One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) (5 page)

~

After he finished his rounds, Rick returned to the office. It was after six, and the staff had left for the day. Before he locked the front door and settled back at his desk, he checked the bathrooms for any homeless stragglers who might have wandered in while no one was looking. The office was close to the usually dry wash that ran through town just south of the business district, and while he wasn’t ready to install locks on the restroom doors yet, he was fighting to keep them from becoming overnight accommodations for the town’s bevy of dispossessed who hung out in the neighborhood.

Kent had located Amy’s cellphone number for Rick, who admitted to his friend that had failed to ask for it when he dropped in on her at the restaurant that morning. Actually, he hadn’t thought of it because he wasn’t really sure why he had stopped in to see her. He was simply pulled in that direction when he left his house in the morning, and he had to scramble for a credible excuse for stopping when he got there.

Rick punched in her number. The conversation didn’t start off swimmingly. She had answered and when he apologized for calling so late, she said nothing.

“Uh, I know this is going to sound a bit funny,” he said, “but I was thinking about your job situation and I just wanted to run something by you. Don’t feel like you have to say yes, okay?”

“Well, I don’t know why I would. What are you talking about?”

Rick chuckled. She wasn’t like most of the young women he met, all of whom seemed to fall over backward to agree to anything he wanted.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll make it quick. I have a job opening here at Buen Dia, and I wanted to know if you’d consider it. It’s probably temporary, and it’s certainly not something that requires a degree in accounting, but it’ll pay better than waiting on tables.”

“Probably temporary?” Amy responded. “What do you mean probably? Do people usually not work out for you?”

“Uh.” Christ, she had the ability to knock him off his usually unshakable bearing! Where did that come from? “Let’s just say that it’s probably below the kind of position you’d be qualified for.”

“What is it?”

“You’d be my administrative assistant.”

The drive to L.A. and back the next weekend gave Amy plenty of time to think about Rick’s offer. On the one hand, she could certainly use the money, and she undoubtedly would have more opportunities to make an impression on other professionals and possible future employers than she was ever going to have working at the café. On the other hand, taking another career detour and adding another apparently random job choice to her resume wasn’t going to improve the way she looked to potential employers—at least on paper. And, if she took the job, she’d probably have less time to look for a better one than she had now.

Her stepfather Robert’s birthday party was as dull as Amy had expected it would be. She had planned to stay until Sunday afternoon, but her mother was too distracted by Robert and by the activities to spend time with her daughter. And despite her promises to the contrary, her mother could do nothing to stop Robert from playing old Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby records on their ancient turntable.

Driving back to Palm Springs early Sunday morning, Amy told herself it was time to come to terms with the ways she’d lost her mother. Robert was needy on the best of days, and he was now soaking up all of her mother’s energy. Part of her loss was her own fault: her inability to find the career that made her mother proud had destroyed Rachel’s early faith in her.

“God, growing up is a bitch,” said out loud. A woman sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was cruising by her in the HOV late looked over and saw her lips moving. Apparently the woman thought Amy was talking on the phone. “Hang up and drive!” she mouthed, giving Amy the finger as she passed.

So much for civility! Amy thought. How did people get so angry? Everyone was so quick to judge and criticize and punish.

By the time she got home, she was despondent about just about everything: the state of her family, the state of her career, the state of the world. She needed a change.

~

When she met Rick Monday afternoon at Koffi, a Starbucks competitor across from the Ace Hotel, she was prepared to answer any questions about her skill set, about her goals, about her accomplishments at her last “real” job—all the things job search sites suggested she be ready for. What she wasn’t prepared for was Rick himself.

Yes, she’d realized she was attracted to him the two times she’d met him—the day of the dog’s accident and the next day when he stopped in to give her the news of Busker’s condition. But those brief meetings in no way prepared her for the visceral reaction she felt when he walked in and headed toward her across the long coffee shop. He waved at her and stopped at the counter to order a drink.

Now her concern wasn’t how she would answer his questions; it was if she could get anything to come out of her mouth at all.

The first day, he’d been dressed in a suit, and the bright morning sun had made it hard to see much of him. The second day, he’d dropped in and out too quickly for her heart or body to react. Now, however, she was getting a long, undistracted look at him. Why everyone else in the shop wasn’t gawking at his athletic shape, his muscular arms, and his elegant face was beyond her. She looked around. The room was filled with gay men who should have been appreciating Rick as much as she was.

“Hi, Amy.” He reached out with his free hand to shake hers. She squeezed and released it quickly, not trusting herself to maintain contact too long. He sat down across the table from her and tore the plastic top off his coffee.

“These things are always too hot,” he explained. “By the time I can drink it, I’ve lost interest.”

“Ha!” she said weakly. She was going to have to do better than that if she was going to impress him.

“I’ve done my research, and I’m certain I’d like you to come to work for me,” he said. He pulled a piece of folded paper out of his pocket and opened it up on the table between him. He had written down a dollar figure—mid-five figures—and a list of benefits, including health insurance, vacations, and a 401K.

“It looks great,” she said. Actually it was much better than that, but she didn’t want to sound too desperate. “But don’t you have any questions for me? Like what I’ve done or what I want to do?”

“I think I know as much as I need to,” he said, shaking his head but still smiling. “So, are you interested?”

“Well, it’s not what I’ve been looking for, but it will be a step in the right direction anyway.”

“Yes, the café thing just wasn’t going to work out, was it?” he said, smiling and folding the paper back up. He handed it to her. “How much notice do you have to give?”

Amy slowly calmed down as they talked through more details of the job. By the time he left and she sat back with a loud sigh, she had begun to believe she could learn to manage her attraction to her new boss. She just had to keep her mind on work and the bigger goal: finally getting somewhere with her life.

~

Rick’s small office building was south of downtown, just down the street from Builders Supply, a couple of blocks north of the wash. Amy hadn’t expected it to look like much, but although it was modest, it was also impeccably well-kept. Not a chunk of granite was out of place in the small, cactus-studded landscaping in front of the building. The large picture windows facing the street were sparkling clean, although it was impossible to see through them. The miniature blinds between the panes of the insulated glass panels were closed, keeping the morning sun from getting inside.

“Hi!  I’m Sandra.  You must be Amy!” The receptionist jumped to her feet the second that Amy walked through the front door two days later.

“How did you know?”

“Who else would you be?” Sandra laughed, reaching out to encircle Amy in a surprisingly warm hug. “Not a lot of women breach this threshold. We are few and far between!”

“Oh.” Already Amy felt off balance, unsure of how to respond to Sandra’s cheerful declaration of what Amy considered bad news.

“Here, let me show you where the coffee is and then I’ll show you your office.” Sandra grabbed Amy’s arm by the elbow and pulled her deeper into the building. “Rick will be here soon. He usually arrives between nine and ten. But he works late, for sure. I get here early so I can answer the phones. Most contractors get started as soon as the sun comes up. Are you and early riser too? I hope so; it can be a little too quiet around here in the morning.”

Sandra kept up a steady monolog as she led Amy back to a small, neat kitchenette, no different from the dozens of office coffee rooms Amy had seen over the past decade, except that it, too, was spotless.

“And, here is your office!” Sandra flung open the door to a small room surrounded on two sides with large windows. Two walls were built out with deep wooden shelves that reached the ceiling. Architectural plans were stuffed into diamond-shaped dividers on two shelves. A few more shelves were lined with building codes, business textbooks, and coffee-table-worthy design books. The rest of the shelves were empty, as if someone planned the space with the expectation that the company would continue to grow.

A long, plain plank of finished maple served as a desk and held a large monitor hooked up to a laptop in a docking station at one end. A couple of two-door filing cabinets held up the desk, and a bright, block-dyed rug provided the only color in the room. It was restful, but businesslike. Immediately, Amy knew she was going to like it.

“As soon as Rick gets here to handle the phones, I’ll show you how to log into your computer and get to Outlook and the other programs you’ll need,” Sandra said.

“Oh, if you give me the password, I can show myself around,” Amy said. “I’d love to get comfortable with it right away.”

“Oh, sure,” Sandra said. She seemed a little disappointed. Perhaps she had been looking forward to spending some time with another woman in the office. Nonetheless, she walked back to her desk in the lobby and returned with a sheet of paper.

“Here’s everything you’ll need. If you can’t figure something out, just let me know. Do you want me to show you the bathroom?”

Amy laughed. “No, I’m sure I can find it. This isn’t that big of a building.”

The receptionist started to pull the door closed as she left, but Amy stopped her.

“Can you leave it open, please?”

“Ah, sure!” That seemed to please Sandra.

“And, hey before you go…” Amy started. Sandra stopped and walked back in as Amy sat down to her new desk. “Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but can you tell me what happened to the last admin?”

“Ah, Gloria,” the receptionist sighed and sat down on the small chair across the desk from Amy. “I think it came down to the fact that she didn’t work hard enough.”

“Oh.” Amy didn’t know what she had expected, but that answer certainly wasn’t it. “How hard is hard enough?”

“Well, Rick likes to put in about sixty hours a week, and I think Gloria thought it should be more like forty. Frankly, between you and me, I think she took the job for the wrong reason.”

“What was that?”

“She had the hots for him,” Sandra whispered conspiratorially. She leaned forward. “Let me tell you a little secret. Promise me you won’t say anything to Rick about this?”

Amy was surprised that the woman would offer tell her something in confidence—apparently something that could come back to bite her—without knowing Amy for more than a few minutes.  But who was she to refuse a little office gossip?

“What?”

“Rick has very high expectations of everyone in this office, and yet he seems insecure about letting us women get too comfortable or too accomplished. It’s a weird paradox I haven’t been able to figure out.”

It sounded like more evidence of a sexist environment, Amy thought, starting to wonder if showing up for this position was a mistake.

“And something else?” Sandra obviously had more on her mind she couldn’t wait to share. “I was offered this job, but frankly, Rick scares me.”

“Scares you how?”

“He’s very demanding, and he’s very good at what he does,” Sandra started. “But he’s vulnerable as all hell. Just wait ‘til you hear him talking with his mother. My god, he is intimidated by her.”

“What’s she like?”

“Actually, I don’t find her scary at all. I kind of like her. But I’d never tell Rick that.”

The phone at the reception desk rang, and Sandra jumped up.

“I have to get that,” she said, walking away. “But good luck. I’m sure you’re going to be fine here.” 

Amy wasn’t sure. What she hoped would be a cut and dried, nothing-but-business, short-term job was already filled with personal intrigue and conflicting expectations.

She raised the seat of her desk chair so her feet would lie flat on the floor, and pulled herself up to the remote keyboard sitting in front of the computer monitor. She found the power button on the docking station and waited for the unit to come alive.

She knew that this administrative assistant position wasn’t the kind of job that would segue into the career track she wanted. Before she heard all of Sandra’s cautions, she had worried that she was taking another detour on her way to making a success of herself. And, if it required the kind of hours Sandra indicated, she’d never have time to look for the right job. Whatever that was.

To some degree, she was already guilty of Gloria’s sin: she was attracted to the boss. What part of her decision to take this job was attributable to that? And how well would she be able to hide the fact that she had noticed his tight ass, his biceps, his large muscular hands? She had, in spite of her better intentions, already imagined herself surrounded by his strong arms. She’d already wondered if he had hair on his chest and if it would tickle her nipples the way she’d always imagined chest hair would. Rob had had a hairless chest. His smooth face and hairless body were part of what made him look good on TV. Yes, Rick still looked young too, but he was far more masculine.

Amy shook herself and focused on the computer screen. She entered the password Sandra had given her, and waited for the programs to boot up. This job—even if it was temporary—was only going to work out if she put her libido in her desk drawer when she came into work, and left it there until . . . well, until forever.

She looked around for a desk drawer, and laughed at herself when she realized there wasn’t one.

“Don’t take the metaphor too literally!” she warned herself aloud.

“What?” Sandra called in from the front room.

“Just talking to myself,” Amy called back. She was going to have to watch what she said out loud.

~

By the time Rick came into the office, Amy had brought herself up to speed on a lot of things. She’d located the financial files and quickly perused them. The company was grossing something like $2 million a year, of which $1 million went right back out the door for materials. Half of the remainder went to salaries and benefits, another tenth to insurance, another tenth to business consultants, a tenth to marketing, a sliver to taxes, and most of the rest—about $200,000—represented earnings. That wasn’t a bad return, she guessed, although she wasn’t sure what the standards were for profitability of construction companies.

A separate company, one that appeared to manage hotel properties, had a separate set of financials that indicated revenues of another $300,000 but much smaller profits—less than $20,000 a year. Amy wondered how Rick thought the distraction of another company was worth it. But then she noticed the balance sheet. The company didn’t just manage hotel properties, it also owned them—about $10 million worth! Wow, Amy thought. It seemed like a lot of capital to tie up for such a small return. Maybe his strategy was to wait for long-term gains as the properties appreciated.