything like it.
“As a heart attack,” she said solemnly.
I sniffed. “You know, you’ve brought me a lot of business and shit over the years, I can’t do it for free, but I’ll go halves with you. Two-seventy-five.” I stuck out my hand, and she smiled and shook it.
“Thank you, I’m glad you’re here,” she said and then her eyes went wide as her phone went off in her hand. “Oh!” She looked at the screen and smiled.
“She’s here!”
“Well go on,” I said. “I got some shit to handle down here. I’ll be up in a bit.”
“Okay.”
She went up the stairs, and I put my hands on my hips and shook my head. Well, that was something.
“Hi!” I heard Holly’s enthusiastic voice at the back door and a peal of feminine laughter.
“It’s so good to finally meet you!” another woman’s voice cried.
“Hi,” a boy’s voice said, cracking, so a teenager maybe.
Hm.
I went around looking at my crew’s work nodding and finally took myself upstairs. I had no idea where the women had got to, but there was a teen in the kitchen. Skinny, tall, hadn’t equaled out yet but maybe sixteen? Seventeen?
“Hi,” he said and waved.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.
He tossed back brown hair that was getting too long in the front, bangs sweeping into his brown eyes.
“Good to be stopped,” he said with a reckless grin.
“Aw, yeah? Where you come from?” I asked.
“East coast,” he said.
“Shit, that is a long way away,” I agreed.
“Marc, who are you talking to?” A woman’s voice called from the stairwell up to the second floor. Her flats hit the hardwood floor, and she stepped around the corner into the dining room where I could see her and holy shit… she left me eating asphalt.
She was fucking gorgeous.
Long, sleek brown hair waved around her face which was angular and super model perfect. Wide brown eyes swept over me uncertainly and softened when Holly came around from behind her and introduced us.
“Oh, Cadence this is Jared; Jared, this is our buyer, Cadence.”
“Hi.” My brain finally caught up to what I was supposed to be doing versus what I was doing which was staring gobsmacked at the woman.
“Jared Ronald Allen Smith,” I said. She hesitantly put her soft hand in mine and barely gripped it, shaking weakly.
“Oh, like the trucks outside,” her boy said, and I startled slightly, forgetting he was even there.
“Yeah, I own the contracting company,” I said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Cadence murmured and without any more preamble, said, “How bad is my house?”
Direct. I liked that.
Shit, I was in trouble here…
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About A.J. Downey
A.J. Downey specializes in writing real and relatable contemporary romance stories. She’s from Seattle, WA and loves the Pacific Northwest. She finds inspiration from her surroundings, through the people she meets, and likely as a byproduct of way too much caffeine. An avid reader all of her life, it’s now her turn to try and give back a little, entertaining as she has been entertained.
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